The Design Startup Show

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Hey design starters today, I have a quick one with regards to systemizing, the processes that you have in your business right now. I know it can be challenging. If you have been a designer who has been helping different customers with bespoke projects and. This is all how we start. Right. And right now, if you want to productize it, it's kind of like a situation where you're stuck, because let's say you have 10 different customers from different industries and asking you to help them with different projects.

What are you going to systemize? Right? Because one person can ask you for web design work. Another one, one's a logo and another customer wants a product label. So it's. Kind of like everywhere and I have been there as well. So the systemizing may start like a bit of a mess, meaning you wouldn't know where to start.

So what I have done previously was not to do it for everyone. So you gotta think like, uh, your mindset has to be like, the customers don't know what you're preparing and what you're planning for. But they know what they're going to get. Right? So let's say you have your 10 customers, you asked you serving them in a way that you have been doing all along all the time, all the time.

You have been providing them with your bespoke project work. When they need a report to the be designed, it designed for them. You charge them a certain amount like that. Right? So to systemize it in areas you can do for everything, but you pick out one small thing. It can be any small thing that you see as commonly required for all your 10 customers.

So say for example, how I started was I know that let's say when a website is being created, it doesn't just, uh, Just, you know, come up as it's it is, you know, and, and, and the customer wouldn't just confirm right from the get go, right? What happens is there are a lot of back and forth. So for example, when I created this web first draft design for a client, I pass it to them.

I deliver it and they will come back to me with another change. And then after that, I, I do the small edit and it's not. A big one is a simple edit. I pass it back to them again and they pass it back to me with another change of, you know, maybe different photo to be edit a different, a different layout, meaning maybe the tax on the change to be changed in the rye and the design, the image to be changed to the left.

So very technical like that. And what I realized is they are not the only ones, because if I were to do a report for another customer, whether or not. The other customer is in another, this industry as a designer, I'll be doing the same thing by, I, it doesn't matter which industry I'm helping, because I don't need to know.

And I don't need to be, to be well versed in, in a certain industry to be able to do the graphic design point is my customer will tell me what they want. Right. So if they are already telling me what. The industry's about and where to put certain things I can just go hit with we've got instructions. So every customer has this stage where they would tell me to change that.

And if they were to tell another graphic designer and not me about this, the other graphic designer will be able to do that change as well. So I. I started to realize that that could be a small area to systemize and hire someone to make that change. So the thing is the changes that my 10 customers have been asking me to make were also regular enough for someone, for me to hire, to help and standby to make these changes.

So what I did was I picked up one customer. To do a trial. So I haven't hired yet, right from the start. And, and for my, for my case, I did not even hire it from the start. I just did everything myself first, because I want to know how it's like, I want to create the, the systems on my own first, uh, right from the start.

That may not be something that you want to do, but, but that was. My situation. So I picked up one customer who has, has quite a bit offer changes all the time. And, and if I were to tell the person that the customer that if he or she is given a month of just every change, every change that they want without additional charges, would they want to take that on at a flat rate and.

And I'm just asking them, right. I'm not selling to them. I'm just asking them if that would seem like a good idea to them. So you could do that too, and suggest to just pick one client and suggest that. So it can be any common pattern that you'd have seen amongst the clients. And then you ask that question if they would like to try.

So you are still going on with your. Your design work with the clients, those clients, and any, any number of clients that you have is the things that the days do run the same. Right? But you need to reserve some time, maybe say an hour a day or two, two to three hours a week, just to kind of come out with this, this package for this select the client as if you're doing it for a lot of people.

A lot of businesses. So, so you asked this client that if you want to do that, then, uh, yeah, let me know and we can start. So what you do. So this is what I tell my customer that at the time, when I just started with my beta, so I see that the price is a. $500 for this month. And within this man, you can just send me as many things.

You want me to change within illustrator because my customer has been working on illustrator falls on her own, and she has been pulling her hair out because she was not a designer or, but she's trying to save money. Right. So now I'm telling her that she can save more than before if she were to. Keep asking freelancers to make the changes.

Every change is not going to be $20. Every change may be $220 because every freelancer we have to kind of relearn every different freelance. I have to relearn what, what she's she wants to change and, and her way of working. And even if she asked me to do it, like change by change, I would have to charge at least $80 as well.

So if the a hundred changes would be, will be. What $8,000. That's a lot. Right? So compared to $500 in, within a month, she gets everything done. So, so it sounded great to her. Then, then we try. So anything that you propose to your customer may not be a good idea may or may not be a good idea. And, and you don't just give that up.

You can trick it on along the way and only just ask that one, select the customer first. On how that package can help further. And then, then you ask for the sale. So you asked to, then you start to sell and ask for, for the, for the fee before you start the work. And only if your customer has made that fee, then it's validated that your package works.

Right. So that, that happens to me. And when I, when I worked for one customer and she was really happy with it, I went on to the next one and then to the next, until the ninth. So I just kept letting every customer know about it. And soon enough, the 10 customers that started using that package and they did not need to go on that, you know, the stages of that invoicing co getting quotes and, and, you know, for us waiting for our pay and things like that.

So, um, so if you're having trouble systemizing, This is the first step to start with is this is to pick out, pick out that one piece of common problem that all your customers have. So they don't have to be the same vertigo. They don't have to ask for the same big thing, but maybe within that big thing, the little processes in between maybe the same.

So you can just start with that first and, and charge them for that first. And. And you can ask them for that if they are not going to pay for that means it's not validated. Right. So, so just try it out and then move on from there.

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Hey design starters. Today. what I would like to talk more about is on hiring training and getting the best out of your members so that your clients and customers will get the best quality and results out of your service. Why I'm saying that is because recently I do have some comments from clients who, who we're not.

Exactly satisfied with the results that we are giving. And they found that there wasn't any progress. They found that we have been giving them the better quality work already than many other designers that they have tried, but there was still some progress that they would have could have seen better over the past months.

And that, that is. Absolutely you do to my own fault for overlooking certain areas. And the, the issue here was because there are sudden designs that were not things like on brand, as much as it should be. And, you know, they did not, the results were not part of the requirement of what's of what's said before in the brief.

So there's a few things that. That are hard to communicate to your team members when you have already kind of bridged them, right? So you have the documentation, you have the processes and they know right from the start that they have to follow the brief, but there are mistakes like that, that can we meet.

So the thing is, you know, we all want to know we were where this kind of quality can be checked and double checked before we send to the customers. But these need time. And if you have hundreds of clients, you have 50 clients, you have, you know, you have so many clients, you already scaling, how are you going to, to double check all the world in a single day?

Right? So it's, it's either it be late. You know, it's either your, your delivery will not be on time or they will be on time, but they won't be as good as what you could have given. So how are you going to. Create this process where your quality of the work will still be top notch and, and yet be on time and not done by yourself.

Yeah. You, you don't have the full control if you're going to pass work on to your team members when you hire. Right. So this has been a challenge for me over the years. And when I started, when I first started to productize my service, Back in 2015, I was struggling so hard to pass on this kind of process and the quality that I would have given, but I made it, I made a work by really training up my designers as customers give us projects.

So I did not do the work, but when I pass on the work to Michael. My, my team members and gave them the requirements of the, of the brief and what the client has said. Most of the time my designers don't come back to me for questions. They would just see the requirements as it is. And they just work based on their interpretation of the brief.

But what if their interpretation is not correct? Most of the time, they wouldn't be concerned about that. And so they just follow the brief and do it. So as a project manager at a time when I was a project manager for my business, because I had to be, I didn't have any, uh, enough resources to hire another project manager.

What I had to do was to kind of, when I got to get a brief, I have to kind of reexplain and reword the, the instructions to suit a designer. So, so we, as, as. Already designers of our businesses know how designers think, right? Because we are designers, people who are not designers may not know how designers think.

And they may describe the brief in such flowery language or, or something that they understand, but they don't do. They truly wouldn't care or be concerned if the designers understand what they're saying, they just want to, they feel that, okay, I'm hiring you to make things easier for me. Means in my brief, I'll just make it easy for me to, to explain.

And I'll just put them down in the shortest time possible. But the danger is the designer may not understand what you are talking as a client. They don't know what they are saying. Right. So as the business owner who has a stake in it, you have to be the one to come in. This is when you're starting out.

Right. When you don't have a project manager in between, you will have to come in and figure out the brief and understand will your designer interpretation in the same way as what your client wants? Because at the start, when I didn't do this, that everything was a mess. It's not the fault of the designer.

It's just that the client wouldn't. One to spend time to rephrase anything, to make sure it's understandable and clear. And the designer also wouldn't have that time to try and understand the brief, right? So it's both ways. And if we don't kind of glue them together, then they will just be on their own.

You know, they own the land, right? So as the business person, that's what I did. I had to read the brief, figured it out and interpret it properly. Ask the client's questions if, if, uh, these are interpreted in this way. And, um, is that what they're trying to say? And they will respondent and say yes or no, and, and, and they send samples and clarify the brief.

So that's what I had to do. Before I pass them onto my designers and having said all that, once those are done, uh, done, I had to then document down what I have explained and what I have done to clarify the brief, because in ultimately I will have to pass on this position of a project manager to someone else.

So that I can remove myself from there and move on to the other strategic levels of the business, like marketing, like branding, building relationships, building network, et cetera. Right. So in order to do all that, I also need this whole process of. Asking the client, what they need interpret from them, putting them in questions, asking them the questions, getting the answers back, then repackaging them together to give to the designer.

So this becomes a process itself to document and pass on to the next project manager who will take over and do the same work. To pass the message and brief to the designer. So this is how we work in our business, our company, where, where messages are being passed on, they won't be distorted, but they will be reinterpreted in a way that the brief requires.

So that helps the designer come up with something that is accurately what the client wants. So. What I'm trying to say here is when you hire you, don't just hire and pass on the work or, or brief just like that because your designer or your project manager may not understand the brief. And they may not be able to find a time to check with the client, what the client actually wants.

So you need to. Give them this either this time or this other person to team up with them to help them with this part of the work. So sometimes it's not that the designer can design. It's not that the designer is not talented. It's this is more of communication, right? This is more of understanding briefs, understanding requirements and not just, you know, Being a designer who can design stuff.

All right. So, uh, this is my take for hiring where training is involved and sometimes you just need to put in that bit of time to do this. And in the long run, it will pay off similar, literally in my company where I did all these at the beginning, and I do have designers who stick with us for many years and they are still around with us because.

They know that there are things that they are learning here. They know that they can grow with us. And these are these employees and these team members are the people you will want to, to promote and, and, uh, have them grow with your company for the long haul. So this is my take and I'll see you in the next one.

Bye.

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Hey designed starters. What I'm going to talk about today is a lot on selling without making people feel like they're being sold. And that is where you start to see leads coming in. Like they're all getting, although they're not really all getting because you have been doing the work to get those leads.

So what I've been doing over months and years, maybe, maybe at least three years is just putting out what I've been trying to work on in my business. And the, the point of how should I put it? Maybe, maybe the mindset I would say, right? The mindset behind all these. It's not about selling, although, you know, At the end, there is a selling, right.

But selling is, is like, you know, the, the, the last part of it where you tell people, okay, time to buy, you know, this is the cost of it. And this is the price. If you want to start, this is the price to pay, but the whole journey to what's to that point, there are many ways. Okay. And. So I've been reading books.

I've been listening to podcasts. I've been watching YouTube videos, reading articles, and I'm sure you've been doing all of that. And there are so many ways that so many people are using to make an income and just to sell things and just make a living out of that. And what are we looking for here? We are looking for probably the fastest way.

To get more leads, right? The shortest time possible to get that number of leads to kind of a half the number of people to buy so that we can more than just survive. We can have that income to even invest further and then lead to somehow our financial independence in the future. So there are a lot of lead ups.

There are a lot of preparation. There's a lot of work and then time is involved. And, you know, after all that few years, that was saying that I was building up, I come to this age where I'm already 41 this year. And then I realized that, Hey, I'm getting older and, and all those time has passed. What have I done?

What, what is there to show? And have I gone to the point where I'm making the right amount of sales that I want to do to bring the income right. And. With that I would want to know as well, what works and I'm sure that's what you want to do. So like you have gone through so much time, so much pain, so much struggling of one thing to get that flow of leads, but time has passed and all you have done is doing the same thing over and over.

And always doing the same work just to get the leads and it's burning you out. Same for me. And so what I found is that. You don't want people to feel like they're being sold. That's the first thing. So that mindset must be there because if you have that mindset, then it's going to be tiring for you to always try to use something that is not within your comfort zone to keep trying to make something, you know, make someone buy from you.

And, and when it looks like sales, these people just reject these people just turn away because. They just feel like they're being sold. They don't want to buy because of that. It's not because they don't want the product. It's not because they don't want the service. They probably end up buying from somebody else and they're getting the same service possibly.

Right. So what I'm trying to say is you're going to get Hyatt from that because you are trying to sell to them, sell to them. And then the few that we, they don't buy, and then you go to the next one, you do the same thing. They don't buy. And then you go to the next one. So, you know, time has passed and you have been doing so much and trying to sell that.

And if you don't get that sale, you think, Oh, it doesn't work. People don't want the service. People don't want the product. People don't want your design service at all. And you feel less confident and you don't believe in it. You feel that the business doesn't work. You think you feel, so this is how I have been feeling as well before I started trying to.

Really put out what I do on a daily basis, weekly basis on a regular basis in my work. Because when I do that, I put that, put that out, people outside. See it. The audience, see it. People who were not ready to buy at at time, see that. And in three years time when they are ready to buy, they buy because they already see me doing it, working in public, putting out what I do in my business.

And they read about what I write. They read about what I say and. So they know me right through these years, but they don't exactly know me as in, we don't keep in contact that is so personal, but because they consume what I put out, it seems like they know me already. Then when they truly want to buy, they know who to go to.

They come to me and then they asked me for help. And that's when I tell them exactly the details of what I do. That's when the features and benefits and the value of the work that I do is being communicated to the people. And then the last bit of it is the selling. So, so, you know, you want to bring in sales, you want to bring quick sales.

There is nothing complicated. It's just explaining what they can get from you. The benefits, the, the, the, the good stuff, right. And, and it starts from just putting things out in your intention, your mindset, you know, what you do on a daily basis, then getting them to know you better in this way works better rather than just plain.

Trying to tell them, Hey, I, I do, I do graphic design, you know, and it's, this amount of money is cheaper than these people. And we do better than them because we are of higher quality and we have better customer service. So if you say such a thing to someone who hasn't listened to what all or read what you have done in your work.

What they don't get is they don't trust you. Right. And trust is the single most important factor when it comes to business. Right? Because they are going to give you the money to get something that they think is of promise. So if you are going to promise them something right from the start, they wouldn't think I would, I would trust you.

They will need to see more. Right. So don't make it complicated. There's no need to go through super deep funnels and, um, super, uh, you know, interesting or exciting sales tactic or, or even copy that, try to kind of make them miss being misled. Right? Like kind of mislead them, no need for all that. So there's no need to spend.

You know, tons of money trying to go on causes that, that teach you super copywriting skills or, or content marketing or SEO. There's no need for that unless right. Unless you have super deep interest in that, because all of that brings a lot of complication. All of that brings a lot of overwhelm because with all of that is telling you that you don't have enough.

To sell. You don't have enough in you to be able to sell as much as you want. So no, you can. You are enough already. You'll have what you have use, what you have now. Put it out there. Just tell them, tell them your weaknesses, tell them, Oh, I'm not getting enough traffic today. Tell them, um, my leads are not, you know, so perfect as to what I expected all today, I have, um, incoming traffic and people are calling me more, you know, whatever, whatever results that you have, your analytics, your traffic, your, your, your results, how you feel and how your customers view and the customers may not be, may be feeling.

So good about y'all y'all service today, and you can say it too, right? Like, like for myself, I, I don't get great comments every other day. You know, most of the comments are great. I do have great referrals, but I do have customers who churn. I do have customers who don't sign up anymore. I have customers who give me a review that.

That tell me I can improve better. I can do better. And, and they were a bit disappointed. I do. And I say this too, and I'm telling you now, so it's the same thing when you want to sell, right? It's all about, you know, your journey between when you start between, when you get a climb and between working with clients, you got to show all of that, that things are going on.

And this will help people gain trust on, we know all about you with you, and they know that they can rely on you. And what with you, because there, there will be, there will be this communication, there will be this conversation between you and them, and they know that you exist and run the business rather than, you know yeah.

Just trying to sell. And then when you just trying to sell the. They, they still don't get it. Right. And, and there'll be skeptical over what you're trying to tell them, because everybody sees the same thing. Right. Everybody sees the are the best. So what's, what's the best they can feel it. You got to show them on a more daily basis to get them to know you first.

Right. So, so this is just, you know, more of what I want to put out today because. Because, um, I do feel like, uh, the times I don't get overflowing leads, there are times when a few that leads are not automatic and I have to rework again on, you know, getting that sale. If somebody churns, I have to think, okay.

Let's um, you know, look for another person who wishes to buy and it can get quite tiring. And I also understand that. You guys also feeding this way too. So just want to share this with you on, on where I'm at and what I'm trying out and what I have been trying out that way. That's.

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Hi design starters. I know many of you like to know about tools, right? As designers or people who have designed background. And we are, you know, kind of building a design agency ourselves. We know we like to dabble in like tech stuff, tools and anything that is techie equipment kind of, um, Um, thing to help us move quicker and more efficient in our work, right?

Especially in when you come to productizing your company or you productizing your services, it's way more, way more fun when you start to look at tools and anything to help speed up and expedite processes, because when it comes to productizing, you will need a lot of. Process processes systems to get things moving without you always being in it to, to run things right.

You, you don't want to be the bottleneck and that's the point of productizing and that's what productizing helps with. So just packaging your services is not good enough. All right. We have to use other tools to help us and where we can leverage on. To make things run smoothly. So when it comes to, when it comes to, um, putting down your processes, putting down all the knowledge of what you have in your brain down to something where, where another designer, another manager, another director can come in, look at it and know what is the next step and the next and the next of that.

So, yeah. So when it comes to processes, you need to have this place to document. It's something like an SOP or standard operating procedure, but it's much more than that because when it comes to SOP, it may not be something actionable. SOP can be just, um, Plain documentation texts of anything at all. And the person who is reading it may not know what to do next, but when it comes to processes, there is like checklist.

There are video screen recordings, or these are the things to show your next person who is running the business or running that, that kind of department, you know, what, what are the next steps? So. When it comes to tools, there are several ones when it comes to processes and documenting your processes. And if you're just starting out, I I'm just listing out the best ones that you can use.

Um, and, and there are not many around, there are many that are good when it comes to the higher level processes and putting down the systems, which are more pricey. But when it comes to good ones that are not so pricey, then also many, I believe some of you may be using like Trello, even a Sana, um, Nosha and slight, which are also the ones I have been using that I've been trying out slight.

And it's pretty awesome. It's uh, the interface is really good. I love the design and everything. The only question when it comes to the. The, when it comes to the payment plan, is that when it comes to the free version, there are, there is only a hundred documents and limited number of documents, which is a hundred documents for, for your members.

So that's very limited and you can just move up to the standard one and pay $6 and 67 per member per month to get unlimited documents. It's not a lot. So I find that slide is. Uh, a great one, which you can consider then the next one that is great for starters would be Tetra. Alright, try.call, which is free, uh, for it could be unlimited free unlimited documents.

And, um, but of course there are other limited areas within Tetra. I feel that it's good enough for you to get started. Without going too pricey. So slight Tetra and notion, notion notion is great because it's flexible. But the challenge with it being flexible is that, uh, as a starter doing a systems and processes at the start, it may not tell you what is the next thing to do in that time on any, you know, um, um, taps or.

Or templates that that is easy for you. They do have templates obviously, but, but I find that the way it works is more like a task management tool. You can use this as processes safekeeping for sure. And you can come on kind of develop it, but it takes some time to learn on, on putting them, putting the things together to make it a process, um, SOP or process systems.

Manager. All right. So it's not that it's not good. It's great. As well, notion is great, uh, because of its flexibility and because of its flexibility, you may need to spend a lot of time figuring that out to put things together. So that's a good and not so good thing, but, but it's really dependent on, on how you want to work with your systems, right?

So the slight there's a notion that Tetra. There is a little bit of a higher level is a process street, which I've also tried before they have been changing their pricing here and there for awhile. They were probably testing things out. They offered a fully free one before and with a limited checklists and templates.

But now I don't think they have a totally free one, but you can try for free. Yeah. And first. Plan is $15. So it's all right. It's, it's quite okay. Just to start with unlimited checklists and unlimited templates. So it's something that you can consider if $15 per month is something that you are willing to fork out right per month.

So these are the few, um, more, but once, uh, and for, to just get started, which is great. So don't use Google docs because. Google docs are just to keep your documents, but when it comes to processes, it's, it's not the right thing to use because you have to think of yourself as a day to day running business.

That's running every hour, every minute, even seconds. Imagine your teammate or your member trying to find out what's the next step. They have to go into Google drive. Figure out which document is the correct? One click on it, go in again, and then read word for word with where is the area to follow and where are the next steps?

There are too many steps. And when there are too many steps to open this, this document, go into this folder and then scroll down to look for a document. It takes a lot of time. Time is one thing, and it gets frustrating because. Your team member is trying to solve a problem. And if you use Google drive or Google docs for that, you are not helping your team member at all.

And that makes it harder for them to work when they find it harder to work, it's easy for them to give up and probably overwhelm and not do anything at all. And that leads to your, your productivity and your results, right? In, in what you are, what you are putting out and helping your clients with. So in order to get things moving fast and not to stress your members too much, you know, they, they want to have a seamless way to, to know.

Okay. So what is next right use of use the process system kind of, um, tool that's meant for it. That's why people create all these, because they already know that there is issue using just what document or, or Google dots too. Get processes put down. So, so, um, the next year, when, if let's say you are already starting out and scaling up, you can try sweet process.

This is a really good one because it's very simple yet. It's, um, powerful in, in, in, in scaling, in helping you scale with more team members, um, more ways to. Kind of refine your processes as you grow and you can also manage tasks within it. So, uh, you can also, you know, kind of create private or public knowledge base.

So I think this is great for scaling and growing and pricing is definitely for the, those who are scaling. The next one is also for scaling, which is system hub system hub, um, it's hundred and 20. Per monthly per month and you can include up to 40 users. So this is really for people who are really growing big and have more than 20 users.

You have so many in your company that you need something that can fill up with all these users at an economy price. So, yeah, so these are all that I would recommend and you can kind of. Pausing. You're looking for things, uh, and tools that can help with processes because these are what I've tried as well.

So it's men, it's, it's down to choosing one. All right. All these are great. You just have to try and play around to see which one fits you and your team best. Right. So, yep. That's it for now? I'll see you in the next one. Thanks. Bye.

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Hey, design starters, a quick one today on imposter syndrome and content that you want to put out, but sometimes you hit the wall, right? Or your most times you hit a wall and don't know what to say. So when it comes to getting your words out and you know, that being consistent with content is important to build your business, grow your business leads and keep them coming.

Right. Which works for me. But how do you. Kind of have rolling content all the time without feeling like there's nothing to say, there's nothing right. Or this nodding to put out because there are others who are possibly better than you at that topic. Well, what I do now is, well, I also feel that way even now, but I felt that way more in the past simply because I kept looking at the people and learning from people who have always been better than myself.

That's it, there are also people who are still learning a few levels or are a level or many, many thousand levels below you. So what I'm doing now, it's more of, pretty much just working in public. So. Rather than trying to advise others who are levels below you, or rather than trying to be like people levels above you while you can do, which is what I'm doing is to put out things that I have been doing along the way.

Right. I'm sure you want to grow a business. And there are things that you are doing activities that are meant to grow your business. I'm sure you don't just sit all day and do nothing. I'm sure you try to. You know, get some sales. You, you try to talk to people, you even, if not really talking to people, you are also dealing with operations delivery and you find certain mistakes.

You find some results and you find some success throughout the day. I'm sure. So one good way is to take down notes, right? Log it down. Early in the day and towards the end of the day. So it was the end of the day. You probably have learned some lessons, do some review, again, ask yourself questions, like, okay, what have I done today?

You put it down. What are the things I've learned by doing all these? You put it down. And then the last part is you ask yourself, what can I do better the next day to make this better? Right. To give more results, give more success. And these are notes. When you put down can be turned into content. It's like, you don't have to do, uh, you know, for example, a social media posts or LinkedIn polls, always telling people what to do.

No, you don't have to, but you can just mention about your learnings for today. And you don't have to say, Oh, today I learned that, you know, this, this is you. You don't have to say it like that so explicitly, but you can start off with that in your notes. And then you tweak to, to a polls, you trick on a polls, such that the content is relevant to your audience and something that people can take away and relate for that day.

So, so one thing about audiences, I mentioned that, you know, you treat your audience as one, but. Sometimes trying to treat your audience can get, let you get stuck as well. Right? Can make you get stuck. And that's for me as well. And I feel that way. So sometimes I don't write from my audience. Sometimes I just write to write.

Sometimes I just write to put things out and just share my learnings. It can be anyone. They don't have to be people who are looking for design. They can be people who are engineers. They can be people who don't value design. They can be anyone. I'm helping them. Right. So we just get to know each other from there.

It's fine as well. So mindset is just to make daily reflections and, and tell people what you're working on on for that day, while you have learned for that day. So working public for me for now is the best way to put things out and put content out on a daily, consistent basis.

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Hey, design starters. Today's lesson is on how you can promote your service business for free on an ongoing basis. So when it comes to leads, there are many people feel that, you know, recurring leads is a recurring problem. Meaning it's a challenge. And many of us, our service owners struggle a lot with, because most times I was of his businesses kind of.

Look like a commodity, and it's hard to find a way where we can show others that we are different or somehow find a way to differentiate ourselves. Right. Besides look just in all talking about different things and telling people of our different features. People don't get that. Right. So when it comes to promoting, it's really hard to know where you should go.

So in this case, a lot of, um, Uh, there are a lot of ways, but, but over the few years I've been focusing a lot on, on, um, one big, one big Moto, all ho I should call it the value, the big value that I always put myself to remind myself off when it comes to, to working with clients is to truly truly know. Who I'm serving.

This is a big one because who you're serving will lead you to find, you know, where, where to find them. Uh, you don't just go to Facebook because it's a social media where everybody is there, or maybe there, but you may never know. I realize, you know, this year, many people are leaving Facebook in a way that they don't like, just kind of delete their account, but they just don't go up anymore and log in anymore to, to, um, Just scroll down post after post.

So if they are not, there are your, are your prospects there? Do you know? It's really hard because Facebook is a place where everybody used to go and anybody used to go. But if your customer is, I'm not going to be there anymore, you wouldn't know. Right. So that's the struggle. And hence you should really know your customers, meaning you don't have to know their personal likes and all that because every customer will have a different personal life.

But in terms of the more common static, common fixed up top kind of properties or traits that each of your customers have. For example, when you deal with graphics, who, who will actually really need ongoing graphics, right? For me, it's a lot of marketing people. I can go to digital marketers. I can go to, um, marketing heads, director of marketing, marketing managers, and I just have to pick one.

And when I pick one, I will then ask myself, you know, where do these marketing leaders go to. Right. Do they hang out on LinkedIn? Do they hang out and talk about things in groups? And if they do, then I would just, um, kind of be part of the group and have a chat and just. You know, just talk with them, speak with them and chat with them about all things marketing.

They are all about improving their marketing skills. I'm also improving my marketing skills. We can discuss a lot of things, right. What I'm trying to say is to have this main group of people whom, you know, well, and, and that will be a good start. So that's the first value. The next thing is on. Because you already know who they are, then you have to go to the channels of how you kind of, um, look for them and keep them as your customers so that these are the three channels.

The first channel is customer acquisition, which is which I go by content and SEO. So the con the customer acquisition is. The big part of it is. Okay. So what were, what are you going to do to acquire customers? So for me, it's content SEO content. I can do things like blogging, things that articles, uh, lead magnets and, um, email content.

It can be social media content on LinkedIn. These are content. And I can repurpose them. I can cut them up. I can do micro posting from big posts. So I have many different, small posts, different, small micro posts that come from one big post. So I can just create one huge pose of 2000 words and then break them down into hundreds.

100 words propose, and this can help me generate. At least 10 days off content to put on social media. Yeah. And as he all will come from the blogging and articles and these can drive, um, kind of, uh, attract people who do search on Google or even anywhere else. Right. So does customer acquisition to first get them to know boss and then we have to keep doing it so that they.

There are a lot of touch points around and they will get to know us even better and gain their trust. Second thing is customer engagement. So from the customer acquisition channel, I will hone down to the engagement where I post daily and regularly on LinkedIn. All right. So this is to get them to read my posts and.

Truly know me better and know what I do better and know what they can get from me better. And that's where I helped them more. And we get in touch via whether it's true, the PMDM or, or, or just pretty much just engaging in my posts, right. And me engaging in their posts. And then the last one will be customer retention, which is via email because why after.

Engaging each other on LinkedIn where we have a conversation. That's when I will, I will say, Hey, you know, let's just connect on email. And because, you know, sometimes LinkedIn's messaging Pato can, you know, kind of not allow us to find a lot of messages and they truly get lost. So email may be a great way to organize that.

And most of the time they say, yes, it. Pretty much every time. So there we go with that. And when you read can retain your customers, they may come back again as customers, even after their projects are over. Right? So you have these three channels, customer acquisition, customer engagement, and customer retention.

And so choices depends on where your target audience is. And for me, it's marketing directors. I would like to support the in-house designers. So I know they may have in-house designers already, but they still need help, like from freelances and all that. And we are there to have a team to help them with that.

Right. So these are the three key areas. And if you want to know where you can, can really get your word out there, you can do things like adding a site to free business listing companies. Um, like for myself, what I did is I, uh, put them in. In, uh, free ones where I don't have to do much, um, marketing, so I don't have to do much paying.

I didn't have to pay anything else it's free. So, you know, when it comes to product ties services, I have, um, also gone to places like service list. So if you are creating a product high service as well, you can also. Puts your service there. And I do get a lot of our leads from there as well. And another big one is Google my business, which I am so surprised.

Many people are not putting their businesses there mainly maybe because, you know, I, I think maybe my guests, right, this is my best guess is Google. My business allows people to just make reviews and making the reviews. Just like that can either be negative or positive. And if anybody was negative review, you, there's no way you can remove that negative review.

So Google my business is so open and so easy for both ways. It can be hurting your reputation in the long run as well. If, if let's say there are trolls and just some people who just want to. Kind of just, just, just don't like your service and would want to put you down. You know, there are people who are like that, so it may be hard for that for, for you, but I have placed it there and I do get some leads from that.

So, so you can try that and, um, try to get more backlinks with, with different other directories. You got to search based on your niche. Right? But for design, there are many others you can submit to submit dot Cole. So submit.com. It's created by Mark , who is the founder of . So try that out. And I've done that as well.

And I do get leads from there and, um, SEO, traffic. Sauces because people visit those directories. So try those, try those out is it really works. And the next thing, when it comes to getting leads is not just, you know, putting your service out there and hoping that people need your service because there may be tons of services out there.

There are similar as we've mentioned, right? So you got to kind of tweak your message. To make it such a hook where it's irresistible, where your offer is something that most people can just kind of refuse to, to just not accept. Right. So, and you have to do it at a place where your target audience will be able to see it.

So for me, what I did was I, there was one day where I was just also being ridiculous to create a ridiculous offer, which is to offer anyone on LinkedIn. A free profile Benner because we do design. So you don't, you don't want people to trust you. You got to just let them try things out. And that's what I did.

So I received 3,669 views and it just kept going and going and going. And they were, people were messaging me and asking for help on LinkedIn profile bene you know, it's the LinkedIn profile. Ben is so important. Because the profile section is where people would just click on and look you up and, uh, better if it's not there any at all, you have that green linked in the fault.

Banner. It's fine. Right. You can survive because people will still just read what you write in the profile. But if you have something that is better than fine, that can catch people's eye and remember you, right? Because you may have that similar banner on your website, you may have the similar bent on Facebook page, Facebook group, or, you know, any other channels.

So. This can help with familiarity and familiarity is trust. So what I, that's why I wanted to offer them that because when I looked around, I see that not many people have their LinkedIn profile back up, maybe because, you know, it can be tough. You can be busy. It's hard to find time to make that banner when it doesn't seem like it can impact your business so much.

Right. But when you have someone offering help, With that you wouldn't mind. So that became a ridiculous offer in front of any other people who say, Hey, I do graphic design service. You need you come to me. No, you know, it's hard for people to just come up with something for you to do. They don't want to spend the time in effort to think of things for you to do so.

Why, why, why give them that job? So instead, what I did was I was the one who did that job of coming up with. The thing to do and tell them that I will do that for them. And all they need to do is they raise your hand. I want that. And then they don't have to do anything besides answering some questions, because I purposely did that to qualify them for that if they truly want.

So obviously the people who raised their hands and did not answer the questions. So I didn't, I didn't give them the banner because I don't feel that if they don't answer those questions, then they are not very serious to stick in, stick on LinkedIn. Right. So. They also need to do a certain thing, which is to answer the question so that we can create a banner that is meant for them.

If we don't give those questions, we make rebounders that don't match them and not something they want. They may think that are, you know, this, this is just a service where, you know, she's just putting a clickbait and she doesn't produce quality work. Right. So we don't produce quality work is because we don't ask the right questions.

So we have to right. Ask the right questions of who are the target audience, what is the, our brand brand style? And we need to match the target audience and brand style together. And then when we create a banner, they will like it. Right. They will like it because it matches their brand and it appeals to their target audience.

So these are questions that we ask before we create them. And then I create those banners and send it to them. And when I send it to them, they in return gave me a great review on LinkedIn. So, you know, there's this exchange. They don't have to pay for anything. They don't even have to give me the review, but if they are happy to do so, I'm happy to accept as well.

So, you know, these two come, come together and, and then we, we kind of build that rapport and when they need it more graphic help the note who to go to. Yeah. So that's one way. And when you publish lots of quality content, this is also another way. And also when it comes to a customer acquisition, it's a lot, a lot about, you know, building that, that, um, group of people who want to look forward to.

What you have to create the next time. So when it comes to creating lots of content, you have to come up with an idea of things where, okay. Is there a way where I can publish something on an ongoing basis without it getting dry? Sometimes you may hit the wall. Sometimes I do. And there are most times I do, but.

From there. I will try to fish out for ideas to be a bit more creative. And then I start to come up with the content. So the content that I have been doing now are designed tips, and this has brought me a lot of leads and may not be qualified ones, but I qualify by, by going to the second step, second step after creating this content is to ask them the questions on whether they need ongoing help.

Are they looking for. Landing page website, you know, developers or just graphic design help. And this is how I qualify them. So the content that you put out does matter, and, um, you got to keep doing it because I have been doing it regularly and that brought me those leads. So it works right. You just have to do it.

So they will come and content is, is just the main thing. To get them to trust you. So there are no other ways around this already. You know, you may have the gift of the gap, but you need someone to talk to. Isn't it. If the person doesn't know you doesn't want to talk to you, you have no one to talk to.

And the gift of the gab is not so helpful anymore and also useful. But if you use your, your talent of knowing things of ideas, knowing what to say, you have things to say, you say it, put it up on where you, you know, your customers are, your prospects are. And do that all the time. They will notice you, they will find out, Hey, what is this person doing?

What are you doing? And know let's chat. And if they need your help, they will come to you. If they don't need your help, they have friends who may need your help. They will refer you. So that's how it works. Yeah. So ongoing generating leads is. You know, just buy content for me and then you can figure out ways on distributing it with your content.

So that's it for today. Thank you for listening. Bye.

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Hey, design starters, first of all, I'd like to just give you a big, thank you for always joining me on my own little discussion and conversation between myself and you. So it doesn't feel that lonely because I know you are there, you are subscribed and you download the episodes and listen. So I know you're there and.

So just want to yeah. Show my appreciation and, you know, it means the world to me that you are here consistently listening and learning and, and also applying to your own business. So it's just something that I wish that others will know certain things where can, that can help, you know, to, to improve your business.

And. And help you feel life as much as possible. Yeah. So for today I would like to talk about ownership of design artwork, materials, and the work that you have done for clients, you know, for the past, like maybe not a past, but since 20 or five, I've been haggling with myself over how I should. Keep the ownership of my artwork and the creative work that I've done for clients.

And many times I, because I invoice them and I send proposals on, on the, the, the work that we are supposed to do together, I will put in the terms and conditions, but that terms and conditions were sketchy if they are not done by lawyers, because I didn't know the way to get legal help. In those days and, and the tech wise and online digital, you know, legal stuff, wasn't that advanced in those days.

For me, even for me, I wasn't even looking out. So I didn't want to spend too much just to save on costs. I did everything myself on. On the, um, the terms and conditions so long, the customer agrees. Right? So what if my clients agree then, then that's fine. It works. And what I put that is a little things.

Like, I was just afraid that, you know what, they may just take my, my designs and copy them and, and, um, use them, which happens a lot because we provide the proposals for free. Right. We don't charge them when we send them our ideas and. You know, you may hear that a lot, that there are people who will take your ideas from your free proposals and they don't hire you.

They don't pay you, but they use your ideas by hiring another cheaper or, you know, less expensive, more affordable designer. And it's, you know, I, after some time I found that this kind of fear isn't worth it at all. It's. It's not that it makes me lose sleep, but it takes up my time and effort to, to cover, cover this up or to counter this, this area of, uh, of, um, this issue or this differences, or how should you put it, maybe like, you know, this kind of struggle that I have to keep worrying and wonder if.

I should provide free proposals and prevent kind off prevents my clients using terms and conditions to prevent my clients from stealing my idea. So whenever you're afraid of people stealing, you know, it takes time away from you because you have to come up with ways to, to protect yourself. Yeah. I think the word is protect and.

It was tiring. So when I started this, this, um, stop five years, six years back, I decided to just give away all the work that is done. What I mean by give away is so long. The client signs up paid for our service. And at least for that month, anything that we have done will belong to the client. And we also put in the Tums where we will use them as our portfolio or work on our own website, social media, testimonials, and such.

So those were what I mean by those will belong to the client is they can just use them, you know, um, however they want, meaning we have already done them in the piece. The source files will all belong to the client. We are not going to keep them. And. And kind of hold up away from the clients. You know, there are suppliers and providers who who's stopped somewhere, whether it's just J pack and only provide the J pack formats without the sauce fall and static slept static files.

And if clients want, when the sauce follow, they have to pay more. It's something like designers on Fiverr. Right. If, if, if, you know, if you are from there as well, and you work on Fiverr, that's what you do, right? So you're charging more for the source files. So in time I have decided not to do that. And, um, I used to kind of play around with how this can be, this can be done and, and provide clients with this kind of service.

But I did away with that six years ago and it just can't come include it right now. It's all included in the pricing. That's given to the client, why that is, because I don't want them to keep coming back to me for the files, even after our, our service has been expired or, or non-renew, if they renew, they still have that on file.

So that's fine. Right? That works fine. But if they don't renew and softballs are still with us, if we withhold them, There will be a chance where they will come back and keep emailing us and say, Hey, you know, we need the source files because we need to change this came. Please provide us with that. Since we have really worked with you.

And even in my terms, I've said that, you know, you need to pay for it. And, um, we don't give you the source files as part off the, uh, the service. Then it, it makes us sound a bit, a bit, um, selfish in the sense, like, like kind of withholding things and why make it so hot kind of thing. Right. And that does affect the, the, the customer service quality that we are offering.

It's just against our values in the sense. So obviously it starts with your values on, you know, how you want to provide for your customers. Right? So for us, we want them, we want to improve their lives. We wanted to make it less. Make make them, you know, kind of lead the, our businesses run their businesses and lives with less hassle.

Right? So if they are going to keep on coming back to us for the source files, without us giving it to them, then they are stuck. And if they are stuck, that's not what we want them, uh, to do, to be going through as well. So if that's the case, That's why me and me decided, okay, why don't we just provide them with everything?

Right. Every changes that is made, they will have the source files. They can just download it from the cloud. Right. We restore them up in Google drive and they can just download from that basically. That's it. And it made life so much easier because I didn't have to haggle with customers after they have churned.

I didn't have to have customers who are still using our services. They simply just download from that and that saves them time. They don't get stuck. And that saves us time too. Right. So it's a win-win and you know, as much as possible in this life, I would just like to have win-wins more than zero sum games.

And if everybody wins, then it helps myself as well because, um, when people are happy, they help you too. If you don't give them that when you don't let them have that. Is, for example, for the source file, you don't have that. Don't give them those source files. They will feel, you know, that they don't feel very satisfied with the services and it's like, it's not full and that they have to pay more.

Why don't you just add that sum into your price anyway, they will surely need the source file in some way or another. Right? Because things change things evolve. They may want that part of the source file to be used again. So, you know, In this way, I feel that there's no need to charge more, right? Unless it's a different kind of value, then I'll probably charge more.

Right? For example, communication via email versus communication via phone. I think these two things are different values. If they can explain on email properly, they don't need that phone call. They don't need the phone call. Then you, you don't have to charge that phone call. So I think this is fine where it comes to charging more, but when it comes to source files, They are the same thing, um, you know, production of their creative work.

And so if, if, if these items, you know, are required on a day to day basis, I would say I would want to provide that value and into that costing anyway. So you need to understand first what your customers need, the items they need to go through their day to day and put them into that package. And then you charge accordingly and give that value.

Right. So, yep. So that's it for today. I hope this helps in any way. If not, um, feel free to contact me@marylandwolatmarylandatmarylandwool.com. Uh, once again, out, I'll say my email get Maryland and maryland.com. So great to hear from you. Bye.

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Hey design starters. Today, it's a quick lesson and I'm driving my car again. So just one, two, something pop up in my head. And I just want to talk about it because it's so important for the lifeblood of a business when it comes to sales. Right? And for myself, I'm an introvert. I don't enjoy talking too long to anyone.

I would rather listen. So if anybody wishes to talk to me a lot and there will be a good thing for me and I'll be so happy and it's the same for business. I wouldn't like to talk so much about my business. I wouldn't want to talk so much about, you know, what the other person can get. That's what as well.

And I don't wish to talk about money. It's very strange. Maybe it's how I was brought up. That, you know, money is like evil and dirty. So trying to. To take money from somebody is not a good thing. This has been ingrained in me since young. Mostly I have kind of changed my mindset over the past five to 10 years, but the habit of not asking for the money is always there.

So I always have to have that conscious mindset and conscious effort to bring myself to make the sale right, to close the sale. However, if. You know, I realize if you are also in a similar situation as myself, very much an introvert, very much not wanting to ask for the money, the only way to get over this is the mindset of what you are in fact selling you see for me, I would look at it as I am not trying to take the money.

It's more of I'm trying to help the person. That's one. Alright. But helping the person is still not enough. What I mean is it doesn't mean the person wants help. You want to help the person, but doesn't mean who are you to help the person right. To the person he or she may feel that no, I don't need help.

Although they, although they do right, sometimes they don't see it. But if you come in as trying to help them, some of them may not. May feel a bit imposed to me, feel a bit intruded, and that may turn them off even though, even though your service is the best and will, will definitely help them. So the first thing is help.

Yes, but not in an imposing way. So it's just comes. The second thing after help is you need to help the people. Who are looking for the help. So these two are very important when it comes to selling, especially for introverts like us, because if you are more of an extrovert, you know, anything black can become white.

You know what I'm saying? It's like anything that you say me kind of lead people to just buy. It's not misleading. It's not manipulating. It's just, it's just, you know, you can kind of speak a way where. Truly needed, which yes, sometimes they really do. And you may be able to persuade them if you're an extrovert, but as an introvert, the best bet is to find people who already want to get such a service from you, such as design service, they, they value design.

They have been using design. They, they are looking for the kind that you are, that you are selling. So this is the best bet to start, right? And then you will show them that you will help them. All right. So these two things, and this third thing is after, after, you know, they want that one, this product or service, you got to prepare, all right.

As an extrovert, I would say they can think on their feet really fast. They can, you know, kind of come up with something clever and witty and kind of win the people over by having that gift of the gap. Yeah. Yeah. And so-called, and they know their gift and they know what they say will make the, the person they're talking to feel like they can trust them.

And that, Hey, you are speaking the truth and I am, you know, sold. Yeah. And that they kind of wait, but as for myself, I con I, and I know myself that that's not how I. I I make business and do business. So how I do business is because I know that they already want the service. They are looking for such a service.

I will prepare my, my communication conversation kind of in a way, a script. So not to, again, also not to manipulate, but just to be sure of their objections first. Always preempt. Let's say if I say, okay, my service provides unlimited graphic design preempt. What I going to see next? As, as a consumer myself, what would I have asked?

What questions would I have asked if somebody told me that the sell something on the middle, right? The first thing people may ask is. If you really sure how unlimited it is, I don't really know how it works. And, and are you going to give me as many changes as I won, they may ask this and then they may ask how much time do they have in a day to do that?

Right. They may ask this, then I will have the answer because I've, I've prepared it because I've really known and preempted that they may ask this question. So you've got to come up with FAQ's on your own first, right before speaking with them, put them in. Yeah. Framework. All right. Put them in a framework and go step by step.

When you go on a call with them, when you're going to call them, start asking questions. So I will start asking questions, like, what is your goal of your business? You know, long-term ones where they know you are concerned over their business, right. That, you know, they know you want to want the best for them.

So. That's the third thing. Okay. Pre pad. And that comes the last thing. Once you are prepared, you also will know whether they are going to object you with, with the pricing, with the packaging, because you can tell when they tell you when they sound you out throughout the conversation. So when you tell them your, the benefits that you get, when you tell them and ask them questions, you can feel from the, uh, the, uh, The conversation and their voice and their tone if they are, you know, out.

Right. So, so that times when they would say, okay, okay, let's just, let's just get started. What do you do? Do you, when they say let's just get started, do you say, okay, uh, I'll wait for your, or wait for your confirmation or, or what else you wouldn't. All right. So for me, it's, I wouldn't say I with a confirmation for me is okay.

So I will. Send you the next steps where this is the payment amount, you got to make an upfront payment of this amount. I'll just tell them straight ahead, because why the whole tone of the conversation has really told me that they are ready to buy. So if they are ready to buy, I shouldn't be stopping them.

And they, they want it and they need it. It's something that they, they know that it's helping them. So with, with that already, you know, you, you should come up with the pricing already at that point in time and productive productized service. Like mine already has predefined items, delivery, deliverables, and costing.

So I can straight away tell them the price. And this should be what you can do if you want to quickly close the sale. So with that, you have these steps. So yeah, just try this out and close an Excel without worrying. If you are an introvert and extrovert or, or, or anything that there are always ways to cover and counter this issue.

Yep. So that's all for today. See you. Next one.

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Hey design starters. Today. I have a quick lesson on principles. So over the years when you know, building my business, I realized that there is no way you can run a business and run your life. If you are not making profits, it sounds obvious isn't it? And it's a good thing to know that yet it's not so good sometimes because this means that the more you have the better.

And that's where things become dangerous. And I say dangerous is because when it comes to making money, there are many, many ways to make money. And when there are many ways to make money, it's easy to be, tend to, to go through certain actions and certain ways to get money, even if they are not morally right or ethically.

Right. Even if you know, it's not right. So this is something where principles come in. So the thing is a lot of things that you do, uh, mostly behind closed doors. What I mean is nobody needs to know how you are doing things right. And, and nobody will know exactly how you. Are working and how you work and how you and the money.

So this is the little hidden area where as a business owner, it's important to stick to your principles is to set these principles as things like being, being a business owner with the integrity to make money, honestly, I wanted to use this lesson because I want to give you this lesson is because of, um, how it, how, how it's so easy to make so much money by doing the wrong things and down the road.

It's not whether people will catch, you all will find out. It's not so much of that, but it's whether you can live with it. Right. So doing the right thing is the best way and is the right way simply to keep yourself out of all the law and legal and regulatory stuff. Right. These will be so difficult to amend down the road, if you are going to do the wrong thing just for money.

Right? So. If you want opportunity, if you want to make more money, then there are ways there are many ways. And there are also many ways that are, that are, I think, Oh, there are so many ways that are within your integrity, that, that when you do people will trust you. If there are ways to earn money and they are not ethical ways and you give them up and you say no to them, people will respect you.

You will feel good and you will lead the same life and a better life than if you were to go down the wrong road. Right. So set up your principles and values. To tell yourself, you can just list them down. You can even put them on your website, even if you don't want it's fine. But by you need to have this list where you can refer to in times where you find that you are strapped for cash or, or, you know, there are always times rains down.

We feel, at times we have less sales at times than what are you going to do? Are you going to scrap for money? Are you going to spam people so that you can earn more, you know, All these things will affect, and it's not so much of reputation. It is reputation as well, but it's not so much of that, but it's how you're going to carry on with your business down the road with a red card that, that keeps you clean, makes you feel good and live with no regrets.

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Hey design starters. There is one thing that I find is so important in building and growing a startup successfully is to be able to spot gaps in the market. So instead of creating something super original or something unique, you spot something that is not provided within. A big industry. So for example, when it comes to design service, how many designers do you know are out there providing something similar to you?

There are, there can be millions, right? I mean, you can go fiber, it can go 99 designs and I've worked in, you can just see, there are so many designers out there which is also good. Because I feel that it means demand is out there. People are still looking for the right one. Right? So in that case, this means that there are gaps, but do you find it tough, you know, to kind of pick out which area you should really hone into and kind of niche down to focus on.

Because I, I had so much trouble with that for the past five years and I finally figured it out for myself. So, so today I just want to quickly just give you four key areas where you should look at to be able to find this gap and fill it. All right. So the first step is to figure out and to really point out what are you good at?

You don't, you can say that there are gaps here and there, and you can say that, Hey, you know, in the design field, there's nobody who can provide this certain service, for example, but are you good at it service or is it just a gap? If you, you, yourself, you're not good at it. It's fine. So long you can find somebody who is expert in that to probably partner you and become someone in-house in your company.

So, if you are good at it, that's the best. If you're not, it's also fine. Just look for the person to feel that look for the expert to come kind of, kind of join hands with you and provide that service to fill that gap. So for example, if it requires some coding, it requires some technical skills or, or technology skills that you may not have, and you are probably better at.

Something else that you lost vision, then you need somebody with coding skills to come into your company and work with you full time to help with this. So do not do not create this business or build this business without these expertise, if you want to fill this gap. Okay. You know, because there are many other people with probably with such such expertise.

And if you don't do this right, They, they can just simply copy you and provide the same thing at a lower price and provide a better service to the customers. So you got to get this part right. The second way is also a second step is to ask yourself in the market that you have selected, right. Is this something where you think.

Is missing this little point just to get people to go where they want to go. It may not be a very big problem, but it's just a very little piece that can help people to reach, to go from point a to point B. For example, when it comes to hailing a cab and getting a CA uh, a taxi, if. You once you want to get from point a to point B quickly, you need to hear the cat.

Right. And what are the problems when hearing a cap? It takes time for you to find one. Sometimes when one comes it's occupied, you know, sometimes one comes, it's not occupied, but it's probably going to change its shift. And in between looking for one, you'll be waiting for. Maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes and that's time.

So you wouldn't want to do that. So what do you do if, if the market has this problem, is there somewhere where you can provide a faster solution? So what comes out was Uber and how the Uber come out is because that's a technology that is serving this. This gap. So, so you need to kind of marry the problem with, with the current solution that is already already in place and existing.

If you want to solve a problem without an existing solution, it's really tough. You may not be able to quickly. Bring it to market soon enough. And soon enough, I will meet within the next seven to seven days to a month with the prototype. You got to get that up already. So if you don't have that, it may take awhile.

Right? So you want to, you want something that you can use current existing solutions to cover this problem. So Uber is an example and the next one, so this is a third one. Where you can figure out how to find a gap or kind of nail a gap for yourself is how about something that already exists? Okay. This solution exists already.

So it's not something that you want to do it again, but can you improve and make it better? So instead of looking different, how and what can you do to make it better? Okay, can you replicate or model other businesses and then you do it better. So there is also different already. You're not trying to be different, but you made it better and that will position yourself as somebody better.

Would it be customer service? Would it be quality of the work? Would it be the, the, the type of process that you add to the business? What is it? You don't have to tell your customer that your quality is better because of course, the customer will think that you will, you will think that your quality is better.

Who, who wouldn't right. We are all biased. So it's not something that you're going to market and promote your business about, but you need to first first have this point and actions that, uh, delivered with when you are serving your customers already. It's not just for you too. Say it and think that people will believe right, but you need to really do it in real, in real life.

Right? So for example, if you are a noodle store that provides better noodles, because there is no MSG, for example. So that helps hourly folks and children with healthier food because there's no MSG. Then you don't just say that you don't have MSG, you must really not put MSG in your food. Yeah. I mean, by the time people wouldn't be able to taste it, so you can't lie about that.

So it has to be an honest, genuine move to be better. Right. You don't put things like, Oh my, our noodles are healthier. You don't, you don't say that in your marketing message. Right. Because everybody will say that. Yeah. So what you. You may want to say that there is no MSG and that is the truth and that's fine.

Right? So it's something like that. So this step is about making your service better than the other one who seemingly in the S in the S in a seemingly similar industry and a similar design service that you have. The last one, which is the fourth one would be, are you able to give a estimate or even a good, accurate data of the demand that is existing?

So your idea may not be original or unique, but your idea may be something that only a small handful of customers will want. You will never know. But you need to find out because it could be too, too, too difficult for someone to use, for example, or it can be something that nobody really find that it's useful enough for on a daily basis or recurring basis.

So it depends where you're getting at and whether people will want to be an early adopter of your solution because sometimes people will look at it with. Some skep skepticism, right? They may think, is it worth for me to pay money, to, to get to that, to buy that product, to buy that service because they wouldn't want to regret spending the money.

So it has to be something that they know it's worth getting, even if it does solve their problem, because there are also other ways to solve their problems. So. Does it help and does it help so much that people will want to demand so much of it? So you need to find out, is there a way to gauge this demand, to know the estimate, to be accurate enough so that you can keep producing this service or product for this demand and to serve them?

So these are the four steps. These are the four ways where you can, um, figure out your. Gap. Right. So get down to it. You can finally find it I'm sure. And if you have any issues or problems and challenges and struggles with this, do do just, um, reach out to me. You can just email to me@marylandatmarylandvole.com anytime.

And I'm sure to answer you as soon as I can. Bye.

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Hi design starters. I just want to put in some, um, ideas and thoughts into your hip with regards to the idea of modeling other people's businesses, other people's websites, other people's web design, and taking inspiration from them. I feel that. Um, even myself rather, and most people would have thought that modeling and taking inspiration from others could be equate it to copying.

And they're copying is illegal over the, over the few years that I've, um, came up with my set up. I find that I find that it was really hard for me to model and, and kind of copy other people's work. I feel that. I, I, I did feel that in fact, that it isn't something that is the right thing to do, but after I have started this business, I've built it up and grown it painstakingly, avoiding to copy others, painstakingly, avoiding, to take inspiration, being afraid of cheating.

I realized that there is actually simply nothing wrong with modeling or even copying. I wouldn't say you should just copy wholesale over your competitors websites, per se. Even, even that wouldn't mean cheating in the first place. I would feel that that could be a strategy where you can figure out if it works because your competitor.

May look like they are doing well, then they may say that they are doing well, but how would, you know, you will never know in a way, because you want, first of all, you want to know, and you want to think that they are honest about their returns, but truthfully you will never know right. Until, and unless you are in their company or you have spoken with them.

And they've been so honest with the, our figures that. Then yes. You know, Oh, you just somehow trust him. But if you don't know them personally, how would you know that their website is working? So copying is not cheating. I would say up to now at this point where I have grown to the point where I'm more contented and happier than before it's.

It's something that you should adjust, right? You, you can take some inspiration. You look at our website, you look at their copy. You look at their design. You can start by first using what they have done, tested out with some people and then make the adjustment. And don't say, It's done by you obviously. So what I feel about copying is that when people copy and they say that it's their own world, I feel that that's not, that is definitely not, uh, something with integrity, for sure.

I want to do things with integrity. So what I can do is I can do the copy and I can just be upfront about it to say that this work is not mine, but I am. Testing it out. I can say that. And, and the person who's listening to this, we understand. And, and there's no, no need to be afraid of doing that because I have been there.

I was so afraid that I got stuck and I didn't move at all with my business because I was afraid that I will be copying, uh, other graphic design businesses with the tech line that says unlimited graphic design. What's wrong with coming up with a design company. That's unlimited design. There are so many other people doing design businesses.

Are we copying them? Sure we are ready. And so copying is not considered cheating or illegal. I feel that if it is only illegal, it is only without integrity. If you copy and say that this whole thing is done by you. I have no shame to say that if I copy, I will say it's copied. I will, I would have said that.

And then I will adjust, right. And change, change to a point where people know, okay, I have my own flavor in, I feel my own gaps in all the general field may be similar, but I still have my own piece of my work in it, which is original. Or originated from me in a way, and that will be fine. So rather than copying everything or even copying parts of things and say that it's yours, you copy and say, it's not yours, but make adjustments.

And once you make the adjustments, it become yours already. And you don't have to say that you've copied. Is it? So this is, this is my take on modeling on taking inspiration from other businesses and they may happen to be a business that you want to also be starting. It's not new. And you will always find that.

This will happen. So I feel that you should go ahead first, but don't take the work as your own. You are not the creator of that work. So don't claim that you may wish to let the owner and the creator know that what you are doing is not wholesale copying and going to use their sites or their designs. Or the, uh, work as your own.

You may want to tell them that if, if you're not going to tell them that it's also fine to me, I feel that what is not right is to stop yourself from putting things out for us. So, but of course, it's for sure, not right to take it as your own, right. Not right. To say that what you have done, what you have reference is yours.

You don't do that. But, you know, at the back of your mind, you are going to make that change. You are going to adjust to your audience, your kind of work and your strategy and your copy or designs will end up all, all created by yourself. All right. So don't stop. Don't get stuck. Keep producing, even if it's taking reference from other people's work.

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Hey design starters. Today, I would like to give a quick lesson because now I'm driving while I'm recording. Usually I drive in this part because this is the first time I'm driving and recording at the same time. It feels a bit dangerous, I would say. But anyway, today it's more about the pricing that you are going to put for your offer.

So when it comes to increasing your, your, your. Income when you're offering services, it's easy to do that based on how much you want to earn a month or a week or a day or a year. Right. And then you probate to say per hour, that, that this is a usual way I would say. And then what you do is once you it's down to per hour, you judge how long you may want to take for that project.

And then you multiply that per hour rate to the number of hours. As required for that project. This is a typical way to, to price your offer. And, and if you are kind of fooling capacity for a certain day or certain week or month, what would you do? Right. What would you do? Would you would just stick to the same rate or would you increase your price?

Would you reduce your price? Most of you would have increased your price because your capacity has been increased Yukon possibly. In more clients than you can. And especially if you're a solo solo entrepreneur or so low business owner, this is what you will usually do. If even if you hire this may be what you do as well, because it depends on the eye, the deliverables that you pass onto your, your team members on what needs to be done.

If systems are not in place, if your office. Uh, customized your solutions are based on very at home, depending on what customers, one kind of, of solutions. Then it's harder for you to fix a price. It's harder for you to know who you're going to hire. And hence you tend to charge higher to give yourself a buffer, if that makes sense.

Right. I'm sure some of you do that because I have also done that before. So that's the typical way. To to price your offer. And another typical way to price your offer would be to

lower the cost and increase the number of customers. And then you figure we are on hiring. Okay. Oh, you have already hired a team and you just bring in as many customers as you can, for the, for you to cover your team's costs. That is also another way to, to, to price your offer both ways. I would say if they work for you, they work for you, but there are always better ways.

And I've been exploring better ways to do such offers and pricing where I feel that it shouldn't come down to a per hour rate. And it shouldn't come down to your capacity because I feel that what's and is more of the value that you want to offer your customers and clients. What are you offering them?

Are you offering them your strategy? Are you offering them logo design? Are you offering them? Um, something that it's ongoing. So this kind of value will, will be better to be used in pricing your offer then to base on how much time you take, because, um, if you're going to charge based on the capacity that you have.

Then I feel that it isn't that fair for yourself. And also the customers. Why is because first, if let's say they are very used to working with you and you would want to take them on to help them, but at the moment, if you are fooling capacity and you can't do that, you have to charge them higher for it.

Then timing is important. Isn't it. Then it becomes, it becomes something that is. Is not within your control. It becomes something that's not within the customer's control. And then you won't be helping them in the lifetime, in the longterm. You're just helping them based on your own free time. So this is not help.

This is just, you know, doing something to earn an income for when you're free, then that's different from giving something that's helpful. So I feel that. There is a better way to price it and how I'm being pricing. Yeah, we'll be to go by value of what people are looking for, what problems they have and what solution you can offer for that problem and to solve their problem for a certain.

Time-span. So what I do is I fix my deliverables because I know the problem, I just fixed that solution just to solve their problem. Right? And the middle graphic design service. For example, I fixed the timeline, which is within a month, you can roll on if you want. And then it, you know, the pricing goes on from there at the same rate, you will never see an increase in price.

You'll never see a decrease in price, no matter what customer you are and who you are and how many offers. All of you I'm taking on, it will always be the same rate. So you know what to expect. And then you be given that deliverable at a certain, uh, timeline. There is no guarantee, but there is a certain timeline that I have estimated for you.

You know what you're getting when you're getting it. How much you need to pay. So that's all for, for, for the pricing at this point. So avoid, avoid overcharging, avoid undercharging. It's both are just not fair for yourself and your client as well. So go with the value, go with this problem and then solution to it, to the problem.

All right. All right. That's it for now. I'm just going to carry on with my driving now and focus. Bye.

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Hey guys, quick one today on the number and volume of competitors that you have, rather than just yourself doing the kind of productized service that you want to do. So if you're a service business, still figuring out what to productized, because there are so many out there who is already doing what you thought you would want to do.

Then I just have this one advice for you that you are for sure. Not going to be very unique at all. It doesn't matter what area you're in. If you want to be able to have demand, if there is ever a demand, you will never be unique. So it's fine that you are not so different from others. But you need to look for a spot, a gap or somewhere in between where people know that you are the one to go to.

So being the one to be serving them, serving the customers is more important than being unique. All right. So just, just to make this clearer. Another confused you, right? I've learned that there is an income formula. Okay. This is, this, this didn't come from me. This came from John who wrote the book, the Welty governor.

So you got to go read this book. To become a wealthy designer. And I just love how John Safari has done this and would like to kind of translate this to being too modest. Wasn't you being a wealthy designer, right? So go read this book and, and, you know, cutting the shot. He came up with the best income formula and it says income equals to the need for what you do.

Plus. How well you do what you do plus how difficult it will be to replace you plus how many people you serve. So what this means, if, if all these four are the only items and factors for the best income, then you can never have that. There isn't anything here that States you are unique. Yeah, you yourself, you know, your personality plus your character, plus everything, your talents and all is yes.

Just uniquely yourself. You are the one person who no one else can replace. Yes, that's right. But the business and service that you have created does not need to be truly fully unique in the world. There will always be someone doing something that you are also doing and serving the same kind of service, but in order to raise your income to a certain level that can cover you for years to make you financially free is not the factor is not to be unique because you will never do business will never be truly, totally unique.

And you don't try to reach that stage because once you try to reach a fully unique business stage, the danger is nobody may want your service or product. Right. It's a little bit like segue that machine with two giant wheels and somebody standing on it and moving around it, it kind of have this cool idea.

And it is, it was so neat when, when it first came out to market, right. Nobody had that before. And it was new. I've not seen that. And that was the first, but it didn't take off. Not because it's not a good product, it's more off. It's just not something that people are crazy to pay and use due to certain reasons.

Right. And what I'm trying to say is unique. Doesn't equate to a great business. So if, if you have an idea and you tell your friends and your friend says. There's so much of this already in the market, or they may comment and say, well, this is such a common business. Or they may command and say, wow, this business is so competitive, you know?

And why would you want to do this? If it's competitive, all these comments have a certain negative connotations, which you wouldn't want to site with, that you would want to go lean on the side where. You just have to fit the formula of this income formula that John sufferi has came up with, which is the need for what you do.

Is there any, obviously, because there are other competitors means there is a need, right. And how well do you do what you do? So you just have to figure out how well you do what you do, which is things like maybe the quality of your work, your processes, you build certain systems that. That somebody can do as well as you then definitely you will be better than many others in certain areas of your business bank on that.

Okay. Work on that strengths and, and put that strengths out there to let people know this is what you do. And this is what you do better than others. You don't say it this way, but you tell them exactly what is it that you can help them with better than others. And then when it comes to how difficult it will be to replace you, it is not about being unique here.

Right? How difficult meaning, because you have certain way of building those processes. It's so hard for others to build them too. Why is it hard for others? And is it easier for you? Why it could be because you've been spending 20 years or 10 years or five years in this industry. Or it could be because you are just so good in this area.

You spend so much time figuring this out, researching. You have a way to look at certain models. You have certain talent in this area. Of course it'd be difficult for others to replace you. So it isn't the service that's unique. Now. It is just how you view certain things and how you see things where others don't see.

Right. So you need to find, figure this out. You, you may never know. What you can see the others cannot see. You need to find that style, the angle, you need to find your voice, right. There are many ways to do that. Um, a few ways would be things like working in public. As you work in public, you will figure out your voice.

You'll figure out a style. You figure out how difficult it is that people can create what you're creating. And then you double down and keep on working on that same thing. And carry on consistently. And that's when people will notice you that you have been putting this out, that they just enjoy. And not many people are doing the same thing, then they will get to know you.

And once they get to know you, there is such as a slimmer chance of others doing the same thing as you do. Maybe they have other commitments, maybe, maybe they have a big family, maybe, you know, things like that come into their lives. Then it's hard to replace you, right? Because you have the edge over others.

So you need to take this strength of yours and bank on that. And then last one, the last factor of income of the best income you can ever have is how many people do you serve? So you have all these tree of the needs for what you do, how well you do what you do and how difficult it will be to replace you.

So now that you have this three, are you serving one person? Are you serving 1 million people in for the higher number in, for the volume? Right? There are people who say, Oh, you can just work for one per what? With one or two clients with a high ticket offer. And then yes, you are a millionaire. Yes, that's right.

But does it recur? Does it, is it ongoing? So to me, I will go for the volume as much as I can. I can serve more people. I can help more people that needs to a better income anyway, the whole, all this, the whole formula here, and the four things here too, your best income ever is. It's more of this. This is more of the idea that there's no need to be.

To create something unique. There's no need to be so original. There is, there is nothing wrong. If you model and copy a little of a competitor and then adjust, I wouldn't want you to copy everything. It's not right as well. It's that? That is, I wouldn't say illegal, but I don't find that there is any point because you will never be able to copy somebody else.

Totally. Right. Because you're not living in a person's life. Right from the start. All of us are unique already, but the service is not fully unique and there's no need to try to be totally original and there's no need to try to totally copy everything. So you take bits of it to test it out with the people you're going to work with and then change.

And at that, according to the people you work with. So there's absolutely. No need to wait for the time where you have something so perfect and so special and so different. And so just, you know, just your own idea without anybody coming up with the idea. And you're like, thinking you're such a genius, no need.

There's no need to wait for that because I have been trying that out and I was waiting for my genius kind of idea, and it just never happens. Right. Oh, man. I went hungry because of that. So don't go hungry because of that, because there's no need for that. You start, you just start looking public applied income formula, and you will get there.

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Hello. Hello, design starters. Today. Today's, um, lesson is a lot more on my journey in my startup and mainly why it failed initially. So it's not going to be a long story, but I just want to let you know. Some of my mistakes and maybe you can learn from them before you make that same mistakes as well. Right.

So quickly starting off to let you know more about it is when I, so I started this graphic design startup in 2015, and why I call it a startup is because I would like it to grow faster than just. You know, like a freelancer bringing in clients as, and when I won and, and bringing in clients and kind of offering them higher ticket items as a, when I won.

So it wouldn't, it wasn't that case anymore. In 2015, I wanted to really focus on growth. In the initial stages. So that's why I call it a startup as what Paul Graham has defined it as startup as equals to growth. So I would have labeled it as a field startup because it flopped miserably. It wasn't a startup at all because I had no growth for two years.

And those days I didn't even know what growth means. I didn't even really know what startup. Is in fact, you know, is it, is it more customers, more profit, more staff? What does it mean by a startup? What does he mean by growth? So those in those days, all I knew was I wanted to make more money. Yes. I wanted to build an asset to have a free control or flexibility with my schedule and not having to worry about client work while I am with my kids while I'm having.

My downtime non-work times and things like that. So I agree ambitions and purposeful desires, but it, those days I have zero execution to grow my startup. And it wasn't because I was lazy, but there are things that I didn't know that I should have known. So here goes with why I want to do this is because it would be the same for some of you.

It would be this, it may not be the same. Maybe you are already growing well, but, but these are just things I would like to share. If you come across such situation, these are things you may want to know. Right. So I hope they help you. And, um, to get started, I'd just like to. Starts with marketing and sales, right?

Which is to make them a priority. When you first start, when you are building processes, creating the design work for your clients, these are also important. It's not that they are not, but you need to prioritize certain areas of your business. And when it comes to up, which is growth is always marketing and sales from start to finish.

And, and not that you're giving up on building your processes and, and providing great delivery. Right? All those are a must, but marketing and sales are priority, which, which brings me to my mistake in back in. Six years ago, I spent too much time being the dessert designer, refining quality of the service because I wanted to deliver the best I can to each customer at a time.

So it's not that you shouldn't give your best, right? This is not what I'm trying to say. It's just that for me, I was always operating on freelancer mode and I was still trading hours for dollars. Even when I was running and trying to grow this business. So my time, if I were to, you know, take it back again, it would have been best spent chatting with people who are looking for such a service, giving them something of value, like creating relevant content.

That solves their problems and offering them things like free trials, coupon codes for discounted rates. So always there is always that conversation between, uh, prospective customers in those days, which I didn't, I didn't at all because, because I got my clients from a lot of referrals. So those days.

Business side of things was still new to me. And I was very comfortable doing the design work itself because having been a freelancer for more than 10 years before 2015, there was this habit, right. That I had to kind of break moving out of my comfort zone and shift. My focus from work design work means the technical side of things to the marketing and the sales.

To growth. So that's the difference. And those days I really didn't enjoy marketing and sales and never thought those were important businesses there. Those were important things for businesses to thrive. I used to think if I enjoy design, then that isn't the best job for me because who wouldn't like to do what one likes to do.

Isn't it. And that was what I thought. But. I wasn't planning. I wasn't strategizing. Hence I only, I only lived by the moment at the time, which wasn't helping to grow the company. So in short, zero marketing is equals to poor business. Right? What I, what I have done in marketing was just absolute zero before, before, you know, How I grew it to this point now, um, then you may be asking, how did I survive?

So as mentioned, I was so lucky that a lot of people came to me via referral. And also because, you know, when I didn't have work to do, then I had to kind of figure out something else or even just wait right. And go hungry. And that's when I talked up a lot of debts as well. Right. And referrals are great.

I mean, they came to me without me having to do anything. I, I managed to earn great income, you know, up to even five figures a month in those days. But with, even with that, they didn't teach me how to start a conversation with strangers and to get more people to buy. So always be marketing as what Scott by water set.

And what I did was I didn't, I didn't do that before the end. And that was the worst way to run a business, to stay profitable if you, if you ever want to. And I'm sure you would. So in order to make this a priority and set myself up for success, I changed my. Daily and weekly schedule. What I did was I made sure those were the first to do task of the day, every day.

So in this way, I know that at least I've done my part to speak to a few people. And I've also done things like written a few articles by noon time. And if that is done, that sets up my day and. The next thing would be other things like customers, request family, friends, and other matters. Right. So that those will get settled first, maybe a few hours in the daytime.

So it works because it became a habit and it works because when you kind of do marketing and sales it's okay. It's not really, you don't, you don't equate them to pushing people to buy, but you have to equate them as building a form of relationship where you start early and you contact the person regularly to keep in touch and you need to start early and keep doing very frequent, frequent touch, touch points, right.

So that they. Associate with you and find you familiar. If you were to just set up the first meeting and straight away, talk about your product or service or something that you want to exchange money for your service, then they will find it strange. Right. And they wouldn't really think that they can trust you yet.

They don't even know you. So that is why the everyday. Scheduled for this will eventually work. So you may not be PLC early if you're not doing it now, but you need to really give it a try first before you go drive without the customers. Right? So even if you have customers going on now, you should give your busy schedule an hour day to set this up.

And the next thing that I have not done those days, that the big mistake was I did everything myself. Right. And the lesson learned was to hire right from the start. So this. One isn't the obvious until you drag your feet to grow a business at snail's pace for four years. And that was what happened to me.

And it feels worst when your competitors who started later than you get ahead of you in shorter time. And so many of them got ahead, which is fine for now because I found a gap. And if you can fit in, you can find this gap and go with it. There will be people who will want your service. Right. But I said is a failure for me and a great lesson.

I will never forget. So when I start this startup, my thoughts were just very simple because I've been freelancing all my life. I just have to charge my clients differently than I used to. So that was what I thought then I want, I went on to spend my time working on that project one project at a time. So since my model is a request, it's a design.

And you can do changes as much as you, like. I receive tons of requests a day by a group of customers. And I have so much to yet the revenue stays the same, right? Because I, I let them request as many changes as they want in a month. So that was when I started to look for designers by Facebook groups. And I thought I could pay someone to just offload my wall, but the nightmare didn't end.

Because what I pass to the other designer did not seem to fit the customer's requirements because some of them started to feed back that there was a drop in quality of my work. And I saw myself spending at least four hours a day, designing, redesigning, not even designing, it's redesigning the work to get to the quality that people expect expected.

Right. But this redesigning work, you know, I could have just used the time. To better spend on growing the business. So what I've learned is to train your people, to deliver the quality work, you don't just leave them. The one thing that they can do something similar to yours, know that quality is always important and should be well baked into the design process.

I've learned that I should have hired a new designer right from the start and not, and not work on the quality and provide that value to the customer first. So meaning yes. I promise myself to give them as much quality and value. Yes. But not for myself. I should have just high at first, right. From the start, my first customer to give them that expectation.

Right. That this is the kind that we can deliver. So you don't over promise. You don't promise much, but you deliver based on the, your, the people you have hired. Then you communicate your customers, that this, this will be, be something that they expect right from your team. I could also give my customers a two week free trial to test it out.

Right. And that's when I should be giving all design projects to my new designers and keep my hands off working on them. So if you were to ask, I would say to stop working on the designs itself. From a higher level on the strategy. Let designers who are willing to be the ones designing, who wants to want to be freelancers who want to have a job with regular pay to do the work, because that will eliminate the chances of me trying to input the value I've been giving my customers.

When I was previously offering them a one to one customized design service is very different. Right. And then this will also relieve the time I need to be doing sales and marketing to grow the business. So the staff you hire maybe highly talented with a great ethic, a great work ethic. However, it's only right now that I realized nobody would have the same ownership as the founder.

And it's not that the employees are not good. I will never try the best they will. What I'm saying is for the most part, they do not have the exact same love as what you, as a founder would have over a baby who is not their own, right from the get-go, it's not their own, you know, and we as founders have to take time to build a strong and trusting relationship with our staff members and, and designers to make this happen.

So you may think that yeah, you know, I, you can hire because of that and all that, but you can because you can train. So I, I, myself made a mistake and I should have hired a designer to do all the design right. From the start, train them to become better people, better designers. And then they will feel that yes, they are closer to us and they would take up more ownership over the company.

And that leads to a better culture in the team. Right? So the last point I would like to make is it would be best to look far is good, but you need to break up the tasks into small bits. So what, in 2014, I started to do something very radically different than before. I started to wake up at 5:00 AM in the morning.

I wrote my goals. I meditated, I read Googles. So at those moments, I was just obsessed to grow my business up to at least a hundred thousand in monthly recurring revenue. Right. And those were those days and who would want that? Right. So it's the same for me. I want that dream to become a reality. And those days I follow a number of gurus advised to be fearless.

And I impart my goals dream big. I write them down. This one I did, and I followed everything. But guess what? I never reached that milestone at all with those advice and the big mistake, wasn't that, wasn't the goal, that piece of code that I set, but it was the broken up task that I taught myself to do to reach that goal.

What do you have to do to get to a hundred thousand monthly revenue? It, it does look like a lot to you right now like that. Right. a thousand and I absolutely fell for that. So I started to list out tons and tons of things I wanted to do. And I got so excited about them that I did everything on the list and then not carry on with them after the first week of listing them.

So it's a bit like if you want to go on a crash diet, you want to reduce your weight. What do you do is you start to eat salads, right? That's it, I'm just, I'm just hypothetically saying that you try, you change the diet and you change everything at one goal. And what happens is you couldn't last after a while you realize you are back to eating unhealthy snacks again.

Right. And that's because. It's too drastic a change. Your body just cannot adapt to it. So what I should've done is the same year. I should have listed out one thing that I know that will move me closer to the next goal or the big goal. So there is a big goal at the end of the tunnel. I just have to move one step and I will be ahead already every day.

One step a day. And I'll eventually get there, right. Because I'm moving ahead, but I need to make, I need to make sure that I do the tasks that will move my feet. One step ahead, right? Because big goals, they are great, but they can overwhelm you if you don't chunk them down to bite size pieces that are manager, but manageable by the day.

So in other words, you have to look term, but first you get to also accomplish or execute the smallest thing that can move you closer to your goal. Even if it's just a teeny weeny step. Right. Like Lao-Tzu said before, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. And with that, you have to do one thing that's small and then you do it well and do it consistently.

And it wouldn't be difficult to do a small thing. Well, and consistently, because it's small, right? You don't go. If you want to do a big thing consistently and well, it may be harder and more overwhelming. Although it sounds obvious, but it doesn't feel like it works when you actually do it on a day-to-day basis because you wouldn't really see the results.

They're just too small to be felt until you take that consistency, consistent steps. So I made the mistake of overlooking the importance of working on one small thing that can contribute to the larger goal that could happen in a year's time. And I thought that to reach a bigger goal, I had to do many big things.

Well, that could be right. If we imagine the end point and somewhat all the things we need to get there, but don't be fooled like me when you were starting out, you don't think of doing all the big things, big things at one, go to make a huge impact first, because you will end up not doing anything at all.

So you just have to put all those things away. Take one bit. That you know, has to be done to move yourself forward. Simply just complete that one thing for the day. And then you do this consistently. So this will get you moving the needle just a little for now. Right? So if let's say you need to get a landing page done on productising, your design service on a productized design service that you have.

What do you think is the smallest thing to accomplish this? Maybe it's the copy. So let's just start with a copy. Do you need a copy anyway, so set schedule, you start, and then you said deadline to end, and once it's done Unix, you work on other things, right? And when you're working on these things, you just work on these things during the scheduled times.

And once it's done, you move on to the next thing, which could be the design of the page, and you will eventually see your landing page taking shape. And bringing in leads and revenue. So the small things add up to meet you to the impact you wish to achieve. All right. So in short to summarize, here are the key lessons you can take away.

Number one value of time. Number two, focus on sales. Number three, schedule everything. Number four, start with the one small step and number five, do everything consis tensely. So right now start getting consistently focused on the things that are important. To grow your startup and build the business you've dreamed off and live the life you've always wanted.

Right? You can do this guys. So that's it for today. And I will talk soon. Bye.

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Hey design starters. Today, I would love to talk about the reason of why you should start a productized service business. If you are already having a design agency and you are still doing invoicing and doing bespoke customized. Design services. This is something that you should think about, maybe not to start mine, but to kind of iterate your model towards a more productized way of serving your clients instead of doing more financing instead of doing more consulting.

So I'm just going a bit into it based on my own experience. So. I was a graphic designer. Freelancer went out when it was like 2020, or so those are the days and happy in my life then. And then my kid was born in 2013. That was when there was no way for me to be serving my clients at the same time while I'm babysitting.

Right. And I realized that my business could run without me. I couldn't just leave it as it was just. Things would just go on. I can just, I can just do other things and define what will be done for my clients. I mean, it makes sense. Isn't it. So I was the bottom name, all of it and searching for solutions.

I tried to create other tech products thinking that services can never be skilled. And I'm sure, you know, thinking that we as well, you want to scale your business, but you are always. The one to deliver. You are always the one to do the sales. You're always the one to be the customer service. So in this way, who are everything for the business then of course services can never be skilled.

So I was thinking the same thing two, and I thought maybe I should do, uh, A SaaS product, which is a SaaS software as a service. And there may be only way to remove myself from the business at skill skill, this business, while earning any income. Right. So sounded like a really good deal for myself. So I was equipped.

I've always been equipped in fact, with decent coding skills. And I thought that I could create the next Facebook or YouTube. Right. And once I do the, I don't have to work forever. So after a few fields set startups, um, I, you know, I did everything under the sun. I did parenting SaaS. I did food at the timing and.

I'm flooded by many lessons. So I found out I was wrong about how startups and businesses work. I was wrong. That coding is the only skill I needed to find freedom. And I was wrong to think that, you know, SAS product is the next big thing to create. There are many, many lessons to learn and things that lead to successful businesses.

It's not just the type of business. Right. So in fact, I was wrong that service businesses cannot scale. So I did some soul searching and realized it comes down to one thing. I just wanted a business that can scale. So it could be anything doesn't have to be a success. It can be a service. We just have to kind of make it and build it such that it can scale.

So this business that I built can create processes, can create systems. And what if somebody can just take over this and run it? So I didn't need to write from, I didn't need to create assessment from scratch or fiscal product to remove myself because things will come back to the same thing. Again, even if I create a success.

I will be so used to being the one, doing everything. I mean, and I'm doing everything in the SAS business as well. So that doesn't helped me to learn anything that helps to scale a business. Right. So it's not the type of business. And so in 2015, what I did was at box stock, a part of what I've been providing as a freelancer into a productized service business.

And that was when I was on the way to build an asset. Right. And that allows me to help more people and bring me the freedom I've always wanted. So one reason where you, where you should. Build yourself, a productized service business. You already know what is good as a designer. You already know what you need to create as a designer to give good stuff to your clients.

So, because you already know that part, you don't have to, you don't have to start from scratch, right? So the first reason will be to remove limitations on your earning potential. So how does that work? So for myself, I've been working my way, not just to remove myself as the bottleneck. I'm also moving towards improving my wealth, my health and lifestyle.

So in the past I tried everything to do more in less time. I'm sure you have tried to do more in less time, but so long there's only one of you, one of me, which there will always be. There will never be two of the same. You. Something has got to give, if you start to try and push on as many things as you can in an hour.

So in a freelance and consulting models, more like bringing in more clients may have to bring more profits, right. And more of your own individual flavor to your client's work because it's customized. So when you want to earn more, while you do is. Very commonly you see people raising prices because they raise prices.

They will take the last client book. I'm sure you have done that before. I had done it before. So freelancing and consulting can be profitable if you want to be in a week because you can increase price. Right. But the truth is no one can multiply oneself. No one can add more time to once a day. Right. So more this already, you shouldn't be expanding that side of things.

So the good news in life is there is always a way you can remove that limitation on your own potential with what you know. So one way is to identify a set of common items that are notch percentage of the market. What might you buy? Which is what something we have done here. My design agency and this. So knowing that there is a huge market of demand people, businesses who want to, you know, kind of turn out graphics on an ongoing basis, it's a huge demand.

There will always be somebody who needs that help because this help takes time to help them to save time and effort. Right. So there will always be. So it's a large percentage. So knowing that what we did is we packaged up small, simple services, and then we grow the team to keep producing the same thing and sell this one thing to as many clients as you want.

So instead of making yourself work the hardest so that you can serve just that few clients for big. Big big pay the big paycheck from each client. Now you are extending your client volume to as many as he wants. So it's unlimited, right? There's unlimited potential in that because all of them will want your kind of service and you hire people to service this volume.

So in a way you can remove limitations if you start upon outside service. So essentially you are selling a product the next advantage or benefit for, with this is there is no back and forth haggling, quotes, invoicing, you know, and, um, and you know, you want negotiation and all that because I've been doing this for 10 years, I've been a freelancer.

And negotiation of my rates was a classic waste of time. Now that I think about it, because if you think about, you know, seeing getting a Mac, you can expect to go to an Apple store to buy a Mac for something less than anyone else by bargaining for it. Isn't it kind of, can it be the same for your services, your design services, right?

I should, I shouldn't be allowing this negotiation of, of design services. In my own business, right? So starting a productized business changed all that for me, I used to be a generalist, providing everything from brand strategy, advice, logo designs, to full on web designs. So within this huge space of design, all my clients will ask for one thing without fail, why they were asking for that same service, many times.

So what they will ask us to make changes to things like colors, forms, spacing, images, and texts. So knowing this, I simply put together a monthly service that provides simple graphic edits at one fixed rate. I don't have to take the time to create one from scratch just for each client and then another different client.

And then one for new clients. So also there's no need for them to wait for me to update them with my quote, and then we will negotiate four weeks. So that was what happened when I was freelancing right now, when I productize it, it's just one price and they are either in or out. So you got to also understand that there will be people that you haven't seen no to, or people who will say no to you and you got to live with that.

Meaning if they say no, and the property has already okay. Convincing from you and they want to carry on to sign up for your product or service. You got to be fine with that because you know, if they come in not feeling good about it and not happy with this kind of arrangement, then you are making it hot for yourself as well.

Because down the road, you have to try to live with the client who, who is not so happy with such a model, right? The next. Reason for studying apartheid is there is no scope creep, right? This is one of the worst things that can ever happen in a service-based business, especially in design. And I also had my fair share.

So I totally understand how you be feeling right. And I used to have clients who promised the only easy, minor, and few changes to a seemingly simple artwork. You know, it always seems easy at the start. Yeah. Everything is easy to clients. Oh, this is just a simple artwork that I need. I just need my interchanges.

Could you do that for me? And it all there so easy that I could have just worked on them for free, right. It really sounded that easy. So I took on the work and after a few rounds of changes, the clients started asking for new requests, such as change of tax image positions. And they started to ask for improvements in the original design.

So before you know, it, you know, initially it was supposed to be a few minor changes and now that changed to become. You know, from a few hours or an hour of work into a few weeks of major design overhaul, and overall we need like tons of research work and figuring out how this would look better. And I mean, not just better but better for the client's clients.

So this is another whole new level of design work that we all know, right. Because the sprint strategy and all that. So it's not, they're not supposed to be in the same group in a sense, but people think they are right. And people think that these are easy for us because simply beyond magicians, right. As they think.

So the, the budget remained the same. They, they pay the same amount, but the time effort. Was stretched way out of proportion. So things like that can happen. And with the productized service is different because right from the get-go, there's this one price for a limited scope and, or within a limited time span.

So you kind of limit the scope, you give a price and maybe sometimes fan for that. And that's it. Right. So instead of you having to wait for clients to request for anything without boundaries, you will set the scope first and predefine it. So you don't things, things that you shouldn't ask your clients when you are having a productized services.

So what do you want? You don't ask them that what you've held customers is this is what we do, right? You got to be brave and put this up because it works when you haven't done it. You wouldn't think in books, you will work. Right. But, but just try that immuno one for the first one, but even worked for the subsequent ones you should really try.

And clients would definitely have a clear understanding of what will be delivered to them at that given price, because let me tell you a very big problem when it comes to customize to work in design, is that many clients don't trust. How did I use this book as well? So as a designer, I may not trust that client to be able to fix what they want and stop their changes, but it's also a mutual kind of feeling.

You know, where the clients see us from the clients also see us as well, these designers, I'm not sure if they're milking us. They may think like that. And this is something that you need to think where you need to, you need to understand that it's not just as a designer, how we feel is right or not, because what clients feel are also right.

They can be right. And if they feel that we are milking them, then we should set our pricing right from the start. Right, because that's what we said. And we will touch you at this price. It will not be more, it will not be less. So this is the price you can budget for the rest of the year. So this is what you want to give them.

And with that, they will trust you even more. So this is another reason really, to having a product piece of this. Right? So another very good reason because there's no scope creep, there's no need for any. You know, upfront quote, quotes or invoices, you have no more chasing. You are not going to chase any more payments you charge upfront before you start the work.

Right. And in my freelancing days, I hardly get paid for all the services I was offering before the works. That's. What I did before as a freelancer was I did the work first and then I waited for the payment. No, because I just wanted to do everything my clients asked for. You know, I was a people pleaser.

I also not just to also not just to try to please them, but I want to provide as much value as possible. So you guys also know that, you know, as a design agency, you want to provide as much as you can so that they will jump ship and go to another agency and that's normal. But if you are going to start to first.

You're going to have a lot of issues choosing the payment after that, because you don't know what's going to happen, right. It's not that they want to cheat you, but you it's just that you just can't predict what's going to happen to you. What's going to happen to them. What's going to happen to things around you and I have been through this where I've done the work and in my, my client had to close down right.

Due to certain reasons, maybe health, maybe. Maybe they may have just cold shot because there's no business, but the client is not getting back to me at all. So I have not heard from my clients from then to now and, you know, means I really don't know what was the reason. It may not be, it may be my, my design quality.

It may be, then it can be anything. But the point is if they have pain right from the start and I've done the work and given it to them, Then there is this fair exchange, isn't it? So right now it wasn't a fair exchange and it's, um, it makes things harder for you as a, as a design agency. Right? So that's one and another thing about choosing payment, if it's really tough to know what's the total price, if you are not productizing your service, right?

Because you wouldn't know how much changes they'll be asking for. And. That was what happened at the time when I was a freelancer. And you don't know how much time had to be taken to work on this, even for yourself, it can be quite hard to tell. You can just say, Oh, I'll go. I can take one hour, but sometimes it doesn't take one hour, right?

It can take two, three hours. So the most I could do at a time was to get a pet deposit right before the work started at like a 50% down payment. And then after that was completed, I will send a final invoice and I can tell them most clients never paid me on time and half the time I'll be sending them emails, messages, day after day, chasing for the payment.

And that's just not only one client, but quite a few clients. Can you imagine you are an agency with 50 clients and you have what, like 2030 clients do chase for payment. That means you are on a deficit in your, within your profit margin, in your business, right? That's probably, you're going to run a business.

Really. You have people to hire, you have already hired people to do the work for the client. So don't do that to yourself really. And because when I will sell, when I'm selling a product or service, now clients will receive a standard set of deliverables at a fixed price. And the price is the same every month.

Oh, I don't know how long it would take. I don't know how much it would take. How much do you have to spend? I don't know. How much is your budget? No, such thing. It is just fixed. I've already calculated back in the start. So without this variables to be coded and invoiced, we can sell a package service, just like any product to be taken off the shelf.

So if the client needs one, they would just pay it, paid for that package before bringing it home. In a real case scenario, the work starts only when the payment is made. So send it since this change was made. I never have to chase my payments again. All right. So basically a productized service can help you to, to, to book on repeatable service and recurring income.

So the possibilities of a productized service are, as far as you can imagine, you can package one quick deliverable. For example, it can be icon designs and then low price. Or you can put together a series of services. For example, a local web design of C maximum five pages. Like homepage about contacts.

You know, I'm just giving examples. It can be really depends on your customers, right? Five social media images, graphics. You can set them at a higher price on a subscription basis. Is, is up to you on who you hire, what are your overheads and who your clients are. And what your service provides, right? So the studies you come up with really depends on who you wish to serve and, uh, expertise you and your team can provide.

So just like a box of pre-mix, right? Someone can pick it off the shelf with all the ingredients are mixed together, including the packaging. And what happens here. If you can replicate the exact same service to a different client. Simply by expanding your workforce without having to be the one, the single person, putting your head down to do the work when you don't wish to do so, you provide the same type of service to people who need it repeatedly and you get paid a recurring income.

So what's not a lot about this. Start your productized service as soon as you're, as soon as you can. Yeah.

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Hey, design starters, what is a productized service? Exactly. So in short, it's a way to scale your finance or consulting business. It's great for design businesses and firstly, the stock is a start right to scale. And what we're scaling scaling is not to. Make it make yourself look great or nothing vain for four, four, one.

It is really to make life easier for both yourself and your clients and people who want to work in such an environment. And some people call productized service, a service product, and business, and some also used to turn them down for you. So in a conventional and customized service business, you offer solutions based on your customer's very individual needs.

And each time you may not know what they need, and most of your processes are different from customer to customer, but in a productized or service product business, instead of coming up with services to suit your customers, you predefine what you have to offer your pricing. And time to deliver it. So it's a great way to scale your service business because more of your service could be sold with less work time.

So for example, in a productize graphic design business, You may provide only infographics design services, not logo, not web, not character designs. You know how to do a logo, you know how to do web design. You may know all that, but in this business that you've created this package, it's only infographics.

Right. So in my case, I used to do everything from brand strategy illustrations to designing magazine pages. But when it comes to technical execution, I can do all of that because I have the skills, right. And I know how to use the design software and Adobe. So as a designer, I can create many things for many clients.

But the problem was, if I get it, if I'm going to do that, there are a lot of processes that I need to create for client a and then another one for client B to too many things are going on at one time. But instead of offering one off services, I offer a set of simple graphic design service, which will not include brand strategy, no animation, no complex illustrations.

Right. So here are steps that you can take when you have any comes to productizing your service. Step one, you predefined your services and fixed pricing. So you there's no wait and see there's no other approach or living from project to project without knowing what expertise is required. Right. Because you don't know what the customer's going to ask from.

You. Instead you're offering the clients that lunch set menu, whether it be getting things like a set of items, a bowl of soup, a plate of cheese, macaroni, and creme Bruni. So they know what they're getting and they know the exact price for the set, right? For this lunch set, nothing more, nothing less. So assets, the service provider at the backend.

I know exactly the ingredients required to cook and serve lunch. I w I wouldn't have to think on the fly and wonder, Oh, what is this customer going to eat today? Is it lamb chop? Or is it macaroni? Right? This is too random. And it's random for you is random for the customer. That's not, that's not good.

Right? So step two, once you know what you're selling and the cost, you hire the right experts, right. Because I know what kind of expertise I need to look for in a chef to cook lunch. It's good enough. If this chef can cook, wasn't a menu because these are the only thing we offer now. So if you are offering macaroni, you don't have to get a chef who needs to know how to cook chicken rice, which is easier for you to look for such a chef as well, because you have to understand there's so much time in a day.

So many customers, one chef can handle. So say you set your work hours to nine hours a day. If one chef needs one hour to cook one set lunch, that means one chef can cook for eight people a day. So in that case, if you have eight customers, you know, you have to hire one chef. If you're going to have 16 customers, you hire two chefs.

So it can skill because you don't have to hire another of you where there isn't such a thing. There is only just you. And if it's just you, you're going to. Cut off your customers and say, okay, I can only take eight. I can only take five no more than that. And you are limiting your potential to earn right and step tree.

You can sell them repeat. So what the Caucasian standard set of food or standard set of design services to get ready and prepare everyday, you are able to tag you offer with a standard price. So customers will know what they are getting and what they have to pay. So right now you're able to solve a recurring problem for customers and in exchange, they will pay you on a recurring or subscription basis.

So in this way, you can sell as many times as you want without burning yourself out and you can help to increase your income at the same time on a recurring basis. So I'm sure you can tell after all these, that a prototype service is definitely simple. And it's simpler than one of work and best of all, it can work for anyone.

So you don't have to own a company now to do this, but if you have a company you can take some time a day to design your own productized package. Right. So let's say you are a solo freelancer and you don't wish to hire and manage people. That's fine. You can package some of the expertise you use the APA, maybe put it into a, do it yourself kit, and then you sell this, do it yourself, kit to clients.

You can sell as many of these kids as you want. It's a product already. You can do that too, if people want to hire. Yeah. And in my case for myself, I would want to hire because I want to help as many people as possible. So I am growing a team of designers who can churn out regular design work for our customers.

So, if you wish to be an entrepreneur and building up a company, it's always easier to have people to leverage and work on product offerings rather than doing customized projects. So once you take off with one productized service, you can use that same model to apply to other types of citizens. The sky is the limit, right?

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Hey, design starters, quick one with regards to free trials, uh, questions that a lot of people ask is would you give a free trial to increase your sign-up conversion? Right. So the thing about the free trial is I find that it depends first is it depends on your service. Is it something that is truly unique to your audience.

So the first thing is obviously not so much of the free trial offers. The first thing would be who, who are your audience? Have you selected that group? Have you come down to a point where you niche down to a certain tribe where the need, your kind of service? I was struggling with the end.

When I started, I didn't have such a group. I didn't have such a try. I sold to anyone. And are you still selling to anyone? Have you sat down? And listed down a list of say 25 to 50 or even hundred possible people whom are common in one area, which is the niche. And because of this niche, this area, this problem, you have that solution to help them.

So you need to start with that before you come to the free trial. And my reason is because. If you don't, then you will most likely find that there will be a number of churn. People who want to get a refund is because they're just trying out. And most of them will just be trying out. Most of them will not be people who really need your service on the longterm.

For example, in my case, we are a subscription-based design company, right. So if people sign up free, it's only for the first month and if they want to continue, they will have to pay for the subsequent one. Right. And the people who, who kind of like stop signing up and, and, and just, just didn't want to work with us anymore.

I'll usually people who don't need ongoing graphic services. Because I gave them the free trial and because I gave them the free trial, what they did was they thought, I mean, it's like human nature, right? They were saying, why not? Uh, it's pretty right. So might as well just try it. There is no risk. I, I can just, you know, stop as, and when I want, and it doesn't really mean that they like our service.

It doesn't really mean that they trust us is because they didn't trust us. They want to have that try. But the, the thing is the thing is. They also didn't know whether they want it for a long run. So these are not people I should be looking for already. So when it comes to free trial, it has to be men for people who are already looking for it, but may not be sure which company to go to.

So if you have that list, you know their problem, you want to solve it, solve it. Then that's when you will find out who are the other players in the market solving this problem as well. Do these group of this tribe form your targeting. Do they know about these competitors? Right? If you are the first one whom they know, then that's a different, different situation, right?

It's it's there's no, not really a need to give a free trial, but you may want to offer a money back guarantee just to make them feel safer because you may be the first one out there or the second one out there. Not many out there for them to kind of try as well. So it's so, so if, if you are the only one then yeah.

You know, they would probably just buy from you because you are the one who solved their problem. So you may not be the only one out there. There may be others around and they may not know about them. Same thing. They would just come to Australia. We, and they will pay for it. This is my experience because I do have organic leads where they, they probably saw me on LinkedIn and they saw my profile that I do design with unlimited changes, unlimited.

Um, Designs. So they just pay a flat rate per month. And when they saw the profile, it was fresh for them. It was new to them and they were already looking for design help, which is long-term ongoing and this was new to them. And it just came to me and said that he just want to find out more because I'm looking for somebody to help with the design.

And I see that you do a flat rate, so it was new to them and they just paid for it. Right, right after our chat and, and understanding more of how we work, they just pay it for it. There is no need for me to say, I can offer you a free trial to try, right? So you need to really know your audience in this manner, whether they're competitors and that's when you offer well, then that's where you decide whether to offer a free trial or money back guarantee.

So the, whether this, this free trial or money back guarantee increase, sign up. Is not directly correlated, I would say so you can have so many other factors. And then when you put a free trial, it does not mean that free trial is the main factor of people increasing the sign-up conversion. That, that is how it works for me, because I have also given free trial freely and nobody signed up for the free trial, even if it's three, right?

So it depends on who you, who you go to to give the free trial. And it depends on who, you know, will need the free trial and also who, you know, who will be willing to pay without trying. And, and would they want to call this and will they want a lead magnet to, to, to help them first? So you're kind of off target your audience.

We have different kinds of people who will want different things at different stages. Need to understand that this, so should I try? Um, yeah. So offering a free trial may or may not work, but. I have tried it. And where I would say you may want to just try it first to see if it works for your audience.

There's no harm because if you're already hiring, you have the designer sitting with you, she or he is already working on designs. So if you have a free trial customer coming in. It doesn't hurt to pass someone over to your designer to do as well for, for, for, for short while. Right. So that's what we thought as well.

And that's why we tested it. So go ahead and try it. I'll speak to you soon. Bye.

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Hey, design starters. It's a quick one today with marketing plan where you just have to follow five simple steps. The great thing about this plan is it's repeatable. It brings you leads. And if you keep going on edit, you will realize that your dream of having free flowing leads will keep coming on to you.

And it's not like you need to pay anything for it. You may have to obviously. Come up with your time and that could be money as well, but you don't have to fork out lots of, lots of money for this. It's all about understanding people. It's all about the psychology and it can be done over and over again.

So just let me get down to when it comes to marketing the thing about getting people to buy, shouldn't be about you trying to force people. People's throat down with what you sell. For example, if let's say you design logos and you want to market about your logo business, you don't go to a social media like Facebook or LinkedIn, whatever is Instagram and say, Hey, I do logos and, and.

You know, I do this so well that I have hundred customers with me and, and this. So you should come to me for logos as well. So if you put it in this way, you are talking a lot about yourself and this does not spark any, any wish for them to come to you because with this kind of message. All the more, you will tell them that they don't need your service, although they may need.

Right. But just that they couldn't see it because you are coming on as a way of talking more about you. But people only think about themselves at that moment when they have certain situations and you need to look at them by their eyes, $5 lenses. Right. So the first bit that I had that five steps, right?

So out of that five, the first step. That you can keep going with is first. You need to keep on asking yourself, what is your hook? What is this message that you can spark curiosity out of the people who are reading this message. Right. So step one is to come up with this hook, this hook. It's all about what's right.

This hook is, is more like things like for, for myself. And my business is like for me and this, we say we are unlimited graphic design company, right? So this is a great hook for a start. And you don't have to use this. You can use other things like boost your conversions and sales, right. Things like that.

It can be certain hook that you know, your customer so well, you use that. To make them feel like they don't know what you are doing, but they really want to know. So curiosity, spark that curiosity. So the first one is you have to have that clear message to first to start with step two is once you have that clear message, you must have that one line or one sentence to explain very clearly one thing, not two things, but just one thing.

For example, you don't say things like I help you save time and effort and boost yourself. These are too many things and you are targeting too many people at one time, which means that if somebody has enough time and enough money, but not much, the cells may read these sentences. Oh, you give me time. You give me less effort.

You helped me with less effort. And you give me sales, but I just want sales and what you are charging, maybe overpriced for me because you, you also save me time and all that, but I don't need that. So these people may be thinking this way. So you need to choose and select, which is that category you want to sell more to and choose that.

And a third step will be put this into. A landing page or a website. So we just create many landing page within your website. And that's fine. For example, if your domain name is design agency.com, you can have design agency.com/sales design, agency.com/time or things like that. So there is this landing page for just this set of people, or maybe you're targeting accountants.

Then you have design agency.com/accountants. That is fine. You don't have to overthink this, do it, build up the landing page with that hook, that one sentence. Okay. And this message will capture people's attention, the right people you need, and they will carry on going down the landing page to find out more and co with the call to action on your landing page, they will take the action to commit to whatever you're asking them to do.

That's the step three and then step four, you will start to give them a freebie. So this freebie can be anything from the tool. Depends on what you're designing. If you are a web designer and, you know, coding, you know how to create and build a quiz tool or, uh, a set off, um, AI power logo maker or something like that.

It depends on what you write, but this is an example. Come up with it, fast, something that you can come up within a few days, create that. And the landing page call to action will lead these people to sign up for this tool or this lead magnet. All these ebook. So it depends on what you, uh, uh, helping them with making sure that it solves your problem.

So, so this, um, freebie can be a workbook. That's helped them solve the, uh, say marketing funnel. This evil can be something that helped them with the daily design. Analysis of the, our own conversion of landing pages. So it depends on if you're selling logos and maybe this, this, um, ebook can be about how do you know how to create great logos and what with your designer, for example, to create a great brand or maybe rending, right?

So this freebie is to get them to learn more based on the hook that you have given right at the top of the landing page. Okay. So once I've created that the fifth step is to start sending them this PDF, this ebook, this lead magnet, this tool. And because you have already captured the email to send them this tool and this freebie, you can then give them emails that are helpful, that solve their problems and on an ongoing basis.

Yeah, because you have already gotten the permission to send them such things. And what happens, this is just very simple one. And you should just carry on with this and keep going on. So keeping this email list and this set of people who trust you already is a great way to be able to eventually tell them about your product because your product and service will help them on the long run.

And they have really. Have this, this trust and relationship with you through your emails. And of course your emails are helpful ones. I have to assume that, and you have to give helpful tips, helpful messages and emails. Yeah. And then you can recreate this again and again, for anything that you are working on.

So this is my take on marketing and planning and really putting things out. Simply so that you can get ongoing leads. So that's it for today. So I will catch up with you tomorrow. Bye.

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Hello. Hello, design starters. If you are trying to build and grow your service business as quickly as possible, and to also kind of help yourself to have that recurring income steady regular income, rather than a feast or famine way of getting business, the, the, one of the best ways that. I know it would be subscription model.

So like how I'm doing it. we are using a subscription model where people come to us for regular graphic work, where we turn out things like changes to social media designs, changes to landing page designs, nothing strategic strategy is done by the customers. And we will just. Move on with their requests.

And a lot of them need tons and tons of changes per graphic. So it's not like they don't know what they want, they know what they want, but they need a change in edits for the next campaign or the next project for their marketing. And when it comes to subscription model, there are also many different models.

Based on the book called the automatic customer by John Warrillow. So he also wrote the book built to sell. So he's that advocate for creating a business where you can scale and you can just sell like a product. So just let me go through, I just want to quickly run through this nine models that. John Warrillow has stated in his book and will be great if you go read that book.

And from there, you can also try to tweak your business towards certain models that work for your packages. Yeah. So the number one model is the network model. This network model, as the name already implies, if you have a lot of people subscribing. That's better for the subscribers themselves. Right? So, because with more people subscribing to it, the value goes up.

So it's a bit like you can say it's like Facebook, right? Because if I were to go into Facebook yet, nobody's using it. There's no point of me going there at all. So this is called the network model. And if, if, uh, you prefer the, um, Where you like to, you know, kind of create things and products and send to people where people are surprised with what you put in.

That's another model that's called the surprise box model. So this is things like, um, Singapore has a good one where, or getting vegetables are sent to homes. And when they open up the box, they're there not before they open up the box, they don't know what they're going to receive, but in know, they're going to get organic vegetables and they get this either every week or every month.

And then they open it and they will be surprised by things like they have corn, they have cabbage broccoli, but the next month they may have other things that can Cumbre or bring jaw, you know? So this is the surprise box subscription model you pay per month and you get that. Box where you don't know what you're gonna really get.

Yeah. So this is also very fun. And the other one you can do is also the, all you can eat model. It's a little bit like what I'm doing at meat, Anders, where it's like a buffet and you pay one amount per month and you get everything and lots of it. And it's like a library of things. For example, Spotify or Netflix, we have unlimited movies per month.

So it's a similar model. So you can do that for design as well as something like what I'm doing when it comes to design, you can do things like unlimited video designs, unlimited infographic designs. Yeah. So you can call that all you can eat model the other one. Wait, let me see how, how many have we got right here?

So we have got the network model, the surprise model, or you can eat model three models. So the fourth model, the fourth model is the private club model. And this is where you, you know, when you say private club, it sounds a little bit elite and special. So this can be like a club, right? Uh, so this is a pretty old school already.

It's not a new thing. And you have a yearly subscription, let's say where you can have access to this club and use the facilities. So that's the physical way of saying it, right? But otherwise you can do it like, um, this community of very special insider circle, uh, where only certain. Kind of people can access basically, of course you pay.

And definitely the amount is a premium amount and these people may not, may not be, let's say may not be entrepreneurs. They may be developers, or they may not be developers. They may be entrepreneurs or they may not the, um, employment. People, but they are startups. You know, it can be anything. There is no discrimination.

Here is more like just a certain kind of people, a group where they make it, make it really special. And this is usually associated to private clubs. But it is B to B. Business to business is also doable. And an example that John Warrillow has, uh, came up with is the, um, genius network created by Joe Polish.

So people pay $25,000 per year. You can be entrepreneurs, authors, innovators, and you meet you physically meet up every year to just talk about ideas and network. So, this is also like a network where there are people inside, but it becomes very private because not everybody can afford, not everybody can access.

All right. So that is, that is number four. So number five would be the front of the line subscription model funds offline is where it's something like Salesforce. All right. Based on John Marino's book, where all customers get basic level support, and someone will provide you with the restaurants over email within a certain day.

So if you don't pay for this subscription, you will not have that kind of support. It's a bit like in, even in our, yeah. And as a team, we also have two plans. So, so for design subscription, you can also have this where. The first plan can be a standard plan. So like I was as a standup plan, uh, customers will only communicate with us via email and nothing else has just email, no calls, no real time communication.

But if they go for the pro package, that is another level, they will pay a certain amount. That's more than a standard package and they have access to us and kind of like, uh, Premium level of support that are support, live, support, real-time support, and they can also book calls with us so that if they need a conversation, this plan can offer them this.

So it's a bit premium. So even in salesforce.com, it will be the same thing where some customer or customers get the basic level. And if you want something better, something faster, you go for the priority. Access where you pay a bit more, and this becomes the front of line subscription because you go to the front of line, right.

You're being brought to priority top other rather than the basic level. So this would be number five, where it is the fifth such friction mode. There's a fifth, um, Subscription model. So the next one will be the membership website model. So how does that work? The membership website model is if let's say, you know, if, if you know you, maybe you, you, yourself, as a person, you have an expertise in sort of website what perhaps wet floor, and you have a lot of expertise to share.

You can put it behind. A paywall and people pay on a monthly basis to get that unique content. So this is also not new because it's just membership website, right? You set up a website that has a membership to it. People want to see the content they just pay. So this is what a lot of people are doing because it's, it's not, it's not too difficult.

If you have that expertise already. You can just share knowledge by creating online courses as such and the next model with the simplified model. So this one is more for personal services because it's maybe less of B to B, but more of me to see. I think one I can think of is the cleaning cleaning of your, your home.

Um, Or even B to B, where there's carpet cleaning or homes where you need some packing technician, something that you can't do at home, new, you unable to handle, but you need to do that. You need to get that done every time. So you pay someone at a contract too, to kind of service your home staff air conditioner.

Anything electronic in your home on a, on an ongoing basis. So you don't really need to think about that. You know, like my air conditioner, sometimes I have to think about cleaning it, but you know, it's, it's tiring, right? To know when, and you don't want to do that yourself, then you can hire such service.

So it's also similar to how, you know, you, you can do such a model for your design service, and it's also similar to all you can eat. Where your simplify model may not be all of the things that you can do in design. You can simplify it down to only certain items like, like logo creation, form creation. So really small things within design.

And the next one will be the consumables. The consumables model is a little bit like the dollar shave club. Where it's a physical thing and people need to keep reuse. They can't really reuse for too long and they need to change like the Shiva. You know, you have to change the shaver on a very regular basis.

So in some of the design, I'm not sure how you can use this, uh, design, maybe physical design products, 3d 3d products. So, if you're in that space, you can use the consumables model where, you know, people may need to change it a few times or even ongoing, right. Printer, toner cartridges. So if you are offering 3d, 3d sort of cartridges, if you can call it Huggins, maybe that can work or, um, yeah.

Any physical item for your, for to provide design, help. In a ongoing way. The next model will be the peace of mind model. Well, I would say all the, all the models are peace of mind, but what this is is like insurance, when they're selling insurance premium, which, uh, if let's say, if you're installed your roof installer, you could offer a warranty program.

So customers will pay you some money each month to just. Give themselves that peace of mind when that when the roof starts leaking, you will come and fix it. So what I can think for design would be say, web design, maintenance, web host, design maintenance, or WordPress maintenance, where, you know, sometimes what press the plugin causes some error.

And then the website goes down and websites shouldn't be going down too often. And if it does, it will hurt the business. So I think this kind of peace of mind model can help. So there are with this nine transcription models by John Warrillow in the automatic customer. So just go and try reading it. It will help you a lot.

And so that's all for today. I will speak with you tomorrow. Bye.

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Hey design starters. Today, I would like to talk about selling or other, getting in sales to increase and improve your income and to grow your business where you become a wealthy designer. So selling. Is something that many people think you have to go to, someone, ask the person, Hey, would you like to get this?

You know, this is really good for you. And because it gives you this, this, this, this is not selling to me. And when you want to get sales, you really don't have to just sell. You want to get your product, your service. And your offer in front of the people who already are looking to buy them. You got to remember as a business owner, you need to know, people don't want to be sold.

People want to be the ones to decide. They, they don't know what's going to happen. When they decide, you know, to buy, they don't know what is leading them to buy, but if something makes them feel good, leading them to it and they eventually buy it it's because they just decided, so it could be emotional.

It could be impulsive. It could be logical. It could be something that, yes, they know they need it and they purchase it. It could also be something that they just want to have based on many factors. So it's the kind of feeling that you are giving these people that make them buy. So I would not want to think of sales as selling, but I would like to think of sales as people buying.

You don't want to force them into buying because in this way they may not be able to feel good about it. They may feel that they're being forced into it and being imposed to give them your money, give you their money. So when it comes to getting sills to your door, it is not complicated. We have to just simply know that whatever that we put out there, we need to know our customers.

First. We need to know. What they understand us. S w we need to know them so well that we know what to put out there to lead them to buy. It's not misleading. It's not manipulative, but it's bringing them something that, you know, can make life better for them. And that's it. So, for example, What I'm doing with my design company, meat Anders is that I've been putting out a lot of design tips, design examples that convert for people that help marketers convert their campaigns, convert landing pages, convert social media at social media promotions.

And these are design design that. Promo promotion materials for, for us, for me and this, but what we don't put on the air on the promotion promotion or the posts, we don't put things like buy us. Now we don't say you got to get our kind of service and talk so much good stuff about it because obviously we will say good things about ourselves.

And it's the same for you as a design business, where you will say good things about yourself. But what you want to talk about, which is what we talk about is design principles, best practices that help these marketers to apply to their marketing materials. So what I use for my marketing materials, they can use them to, to help themselves.

And what happens then people take notice, right? You get people, people hooked to your. To your polls, to your publication, to your media. And as you keep going, people will start reaching out to you, which is what happens in my case, where I put out the design examples consistently, regularly, and eventually the people who just sent a message to my, um, social media message box, like LinkedIn, or even Facebook, or even email me.

To tell me that, Hey, I really enjoy your design tips that you put out. So you do this, do you do these kind of graphics? We do this kind of design because we are looking for such a designer and this is an opportunity. And just, you know, that I didn't sell them anything. I didn't tell them to buy what I sell.

Right. So there wasn't any selling. So sales. Does not have to be selling. You can, you can, you can start with being a production company first and people will just buy from you. You don't have to mention that they need to buy this first. You can mention something that helps them first. Right. And they will eventually.

Just want to get from you and that's their decision and they are happy with that. You want them to be satisfied and contented with their own actions, because nobody wants to feel regretful. Nobody wants to feel that they are wasting money over something that they didn't think they needed. You may think that they need your service, but if you were to do the selling first, that will make them feel that they needed it and they may regret.

They may think that they real regret of the buying, although they may, they may feel like they may be, they may be getting at an advantage by buying your service, right. Don't get me wrong. Your service is great. You have a great business and you will take care of your customers, but that the selling first wouldn't make them feel this way.

It's a psychology and nature of human beings. So people overthink. And they wouldn't want to buy what you're selling. They would just want to stop and say, Hey, you know, okay, I'll just think about it. Right. And eventually they don't buy from you. They may end up buying a design service from somebody else and yes, they still have a design service purchased.

Right. But if you do the other way round first by, by publishing, by giving away. Something that's entertaining something, that's educational, something that's informational, which has nothing to do with them buying. They ended up coming to you instead, right. Because that's based on their own action that they intend to do.

So selling that's not comfort. Right. But you can get your sales in. So don't, don't have to do the selling first. Selling comes later when they ask you about your offer Desmon, you have to step in with your selling and say, yes, you paid this amount and you get this, this, this, this, and that's the value that you get.

And then you can explain all that, that part will be the selling part. And they're already for that really because you have, they have been through a journey with you. They are ready to buy. So guys sell when people are ready to buy. All right. So cell dust, that was, that was that. That is what I'm trying to see.

Okay. So yes, that's awful today. Talk soon.

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Hey design starters. Today, I would like to talk about which one comes first. Is it marketing or is it your product? I would like to say this thing where it is a big mistake for many of us as designers, especially when we start off alone as a solo freelancer, where we think that if we enjoy what we do, that's most important and that.

We create and design great and awesome stuff where that's enough with we, most of us think like that. And after, after so long in this business, I realized that was such a big, big mistake I've made for 10 years. So, well, the main thing, when you come up with a business, whether it's designing, whether it's art, whether it's.

Craft, whether it's content, whether it's a blog, the most important thing is because it's a business, you need to have people to see them and buy them. So I would say the product is important in a sense, because if it's not good, they won't continue to keep looking. Right. But I would also say that the marketing and sales.

We'll have to come as early as possible. I wouldn't say there's anything that should come first or not. It is great. If you, you can build something and create something first, because without a thing that's probably nothing to sell. That's it? You can sell an idea. You can market by putting something out by just talking.

You can write something without even starting to build anything yet. So learning to create, learning to build is an important skill. That one should not kind of have kind of a few that it's not important or disregard, right? It's not something you should disregard, but when starting out, it's important to have a plan when it comes to marketing and promoting.

That business or service that you're eventually going to do when you're even a designer. What you're doing is just simply business is marketing. Everything you do requires marketing and sales. If you want to earn a dollar on money. So in short, I would say to be effective, to be the best marketer you can be.

Because even with the best product in the world with no marketing, you pretty much can survive, but thriving will be hot. So that is how many people don't feel appreciated. That's how many designers and artists don't feel that what they do is important at all, just for themselves and just for themselves to feel good about doing so.

Right. But if you want your business to thrive, you want to be a wealthy designer. You want to grow older with freedom and financial independence, then you shouldn't wait, but the best you are in marketing, even if design is important, even if the quality of the work is important about say marketing trumps.

The quality first. And then you know that people want that kind of quality. Then you start to put it out. Once you have that skill in marketing and you put out the best product and service, you can start to use the skill in marketing to keep promoting your great, great product or service already. So give yourself that leverage with the best marketing, you can plan it out and strategize who to promote to.

Right. And then create what you need, need to create and what you can create with your talents.

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Hey design starters. Today, I have a quick lesson on the biggest mistake I've made as a freelance designer and a business owner of a design agency since 2005 those years. I only think of making an income and just taking all the revenue as income for myself. So I thought if I were to hire people, I have to spend it's an overhead.

Why not just do everything myself? Right. I know, I know so much of Adobe, Adobe software, how to use them, the technical knowledge and I love design. Right. I love to design. So I was basically the, the owner, the technical person, the illustrator, the designer, the artist, the accountant. And everything in between.

And that was my greatest mistake in a way. But what do you mean by the greatest mistake? So just in this past five years, I've realized that I should have built my business to sell. If you have read the book built to sell by John Warrillow. That is what I mean. If you have not read the book or read the book, but in short, I can tell you now how the book is trying to help you grow your business and it's to be done in a way where you don't rely just on yourself to run the business, to do everything only on your own.

And if somebody comes in to take over that person, can. Can handle that and don't know what other processes that is the biggest mistake you can ever make in graphic design business, or any design business or any service design service business. For, for that matter in a service business, if you're going to rely on yourself to be the one, delivering something, you are the bottleneck and.

And to end the thing is if you are going to rely on yourself and become the bottleneck, then your deliverable is something that is pretty customized, pretty bespoke, or you may not have a bespoke product or service, but your, you have no processes to pass down the system to someone else to take over when you aren't able to run the business.

So that has been. My greatest mistake so far, just want to share with you are to what you have to do. Now, if let's say you, you feel that you are the sole delivery deliver, deliver, uh, how shepherd is delivery person, right. I would say to everything in your business, This is, uh, this will be a mistake. If you still want to grow it, if you want to stay as a sole sole freelancer or solo freelancer or freelancer with maybe help getting help somewhere and all that, that is totally fine because that's what you want.

So if you already know what you want, and this is for people for designers want to grow their business. If you're a grower, then you have to build your business such that it's, it's going to be ready to be sold. So build it up such debt and you can sell it like a product, like a, like a package, like as in your business, not, not the, not the service, not selling the service, but selling the whole business as a product to someone else to run it for you.

You are not actually going to sell it. You may not. You may or may not. You, what I'm trying to say is if you don't want to sell it, it's fine, but you still need to build, build it to, in order to sell so that it's easy to grow. All right. So this is one take today and I will elaborate more on this in other episodes.

See you later. Bye.

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Hey design starters. Today, just want to quickly run through what we have been doing at productize kit version 1.0, that is the one that we launched in 20, 20, beginning of December. That's when our first few members join us and we have had. So much going on. Then we had weekly coaching at the time and a lot of questions going on in the, in the Facebook group that we created.

And after that, we changed our format where we have a fortnight, once fortnightly live coaching as a group, and then we have expert interviews. On every other week. So every week though, there will always be a training, right? Then every fortnightly will be the live training where you can come in, ask the questions.

All you want, the floor is yours. And you can ask anything that you are getting started with your business or already running it. And you fix problems with your sales, your systems, and you need to find out more. And what's the next step for you. You come in for that. And, um, And that was what we have gone through since December to now in March.

So that has been, that has been a great ride for us. And I just want to say it's it's, um, it's a lot of learning lessons for me as I'm running my own design business right now, as well as I help others to get their business off the ground and get their systems running. A lot of things, it's just things in progress, right?

Because you don't just get it done overnight. And it also takes commitment from the co from the members themselves to put into work and take action. And productizing is tough because you're going to say no to a lot of things that even if you can't do them and I've been through that, I know web design and the logo.

I know, I know what press, I know what else I know. I know. Magazine design poster design, but I got to say no to many of them that I shouldn't be working on because you know, time is required for, for things to, to grow my business, like sales, marketing, like, um, systemizing, better streamlining the processes.

So in product guys, kit, this is what we cover. Things may not be. I should say, things can be more structured between December and now we are ramping up on that for now to prepare for prototype version 2.0, which will be coming up in April. So I want to give you some heads up now that we are going to ramp that up soon and the.

The group will be open again for you to enroll. And right now we are going to put it on a witness. And, uh, what you will expect is things like marketing and marketing is a big part of how you are going to be successful in your business. Because even if you have a great service product and you don't get your word out there, nobody knows you are doing it.

I've also been through the downside of, of, uh, being too quiet and not promoting what I do best and many competitors to go over to, to the place. And, and that's fine because so long customers are being served the way I think they should be. They should be safe. They should be served. That's fine. And. With more competitors.

I think you can find more gaps, but the idea is the faster you market, the more you learn about whether your service product works and whether the customers you're serving are the right customers. So in marketing, You know, we have trainings in our group where we talk about why marketing is not just about social media.

It's not like when you talk about marketing, it's not okay. That social media, you could have social media and just picky posting, or keep spamming others in the, in, uh, in the DMS or PMs, private messaging or direct messaging. It's a lot more than that. It's a lot about relationships between you and your prospects and it's about people.

So it's not about your service or features or benefits, maybe benefits, but not features, but morsel of the person you are talking to. Yeah. And it comes with quite a bit of empathy to understand where they're coming, where your clients are coming from rather than what you are selling. So we talk about all of these.

What do you need to prioritize when you're starting out? Let's say, let's say you can have a business running for a while already, but you haven't been really actively marketing because in design and the design industry, I understand a lot of you may be getting work from referrals, right? And the reason why is because many people who need designers prefer to work with re foot contacts.

It's natural, right? Because there's some trust admin there that's it. You also can't just rely on referrals. And I've also been there and, and really got burned deadly without, you know, any clients at one point in time when, when people started not referring. Right. And you can't control that. So you need a way a system where lead generation is it's there to help you.

So. That these are some mistakes that you will learn from us and learn from experts whom we interview and improve in that to bring in more business for yourself so that you don't have to figure out all the, I have no business coming in tomorrow. What am I going to do? Things like that will not help you.

Right? You want to have a time when you don't have to worry about that. And. You still need to do the work, but you know that when knowing that the work brings in the customers, that's what you want. Right? You want to have that bit of control first. And then we also talk a lot about systemizing a business, because productizing is all about systemizing.

Every part of your. Uh, every part of the package. Yeah. And you know, you want to know how to systemize when to systemize you don't just systemize right at the beginning, because at the beginning it saves time, right? You want to get the business done. You need to get in clients. You need to get an income for the runway to survive for a few months, as you, as you put in the work on different parts of your business.

So when to systemize is key. What tools can you use to build your business? There are many tools out there now that absent tech, but what do you use? Right. And you don't use anything. You don't just pay for every tool and use, use them, or they're just tools. You need to understand how to leverage certain things, to bring more returns to your business.

And of course, what books to read to systemize your business. We also talk a lot more about niching. Niching is something that you meet to have an ongoing review, just like branding, just like positioning because customers come and go, customers evolve, customers change. They don't just come in. They know what they want.

They don't just know that and tell you what they want. And it lasts forever. No, over the years. They may change their branding. They may change the needs. They changed what they want. They may change their desires and your competitors may also change along the way. So how are you evolving to meet these wants and needs?

So niching is a big topic that we can cover throughout the years throughout your business, lifetime and other business models that can skill, you know, you can talk about. Whether your business model should be a monthly package, should be, uh, should be a project based or should be a yearly or should. How should, how should your model be like, or should it be by credits?

Is it like a SAS? Is it more like a done with you? Things like that. And then you talk about hiring, like, do you hire straight away and get your business going with somebody you hire? Which could be a good idea. Like for myself, I took a while to hire because I couldn't let go of how I, you know, design artwork and creative, the creative process that I have.

And I just don't trust it. Others can do as well as myself, which is totally the wrong thinking. Right. And we can talk a lot more about this in another episode. So, so I believe you have your own way of, uh, creating designs and you would want to use that more rather than. Passing it off to someone and not knowing whether they are doing something that you think will be right.

Although they may be doing something right, and good, right. Things like that, things like that will affect your business. I guarantee you because it takes time. It takes time too. Figure out when you want that person to come in the training that you have to give this, this new member and this new member will also need to take time to trust you, right?

It's a two way street. So training your staff will also be covered. So we have all these in, um, recorded format already from, from the, from day one. So what do you have? What you will get if you come in and join us. When we are on productized CA 2.0 is you will also have all these in your library. And it is also something that I'm currently building together with Lynn Cardetti from outsourcing angel.

So what I'm coming up with is this platform and library of all the videos and recordings and resources that we've came up with in one place. And. We can discuss more in our community, in the Facebook group. So that's, that's all for prototypes kit. 1.0, it has been an amazing adventure for us, myself and Lynn and the members.

We have people from Nigeria, United States, I'm from Singapore, and then it's from Australia. We have, um, Quite a good, tight and close knit cozy group here today. So great for you to join us if you want. And yeah, just look up on us at productizekit.com. We will reopen in April. See you there.

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Hey design starters. So I know a lot of us would want to scale our design business in a way that we don't have to always be burned out. We don't have to always face clients from hell, but we need to do the work. Isn't it. And we know that without work, we can't have an income, but I would like to talk more about how we can really actually.

Have, you know, what coming in income, coming in without feeling that burnout without even choosing or even needing it, needing to choose to work in the business. So I know you like to do creative work yet. You also want to scale the business and that is possible. It's, it's more of a choice right. To make.

And right now made it maybe most of us don't have that freedom of choice to say, I don't wish to work today. I wish somebody can just take over what I've been doing. And there are some days when you say, Hey, I feel like working on it. And I just did like being creative. So this is the choices that we want to make and be free to do that.

But right now, many of us don't have, right? Many of us can say that. And many of us have to wake up to react to our customers or clients, emails and requests. So right now I just want to. Put out and let you know that there are these four steps that you will want to cover to build your freedom business.

And what I mean by this four steps is it, it can, this four steps can help you to scale. And it's something that is really doable and which I've also implemented in my own business. So the first step step one is you need to first product ties. Because you are having a service business because you are doing something that is using your time.

It's not possible to scale because you only have 24 hours a day and you can't avoid that. Right. The thing is, you don't know when that day ends means it's finite, which means there's no way you can. Do work for as many clients as you want in a D. And if that's the case, that's where we, the skill. But if you productize, you are basically doing something where you are selling like a product, but it's do a service, but it, it, it's kind of packaged in a product form.

And that is the first step towards scaling. Really. I mean, knowing that if I'm even telling you the idea, I'm sure you understand how that works. So productize a service by packaging, the offer. So you need to decide that offer and make it like a product similar to assess or software as a service where you decide the solutions, you decide the deliverable deliverables, and you want to only give that to y'all and offer that to your customers.

Step two, because you have already predefined your offer. You set up the systems and processes. Set up these systems set up these processes that are designed to deliver at scale. So even if you have productize, if you don't create their system and process, you can't scale as well. You've got to document, you've got to set up the fixed areas of things that have to be done so that you can pass them on to someone.

If let's say you aren't able to work for the day, let's say you have a team and they want to understand how the deliverables are being, being created. And you have those fixed steps. So you need to show the fixed steps, right? So rather than relying on yourself to fulfill the customer needs with the systems and processes, your business is now like a machine.

Churning out the work for you. So you tell the machine, okay, I set you up like that, you know, in the electronics, you have logic there and it works by steps. If it's going to be so customized, every process is different than the machine wouldn't understand. There's no way you can build that kind of machine, at least in this lifetime.

Right? So that's that tool. And with your offer with your system and processes, your step three will be to fix your posting. So stop giving different customers, different offers, customized bespoke offers and different pricing. You have a product already, you know, what are the steps to deliver this product?

Now you can set a fixed place for that one package and service. One particular client saving you that time and effort creating individual proposals for different customers. Right? Because if you can do this for one client, And you can do the same for our second client with the same problem, with the same solution, you can serve 1000 clients in a day easily.

You just need probably to hire more, engage more automation, maybe, or get more tools to just cover these fixed areas. And step four is to automate your leads because you want to do marketing. You want to do promotion. You want to service the right customers and one them. Come knocking on your door rather than you trying to convince them to buy, right?

So this is where you create a lead generation system that brings ongoing prospects to you who will benefit from your service repeatedly, repeatedly, meaning they can come back again and again, because you have already designed this in a way where they, they have, you know, that they have repeated problems.

And they just need that same solution every time. So they will come back to you on a recurring basis. You charge them that same fee over and over again. They know that's the amount of budget for, and they don't have to, you know, be surprised by a Southern big invoice at the end of the day, but they know they have just have to pay the fixed price and they know they will get the same deliverable at the end of the day.

So these are the four steps and I would just repeat the four steps in shot to start scaling your freedom business, which is number one, step one, productize. Step two, get the systems and processes set up set. Step three, fix the pricing. Step four, automate your leads and promote your offer.

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Hey design starters. Today, I would like to talk more about how you can break free of billable hours, which comes from the previous episode. When I talk about how, you know, billable hours, don't just don't make sense. And this is mainly for design agencies and all want to improve and grow and scale your agencies.

And also designers or freelancers who want to kind of build a freedom business, somehow hire a team or somehow a higher automation engage automation tech in a way to can eventually have the business run on its own without your direct involvement in the day-to-day operations in the long run. And the first thing you have to do to break free of Ollie billing.

First, this is just the first move is to be more confident of the service you're providing, then decide what you want to offer and also be ready to say no to other things that you won't be providing. And this is most important because I understand as a designer myself, I know we can pretty much do everything in design, right.

Many things because it also long we know how to use Adobe. We can create many things. We are creators. So when, when a person comes to us and asks for a logo, we can pretty much do that too. Right. And if a person comes to us for fly, we can do that too. So we can pretty much do anything that requires our creation.

And we just need that technical knowledge in Adobe software or any other softwares out there. To come up with the, the graphics, the lacerations, the designs, the user experience, anything that just needs our skills. So that gives us a wide range of deliverables to be able to give. And it's hard for us to say no in that way, because if somebody wants a service from us, we can offer that we can make an income and it does help.

When it comes to paying our bills, but we need to understand that that takes time. And when that takes time away from us, it takes time away from how we are going to design our business in the long run. How are we going to innovate? How are we going to think about our customers? How are we going to even make more sales and make more sales and marketing in the things that we want to be known for?

Right. If we are going to accept every other projects, then we may not be known for something or one good thing. We are going to be known as maybe not even known because we are probably doing globals or doing flyers or doing social media stuff, but we websites less and less people will take up each of the items that we can do.

We want more of the people, more clients. To come to us for one thing first. Right? And then we are good in that. And we are known for that. Then we start to diversify. So that is the cost of us doing billable hours, because what we love, what we are basically doing is to have the convenience of letting the customers know how we charge and then they get then just leaving it to them to tell us what they want.

So in order to break free, you have to say no to some things. And decide on what things you're going to offer. That is the first step. And then when you predefine that you predefine in outcome, you predefined a deliverable, you predefined a result for your customers. So don't ask customers and ask them, you know, don't ask customers, Hey, what do you want?

Let me know what you want. Don't do that. Okay. You, you got to decide for them. A lot of things, you have to decide for them what outcome they should have, what deliverable they're going to get, what result they're going to have, define it for them and present that scope to them. Let them know, Hey, I am giving you as many requests, as many revisions as you want in one month, one month, you're going to.

Tell us your request within 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Mondays to Fridays, weekends are out weekends. We are closed. You're going to tell them that and going to tell them that in, in this month, you're going to pay this amount a hundred dollars for this request, these designs and these designs are only simple graphic designs.

So basically this is my business. Now I'm just telling you what I tell people and. How meat vendors came about. Right. And it does help because you are just telling them what they're going to get. And they will know how much to pay you. And, and there's no hourly billing at all. You don't give them, Hey, I charge $10 an hour and then they will try to make you deliver within two hours.

So they only pay you only charge $20, right. Basically. So you don't want to have a situation where your clients can come to you asking for something else also in the middle of the project. So let's say if a client says, Hey, I want a web design and you say, yes, I do web design. So the clients is any number of pages, then you say yes, because you know, it's by the hour so long, you're going to take, give me a project of 10 pages.

It may take 10 hours. Then you're going to pay 10 hours of work. If it's a hundred pages, you're going to pay a hundred hours of work. Right. This can be something that you're going to say. And in the middle of the project, I can tell you, and I can guarantee there will be more things. There won't be 10 pages.

There can be more. And each page may have more content than maybe changes because there's nobody who will fixed a website is, you know, is always constantly evolving. They may have more things they want to add. They want more images. They want change of copy. And what are you going to do about that? Right.

If you do all the billing, you'll be probably saying, okay. Yeah. You know, just give it to me. I'll just, you know, put it in my time sheet and let you know how many hours I've used. Then what happens then? Because in the middle of the project, this happens, you add on hours, then Y then you're going to put in the workforce and then you're going to put in the work first.

You're not going to be paid first. Right. Because how would the client know how many hours you've put in in this case, you're going to work. Until the project ends, then you can send an invoice to your client and tell them, okay, I've worked a hundred hours. Please pay me for the a hundred dollars. So what if the client takes one year?

Are you going to wait for a year to get paid? And this is a big problem, right? So this problem causes you not to be able to build your client upfront. It may not even take a year in meeting forever for your client to pay you. And it's not their fault. It's how the, how you set the boundaries in the first place.

So in order to break free, you have to define the deliverables, define the value of items. Okay. Like how we put it as you, you can ask for as many changes as you want, you pay a hundred dollars a month or 1000 a month, 10,000 a month. You can ask as many times as you want, but you're going to pay this amount.

Right. So that's what, that's what you say. You put it. Oh. And then you're able to fix this pricing, like how we have to fix our pricing in meet vendors and you fix the time taken to deliver them. Right? So the time you deliver the time to be delivered could be a month, could be 10 days, one day, and you charge that amount and that's it.

So what happens this way is you can easily get paid at a hundred percent upfront with all right. And then you get a done, you deliver it as promised. And there's no scope creep at all. So the problem with hourly billing is basically scope creep. And if you are to break free off of that, by focusing on predefining everything you are able to break free, and that won't be scope creep in this sense, because you have already taught them upfront.

You are given one social media image, one photo, one phone. One page of web design with 1000 words and then that's it. Right? And, and, and they, they know they have already agreed at the site. So not everybody would have taken up this offer, but you have to go to clients who will want this offer because you know, the problem that clients are facing, then you offer this solution.

So don't be afraid that nobody will take it up because you have really done your due diligence of knowing the problem that customers are facing. Once, you know, the problems that they are facing by testing our, all your office, then you start to focus on that one solution and just market and promote that same solution to the clients with this common problem.

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Hey design starters today, I would like to talk about the problem with billing by the hour. I would say the idea of billing by the hour may have came about when, you know, you have to prorate your monthly salary down to a set of shorter time spent, you know, you see when you are calculating or coming up with a pro-rated.

Rate a prorated fee for, for someone, or you need to find out what's your best fee that you want to earn per month. This is the kind of calculation you do, right? So the process of calculating is to break it down to the per hour. And then that's when you come up with that rate that you want. So because you are calculating for yourself.

It becomes very convenient for you to tell people what to put our rate, but you know, that shouldn't be how you should charge or bill your clients. In my opinion, I feel that this is meant for, to be your, for your reference only to coupling your fees. So, so you know how to respond to a client or what a project will potentially cost.

So from here it becomes, maybe it's just more of a convenience, right? To tell someone you're all leaving. And naturally people begin to, to use that to judge what it costs per project, if it takes a certain amount of time to complete. So I see these as a problem because it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.

For you to produce or design an artwork as quickly as you can with great quality if you're charging by the hour. So it may depend on what you value, but it doesn't make sense to value work that lasts forever, right. That work that goes on in progress forever. And you would, as a, you know, as a provider, you would want something to last on forever.

So that you can just keep charging per hour, right? Because the more time you take, the more you earn in that sense. Right. So it doesn't make sense anymore because if I would a client, I would prefer you to complete the project sooner than later. And would you want to keep dragging it even though you were?

Yes, you are earning more in dollar total, but in, but by the time you reached a total number of. Amount of fees. A lot of time has gone to us, right? It, as a designer, I would want to earn more in a shorter time. Right. So for both ways, it really doesn't work at all. So you should be charging more for the speed of completion and with quality rather than having by going by per hour.

So for example, okay. Let's, let's have an example. Maybe it will illustrate better. If your client wants a logo from you in 10 hours time, how would you build him or her? So if you charge $10 per hour, you will effectively receive a hundred dollars for the logo. But if you deliver the logo longer than 10 hours, let's say you deliver 800 hours eventually.

You get to take back $1,000, right? Because it's $10 per hour and that's so much more time than delivering it in a quicker turnaround time. So if you were to charge $10 per hour for a logo, you would want to give your, your client the logo back in 12 hours because that's $20 only. You want to give your client bank, the logo or deliver a logo, you know, taking the longer, the better.

So within that hour, just doesn't make sense. If I want to receive a logo in a shorter time, your, you know, you should be charging higher, right. And to have it quicker to be delivered quicker. So you might say that, okay. So I can build a client such that if he wants, or if he or she wants a logo in a shorter time, then your per hour rate.

Will be increased and it will be higher. Yes. And I think that is what many people do. However, that even though that works by the numbers and the amount you're receiving is probably more per hour now, it's I find that it's not sustainable in the long run. And I have done it as well before as a freelancer.

And what happens is I will have to recalculate a new rate of billing for every customer. Because every customer has different requirements. So customer comes to me and say, Hey, I want a logo like this, like this, like this, I need it tomorrow. How much would it be per hour? And I give that rate. It can be a hundred dollars per hour to give you tomorrow.

And then another customer comes along and say, Hey, I want a logo and I need it. Three days later. I don't need it tomorrow. These charge me cheaper. And I have to kind of figure out based on the requirements of the logo and the per hour rate, I will have to charge, which is not a hundred anymore because it's three days later.

And I, it, it may go down to $40 an hour or $20 an hour, but that's not sustainable. Right. I need to always be there to kind of calculate such fees. And there will be a lot of negotiation between us, between the designer and the customer and the client. So. So this recalculation does not work all the time.

If you only have one customer, then that's fine, but, but you're not going to survive with just one customer. Isn't it. So recalculation of this billing has been eating up my time so much, and it became costly for me as well. So ideally you should be setting a fixed cost for a fixed set of deliverables for all clients who need them on repeat more, rather than just letting them know about your hourly rate, because they would try to work around your hourly rate.

If you say $10 per hour, they will probably say, Oh, then just give me today. You know, like two hours later, I would just pay $20 for it. So it doesn't make sense anymore, even for you, you, yourself as a designer, right? So you set a fixed cost for a fixed set of deliver, fixed set of deliverables. Then it there's nothing else to negotiate about.

You know, there's no more quote, you don't have to recalculate. Everything can be self-serve on your website. And if this is something that the clients need it on, repeat more, even better, right. You get it recurring. So, if you want to scale their business to cater to more clients and for them to return to you over and over again, I'll say you should not use all the billing, but you start with recurring problems that your clients are facing stuff.

Figuring out the recurring problems your clients already are experiencing. All right, with debt, those problems, you start to provide a solution that will be a value to them. And then you'll fix that price for all clients.

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Hey design starters, today, I would like to talk about how you can figure out what problem is worth solving in your industry, your business, your design industry, and, you know, generally what challenges are your customers facing and how do you know that? So many advice you may have heard is to just ask yes.

Asking is very direct, very straightforward. It is available in a certain sense yet. I have tried that many times and I found out that it doesn't mean. You know that you even your customers know themselves? Well, it doesn't mean that they know what they want and it doesn't really mean they know what they need.

So even if they can think of it and know what their frustrations are, and you can just ask them the question, they may not be able to give you a direct and immediate answer that. It's really true. And they don't mean to fake it. They don't mean to, to be dishonors about it. Uh, but there's just natural, like humans where not every one of us knows exactly what we need and what is good for us.

So, if you are facing this, it's the same as what I've been facing for a long time. And what I've been trying to do in the beginning of my business is to ask my customers again and again, and to ask, Hey, you know, what feedback do you have? What improvements can I make? And. And this has become more of a formality and kind of official to ask, but I don't find that it's very useful after trying for, for, for a long time, because you got to know that your clients are also busy people.

It doesn't mean that they're sitting there waiting for you to ask this and then they would want to jump at it and tell you what to improve. Most times they have more things to care about. In their business, rather than looking to help you improve many times. If anybody wants to give you the advice, you know, a lot of people like to give advice and they will just give it to you even without you asking Andy.

And you know, I'm not saying that you shouldn't ask, but. Asking is one way, but it may not be the best way, depending on the number of clients you have, depending on how you ask. Right? So if you don't know what problems your clients are facing over these five years of my business, I found out that one really good way is first before you ask them anything is to brainstorm.

Really just to sit down, not doing any other thing, focus on brainstorming based on your experiences with them so far, right? Least on what brainstorm and list down what, uh, the problems that you think they are having. So, so it starts with the assumptions. All right. And it's still hypothetical at the beginning, correct?

So you have all these. Points of problems. For example, for me, when I first started that brainstorm session with myself and checking in with my gut on what, what problems they are facing, I put down things like number one, there's no dashboard for them. They can't see what are their task pending task and what.

They need to action on. They only rely on email and, you know, things may just get lost in tracks. And that is one assumption that I had. The other assumption is they needed some way to mock up the design artwork. And without that, it's hard to articulate what is it that they want to change in the artwork?

So this, this is one of the, in the list. So that's what I did. I put them down. And not everybody finds that all of this point is a problem. For example, for dashboard I've been using Asana. And what happens is there's only like out of, let's say about 10 customers that we have only one is using. So they are just too busy to use that.

So in this way, that's what may not be a big problem, right? And you don't even need to ask them if you ask them, they probably say, yeah, it's good to have. And yeah, it means solve their problem. They may just logically give that kind of answer you, you know, if you, if you, if you ask them what they want, they just want everything faster, everything cheaper and everything better.

Right. So, You know, just plenty asking wouldn't help. So what I did was just to put this down and, and next to that column, off that list of problems, I put a column of solutions. So for example, dashboard problem, right? I don't have a customized dashboard. I have the set of solutions on the right side. The column and on the right side.

And I can put in things like number one, customize our own. Number two, maybe we purchase from a third party software, for example, a center or maybe something else. Um, number three, you know, I can just use Google sheets just to put them down, you know, and just use that to solve the problem first, which is something that I'm really intending to use.

And I think that may come up well. And of course, I'll let you in on how it goes. So, you know what I'm saying? It's just problem. And then problem is assumption, right? Assume problem. And then the kind of like proposed solution that that's brainstorm there. And then I just put them down then. I will test each of the solutions.

Right. For example, when it comes to the dashboard, I'm about to test on this Google sheet. If it works, I'll put down another column. So that three columns, the third column will be the testing, whether I have tested it and whether it works. So, so after I've done that, and I have assumptions of whether it works, then there's a time and an Austin, because they've really tried it out.

So for example, if it's a dashboard or a Google sheet, I sent it to them and, and, and they tried it a few days, a few weeks. That's the time when I asked them is, Hey, so I've made these improvements. What are you asking me? Whether you asked me to make these improvements or not. Right. But at the customers have taught me to do that or not.

I have made it. So, you know, you just be proactive with this. You tell them that you have made it. And I did. This does help you save time. How do you think these are helping you? So I think this kind of ask is a different ask. It's not too old. And th that, you know, they are not guided in any way and know where to start from to answer you.

And th they feel like it's an obligation to answer you by if you give them this kind of, um, uh, some assumed, assumed problem assumed hypothetical. MVP minimal viable solution and the MBS maybe. And they try it out. They really use it for real. Then that's when they can give you that feedback. And obviously you don't give them something that's expensive.

You don't take too much time and money to produce. Google sheet is good. Uh, Sinai is free, you know, you can try all these things and they don't take you much time to start. That is where it starts from. Right. And then you let them try it, then you ask them. So when you ask them that, then that's when they will be able to give you feedback because they have already tried it.

So definitely they will let you know, if what you have been doing is serving them well or not. Right. So I find that this works better than just simply ask them. So what do you think I can do better to help? Let me know. You know, when you start to ask this and you ask them to let you know it. It kind of, you know, kind of need them to do the work rather than you are doing the work.

So you wouldn't want that them to do that. And it becomes like a survey to check in on them, but surveys can only really work if you have a lot of clients, maybe even 5,200, at least. And you may be there already at this point in time or not. It depends, but. Even if you have hundred a thousand of clients, not all of them, you know, until your, your, your survey in the best way and most honest way possible.

So I feel that using a quick hypothetical, uh, cheap, um, something that doesn't, it's not expensive to start with would be the best way to do that. So what I'm trying to say is, You know, you just have to know what is a good solution. Your customers also may not know what is a good solution. You wouldn't want to listen to all customers.

Some customers have good feedback, even if it's a good feedback, it may not work as well for your company because you have other customers too, to think about. So one customer's feedback may not cater to all customers that you have. Right. So what I'm trying to say is. To know the problem that's worth solving does not mean that you need to go to every customer, ask them the question of, Hey, how can I help and listen to all of them?

You need to also do your due diligence of, uh, brainstorming a list of assumptions, assumed problems, assume solutions testing, and then back to asking them. So that feedback will be most valuable.

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Hey design starters, today is the first day I'm giving a big reveal on a big secret project that I have been kind of working on with King Lau. So I just want to let you know here first in this episode, and also run through with you, why I'm doing so many things. And how do I keep focused on so many things, right?

So we all know the word focus is to follow one course until success. And this comes from John Lee, Dumas of the entrepreneur on fire. My favorite podcast of the century, because I followed John for five to six years, started. You know, signing up to his program and being in the podcast paradise since five, six years ago.

And focus is the thing that John has always been advocating. I'm sure you guys have always known to be laser focused in order to succeed and that's not wrong. It's totally true. I'm not disagreeing on that. But I have been struggling with that by not doing any other thing, but just one thing at all times.

And that is also not something that I grew to agree over the past years, as I am succeeding, growing my design service business. What I'm trying to say is you can do one thing if you want, but you may need to do many sites, site areas or site staff. To compliment this one big area. So what is important is to be able to know and be self aware of what is it that you want in future first and then work backwards with all the many site projects that you are creating too.

What's that one big thing in 10 years time in 20 years time, and the focus is on all these things, right. Rather than just. When we say focus is to do one thing and not do other things that, that, that is a different mindset already. So when, when you hear gurus or successful people talk about focus, it's true.

You focus. And, and that is more of setting aside time for that. And, and that's a previous episode, I think, uh, episode two, two episodes away, or one episode away where I talk about the 80 20 rule. You should use that to keep focused on each item one at a time. But when combining them together, they lead to one big goal and achievement that you, that you are very clear that that's where you want to go in the number of years, time, or number of months time.

So to give you more context, what I'm trying to tell you is I am doing many things. At, at this point in time, because I want to reach financial independence in less than 10 years time. So five years is my goal of course, 10 years. Is that extension, right? So it means five years. If, if let's say in five years time, I don't reach my financial independence.

I'm not just gonna kill myself for that, but it can lead onto the 10 years. But point is, I know where I'm getting at, in those years, right. Towards, towards what I really want and truly want. And in order to do that, I need to grow and scale my design service business, as well as help people to do that as well, because it's not a zero sum game.

We all win together as a community. And I understand networking where network is your net worth. So I'm building a community at the same time and to, to, in order to do that in order to get. People to know about my design service, to get people to know about the community. I must also network myself. I must outreach.

I'm a screamer marketing activities, impactful activities in order to get people to notice, I must create some form of value and quality projects and work to towards these. Areas that I am building and growing. So you see the one thing is still the design service business and helping my, the designers and my community to get better, right.

To get better in their businesses, but the activities around that other site projects that will lead to this growth. So I'm still, you know, kind of yes. Working and focusing on one thing. But I have other side projects too, to kind of focus on one at a time to lead to that. So I stopped podcast, I'm starting a YouTube channel and it's awful that purpose and that bigger goal of financial independence.

And at the same time, I also want you guys to get better because I know the pain and I know the struggle of growing and scaling businesses. Because of that I'm been working on this secret project that I, I was trying to introduce you to today. And this project is, uh, is with, with King Lau, uh, th uh, on this virtual summit, which is a free three-day event.

And it's called be your own boss summit or BYOB for short. So, you know, You know, that I specialize in productizing office for design service business owners. And I mean, at the same time, I recognize that you are, I've been around and you want to listen and you want to learn more from me because, because I have been helping you with all these and, and besides all that, that's also other things that you need to, to learn, to be successful in being self-employed and being a freelancer and being a business owner, especially being a service business owner.

It can be different from product product owners. Yeah. So, so with this partnership with King, this is, this virtual event is to help you to achieve your goals. This virtual event covers many other lessons that you will learn with other expertise to help you be your own successful boss. Right? So this summit is geared towards helping you if you're just starting out in any service-based businesses.

So if you're a design freelancer and you, you just want to kind of, um, get this off the ground, get your design design business off the ground. You have probably a few clients. Sometimes they come back to you. Sometimes they don't, you want to increase your leads. You want to increase your income and you don't feel like you have all the pieces you need, right.

To make the most often. Amount of impact in what you're doing, then this is really for you. So you can check out at the BR will be summit, and I'll just put the link in the show notes. So you just got to get onto MarilynWo.com and you can find the show notes that the link is there, you know, get in, sign up for it.

And it's free for you three days events. And you know, if, if you want me to further learn, you want to learn more about this and, uh, And understand more of what this event is all about. You just have to stay tuned to my podcasts, or you can sign up to my newsletter as well. That's where I will for sure review everything in the weeks to come.

So if you're curious, you can take a sneak peek at the link in the show notes and find out before everyone else.

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Hey design starters. So today I would like to talk more about how are you going to get work from the same clients over and over, you know, without having to keep on trying to get new leads, you know, because that can be really tiring. That's full for sure. And at the same time, you're just thinking, Oh man, it's like a rollercoaster ride.

You know, sometimes I struggle with lead sometimes it's good. It's, it's killing you like emotionally and mentally, right? Because today you can have like 10 leads and tomorrow you have zero leads. So, you know, it's like, it's just, when I was doing freelancing back in like five, six to 10 years ago, some, some were there.

You know, I have, uh, friends, I have family asking me, so, you know, how what's your average? Salary. What's the average income. It was so hard for me to answer. So I would always tell them, see, sometimes it's zero, sometimes it's hundreds. Sometimes it's 1000, sometimes 10,000. Yeah. I've, I've reached up to six, like five, six figures in a month before, and then the next month I go dry and, and my income goes down to zero.

So, so that's, that's really bad because. Everything is up and down all the time. And I couldn't even answer that question. And they'll just give me the look that, you know, that Tel told me, like, uh, do you even know what you're doing? You shouldn't be, be getting up and down, leads up and down income. You should be able to average get a minimum.

Right? So in those days, I didn't even know there was such a thing for, for, for freelancers or entrepreneurs. I thought. Isn't that what I sign up for, you know, the, the unpredictability, the, um, the very unstable and risky and, and the thrill that I can get from this kind of life. So until I truly ran drive with clients and leads that I realize.

That that that couldn't work. Right. So, so that's when I figured a way to get recurring leads, recurring income, and just something that is repeatable, not with many clients only. Yes. I can get repeatable clients, client work from, from new clients, but as well as current clients. So. How are you going to do that is basically, there are a few, few things that you need to think about.

Firstly is the offer that you have is this offer something that can solve a recurring or repeat repeatedly kind of occurring pain and problem that your clients are having. So you just have to look at one client that you have right now. So you may be freelancing. You may be running an agency and you may be doing, say a logo design service, for example, for a client.

Right? So out of all your clients, you pick one and right now you pick that one already, you know, you're giving the logo design service to this client, or you have already given a logo design to this client before. Okay. So now that you have that, then you have to ask yourself, Right after providing this local design service, what other problems does your client struggle with related to this local design?

You don't want to veer too far from the design. You may want to expand your service. Yes, but you may want to niche in an area. So. If you are thinking to niche such that you don't want to provide too many offers, you don't want to just give local design brochure, design, uh, social media design landing, page design, too many, right.

That could be too many. And that could mess up your processes. You want to keep to local design to the same client. And what other areas around this logo or graphic that you create. Can help this client. Okay. So one book that I've been I read, which is really good, is built to sell and built, to sell, um, talks about logo design as well in his, in his book.

Uh, th this, this, um, the person who writes this, uh, talks about this, like a story where there is, um, There is a, uh, a person who is selling global design as well, and figuring out how to kind of productize and niche down and narrow in a way where the processes are always the same all the time and giving the S the same recurring, repeated solution to similar customers.

So this author is John Warrillow and you should try to reach out to get this book. And really to understand how he uses this story to work an offer around the design. So that's one, um, Back to the logo design offer to a client. You want to think about, okay, with this logo, is it branding they were talking about for these client?

Shall I provide a monthly offering with regards to branding to this client? It can be something like that. It can be a month of consultation and it, it may not have to be you during the consultation. You can train people to go through the same processes and asking the same set of questions. To the same client every every month, just to keep up with your same clients, branding, brand work and brand growth, it can be strategy.

It can be a brand guide, style guides, something along those lines to keep things going every month. So in this way, you can charge as a retainer. You can, you can come up with different ways of charging. If it's not a retainer, it can be yes, per project. But you know, this client where the come back to you the next time for the next round of either consolidation or the next round of marketing collateral or branding collateral or branding strategy, it can be anything around this logo design or related to this logo design.

Right? So for example, I am offering simple graphic solution or simple graphic work for my clients on an ongoing basis, knowing that these clients need ongoing graphic help every time. So I have clients and customers who have stayed with me for at least five years. Since the time I started this company.

And, and they're just coming back to me and I, I don't have to keep looking for leads to cover the base income that I need to pay my bills to pay by my team members, because my customers are already coming back for the same service every month. They are not doing the same thing, but they are creating new collaterals and they need that similar service.

Right. So. So back to your, your own offering, you got to figure that out based on the problems your customers are having. So the problems my customers are having is if they were to go through a one time change of a graphic, it may cost them more than a retainer because maybe in a month, they need to change something a hundred times.

And if let's say someone charges say $20 a hundred times, that'd be $20,000 to $2,000. Yeah. $2,000 a month. That's crazy. Right? Because I'm only charging $500 a month and I can change a hundred times for my client. So you can compare. This is a pain for them. If they are going to fork out $2,000 a month, not knowing they have to come up with that in the first place, right.

It's only after they're done with the changes, you send them the invoice and you get a shock. So, so this is, I'm trying to give you the problem first and then create a solution. So you, you have to come up with that problem first with your client. First. Yeah, that comes first. And then your solution rather than keep thinking, Oh, I'm great.

At logo design or I'm great at branding. I need to provide that. No, that's not, that's not the right sequence to create a productize company or a business or an offering. The first step is to understand the recurring problem. Your one customer has first. Right. And then. Then you start to offer of course, related to your design work and then you offer that particular solution.

Right. So keep that in mind and do that brainstorm first. And, uh, just let me know what you have come up with. You can just, uh, Just send an email to me or sent center, sent a message to me via my website@neverlandbull.com. I have a contact form in my contact page. Just fire it to me. I will, I will definitely read what you have to say.

And yeah, we can discuss over email or you can just add me on LinkedIn and we can discuss on what you have come up with.

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Hey design starters. So today I just want to go behind the scenes on this new thing that I started with Lynn daddy of outsourcing angels. And we, we started this together as partners since December of last year in 2020. And so this just want to like, you know, give you a run through of what I've learned.

In this short lesson and hope that it will help you with, with your business as well. So, so this is not our main business. Uh, we have our own main businesses. I'm running a design startup, and Lynn is running her own virtual assistant company, as well as a few other startups. And we have been productizing our company, our services, such that we are able to remove ourselves from the day-to-day that deliver.

We offer. Designs and as well as the, the, the, the operations, and we are also able to find as many clients and work with as many clients as we want so long, we are able to recruit, hire, train the right people to take over our role. So with systems and processes, these are very possible for really any service businesses.

So long, you are able to package them in a way that serves a niche. Right? And well, so, so far how, how things work is. This is not something that you might, might be rendering, right? Because the design startup has been taking so much time. Our design business has been, has been growing and, and, and I, you know, every day we will definitely have to put some time into it.

And I've also a family. I've, uh, I have two kids and I also do wind surfing as well. So, you know, it's like, Hobbies and things that I like to do. So what I've learned from Ramit Sethi is to put in, you know, using the 80 20 rule. If you've heard of it, you, there are different ways to look at an 80 20 rule.

So like for impact, you want to put in just 20% of your time on to produce or to have that 80% of results. Right. So I always use this. To kind of, uh, be as productive as I can and constructive with the results that I want to come up with. So, so that is one. And the other part of 80 20 rule is 80% goes to, of course, most of my time will go to the, uh, the major part of my life.

My, my main business, my family. And, and the more important things that I would think is, is what that drives my my life. Right? So let's say my main income is in my design business. I would have to put in 80% of my time there first, including my family. Right. Or these are part of it. And then 20% will go to mind this new business with lead daddy and his, uh, which is called product high skin.

So this, this community and coaching membership is where we help others to build businesses that we have been building as well. So use this 80 20 rule and you are able to come up with something. On the side and you will never know what comes out of it, because for now it has been kind of part of my life as well, with this new business.

And, and with this new community, we are helping each other a lot, not just us helping the, the new members, the new members have also shown results from, from what they have been gathering in our coaching sessions. So. What I'm trying to say is the thing that we learn here is how you really split your time up throughout the day and split your time out throughout the week.

So the important, the important thing too to note is I probably said once before in one of the episodes is time. And weekly scheduling of, of your, your task and, and matters that you need to tend to. So within this week, what are the impact activities you want to do to, for example, grow your business. For example, start your site, hobby site hustle, improve in your certain skills in certain areas.

Right. So, so for my myself, myself, me and my husband, we are working together to grow out design business, and myself and Lynn, we are working together to grow the productized kid community so that with more people, more people can help each other. Right. So, how we are doing is we are just recently reserving the 80% to the, the main bulk of business with N with our family, and then the 20% on this other, uh, productized community to, to grow that and help others as well.

So, so within that week, Mondays to say, Thursdays, I will be dealing with my business, work, my team, my family, and. Bringing in more customers to help them with, to scale their business with design and then Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, I'll be working with, with, uh, to help on the productized kid tasks. So I will work on that more and, and help to figure out where I can help in those areas.

And part of weekends, I will also be out windsurfing, you know, my hobbies with my kids family day. So, these are ways you can figure out how you can do things that bring in an income and also do things that you will feel fulfilled and really contented with what you want in life. Right. So that's it for today and I'll see you tomorrow.

Bye.

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Hey design starters. Today, I have a lesson on productizing or not to productize, so it depends on where you are at with your business right now. I would like to just say that if you want more of this productizing health and a community where you can bounce off ideas, build partnerships, learn from experts in this area, whether it's a sales, systemizing processes and, uh, Getting leads, marketing just simply growing and scaling your business in this productizing way.

Then I have this membership where you can join. I partner with link daddy. She is the CEO and co-founder of outsourcing angel. It's a global. Outsourcing company where they help you look for virtual assistants. So go to productize kit.com. That's where you find the information on how to join and, um, yeah.

And you just have access to myself and then, and everybody else in the community. So this is growing because many people asking for this. So I would like to help as much as I can. And, um, with this one that you will get premium content, which we don't reveal out out of it, because this one is a very kind of customized way when we work with you, uh, depending on your needs.

So that, that is productized kit.com will be great to see you there. So when it comes to productizing right now, back to this lesson, This term, isn't a new thing. It's another word to mean service product, where you sell a service, like as if it's a product. So if you are not productizing your service, then.

I would like to just illustrate more on how you're running your business right now, so that you can compare, right? Because you may be thinking, you know, what does that mean? Like I can also, you can, you are thinking you may be doing it already, but let's, let's just break it down a bit further on how you work.

If you are not productizing your service. So you are not. How it works is a prospect or client comes to you. What do you do next is you do a discovery session. It can be a call. It can be meeting up. It's just a time where you want to find out what, what they do, where they need help and what they want. So why are you doing this is because you don't know what they want.

Right. And in this case, you are assuming clients know what they need, but I can tell you that. Clients people in general, usually, um, they don't really know what they need, right. Because what they need is not what they want. They may know what they want, but needing something to help with say, growing the business, they don't know that there's something that they need.

They just want, they just know what they want. For example, when it comes to building a business, they know what they want is. Say, for example, people to be aware of them, they want to build awareness, right? So that's what they want. They know that's what they want, but what they need now may not be awareness, what they need now, maybe sales, what they eat now may simply just be just generating income, awareness, branding, and getting people to know you does not mean incoming money.

All right. So these are two different things. What I'm trying to get here is what people want is not the same as what people need most of the time. And most times clients don't really know what they need and you are here to show them what they need. Right? So if you are in a, you know, if you're not productizing, you may come in, you may get to a point where you feel, you are thinking that.

I just want to hear what my clients say, because since they are there, they know what they want. They can tell me and I can give them what they want. All right. So if this finds, if you find this familiar, yeah. This is where you may be at. And right after that, what happens next is you find yourself creating bespoke or customized proposal for every client.

So let's say. Let's say this client meets you and say that, okay. Uh, you know, it looks like my branding is very blend and, uh, if have this website, but, you know, I would like my local to stand out and have this color, um, that kind of phone. Then then after that, you, you are, you are, you start to tell them that, Oh, I see.

So you want to, you want a logo and you want to go like this. So you started to come up with a proposal, right. To, to work on, to, to kind of give them the ideas of what you're going to help them with their logo. And you put down things that they want, things that they tell you that they want this color.

They want a certain look. They want it big on their website. And you write that down in your proposal and tell them that this is what you're going to give them, because that's what they said. They want it. And then you put it on the price and you deliver that proposal to them and present to them. Then after that you realize another client comes to you and say, Hey, you know, I find them, my Luca is great now.

Uh, but the thing is, my letterhead doesn't seem to be very easy to use. You know, I would like it to be in word document. Can you design the header and the footer? Can you design the background? And then you set off to, to put that down in the proposal and said, okay, you know, I can do this background for you.

This header for you, this is completely different from the proposal that you have done in the first one where you did the, you gave ideas on creating the logo for your client. So you start to do proposals like that. And then the third proposal is probably a website. The fourth proposal is probably.

Something else. So it's completely bespoke because it's not product ties. You see where I'm coming from. Right. Then you see yourself wearing hours, days to create these power proposals. You think they are so good in the ISS. So perfect. Because you are giving what the client wants and you look forward to showing your prospects and you look forward to starting work.

The thing is, you know, All of them have different budgets. All of them have different rates. You need to start taking your time to figure out, okay, how many men I wasn't going to take? How much am I going to charge this for this, this world, this number of hours. And all the time has gone, right? For each proposal.

It's not just one, but you may have 10 20 proposals to create. And. If one proposal takes one hour, that's 20 hours of your time. Right. And that's not the worst thing, right? When the time comes to present your proposals, guess what? The client probably has found someone, or they decided to call it off, or they don't like your proposal ideas or they can't afford your fees.

So these are the things that. You realize may come up and that's the worst things, right? And what's, what's next. You need to find another client and you repeat the same process. So what's the worst, worst, worst case of all seven days have passed and you've got no case for the week. So this worst case is pretty bad.

Isn't it? If you have done so much yet without pay, you know, So if you, but if you eventually get a client, that's great. But when you start work, you realize you have to create a set of designs in a different way. From the previous clients, you, you know, different things. So you can use the same mode.

There's no more when you can, just, when you repeat, you can just use that mode, but you need to recreate your processes. You need to recreate your systems. And it's it's on you every time a client comes in. If you have hundred clients have to do a hundred times, that's, that's, that's totally crazy, right?

It's a lot of time and I've done this for 10 years, myself. So right now I think is a mistake. It wasn't a stick for me, but those days. You know, I, I, I didn't think of this. So those 10 years I realize right now, it isn't, it wasn't a good idea at all. And, and for me, I've learned a lot even by doing all these bespoke customized proposals, but, but I've also threw away a lot of time.

I threw away after 10 years and I have use this time to, to build my own. Assets and systems to make processes more efficient. And that's why I'm sharing this with you. And I hope that you can also come up with, um, this way of putting in the right time for the right things where you can repeat it without recreating it.

Yeah. So I would say great things will come from productizing and there's no harm in that. You wouldn't have to worry about quality because you have to build the system to repeat the same quality. And you, if you do that, your quality will match. There is no more haggling. There's no more negotiation of a course.

You don't spend time on that. Clients don't spend time on that. You save your time. They, you save the us and clients know what they are getting. You do you, you do one thing, you show that thing and you're saying, this is the thing that you get. There's no need to ask them. What do they want? You know, that they don't know what they need.

And they're just going to ask, tell you what they want. And yet it doesn't improve their business or their situation because you haven't given them what they need. You've only given them what they want. So start giving them what they need. You can tell them what they want. You can say, you can give them what they want, but first.

You will have to build something that can give them what they truly truly need. You know, that that is the best value you can give to anyone and you can make your order self serve, right. Or the process instead of recreating a whole new proposal from scratch again and again, and then invoicing them. And when you invoice them, you may not get your income, your money back on time.

They may drag the invoice. And this is all time and money. It's interesting over time. So you shouldn't be giving them the invoice and waiting for all your money. You have already given the work for us. We charge and, and ask for the fee upfront because it's under $500. If it's under $1,000, you can ask them upfront.

It's a commitment for them to be part of the world, right? So you have to charge upfront. And to touch up front, you can do a bespoke and charge up fun because when you don't know what they want, and you are in this mindset where you should know what they want before you create. And then when you create, before you get your money, then you, you have to create, if you're in this mindset, then it's really a bespoke mindset where you will have to work first, then invoice.

And before you pay. So, what I'm saying is don't get in there. So get into productizing. Then you can create the product first, a predefined set, fixed set of deliverables and items where you can pass it on to your client after, after you're done with the work. So with this, you can charge upfront. It's like a product, right?

You go and buy clothes, online shoes online. Well groceries online. They don't give you an invoice after you're done. And then that you owe them, you, you pay for us, then they deliver to you. Yeah. So you can also do the same with design services. Correct. So what you are doing is you build just one set of systems for all the clients.

So what you can do is with that, you can remove yourself from the, all the processes, because right now you can, everything's the same. So if everything's the same for every client, you can. Hire people, you can leverage automation and tools, and these can accomplish the tasks. They don't need you to be there to use your brains every time a client changes.

So right now you can serve as many clients as you want. And remember this built ones sell too many. Okay. So what you're doing is to be at once. And you can have this one thing sell to many, many people without redoing the same thing over and over. So there's in turn helps you to earn a recurring income and well you're on your way to becoming a wealthy designer and achieve financial freedom.

So become a wealthy designer, become, create a company that works without you being in debt so much. Right. So that's, that's where you want to go. You don't want to be stuck in the day to day everyday. And when the time comes for you to relax, you may not even have time to realize, I would say those were the 10 years of my life.

Right. So I really got that. And, and you shouldn't be in that position as well. Don't get stuck at that. Um, There's always work to be done right now. And you still can remove yourself, but look towards the time when you're wealthy looks, look towards the time when you have financial freedom, right. And then, and set this up right now.

Uh, you, uh, putting in the time right now to do this, this is your asset. This is your company. So productize as much as you can now, and you can earn money and make an impact while you sleep. And do all this while making your clients happy. Okay. So yeah, that's it for today. I hope you've learned something and see you tomorrow.

Bye.

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Hey design starters today, I have a quick lesson on getting leads, not just relying on referrals. So if you are still relying on referrals, um, this is more for you. And I just want to go back to my, my days as a freelance graphic designer for 10 years. And in those days I, you know what I do when I just, you know, first thing when I wake up in the morning is I just react.

To my client calls to my client emails, requests. And it's not only, only just the morning when I woke up, but also every day, every hour, every minute, literally every time when they send me an email, I'll just respond so quickly. It's like more of reactive. I was simply overreacting on. There are, there are requests and requirements, and I just want to make them happy.

That was my number one priority. Right. And trying to make them happy, helped a lot with regards to raffles because they were thinking, wow, you know, this designer is just the best that I've ever got because other designers are ghosting on me. You know, that's what they think because there are designers who ghosted on them.

And they may have their own reasons. They may have personal reasons. They may have anything odd to try just trying to avoid the clients. It can be anything right. And in those days I thought, wow, you know, that's my chance. That's not my opportunity to, to make an income more by this, this way of working. So that's what I did.

I didn't look for any resource to help me to get more leads. I just did what I did. You know, with referrals, um, in this way, by just doing what I do best giving good work, delivering on time and just reacting to client's requests every time and being very responsive. It's like to the minute, you know, the response to every emails.

So that, that helped me with. That those recommendations that they did. So you may be thinking, this is a good thing. It probably was two last needles, 10 years, but it didn't really bring me to anywhere that I wanted to go. Uh, so those days I wanted that income, very short term. I just want to do a client work, finish it, get the money in exchange for the work and that's it.

So that's what I thought. Design and service is or even business, right. I thought, Oh, that's sort, that's how business works. You know, you just, uh, do something well, as well as you can, within the time given by the client and you deliver it, you get the money and you go for the next one. So that was all I knew.

And now realizing this, in retrospect, I was such a fool because. When I gave birth to my first son, I didn't have much time to do this anymore. I had to be reactive to my son, right. Because he was just a baby and he needed my care, but my clients need my care as well. And they were, they were uncomfortable, right.

That I couldn't respond on time. And I had to tell them that I had to, I had to kind of pause when it comes to client work. And that's what they did. They had to look for somebody else. I had to recommend others and, and I had no clients for a long while. And that was terrible. That was, uh, there was a super dark moment for me because, because, uh, I, I didn't have any income coming in and I still need to care for my son.

I had my new home at, at time. I had mortgage to P I had debts and gods. Got to half a million dollars in debt at a time. So that was a pre that moment, if, I mean to say that I have a kid and that kind of time is the worst thing ever. Right? So, so what I'm trying to say is, you know, when I was relying on referrals, it was easy.

I didn't have to do anything. And my clients would have wanted to bring me the job and income. But when I didn't have these clients to tell others that I exist and I'm free capacity to help them, I didn't know how to get my own clients. I didn't know how to get leads. I didn't know how to make money. So I didn't know how to build my wealth because, because right from the start for the 10 years, that wasn't my aim or rather, I didn't know.

That was my purpose. Right. So if you are still relying on referrals, just like needles in those days, then you need to ask yourself if, if is this how you want to proceed? And if one day you just have no way of. Serving serving those referrals or getting the leads or, you know, somehow these referrals just don't come in.

Right. Because you have no control over the referrals, then do you have a plan? Right? It's based on me. I didn't, when those referrals became dry leads became dry. I was, I was just helpless, totally helpless. And I had to start all over by learning how to, what marketing is about how to do sales, what it means by not being salesy and spammy, because I was family for a while.

I didn't know I was doing, I just needed to get a job. Right. I need to get more gigs. Yeah. And so this is something that even if you are doing a business, now you may be hiring. You may be getting a lot of clients. You may be busy with work. Uh, you may be reacting. You may be getting way more referrals than you could ever have, but I would suggest to spend at least one hour, one hour a day is good enough to figure out another way of getting leads.

Th th these are my, my best thoughts for this to start, because in the text, when I was in freelancing, I didn't reserve that one hour to figure that out. And so I spent two, three years kind of struggling with my new startup and those in those days with my son, with my new son, with my new home, with my new debt.

Yeah. So you wouldn't want to be in that situation where you're stuck with, with a debt, with no money, negative in a rate, you know, with your dependency. It, it can be any situation, right? So long if it's something that keeps you stuck, we don't want to be in that situation. So if you are going to plan now, this is what you can do.

So keeping so blocking off the time blocking off the time will always be the best way. When you sit down brainstorm ways of getting those leads, it can be many, many ways, many, uh, many points on your list. And then after that you shot this, right? You wouldn't want to work all of them at all. All at once.

So that's a, uh, giving you some ideas. Now, if let's say there's, um, you would like to go for guest posting to get your word out there. That could be the first one. And then you can see social media, which social media, Facebook, Instagram, pick one for a start. Right? You, you, you don't want to stick on stick to one for the rest of your, your entire career, but you want to pick one for a start.

And then after that, You can kind of expand and, um, just use more social media to do the same marketing. Yeah. So these them down take a few of them. So this is an everyday thing, right? So let's say today, when you take that first hour to list them down, you may not have enough time to start to get started on posting.

Ready? So no worries. Carry on with your busy work the next day, another hour. Stick to that. And then the day after another hour of brainstorming doing this, remember, this is one of your impact activities to grow your startup, grow your business and not just becoming a designer, but a goal to design company for your clients, for people who need your help.

Right. So, yep. That's it for today. And I will see you tomorrow. Bye.

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Hey design starters. Today, I'm just going to talk a little bit about what I'm doing on LinkedIn and getting really serious using LinkedIn as a platform to work in public. So it doesn't really matter what platform you use, but it also matters. You see, platforms, platforms are like tools. Platforms are like.

This separate help to give your content, your knowledge, whatever the, you know, your skills, whatever you want to show to others, right? Platforms already have probably a certain audience, uh, platforms probably have some people already kind of interacting with that platform. And you are using that, like leveraging to get your stuff out there.

So that could be a way of using platforms. So that is something useful and helpful to your business, to your social life, to your personal endeavors and anything that you want to put out to the public. Isn't it. So that is, you know, How useful it is. So it matters in a way, but it doesn't matter in a way also because it's just for you to leverage.

It's not the fundamental, it's not something that if you don't have, you can survive or con kind of get your word out there. There are people who don't have, um, a solid following in any social media. But they're able to get there without it and still be very successful. It's just that, because there is this social media, there is this channel and where there is a wave of people going there.

It helps you get some eyeballs. Isn't it. So what I'm trying to say is to have this understanding that LinkedIn, although I'm trying to use it and getting serious on it, Does not mean that using that is the main thing that will help me be successful in future so that, you know, this is clear even for yourself, if you are choosing a channel to promote your work.

So when I am using LinkedIn, I am yes. Promoting my work. But I'm not being salesy. I'm not being spammy. I'm not trying to sell my services. So that's key as well. And when I get serious on LinkedIn, what I'm trying to do now is to put out all that I understand about my niche or their understand about my expertise to people who want to learn them, not necessarily to apply, but to learn and also to make use off.

What I put out. So I want, this is called, this is called value content. This is called because I always wonder what is value content and what do you mean by providing content? That's valuable, right? Everything can be valuable, but what is it? What is useful to people you want to work with? What is useful to people?

You are selling a services to rather than straight selling. Yeah. So I'm using LinkedIn in this way. And since 2018, pretty much 2019, I've been posting articles, posting anything like text messages, text polls, I should say image polls, um, PDF polls document on LinkedIn every single day. Then after that, I went down to three times a day, sometimes two times a day.

Well, just to test things out. And I think that a daily post would be best. So I didn't have this streak in me where I would really want it to just post straight up Monday to Sunday, you know, like really everyday and not missing a day. So I haven't got to that yet, but I will be putting in. Sometime where I will bet my content.

So say for example, Fridays will be a good day where I just turn off all the content for the next week. Right? So I have a full batch of content from Mondays to Sundays the next week and the next week when the next week comes. I would just pause every day and then Friday again, when it comes again, I will create alternate the next content, right.

The content for the next week again. And this continues. So this is my plan. And then when it comes to content creation and what kind of content to create while LinkedIn is because it really depends on who goes there. So for me is LinkedIn people go to LinkedIn of business. Ready? No, they're not spammy radio or salesy ready, meaning you don't just go there to pitch straight away without knowing them.

That's just basic rule that you don't it's human nature, you know, where people will be feeling. Kind of, um, puts off if you do that once, just that single day when you meet them. Right. So that's not how it works. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to post on LinkedIn, the useful stuff, and then outreach to people and talk to them about asking them what they do.

Where are the areas that you find challenges in, and that's how we will get to different kinds of conversations throughout weeks and months, right. And days. So they are business radio ready, and when they are business, really. And when I put out something that's related to their business, not my business, but their business, there is some interest.

Right. And they remember you, if you do that, why not? Facebook, Facebook is also fine yet. It's also not in the sense that they are not business ready. They are more the Facebook audience I'm already with just the daily daily stuff, which is also fine. Now I can just post it that, but, but, um, we got to be mindful of the time of doing that.

So what I'll do on Facebook is more off. Just putting up my posts on my Facebook page, but not expecting any much, um, interaction, but I just want to populate it so that I have a bank over there too, to kind of maintain my, my, my kind of my, what am I content is, and, and keep going to put things there and update.

And that's all I do on Facebook, but for LinkedIn, I'm going in serious where I will have to spend more time there. So other than spend more time on Facebook page or even groups, I will spend more time on LinkedIn to put out the content and, and interact with people for Facebook groups. They are also, some of them are business ready for sure.

But I find that I'm not sure if it's because of the people who hang out there or maybe they're more people. And the probability of this is higher is. They're not very forgiving. And there are many trolls around in Facebook, much more than LinkedIn. I've received more tools in Facebook. I have received some trolls in LinkedIn, but really not as much.

A lot of people are very supportive in LinkedIn. And I know the reason why, which is, so this is also platform related where you choose your platform wisely is when it comes to LinkedIn. They make it it's by design. When you, when you comment on somebody's post. It will be in your feet as a content it's like sharing.

So it's a bit like sharing when you share on Facebook, but you don't click the share button in LinkedIn. You just have to comment and your, your network will see your we'll see our CDFI feed, right. And yours may appear with your comments above the posts that you have commented on. So. This is not what is happening in Facebook, right?

Facebook, if you comment, it will stay as a comment in the threats. Uh, although yes, the polls will go up to the top, but it may not seem like it's your content, right. It's and it's not about, it's not about misleading people or anything. What I'm trying to say is is that there is some, um, It let's say if you are being a troll, what you're saying gets out there very clearly.

But if you're going to say something supportive, people will take it positively and they will think, Oh, this person is the right person to mix with and to connect with. But if you're a stroll and you put up things that are negative, The people who see, will also feel like, okay, this, this person may not be the one I want to, you know, connect because he, or she may also say such negative things about my posts, right?

So that's how LinkedIn is design. Then more people be more positive. So I need to start there and, and hands, I started that there in back in 2018, because as I started you, you don't want to deal with the trolls. Right. You can take the trolls comments positively and turn things around by, by kind of best bonding with, with something that.

Uh, it's positive is fine, which I've always been doing, but it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of mental strain. So LinkedIn becomes that really good platform for me to put out things to the right people and also what we've supported people in this sense. And if it's Facebook and you know, it, I mean, it's great that they are being honest about the, uh, they are, they are thinking.

Um, but, but, you know, we need to also balance with our time here. Right? So if they are trolls being just been and, and not being honest, then we will know as well. So we wouldn't want to have them in our lives for now. Yeah. I'm sure there are probably possibly great people and they just happen to be very choosy in their comments.

Also, whatever that we can leave them out for now. If we are still trying to find that platform to focus on. Yeah. So for LinkedIn going for, for three years in this, I've been growing my network pretty steadily and well, I have quite a bit of how I know about LinkedIn and maybe, maybe I will be creating a LinkedIn playbook or something like that.

Maybe, maybe you all can call it a LinkedIn growth playbook where you can learn more about how you can. Increase your network connections and even net worth using that platform. So that may help. And, you know, you just, just let me know in the reviews or, or just, you know, kind of send me a message anytime to tell me if that helps.

Right. Um, yeah. Or I may just probably put in a, um, an opt-in. Um, maybe I'll link in the show notes and you can just go, go there and let me know if that's something that you may want. Uh, no, I'm just like, you know, thinking open mind, I'm just like, ah, this is just a, you know, I'm just thinking out loud, really here.

So, yeah. So that's, that's what I'm thinking of since, uh, I do know quite a bit about LinkedIn by now and how it works and how it can make advantages and beneficial for you to put yourself out there. So, so that's all, so, um, yeah, I'll get serious in LinkedIn, work in public. Uh, you can use Instagram. You know, because you know, Instagram pinchers, because it's all visual.

Um, but it may be a bit too crowded there with, with too much visuals. So yes. So LinkedIn is a place for me for now. And if you're there, I'll see you there. So let's connect and see you tomorrow. Bye.

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Hey, design starters. I just want to share with you today on something that I have been trying, and it has been working out for me in terms of generating and getting more leads. So I know this is possibly the kind of thing that most people are. Most of these business owners will want to know, which is how do you kind of generate leads like.

You know, automatic without having to always do a bunch of like outreach or any, you know, any form of thing that is so called work. Isn't it like you want it to just come to you a little bit, like a kind of a referral system, but something more organically so that you don't have to really do too much, right.

Well, this is what many people even everyone wants. And that's what I have been looking for as well. But it all starts with some work. So I was trying this bunch of things like, um, Reach like marketing activities where I produce lots of design tips so that, uh, people, people who, who from usually I work with will, will get some notice, notice and, and know what I'm doing with the work that I do.

And to know that I can help them with such design service. So that's the main aim of this marketing activities. So what I do with all these. Whether it's outreach and marketing activities. I do a lot in LinkedIn and the past week I did something that really went trending. I wouldn't say it was viral, but it caught a lot of attention because I mentioned Elon Musk.

I mentioned HP. I mentioned Apple and I was trying to kind of get them, get the landing pages to kind of. Kind of have this wall with each other on their designs. So you can have a, have a, you know, have a look at it and I'll put it in the show notes and you can, um, you can click the link and check that out.

So that, that is what I was trying to do. And it did get quite a lot of attention and, uh, With that attention. I got quite a number of weeks as well because people start to tell me, Hey, you know, I really love that Posey did a, I love Apple and, and you know, uh, something can be done with HP's landing, page design, things like that.

And they, they are wondering if I can help them with the, our landing page designs and that's spurred a lot of, um, reactions and. People started connecting with me. So, so that helped. That's it. I'm not saying that this is something that works well for me. So this is a twist. Yeah. It worked in a way where I, yes, I got notice and I caught some attention, but you know, when these people came to me, they may not be people who.

Uh, I'm ready to buy, or even people whom we, you know, they are off our target audience or ideal audience. They may be not, they may not be right. So, so what I'm trying to say is that is not something that may work. You know, even if you're posting go viral, you you're putting tons of content out there that may not lead to lead properly.

Jen. So what, what really well, for me in, in the end that I realized isn't so much of these activities, but more of truly understanding your audience, right. To the core of, of what you're offering and what they want is it's, it's not so much of knowing your audience. Life, you know, you, you, you don't have to, I find that you don't really necessarily need to know, um, whether they love dogs, cats, and what food they eat, because, you know, if let's say you are doing something like what I'm doing, uh, I, I do unlimited graphic design.

So this is. I don't, I don't have to know what my client's personal life is like. It's good to know. I mean, they, they may appreciate that, that, um, I do think of them and, uh, careful what the like, but, but what I mean by knowing to the core of what they want is in terms of what they do in their business and on their business.

Right. So I know they want to grow their business. I know they are having some pain points and problems in, in terms of hiring designers. I know the, uh, facing and experiencing different, you know, um, challenges when it comes to getting the right designs from designers on the daily basis. So knowing that.

Uh, understanding this, this, this one that they have, that leads me to understand where I can go to find them. So what, let me to find my core audience is, is this understanding. And then what I did was I went to look for groups like Slack groups, like general groups and Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, and in groups with.

Some form of activities going on. So they must be active in and they must be kind of contributing because when they contribute, you are able to kind of come up with ideas. You are able to come up with a way to, to, um, kind of communicate with them. And that's how they get to know you. So, so with my, with my, uh, linked impose, that goes trending.

The impact is great when it comes to being noticed, I guess this helps with the long-term attention and people may kind of have an impression already about me and my posts, but when it comes to lead generation, you want the right leads. So one thing that works for me is this understanding and then going to the groups, because these groups.

Uh, half people whom uh, my idea leads and, and people, I know they go up there for this common, common solution to a common problem. They want the same solution. They want to look for a network of designers. Let's say, you know, who can do simple stuff, or they, they want to go to this, this group with the. The people of great minds to help with their work.

So for example, as a designer, you may be helping marketers very obvious because marketers need designers and then you need to ask yourself not what kind of designers or what kind of design these marketers are looking for right now. You don't look at that first. You look at. So what, what are these marketers trying to work towards?

Why are they a marketing managers? Why the head of marketing? Why are they marketing directors? Are they trying to work their way to become a CMO? Are they trying to work their way to become a. The head off of the region, you know, things like that, like odd kids. So if that is the co climbing up the corporate ladder, then, then how about revenue making?

Are they trying to grow the revenue of the company? Are they trying to increase sales? Are they trying to, to just want to generate more, uh, interesting, inspirational and educational marketing materials and they want to learn how to do that. Uh, I mean, there are different possibilities, right? So, so you have to pick on one, which is what they want for me.

I picked on them wanting to really, um, Really, it should bring that level to the next level. Right, right now they're at a certain level. Let's say that they know so much about marketing and, and filling up the sales pipeline. They may want the go to the next level and be more educated in improving that sales pipeline, filling up this one, and then they want to keep filling up.

Right. And, and, and. Keep that going and then what is next for them? So they want to grow that and learn more. So if they want to learn more, they want to join a group with people who are up higher level than them. Right? So then you want to join a group of other directors of marketing, for example, are the CMOs or the companies are the great people from great brands.

So if they are looking for a community with these people, They will look for a group like that. So this is the kind of group I will join as a design service business owner. Okay. Firstly, it's not so much of earning money from them. It's great earning money. Yes. But I want to help them. Right. I want to be, be, um, visible to them so that they know that I exist.

So I'd have to be there and there would be, there may be times when you ask. Hey, do you do, does anybody here know of anyone who can just design some collaterals for me? I have a campaign coming up. That's when you can come in, right? Because they're asking for it. But, but besides that, you can also contribute in other ways, like for me, I can contribute in a way of how I, how I produce content on LinkedIn, how I get more connections on LinkedIn.

This has nothing to do with my service, but I'm just helping as a person, as someone who can help them grow further. Right. So, so this is my take on something that worked for me so far, and I hope this helps you as well. So yeah, that's all for today and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.

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Hey design starters, today, I would like to talk about why it is so hard to grow a service-based business. So we have all heard of the SaaS business, products, and these are, you know, you can create one thing and sell many times, but as in a service-based business, there is this tendency for the service owner.

To be the one, doing everything or to be the one, delivering something. And if you have 10 customers, you have to repeat 10 times. And if you have a hundred customers, you have to repeat a hundred times, and there's just so much time you have in a day. So if you are going to have 1000 customers, you can't possibly deliver the same quality or the same amount of work to all thousand of them in a day.

So this is an issue here, right? We are somehow bottle-necking ourselves to the business in a way. So to think about this and to really grow your business, there are some reflections that we have to make. And I have, I've had many questions when I meet so many mistakes in the past 10 to 15 years in my business that.

I thought maybe I should share them with you. And you can use these, these questions to reflect upon how you can shift from difficult to grow, to, to possibility of growing. Right. So the first question is, are you putting a hundred percent of your focus on your customers? Every one of your waking hours. So with this question for myself, For the past for many, for many years, I must say since 2005, all the way to 2015 every year, you know, waking hour, I will react to all my customers, clients, emails, calls within that minute, right.

Within a few minutes, I don't even like, I didn't even wait for half an hour, one hour, you know, as much as I can. And, and. And that really made them very happy. However, because of that, I put myself away from anything that can help to grow the business so that I realize shouldn't be the move that I should meet.

And I should have focused a hundred percent of my energy on them. Only a certain times of the day. All right. So I should have set some time to focus on them. And then there will be times when I have to shut off from reacting to the emails and calls and requests. The next question is, are you stuck in fulfillment?

This is a very common one where, because we as service business owners, we, we think that we are probably the only ones who can do the work, who can do the designs, who can do the creative, the strategy. And when every customer comes with a customized requests, we don't know what they are looking for. So we just listen to them.

And then we develop a solution based on their personal, customized questions. So this will, will very much prevent your growth. And that has prevented my growth for 10 years. The next question is, are you hiring, are you even willing to let go of your. Your job as the sole designer or the person who is delivering what you are delivering to the customers.

Are you getting somebody to take over those work? Because, because the, the, the issue of a lot of us as service owners and designers is, is that we tend to not trust another person or another designer to take over that creative process, because we know what we are doing. And to articulate what we know articulate, what we think in our head to the other person is a challenge.

It's like, It's like, Oh, why do I need to take 10 hours of my time to train somebody else? And yet the person may not even get it when I can do the same work in probably an hour or even less than 10 minutes. I can just, you know, quickly just drop something or I'll just play around with my Photoshop and illustrator for 15 minutes and I can come up with something good.

So why spend the 10 hours to teach somebody else? And that person may leave eventually. Right, or that doesn't mean even copy my work. So these are negative things that you may even think about. And I must say, I have thought about this for many, many years, and, and that prevented me from the first step of asking.

Someone's help asking for someone's help. Yeah. So that's with hiring. And another thing with hiring is even if you're hiring, are you hiring the right people by people? Meaning. In the first place, are they experts in the area? They don't have to be world-class because world-class comes with experience and years of training and working with you.

So you may not even hire a class designer to help you. Right. But, but are you hiring the person who has that bit of talent and that, that bit of edge in that area? For example, let's say if we are talking about skills wise, I mean, we can just put it our skills wise. It can be something else. It can be any other tenants, but skills wise, if this person is better in illustrator, but not so much in, in design, is there somebody that you want, are you doing a magazine?

Are you doing, or are you doing a landing page or are you doing a logo? So if you are, so you must be clear if your offer. Claire we've offered that you want to scale. And with that, you will hire the right people, have the right expertise to cover this and deliver this offer. So if you are doing a productized logo design offer, then your designers must have some sort of expertise in illustrator, maybe more so than in design.

Isn't it? So this is an obvious one, but there are many other, you know, Talent and, and the criteria that you have to set up before you hire this person. Okay. So the next one would be, are you busy doing non-growth activities? For example, looking for tools, which are used to love a lot, and I can just like sit and.

Browse and surf or millions, thousands. I don't know how many tools there are online. Try them out, take a free trial, you know, use them at any Indian don't use them. And I started to use different kinds of tools at the same time and it wasted all my time. It just, it just took up so much of my time when eventually I don't really use them at all.

So, um, The thing about them is not about so much of using them, but are they helping the growth if they are helping the growth and yes, look for the tools to help you grow. So it depends on how you are using it. We got to kind of use something that we can leverage to towards growth. So we need to think of what is that tool to help us grow rather than do it based on emotion or do it based on that spark of inspiration.

All right. So it's not something like. Uh, creative. What were you? Yes, I got that inspiration. I'm going to do it. Growth is standard. Growth is not just browsing for tools. Growth is not just changing the website, design and colors. Um, you know, you need to make more time for, for sales, for marketing, for lead generation activities.

This is growth. If you are going to improve your referral. Referral system that is also part of growth because you are helping your business to get more leads in, help your, how to get more prospects and then figure out to convert them, to buying customers. So that is growth activity. What if you think you are not adjusting processes and systems to match quality and influx of customers, this would also prevent your growth because.

If there are more customers coming in, can you yourself handle the influx? Can you and your few men team, your two or three designers help you to take on the influx of 10 customers today? Because if you can't, then you will, you know, you will have to tell some customers that no, I can't take on your work anymore.

I'm up to the I'm up to the, my neck and I'm full capacity. I can help you. And this prevents your growth. It's not necessarily that you would say that, but you will probably not try to sell as much anymore and you will stop there and say, okay, we are done for today. This is the number of clients we can take for this week, for this month.

And this will hinder your growth as well. So you need to go through your processes, create some documentation and also self. If I were to have. 10 20, 30 customers tomorrow. Can these processes be used by another designer immediately? Can they just go through these processes? Read your manual, read your digital manual, online, help and knowledge base documentation, and execute.

Do the work and deliver on time. So, this is just minimal kind of standard that you should have already before you say, okay, I can take in that 30 or a hundred customers tomorrow, right? So this is where bottleneck comes in. Usually for many people, another question you can ask is, is your offer solving what people are looking for?

If it's something that people are not looking for. And you feel like it's such a good idea. You feel like it's a good solution. It doesn't matter if nobody is really or not many people are looking for this solution, then it's hard to grow. It's hard for people to say that they want to buy, and then you will see that your sales are not flowing so much and enough to cover your expenses enough to come in as healthy revenue for your company.

So even if your offer can be something that people are looking for, then you need to ask yourself the next thing, which is, is this solution something that can solve a recurring problem? Is it a repeatable process that people need again again and again, to solve that problem? So when it's an example is a question where I asked myself before I came up with this ongoing graphic service, I have seen people doing it as well.

And I, I, I did model and copy how they are doing as well and kind of transformed how, how others are doing to match my current freelance customers. That's what I did. I realized that a lot of them need. Ongoing revisions to their designs to match probably another year. For example, events, let's say 2019, they come up with event collaterals, then they need to refresh it.

They don't really need to redesign much, but they need to adjust and they need proper design, help designers help and not just on their own, because you know, for them to shift things around, it can take hours. So they'd rather have this help daily to shift things for them to change it to 2020. To change the dates to change the title, to change maybe a bit of how the colors are to match that year.

So things like that, this is just an example. It's a recurring, it's a recurring solution, right? Because people will have to come back to them, to us, but is it monthly or yearly depending on what they are requiring. So what I need to look for and what I want to find. Is a problem that is monthly. There is daily there's weekly.

That happens very frequently. And so our help is much more needed and that's when people will want to buy. So based on my current customers and based on what I see in the market where people are already selling the, the unlimited graphic design service, I took it on and I, uh, I did some modification to what they have been doing.

And from there I met them too, who my customers really are. And that's when I use that and put, and put them into the reality and execute them and offer them this offer. And really lo and behold, this solution is something that they want regularly. So remember, If you already have an offer that people are looking for, you need to move a step ahead and ask if it's solving a recurring problem.

Next question is, are you offering too many offers for too many people? So if let's say I can do design. If I can do design, there are a lot of design work that I can offer. So, what do I say, Oh, I can do logos. I'll do logos for industrial companies. Or I also do web design. Do I just go out and say, okay, I can do web design for financial companies.

They're just way too different. Right. And too many different things that I have to do, processes the systems, the deliverables, the delivery, everything like that will be different. It may not be very far different, but. They will be different. So that, that causes you to spend too much time to make, to make all these different packages and offers for too many different people.

If you are going to go to industrial companies, manufacturing companies to offer logos, and then you have to go to financial companies to offer landing pages. You know what, that's a switch of different kind of persona, a switch of the different kinds of people. So that takes time and you're going to create different proposals.

You're creating different ways of payment that would be taking too much of your, of your time away from the growth of your business. So that's it. What I want to say at the end of this is. It's all about what you are doing with your time with this 24 hours or nine, nine waking hours for, for, for that matter for you to do all your work that you have to do.

What kind of, what are you doing? Are you using this work time for impact? Are you doing activities that lead to growth? You don't really need to do so many things, but within today, have you had one step ahead to what's growth? Are you closer to growth than yesterday? So, I mean, with all that, with all the questions in mind, I would say right now you can quickly draw up a schedule of your week.

Okay. So a one within the week, you can have one day. Or maybe even every day with your waking hour, let's say when you wake up, say seven o'clock seven to 10, you're just going to get leads. That's it. You're not going to do anything else. You're not going to meddle with your website. You're not going to, to, um, think about your customers for that for, for now.

You're just going to get leads. So, so do that. And then after that three hours, after that 10, 10 o'clock. Then that's when maybe you check out your customers and say, Hey, you know, how, how things and, and fulfill, uh, the deliverables to your customers. And then two o'clock, maybe you will get back to your marketing and then maybe four o'clock you will get, get to your sales.

For example, these are examples where you need to set your schedule because these are growth activities. Right. Sales leads, marketing raffles. These are growth activities. So these will make the impact in your company rather than just you handling all the customers things right now and fall for so many hours.

It's not, it's not a hundred percent of your waking time to do. Right. You, you, you give them the focus, but you don't take all your time to work on your customer's work to think about our customers and, uh, and not, not getting help. Right. So, so these are questions you can think about right now and your weekly schedule as well.

Right? So with that, uh, I have to go and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.

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Hey design starters today, we're going to talk about either staying small or growing big, so she she'd stay small. You start growing or other, should you grow or should you just stay small? Right? I'm sure there are many people who are thinking that when you grow, you got to hire more people. More employees and going to manage more people.

Sometimes managing people is not just hot. It can be so sucking. It can be difficult, right? Because you don't want to control people, but yet you need to control them to know that they are doing their work. You need to be over their shoulder. And, but yet you feel bad doing that cause you want them to. Be creative in what they do without being micromanaged.

Right? Because you, yourself, when you're, when you are a designer or you are now a designer, you don't want people to just look over your shoulder and control you yet. You know, this is sometimes some people may think this is the way to get things done. So back to growing, you know, you need to hire so.

What's going to happen when you have this number of employees and, and there will be times when you don't have enough work for them. How are you going to get enough work to, to keep y'all business sustainable? How they're going to have enough work to carry on hiring these people, because you don't want to also hire them and then realize you don't have enough work for them and you have to let them go.

So you don't want to hire train that, go hire, train that go right. What I would say is these are things that may happen. Yes. And it doesn't just happen well, or it doesn't just work well, right at the start for sure. For some people you may see, like, Hey, you know, there are people who are doing well, right at a start they're hiring and they're growing fast.

It may not just happen right at that moment. They may have prior or previous experiences before this, before they finally succeeded. So if you're just starting out to kind of decide growing or not to grow, then you have to see beyond people whom you know, are growing successfully well and getting reached from there.

Or, or, or really growing wealthy from growing, right. It's not everybody will succeed in that way and not everybody, you know, consider this as succeeding. So the first thing that you need to iron out for yourself is what does success look like for you when it comes to growing your business? Would it, would it mean.

Does it mean growing a big team and what fall? You know, there are different reasons, different people are growing a team for, I know of people who want to grow a team because they want to see how scaling is like for a service business. And that is their passion. So if that happens to be your passion, I feel that that is other legitimate kind of reason.

Right. And that is possible because I have friends who have done that and they are very happy with that. They see, Oh, this is how you grow. This is how you scale the service business. And it works in this way. Well, these are, this is the passion that they want to, that they have, and they want to do this ongoing and that's fine with them.

Right. So for you, what is it? You have to figure that out. For myself, I would like to grow my business to a point when firstly I would like to be financially independent after a certain number of years. So let's say I give myself five years, 10 years to build this company where I have that stuff, efficient revenue or income to provide me with that residual income enough every year to survive.

Without being in the work itself. I don't want myself to be in the day-to-day tasks of designing for clients. My company will do that and I will hire designers who are willing to do that, to do the work. So this is, this is my, my basic success goal. And for that I'm willing to grow as big as I can. So I gave myself.

Uh, kind of a benchmark or, or kind of a goal where I can hit say $250,000 a year of residual profit. So you can actually set that goal or set that income benchmark for yourself per year. And, and what I told myself is I have to grow up to 50 designers where I managed this, this company. To be able to give me this residual income.

So you need to kind off, uh, work with the pricing of your offer. How much are you offering? Uh, how much is your service per customer or per client? All right for that. So you have that goal, you have that pricing. How many customers must you have to have a certain revenue so that you will have that passive income per year.

If, if this is part of your goal, right? If this is yoga, because you may have another, uh, another income generating source, and this can be another passion that you have, that you are, you are, you are doing so, so growing, they have a different reason, but this is my main reason. And it would be good for you to have this reason as well, because you want to be a wealthy designer.

I mean, you want to grow a company, so to make you wealthy, right? You don't necessarily need to be a designer yourself. And I am not as well. You know, so, so I want to be able to, to grow, to get to that point. That's it. When should you start growing? Right. And I ended up as well because yes, growing is growing.

You want to grow based on your reasons, but when is a good time, do you, you know, you see people growing like in one month time, two months, th th those are really fast and. And they start to be, you know, in the media and they have a lot of publicity that is part of marketing and, and they beat their competition because of that, that helps.

Yes. But the next thing that they need to sustain will be the processes and processes in the, uh, operations, can, their operations, the slew and rush of customers coming in. You know, one thing they said is, so their marketing is so good because of all these PR uh, maybe so good because they're able to grow so good because your marketing is top-notch.

Yes. But if their operations can't handle the onslaught of clients and customers, they may lose them pretty quickly as well. So this is the balance that for me, I would like to take an. I have been working on my operations and processes for the past five years and not growing as fast as I have wanted to or hope to, because I would like my processes to be able to manage the increasing number of clients.

I don't want my operations to feel when I have more clients than I could have managed. So my recruitment, my training of my staff and the delivery of the results must all be balanced up based, based on the processes that I've created and tweaked and improved along the way. So that was what I was doing for the five years.

So there isn't any kind of fixed timing where you should follow. There is no, like, you know, I have to grow in one month's time. If not, I won't grow or, or I have to grow in 10 years time. It's all based on your circumstances. Yes. Uh, do you have kids, do you, do you, do you want to, uh, do you have a full-time job or do you, do you want to have another side hustle?

Is this your side hustle? So all these other reasons that you have to put together plus your long-term goal, right? So your long-term goal is always the first one. To be anchored down. You're aware of that, you know, and you are sure that is what you want. Then you look back what's on whether you should start growing now or a year's time or years time or, or some at a time.

So it all depends on these factors. So. She you stay small and start growing. Then, you know, you should just ask yourself based on where you are going and where you want to go. And that will give you the answer. All right. So that's all for today and, uh, I will see you tomorrow. Bye.

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Hi design starters today. I'm going to talk about how to work for free, right? And you can still make money working for free. Can you actually do that? And no. Should you work for free? If you want for free, how are you going to pay the bills? And, um, is this something that you should do? Right. So, uh, I mean my own experience, I have met many clients who have came to me to ask, you know, I just want to make one small change and, uh, this is just this change.

Can you just do it for me? I'm sure I've come across many clients or friends, family coming to you for, for such a request. And. You know, for me emotionally, I do want to help them and I've been advocating, helping people. Right. And, and I, myself, I want to help as many people as I can. So if I don't help them for free.

No within me, I feel a bit misaligned. Isn't it? Because you know, in my heart, I sincerely want to help yet. I have to touch them. I would feel like, you know, I feel like people may think, right, aren't you here to help. And if I could help, why do you charge people? Right. So with this. In the past with this misalignment, I would just offer them for free right.

Offer them help. And so this for free hoping there is this hope where, um, they can come back and they will come back to me for more of my services in future, because I believe in the coming equity of, uh, giving something away for free and they may just come back and help me out by kind of, uh, Taking on my services and paying for me future.

However, however, this may not be true and this may not work in the way that you think in that coming equity kind of a way that you think is a lot of times when you want to help people. Over the years. This is my experience. Right? A lot of times I want to help people. I realized that I shouldn't expect return.

So let's say for example, if I want to help someone for free, I must expect that when I help these people for free, they are not going to come back to buy again for me, I have to have that expectation. And the reason why is, you know, having been in this design business, In a, as freelancers do now, it's been like 15 years and that expectation, you know, it did not work as in it, it did not become reality.

And when I have that expectation and if it doesn't happen, it makes me disappointed. Isn't it. And when does this disappointment and appreciate it, I feel that whatever the I've done, isn't something that is worth doing. But rather if let's say I do it for free, without that expectation of people coming back for more, it helps more, and it makes me want to do something better and giving that free gift with a much more quality service.

Right. I put in my heart isn't that right? So this is one part of it. Um, the other part of giving, what for free is it is okay. In fact, I'm sure you have also met people who's in, or don't give away for free. It's a yes or no answer, but I would say on the whole is okay, but you need to put in conditions.

Okay. So, so first and foremost, you give away for free. That's the first thing with a mindset that you've don't ex you know, don't expect anything in return. Okay. There's the second one. And the third one is to set those conditions and, and sort of boundaries. Communicate them to the clients and ask for an agreement, an agreement where you sign any, you know, like NDA, that kind of thing.

But it's not, it's more an agreement where Hey, you know, Uh, let's say, if I give you for free, shall we, shall we exchange instead, rather than you paying me or I'm offering you this entirely for free, you don't have to come back to me for future. So this is, let's do an exchange instead. So it's like a bottle of tree, which has done a lot of times.

Right. And it turned out well, because there was something that you want. There is something that the customer wants. The client wants. And you do a fair exchange. I feel that that works really well because, you know, if you, if you don't give them for free, you may use some of your budget to, to pay for other services to buy something.

So if there is something that you would like to. So you purchase or engage or hire or, or come up with and you need to pay for something. Maybe the customer is already sending that, so you can do that bottle trade. So these are ways where you can kind of offer for free. And I feel that it's a win-win. So this is the yes.

Answer where you should give for free.

And the second thing where when I say yes to giving your service was free, is when you are doing this strategically rather than emotionally or reactively. So that emotionally and reactively way off giving services for free was what I used to do. You know, in the past, when, you know, I didn't really know what to do and people were asking me for it.

And I, I just felt bad. Right. I was a people pleaser and, and obviously I didn't just turn out like that, you know, when I was born, of course, but it's more like progressively, as I, as I grew into the business, I thought I need to please them for them to keep signing up to mine. It's just the sort of mindset and.

I'm not sure if you have felt that way. So, so being a people pleaser, if they asked me for free, I would just say, okay, you know, I didn't want you to judge me and think that I'm selfish and I just want your money. You know, maybe you think that way, but that was how I thought last night. And I hope you don't think that way.

And I felt that having this mindset pushed me to just agree with them before they. Kind of jumped to another designer or another agency or freelancer, right. He's like, I just want to have them. I don't want to let them go. And if they say, if they ask me for something free, then you know, it could be a kind of getting them their foot into the door.

Right. So, so getting down, getting their foot into the door to come and try me out is, is great. Right. But the mindset of being reactive to them without being strategic, Kind of, um, put this opportunity away. And what opportunity is this? The opportunity is, can you leverage, right? Can you leverage on this service, giving away free to your customer rather than just give away free?

And then when they, when you finish the project, the, the let's say they just disappear and you will never probably get them back to. Take up your service again, I'll pay for it. So this again, because of the remote member, the first mindset was that I mentioned was that no expectation leaving no expectation of them returning a favor at all.

Even if they, I mean, they are great people and all that. Yes. But no expectations. So if you don't have that expectation, it means there's a possibility that they may not come back to, to pay you for another service in future. Right. And, and that's fine, right? There's no personal or, or anything, but because you don't have that expectation, you are thinking that we did not return then right now, when you are giving that free service, you should strategically, already agree with them on conditions.

Right. For example, like butter tree, for example, and another. Another good example or way to liberate on this free service is asking the, Hey, you know, do you have say a few people or businesses you can refer me to, you know, you may have friends, you may have your network, they may need graphics services or design services or any services that you're providing right now that, that, Hey, you know, since you are.

You know, kind of benefiting from my, from my service. Maybe your network may benefit as well. So this is also a good win-win where, when they, uh, networking or when they are with partners and partners, ask them for referral, right at that moment, they know who to go to and who they should be referring them to.

We'll miss you. Right? So, so this kind of conditions will help to keep that boundary there. And that, that keeps that commitment of your client with you. So, so they will know. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. At least, you know, I'm returning my designer favor as well. They may think like that and they may feel better.

Right. You wouldn't want them to not just not pay. And some of them may also feel bad, but they're just not in the right budget to do so at a time. So, um, this kind of win-win will, will help you to kind of keep that relationship there. So this is one way where you can. Um, what for free and still make money because, uh, when they insure you to their friends and network, you, you will probably, uh, kind of coat them or charge them and then they will pay you.

Right. And it's, it's a snowball effect from there, right? So this is one way to put in a condition. And the next thing when working for free is also to choose strategically who you want to provide a free service to. You don't just give away and give away free for anyone. You don't just see that whole, okay.

You know what? There's a lead coming in, who is visiting my website and just email me for, for, for a service. And I just give them a free service. You shouldn't do that because you don't know that person as well. It doesn't mean all right. A client, any client is, is great to work with you. You need to be strategic in the sense.

You have to ask yourself, where is the direction? Where is your business direction? Uh, are you, are you intending to work with cultures? Are you intending your work with furniture owners? Are you intending to work with, uh, say, say, uh, the big top 500 companies in the world, for example. So you need to, to iron out who you like to work with now and in the future.

And people who come to you with such a persona, such a, uh, a description can possibly qualify for your free list. Isn't it. So I learned this from Verne Harnish, uh, from scaling up the growth Institute where he talks about the top 25 prospects. I've also learned this from Russell Brunson, right? Where he mentioned dream dream, 100 clients.

In his book, traffic secrets. So how this works is you have to have this list where you have, let's say 25 dream customers, hundred dream customers. For me, I use 25 because a hundred may be a bit too much for, for a start. So you can start with 25 dream customers and you choose your battles, right? You choose who you want to seriously, what we've and provide that free service with those conditions.

Because, you know, they will be your advocates, you know, they are your persona. And if they are advocates of you, they may recommend you to similar clients have similar profiles. And if that's, these are the people you work with, then, then you're on the right track. Right. So. I feel that that is the right mindset and, and there will always be people who are willing to pay.

So with that condition of asking them to bought a tree for them to intro and refer, these will help you kind of unpack whatever time that you have spent providing the free service. Right. So, so what, what I'm trying to say is you need to, liberation is free service as a breach, right? To weigh on a goal.

So if, if you can find these people as your advocates, then you will definitely make money from there. Yeah. So I hope this is helpful. And, uh, so I'll just have many more to go. And I've, uh, also intended to, to pull, uh, to kind of talk about productizing and growing your startup. In a productized way on a daily basis.

So right now I'm saying this and I'm just thinking when I can publish the next one, but I, I have been publishing weekly and I think that is a little bit. A little bit slow for you to consume. So I do want to go daily so that you can also learn faster. I can learn from you faster. You can learn from me faster.

We can support each other, you know, at a shorter time, rather than waiting for a week. Right. So I hope what is out there is helpful and there'll be more to come. So, uh, see you in the next episode, right? Thank you. Bye.

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Hey, design starters, today's topic would be something most of you would have experienced every now and then. All right. Which is, you know, being a slave to your clients. So how do you stop being this, this crazy worker to your clients as if your clients are everything to you? Right. I mean, are they are?

And I've been friends. I've been, um, great, um, relationships with my clients, but there is always, there is always a way where, uh, you, you shouldn't just live for them and they don't live for you. And they know that too. So imagine this. All right, you're cleaning up the mess that your kids have made. If you have kids, you know, it's 9:00 PM.

Suddenly your client gives you a surprise call, right? So this can happen to you. Even if you don't have kids, you are having a dinner. You are just having a great time before family friends. It's not work time. And, and it's 9:00 PM. It's 7:00 PM. It's dinner time. It can be anything where you're doing all this stuff, right?

So with this call, You know, you look at your phone and you see the number, you know, it's, uh, it's here, here is him again. Um, this client again, uh, also again, so at that point in time, you don't really know how to reject that. You can just put it down because you know, you're in, in your mind, what you're thinking is what are going to do.

If you are going to just hang up, we're going to do it. You're not going to pick up. Right. So. You pick it up and, you know, agree to have your car. There's something, you know, at that point in time you were like, Oh, this is urgent. I just really, really need your help now. And you said yes. So next thing you know, if you're a parent, you, you, you see your kids and, you know, they start to climb up onto you, uh, expecting goodnight hugs.

Then you get over reactive misaligned, you know, because in your, in your heart, you. You just want to carry on with what you were doing before you were interrupted. And some of you want to have your kids at a time, you know, maybe putting them to sleep, sleeping with them or reading them. You already have plans.

So right now inside you and what you are about to react to are misaligned. So you get reactive with your clients call and now you're not feeling very good about it. So for those who are parents, the next thing you do is you tell kids that you have something important to do, which is not as important as the kids, but you know, there it is.

You have to do that. You were being told that it's urgent. And you reacted to it. So that goes the time you get down to your desktop and started to work for your clients right. At the wrong time, at a time when you're not supposed to be doing that. So it's just how you think working with clients is like, Is this an everyday phenomenon?

Do you feel like a slave every time you're at work, you want to do the work as well. And you really want to earn the income from this client. You don't want to lose the client, you know, and you just get all misaligned with your emotions and your actions. You know, that shouldn't be the way to succeed in your business and in your life, Lyman will not help.

And, uh, with that. Would that meet the layman it's like canceling shut out. So success is harder to come by and I will talk about this in another episode, but right now I would, I just want to let you know, there are steps where you can take to prevent your clients to be, to prevent yourself, to be like a slave to your clients.

So for me, I used to think I was in this case as well. And I, I used to think that work is all about bending everywhere for your clients. You know, I've burned out. I mean, literally for 10 years of freelancing and I was on the brink of giving up. In fact, I did give up for a while. I gave up design for awhile because I thought maybe it's a design industry that there's something wrong with it, where I couldn't give what I think is.

It's worth my time and that people will appreciate me for it. I thought that was the case. So I did, but I came back to that because the, the other side hustles that I have tried did not work out at all. Right. Because those were not my passion. So, so that was when I realized my clients were not in the room at all.

It was not their fault in the first place. It's up to them to call. And ask for help, they need support. So, so that is what they want to do. Right. But in fact, I was supposed to be responsible for giving my time in the first place. So if you are in, you know, if you are stuck in this situation, like what I have been fought for for many years, and you don't really know how to block the time and you don't really know how to say no, And yet you want to keep your clients and golf center.

I have some ways and this other ways, number one, all right. Give steps to your prospects and clients and not to ask them to let you know what they want. You, you don't, you don't ask them, what is it that you want? And then they'll tell you what they want. Right? No, don't do that, but give steps to them on.

Okay guys, this is how it works. Number one, number two, number three. And then you get your deliverable. So tell them step-by-step what they're going to get, rather than ask them what they want. Because if you ask them what they want, they can give you the world. They can not give you the world. They can ask you for the world and the expect you to give them the world because you ask them for it.

So it's your responsibility. So tell them what you can give. Right? You can do lots of design, but this only, these are the only things that you provide. So you need to spell them out. So there are some restrictions and you got to say no. Um, so what is, what is possible is what you can give you can't possibly give them the world, right?

So you are going to let them know what you're ready to give them, make them, make, make this, make this clear and give them the right expectations. Number two, set the systems and set the stage. For example, where should your clients email you? When she'll client, email clients email you. So in my case for my company, what I have done is I set up this help desk where, uh, I have, uh, opening hours and closing hours.

So all my customers will know and expect to be able to receive a response. Eh response if it's between 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. So these are my opening hours, and I have really told them that after 6:00 PM, they are free to email is fine, but don't expect a response only aspect of response. The next working day at night from 9:00 AM onwards.

So, this is what I put in my email, as well as an army, the email from the help desk. So you can also do that. And when they email after office hours, they will receive an automated email that says, Hey, we are closed now, just leave me or questions. I would like to support you as soon as I can. We only open at 9:00 AM tomorrow and you will expect us to respond by then, you know, and then help you out with, with, um, your questions and your request.

And I, I can guarantee you that it will work because I have been using this for the past five, six years. And if they don't like that, they will let you know, I have clients will let me know and it will say, Hey, you know, I really need some stuff between 6:00 PM to say 12:00 AM, you know, midnight. I really need this to be done.

There are times like that. And then you can possibly up sell them a service. Where do you have to pay a bit more for this urgent timeline? You can do that. Right. And which is the best, it's much better in that way, rather than of coursing. Uh, Oh, do it at all. You can also say that. It's just that, you know, if you want to give a good service, you, you need to give them an option of paying more.

So far for my case so far, when I, when I let them know that there isn't, there's an add-on fee for four after office hours, timeline, usually they will not want it. Usually they will say, okay, fine. Who just do it tomorrow. They wouldn't want that on fee. They would want to pay more because it's going to add to their budget.

It's not a day. It's not that they are selfish or anything. It's not that they are not willing to pay. It's just that they haven't budgeted for it. And now that they're asking for urgent, they just asking for a favor. You know, but, but you can set the stage where you don't give charity in this way. Right?

Because they are also business. They earn money by selling whatever they do with you as well, their artwork, their marketing, they, they get, they are supposed to get a return on investment, all that, and that is part of their responsibility already. So you should charge them and add on fee. If they ask for after office hours request.

And what we've done. So that is what I do so far. Nobody wants to pay more for the add on, and I never had to worry to provide a designer after office hours. That's it. You can also offer a 24 hour turnaround and figure out on hiring people off another time zone to cover the after office hours time. And that is what, something that we are also intending to do.

So this, in this way, you can service the one on demand. Right? And that's something yeah. You can think about, it's not, it's not, there's no do or die. There is no data. And here you can do something about it. Point is to let your customers know. All right. So set the stage where you can give yourself that free time.

You set the stage where you can give yourself a scheduled time so that your customers will know, okay, this is not the time to expect responses. And then this way you won't feel like you are off slave to them. So that's what an email is and opening and closing hours. You also need to tell them your holidays because no, some certain holidays you have certain celebrations.

Like new years, right? Like for Singapore, the Chinese new year can be quite long. So I will tell them that, Hey, during this few days we are closed to expect any response and we will be back again so holidays. And if they really want support full quit candy, go to, so if you are not the one, have you hired someone, do you have a support?

Where did they can respond to your customers if you do then yes. Let them know that. So that they don't call your, your mobile. They don't expect you to return. Yeah. Yeah. They are requests. Right? So, so these are the steps that you can take and they have been working fine for me, finance to set this boundary.

Don't let it run wild, uh, unless, unless, uh, you know, you are willing to go, go through this and don't think that you're a slave. Right. And then that's fine, but. It does cause burnout because you are able to save time for yourself and do the things that you want to do all the, while you, you, you, you need time to do marketing and sales.

You need time to nurture other relationships. You need time for self-care. So set this stage, set the boundaries and let your customers know. All right. So to then we'll speak again. Bye.

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Hey design starters, today, I would like to talk about, um, whether you can launch your design startup first, your productized design, without figuring out the processes first. So I know eventually you like to remove yourself. You know, in most things in your business, so you don't have to fight fire every day.

And I've been there. I've been fighting fire like on a daily basis every time for many years, for like 10 years, at least. So it was only probably about five, six years ago when, you know, Things like that to change. Right. Um, thanks for the model of things to productizing my, um, different services that were used to be very customized to every different clients.

So in the beginning, when you, when you start and when you first launch your productized service or changing your business model, it will take some work. So one mistake. I see too many designers and service providers make is waiting for the perfect processes before launching. And this day will never come.

My friend, what I mean is yes, you processes are important. You need them to run the business and you need them to scale of the issue. Is that right? You don't wait. You don't, you don't overthink on launching. Launching is different. Launching is starting out with real people, right? So even if you don't know if your clients will take it well, we'll take your idea.

Well, even if you don't know if your processes, you're going to tell them, you can honestly let them know that these are the things, these are the packages. These are what we give you. And if they find that it work from what you've said, you should just start first. Then you tweak your processes along the way while it's going on.

Right. You may not be clear on the processes now on how to scale. Exactly. So you shouldn't spend months figuring out the processes first without studying, because if you don't know, and you're not clear now, Um, right. Even in month's time, you will probably not be clear as, as well because, um, clients, the, they, they can want anything and everything.

If you ask them what they want. So you need to start and stop and step up with the first thing first and let them know what you have to offer. You, give them and deliver. Right. And then the processes behind the scenes is for you to figure out for you to tweak for you, to perfect for you to change based on what you can help make it work.

So for my team, we've been making big, small changes to many things, um, like client onboarding, team training, designer, trainings, et cetera, over the past five years. Imagine that I did not start. Right. That would be a waste of five good years. So if you are still at pre-launch stage, not sure how things will work out, just launch and work with your first customer to test your processes out, to test your assumptions of your processes.

So they are really your customer, for example, right? I mean, you already. You have already sold to them. You've really pitched to them. They're already your customer. So, you know, they don't have to know your exact processes at that point anymore. Right? So you may be hiring designers. You may be using AI.

Artificial intelligence will be using machines. You may be using robots and maybe using templates, whatever the case to the customer so long, you are delivering the output on time. And with the quality you have promise that is good enough. So, for example, if you say that your deliverables will not be templates.

Yeah. You don't use templates, but you need to find out a certain way on how you work to provide what you have. Promise. For example, if you say you, your artwork is going to be really fast, really quick, turn around you, you give them tomorrow, for example, then you really have to give tomorrow. So. You already have promised them that, then you figure out, okay, how am I going to do this to give tomorrow?

So you get us sense that reasonable promise you give them the reasonable promise, and then you work backwards to what's what you can do. So for the first customer, you may be going crazy and working really hard, overnight, really fast, maybe two designers at a time. It can be anything right. Just to give that promise.

So if you tweak and say and do many things and say, maybe I can use AI, maybe I can get more hands on the job and then deliver to the customer. But you realize there's no way that you can do this with many customers and you can't find that way. Then you just stop at that customer. Right. And you don't move on to another one.

And that works really because you're not gonna, you're not gonna scale with this kind of process. Then you go onto the next promise or you change your process and figure out how you can give, still give that promise with some other process. So you don't have to worry whether it works or not before starting because you may never know what, what you are going to offer the customer at the end of the day.

So you need to, you need to first start off with someone to really know, like put it in reality rather than just on paper, on people is good. You you've done all your kind of ideation. Um, your thoughts, your mind mapping. It can be anything, then you need to put it out and really serve someone first. So while you deliver for that customer, try to notice right along the way, try to notice which step has you inside as a bottleneck eventually.

Yes, you want to be free. So why not free something? Something must be some, something must be keeping you there where you can remove yourself and still let the business run. Right? So you need to break up everything and figure out which one is the bottleneck, which area. If let's say you are not in it. Can you delegate that to someone else?

Which area can you automate automize? Um, or find some app or some software to replace you in some way? It doesn't have to be a big thing. It can be a small thing. It can be give me things like customer onboarding. Doesn't it. You. Can he be somebody else? It can be things like following brand guidelines to create a design.

Does it have to be you? Can it be another designer? Can it be a, an in-house designer, another you have trained. So you've got to think in this way first, and if it can be removed to streamline and Quicken your delivery. Then that can be a new process. Right? You can just add that in. So would you say that you can have all this figured out before starting?

It's also pretty hard, so it's actually harder to figure all this out before studying. Right. So point of today's messages, you can adjust along the way. So you can, and you should start first, even without processes fully figured out, because you will never know if they work till you try them out with real people get started now with your first client, I will say.

Right. So yeah, that's all for today. I'm heading out. See you the next episode. Bye.

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Hey guys today on the design startup show, I'll have to talk more about, um, how it can handle criticisms given by our clients or any feedback that's given by anyone, um, on your designs. Yeah. And the design work. And I have gotten that a lot. Definitely. Throughout my time as freelancer creating projects for design, for clients, for design clients.

It's really not that easy because, um, I go through the research. I come up with, um, conceptualizations plans and ideas to help my clients, but somehow, um, you know, they just don't seem to get it. I'm not sure why is it, you know, How I pretend to them, is it how I articulate what my designs mean? Or this is just that they don't get it.

Right. So this is an area where it's really great because you know, this is where we say that design is subjective, right? Uh, but it can be signs for sure. And this week we will leave. I'll leave this as another topic some other time. Um, but let's talk about ourselves now because we are our own, the roadblock, um, when it comes to our business and making it work for ourselves, when it comes to income making and generating income and keeping our clients, right.

So we want to, um, make sure that. Our clients are happy with us so that they will come back to us for more. Um, yet we, we, we, we don't want to keep receiving negative feedback. So, uh, so the one thing that I've learned so far, and I feel that all designers should have in their mind, uh, Three, very basic things.

They are basic simple, but they are impactful. So the first one number one is always have a mindset that criticisms are feedback on improvements. That's it for the first one, right? It's really how you, how you handle criticism, how you, how you take them as, um, kind of, uh, Improvement comment. You know, I read something in Nelson Mandela's book, his biography, where, when he was in prison, what could, what can you do?

Right? What could he have done? So what he's holding himself is, uh, anything, anything can be done outside of him, anything can affect him and his life, like how it is already. But he is the only one who can control his emotions and control his reactions. And this is a game changer for me as a designer is a big one, how he has put it, but it is, it's a way of reflection, right?

Uh, what he's trying to say is in all design world, You know, we can come up with something and in the client's eye, they may see in a different way, and they may comment it in any way they want, because they are being honest and being direct without the feel at that time. The whole, how we are going to react to that or respond to that, it's up to us.

And that would be our problem in the end. Right? It's it's not, it's not them anymore. It's how, how we receive it and convert it to something, whether it's to be better, whether it's to be something that the client will eventually prefer to have, or not about us. So, so how we have to understand that. It is how we control what we do and what we think about what people see.

So that's the first thing. It doesn't directly help you with handling criticism, but it helps you manage that situation when, you know, kind of see something. And then you build, I mean, for me is I feel like, um, all my effort has gone on the drain, right? Mike Mike, I've been working on it. I've been spending time and it's like, not for my thing, it's for a client.

But with that negative feedback, I feel like my world is crushed. Isn't it? Cause all that 10 hours, 20 hours, two days, four days a week, or even a month, it's gone on the dream. I could have used the time for my family, for my own projects and you know, probably alone. And more money then than simply doing something for this client who, you know, uh, just took a minute to look at my design and kind of spit me with something that I don't feel good about.

Yeah. This is how I feel as well. Um, whenever I got negative feedback, uh, in the previous years, but this mindset off. Controlling how I respond, helped me to see, see things in a different way and be grateful. Right. And she'll already do that. Hey, you know, I have a chance to get better. My client is not seeing that.

Uh, she hates me. It's not a personal thing. Um, I had this chance, so that's number one. And the second thing is very importantly. Not to be overly attached to your own designs. Right. So basically this is something that most designers have, uh, in terms of when creating your own designs. And I, myself definitely am guilty of this.

So whenever I created my own design, I put in so much time, but when so much love I, and, and this, I did it. This is how I should do it. I can't really let go of what I had done. Uh, so if you have this kind of feeling, then maybe the next design that you are creating, put this emotional attachment away so that when ever anyone puts in criticism, you, you will ultimately look at it in a different way.

For sure. You have to try this out. It's. It's not like something where you can, you know, I, I'm not giving you a magic bullet where you can just shut off clients without any negative comments. It's not possible. You can't tell the client not to give a negative feedback at all. They will want to say what they want to say.

So you've got to remove yourself from your design. Uh, every time I designed, this is what I do. Every time I design or I come up with a creative or even my, my team members come up with a creative, I will put myself out of that and tell myself it is a very conscious effort to start. Okay. I tell myself, Hey, this is not mine.

This is my clients. And this creation is for the good of my client. So anything, uh, you know, that is, um, Any concerns about it, it's not mine. So I kind of put it away from, from who I am and what I'm worth and how, how much I deserve, you know, any, any complements of it is, is, is not something that I want to know anymore.

I have done it already. I, I let it go. So you've got to consciously tell yourself to do that and all the time when you build up that habit, it just naturally goes away. No. Whenever clients come with its negative. Criticisms or comments, this feeling of ego bash or feeling like you are not good enough will slowly fade.

I promise you this will slowly fade, but you got to do this work of consciously, uh, keeping yourself emotionally detached, uh, from, from, from your work. That is, uh, the second one and the third thing. Okay, so this, this third thing is, um,

this is one of the most important thing or one of the, one of the most important change that helps me to handle criticism from my clients, which is over the years, working with them, made me realize that clients. Not all clients, not all clients, but most clients don't know how to articulate what they want.

You see, clients are busy, you are also busy when people are busy, they it's hard for them to spend time or willing to give up the time to sit down and think how they want to describe. Um, changes required for the design or what they feel that they don't like about something or what they feel like they like about something.

So we can never expect the clients to, you know, find time or put in the effort. Okay. It takes a lot of effort. So you don't expect them to take that effort to, um, explain nicely or explain with a good tone. To you on what they, what they feel about design. So let's say if you come up with a design that they may have said, ah, this is a poor design.

I really, really like this one. Um, you know, the words may be too strong, but they don't really understand that because they didn't, they don't have time to and empathize. Right. And it's not that they are not people with empathy. The art is just, um, Sometimes they feel like they are already paying you. They feel like that part of exchange is done.

So when it comes to feedback, they don't know how to feedback. So if you are able to give them say a cheat sheet on, on things like how to improve your designers design, for example, and give them explanation on saying, okay, this is how you speak with designers. Maybe that can help. Right. Which is something that I'm thinking to create as well.

And you can actually, uh, take it away, uh, and use it is, uh, you know, most, most people who, who, um, contract designers or ask designers for help, they don't find that it's worth the effort to speak nicely with a better term. Some of them feel that they don't like that. Um, They just feel that you don't be direct, you know, be honest.

And that is also okay. You, you, you can stop them. And, but that leads to a point where the designers may not understand what they're looking for. Right. So on the designers point of view, we should understand this part too, to know that, okay. Um, this is forgiven. No, you, you, you don't really know how to explain.

And that is why you give such harsh words. You use harsh words to tell me what you are thinking. So this is not being honest or direct. This is being just, um, this is just being no effort on, on the client's part, in a sense. All right. And it's not that they don't value you as a designer. They do. They just don't know what other.

Consequences or what will happen if they come up with such Anton. So, you know, it's building trust. And if you are able to build that trust that, you know, if you as a client, what with me, like a partner and give me that respect as well. I will also be telling you that respect with designs and we've worked with you and vote for you.

So this is that mutual understanding that. Where, where it's not so much of direct criticism, it's more of the tone that they use. It's uh, if they give a better tone, the feedback on your part, well, you will definitely take it better. Right? So that is an ongoing work with your client, where you may have to also feed back to your client about.

So that is eventually the case. But while, while that is happening, you've got to use #1 and #2 first to manage yourself and then #3, you, you in turn feedback to the client that, okay. I understand you are not sure how to put your words. So just let me rephrase how I interpret, uh, your feedback. Right. So they give a negative feedback and you, what you have to do is you have to detach yourself from the design first and understand the customer's needs what they're saying and rephrase and give back to the client, what you have rephrased so that the clients can tell you again, okay, you have interpreted it, right.

Or you have to, it wrongly. And that's how the conversation can help with the, the work itself instead of you feeling unhappy and just emotionally depressed over what the client has initially said. When in fact, hi John, I would say 90% of the time, the clients truly don't mean how they sound or how negative they are.

It's really not that. So, um, yeah, I would say, uh, th these are the three that you should implement or, um, or just put in place before feeling really bad about anything of what clients say. So, yeah. Um, let me hear from you. You can, uh, send me a message or just, uh, maybe. Give a review and, uh, you can even ask questions there or go to my website at dot com.

Send me a, send me a message. If you have questions, go to my LinkedIn. If you want, uh, on the Marilyn goal, that's my profile. Just send me a message and ask me anything. Let me know if this helps or not. And, uh, I'll see you in the next one. Thanks. Bye.

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Hi guys, welcome to the design startup show today. I would like to talk about how we can start a design business that you can scale by productizing your services. So essentially, essentially, it's it's um, how you can productize your design service business. So, first and foremost, what does it mean to scale?

When you think about scaling, is it talking about just earning a lot of money? Are you talking about having a lot of clients I'm talking about being global? So you got to decide on that. On your own for yourself, what it means to skill. Um, and to me, I think that it's more of being able for it to run the service, to run without being in it myself.

So I can remove myself. I can kind of run the business and has half as many customers as I want to work with without me being in it. At all or all the time. So if I were to be in it for, uh, for just, you know, a few hours a week or not at all, and I can have as many customers as I want, um, relying maybe on the hiring or automation and they can still be fulfilled with my business promises.

I feel that that is scaling to me. So, so you could have first decided on that. Put it down and make sure you remember that. And the next thing would be, how much do you want to scale? So at first you are talking about scaling, but after that, how much would you would, this is enough, right? So you've got to decide on your scaling level, your revenue, your income, so that, you know, it's not just paying your bills.

You should be already being, be able to pay our bills. After you have grown, you have enough profit to invest. And do other things. Um, and that's when, you know, you can start scaling because you can start investing in things like hiring and, and, and automation to run your business. So, so how much is that?

You've got to decide. So for me, my plan is within this next 10 years, I will be able to. Build an asset, a business where it's not, not only just running on his own, but I can have the profits where it gives me at least $250,000 in residue or passive income every year. So this is what I set for myself to give myself that number that I can reach towards.

Right. So that's my goal. In five to 10 years time from now. So decide on that for yourself, decide on that number so that there is something for you to work towards rather than thinking it can be as much as you want. And nothing is enough not. We got to set that number for us to feel that it's enough.

That's when we are able to motivate ourselves. If. Along the way, right. Rather than thinking that it's it's way too high and way too, too above us. But we have the number to set us, uh, to know how many customers to bring in, to know how much we must work per day. Uh, and this can give us a better guide, right?

Uh, along the way, the third thing is to check on demand. So, uh, you have, these designs of is for example, you want to design or you have been designing logos for customers. Um, so if let's say you are just starting out and you want to know if, uh, let's say you have been designing logos and you want to keep kind of make this logo a black and white logo, for example.

So your productized service is such that you package it to be. Um, just black and white logos that only have three options, three design options, and say one revision, for example, this is just an example, right? You got to check if there are enough people with this problem. Of creating black and white logos for you to reach your level of skill.

Okay. So now you've decided your level of skill, your, your goals, your, your, your income level revenue level. Then you need to check if, are there enough people in this world to use your service, pay you this much, and you can reach that level of revenue, income, and all that with these demands, right? So, um, I've made this big, big mistake, uh, where I focus too much on the solution rather than the problem.

So this point here is to tell you to hone in on the problems that people have and then see how many people have the same problem. And if you are going to serve these people, will they meet the expectation that you have in the first and second point on the scaling level? Okay. So if you start with the solution first, for example, if you say, Oh yeah, I'm great at making logos.

I'm great. Making black and white logos. I should just do that. And, um, so that was the mistake I made in the first place. And, um, it just made me keep thinking that what I'm creating is so awesome. Right. And I just fell in love with my own solution. So that may not be what people are compelled to people.

It may sound good. It may sound good to my friends. It may sound good to your friends, right? And your friends. That's a good idea. You should sell it so good at that, but will others who don't know you once, uh, firstly, to pay that, to kind of solve the daily frustration, are they are enough of these people to even pay for that too, right?

And, and after that, you got to understand whether if this problem is something that's repeatable, right. When it comes to logo design, is there something that one customer needs it all the time? Is it something that, um, many customers need it many times? So if your level of scaling is a hundred customers, every.

Every month. Let's see. I mean, you may never know, but you know, this, this is just an arbitrary number. You may want to have a hundred customers a month and earn a certain goal of say 10, $10,000 a month. I mean, this is just an exact cool. Do you think you will have enough, um, customers who have this problem of local creation that they have to come to you and, you know, Keep on doing that every month and hundreds of them doing this every month and paying you enough so that you can reach 10,000 a month.

So you need to ask yourself that. So there may be there maybe not, but you need to find out, right? So it can be logos. It can be infographics. It can be designing, um, email templates. It can be designing everything. So for me, it's. You know, I'm running, uh, uh, uh, this graphic design, uh, service business, where I offer as many design revisions as you want in the month.

This is a flat rate design service where people don't pay based on the kind of design people don't pay based on the number of revisions. In the design or number of options, but they just paid by month and we just turn out the designs for them as, and when they need them. So that's, that's a recurring one that I found out is because whenever I, I work with clients, they always have tons of revisions.

Right. And, and charging them can make them go crazy because they wouldn't know how many regions that they can budget for it. So having this. Model that I have give them that, that, you know, that control and it empowers them with the budget that they need to set aside every year. So that it's standard.

Right. Um, if each. Each month they had just have to pay 500. They know each year it's six, $6,000. That's it for design. And that's nothing more, nothing less. So this is the problem that I'm solving. The problem I'm solving is it's quite a few. It's like the budget, the revision costs the, the, the varying, you know, surprises that they get in each invoices from, from designers.

So, um, as a designer, you wouldn't want to keep thinking of your design and final your design and thing that all my work is so good that they need to have half my work. You got to get out of that first and look into problems that people are having first. And one problem is, is, is good. The next step is to go into, are there many people with that same problem?

At the back of the mind with that in my, then you work with one person back down to one person, right? Just to get your solutions, um, clear that your solution is something that they want. The next thing, the next point is to, um, then because you have that demand, uh, in mind, you decide on your offer, which is deliverables, right?

So you go through your, uh, research and you realize, Hey, no, no, 10,000 people from this group that I have research from, uh, say that they want a black and white logo designs and they will want to kind of, uh, make changes on them every month. You know, due to certain reasons. We don't know why, but you know, you got to find out, you know, your offer.

You're you're, you're the problem. They are. People have where you can offer that solution to. So, um, now that you have, uh, known that you will decide on the item to deliver, which is black and white logos and revisions every month. Right? So you, the next thing is we'll just go to predefine that with debt offer with the deliverables, you're clear, right on what you, what they are getting, what the customers on their end will receive every month.

You put that as a fixed package. Okay. And narrow down all services to only help those with this one problem that, you know, people are having. For example, it could be Shopify blog images for beauty products. So in this sense, what people are receiving. Uh, these people will be beauty product sellers, for example.

Right? So they're, e-commerce people and they sell beauty products. For example, beauty, let's say, um, lipsticks. Okay. Just lipsticks. They just sell that. So you can, you know, kind of design blot images for these lipstick companies and your blog images will have, um, women or men or anyone who use this lipsticks.

Correct. And, and that will tailor to these people who sell lipsticks. And that's it. So if people who come with you and say that I sell eyeshadow, I want to create eyeshadow, uh, blog images. If you are only selling lipsticks and you want to stick with that due to the reason that it's easier to design and, um, package, then you stick with.

Your lipstick design, and you will tell the, the eyeshadow seller that no, I only designed blog images, for example. All right. But if, of course, if you put it as a beauty product, put yourself as beauty product designer, then, then yes. If it's a shadow product, you will also do it for them. But the point is you craft one solution for one problem and for one person first.

Yeah. Uh, difficult from your mind, you know, that there are probably millions and billions of e-commerce sellers selling beauty products, but you just base your, your package based on one person's, uh, issues, first, their problems and challenges. So you can kind of speak with one beautiful Accela and ask, Hey, you know, um, what kind of design work do you usually need all the time?

Like, you know, every time like daily. Monthly and without stopping and you have to pay a certain price that sometimes you don't really wish to pay for. So the person may say, Hey, I just need blot images every time. Because every day I produce one image and, and I, I do, um, beauty products. So my, my blog images have to tailor to what's people who want beauty products.

And there you go, you have one person with a problem and you craft a solution to solve that. So this is your offer, right? Your deliverable will be five blog images each week with beauty products or beauty graphics that you've created for the blocks. And that's it. And that is your deliverable for us, for them fixed fee, it could be $20 a week.

It can be 300 a month. You can fix it as that, or we can fix it as. 50 block images for $50, for example. And that's it. You sort of have to ask for more, ask for less, uh, you can tweak along the way when you have created your packages and, um, and move along the way from there. But you start with one first, right?

Then the next thing is you will have to decide on how you run your operations. Uh, with unlimited capital capacity in mind. So you've got to go abundant here, right? You, you, you shouldn't be thinking on, um, how am I going to do this? Because I'm only a one-man show. And like, I can't handle all of this, uh, 50 graphics for 5 million people.

You know, you, you may think like that. And, uh, that was how I thought about in the past. And I had this limited belief that I can only, um, work for what, with. A few clients in a day. And that really, you know, kind of, uh, put me down a lot, a lot more than I could have because it, it tells me that he, I can do so much more.

So I just, you know, subconsciously make myself do this right. And what with less, but I got to go abandon here to first start thinking and designing the operations to be able to help. As many people as you want. All right. Firstly, first thing, first, you are not going to do the work on your own anymore.

Right? You're going to set up a process to complete your deliverables, to match your offers. Promise. So, so ask yourself if I have hundred customers with that same exact problem, what do I do to provide them the solution that I've promised. So you promise that you would give 50 blot images designed to this first customer at the end of the week.

And imagine you have 1000 or one, 101,000 to 1 million customers coming to you, and you've got to deliver that 50 times, whatever number of customers you have in five days. How are you going to do that? Right? So now it's just a rough number. You, you, it's not there yet, but you have to make it and design it, such that this can happen and your operations must, must match this capacity.

So you need this. I will higher manpower on demand or whether I use tech and automation. You all will. I use both, right? Well, I'll use AI and manpower. Uh, or one of each. So you got to decide right now, um, at the end of the day, how do, how do these operations in your company run first without even doing anything yet?

Okay. So how decide how many customers. Um, two, one designer. So one designer, how many can, how many customers can do, what are they? You said that, for example, for us, we have tried different things like designer to work with eight customers, day 12 customers, five customers a day, and for about one hour, a day per customer for about two hours a day per customer.

And we see how that goes. And that's fine because. There are many, many designers who want to have a stable job and to work with us. So if they wish to work as a hired full-time in-house employee, we are happy to take them. So these are people we've worked with, who are willing to work with customers a day, um, nine to 6:00 PM, and then they're off and they'll come back the next day.

Right. All working remotely. So this is what I have decided for decided to do. And that is what we are doing now. It could be the same for you, or it could be something else you could, you can say, Oh, um, I will have, um, you know, two senior designers to kind of. Managed them. And there will be AI at the back end to help producing certain logo concepts, and customers will look at them and feedback, you know, things like that.

You can create those. And just to ensure just when sure. Right from the start that you can serve a million people. If you add on these, uh, manpower. Okay. Um, so that is, that is much important now, so that you won't get into too much day to day operations after this, then you have to set up the communication and deliverable channels.

Right. For example, on my end, we have the email only a selection or plan. Okay. Or the two project management tool. And we have another plan where people can have calls with us and real-time chat. So why, why designed this now is because you already know what is required as a design freelancer, as a design agency, as somebody who, who handles design world, you know, what is required, you know, that, you know, in collaboration, your customers may come to you and, um, Ask for some concepts or ask for revisions or explain to you the brief and things like that.

Do they need, do they need to explain a lot? Do they need to only just pass you some assets and images? What is the collaboration involved? Do you need only a email or do you need, um, some certain form of other, uh, Deeper way of communication. Do you need to even meet up in person? Do you need to use video?

Right. So for us, we wouldn't want to meet up in person. It'd be harder to scale. Uh, it's not impossible. It may be something that you want to put into your operations. If there is demand, right. It's hard to tell. So it's really depends on how your design services is like, and it's going to be to solve a certain problem.

Right? So for us, it's not, and it will be fully remote for now, at least. And I can easily serve a hundred customers, 1000 customers. So, so long the one, well with me. Um, so you need to decide on that right now, after you have decided on that you will move on to your organizational chart. What is an organizational chart?

Uh, it's. It is that formal table where you see different hierarchy of, uh, employees or hierarchy of, of members in your team. You don't need many, many levels. You just need to set the levels for yourself, where you can easily scale. So for mine, I started off with CEO, CFO, and COO. When it comes down to, um, the key key people of day tasks, like project managers, senior designers, um, and the down to junior designers, all we need at the start is pretty much junior designers, but I designed my organizational chart to grow.

So if. Right. The start, when you're doing this, you may be doing everything which I did. So I was a CEO. I was a little bit of a CFO while my husband kind of helped me along the way. I was also the CIO. I was also the project manager. I was also the junior designer. So I was everything at a start because I had to design it first and make sure that things run well before I hire hire another designer.

Right. After I ran for, with a few customers, I realized I could hire and relieve myself of the day-to-day design work. That's when I started to have more designers and you can see the upshot starting to be filled with other people in the team. So design this first. Okay. Right from the start with the rest, uh, other points before this.

So you've got a, an a in this organization chart is. Really to, you know, decide on the rules so that in future, you know who to hire, you can also put in the cost and price and all the hiring fees, uh, in your projection, if this organizational chart, then you don't have to worry, right? But along the way, will you incur too much, too many calls, too much calls and not be profitable.

All right. In this plan, if you follow it will be profitable. All right. It's because, um, the next thing, next point after this high organizational chart is about financial projections. That's when you create an Excel sheet. Okay. Blue sheet to key in all the calls you think are possible to reach that level of scale that you want to go through.

So, so the first point first and second point of, of putting out the level. Of where you want to go is very important because now you're talking about the cost, uh, how much do you need to put in to get what you want? Right. So you need to know what you want us to know how much to, how much cost to fuck out.

Right? So now you put down all the costs of hiring of tools, anything that is considered a business expense, even your salary and your Texas, right? All in this Google sheet to project. What is going to happen 10 months down the road, two years down the road, three years down the road, will you be profitable?

You use this to fit in all these costs to know, okay then, because you have this projection, you can tweak your pricing of your packages, right? With all the calls you can say, okay. If I put in $1,000 for my logos per week, If I charged people $1,000 per week for 50 logos, will I be profitable in say five months on the road, 10 months on, I may not be profitable today.

I may not be profitable tomorrow because I have to hire. Right. That's fine. But with your projection sheet, it can tell you 10 months on the road, or even just quick three months down the road, you may start to be profiting. If you are bringing in enough customers. Right. So use that, uh, financial projection sheet to help you.

Uh, and, um, with that projection, the next thing is to create a self-serve website where people can see what is your offer, your FAQ's. And they can also make the payments right there, because now you're ready with your offer. You're ready with your pricing. And you're already that if, if a hundred people are to order in the next few months, You know, your operations have been designed to support that.

Okay. So, um, within this, so you can just create this website and it's self-serve meaning people can, without you, they can go in click and make payments and they get started right there. So you got to design. What happens after payment is made, which is your onboarding. And you can also make automated emails to be sent to them.

And you can tell them through these emails, what you need from them without even you being involved in, right. Because you have really done that upfront. So you do the work upfront and a hundred people can come in. You don't have to do a hundred times, um, previously in where I was, what I was doing, my design freelancing work I had to.

For every customer, they want different things. So when they want different things, I have to talk to different customers a hundred times. Right. Let's see if a hundred customers meet them a hundred times and it tells me a hundred different things and I have to create a hundred different invoices, a hundred different proposals, and, um, got, get rejected like a hundred over a thousand times.

Right. So, so, so that is over when you productize your services. Um, so, so. When you, when you kind of onboard them, here's where your operation processes coming. Right. So whatever they have, they designed, uh, in the previous points, right. Where, before I mentioned on operation processes, this is where they will be, they will be seen, right.

Your operations will be seen up to delivering your customer's wishes. All right. And. Next point, which is a ninth point is nine or 10 10th points. Yeah. You set up your recruitment and hiring process. Look, we can never really do this alone. Um, unless there are robots and super robust AI to help you with that.

You can build the AI process. It's not impossible. Uh, it's just, you, you need to understand your. You know your customer's problems. And if the AI can solve that, I think that works fine. If they need some people to be involved, then you need to hire, and that has to happen. So what happens when you have an incoming customer, all your designers have too many customers in your hands, so you don't want to burn them out and affect their work quality.

So you need to. Preempt that and know where to look for new designers to help incoming customers. So decide on what kind of designers you're looking for based on your offer. So let's say your offer is to, um, kind of design logos or infographics. Then you need to look for designers who can do them, right?

So once you have decided on, on, uh, okay. People who can help you with the logo designs. How do you recruit them? Do you go to Facebook groups to find them, do you go to recruitment agencies? So you have to decide where can you find the best designers to support you in your kind of work that you want to deliver?

So for us, we have a few stages to test them. We can actually recruit from mostly anywhere we can recruit from Facebook groups. We can recruit from anyone who comes to us. And ask us if they are, is it fine for them to join us? What we will do is we'll send them first a test, right? So this, these are, these are tests where, um, they have to complete them in like two hours.

So I purposely designed the test to make it slightly more challenging than usual. Um, it's not meant for them to completely finish. But it's more to see the aptitude of working through the test. It's not so much of, um, con coming up with great ideas or creativity, but it's a lot on the balance between the time that they can, um, complete as well as how, how they follow the brief.

Plus a bit of that quality because I don't expect them to do something super good in such a short time. It's not that we are not testing on that, but it does have to have that bit off, uh, effort. Right. So this is what I'm testing. And there are some people who, some designers who didn't get that and. They did not follow the brief and they did not want to complete.

And they would just email me and say that this the time is too short for, for work. And they refused to do that. That's fine. It's you know that then they are not a fit or we are not a good fit for one another. They may be good designers, but it's just not the ones for us. My point is you've got to decide who is for you.

Right. And then craft this and design this recruitment process so that you know where to find it and you know what to test them and you know, what, what you want from them. Right. So decide that criteria and go with that. Okay. So you need to know first your audience and then your hiring process. And your, um, criteria so that you will get the right designers for your, for the clients that you're working with.

The last point number 10, which is, um, yeah, it's the last one is to create a marketing and sales process. Okay, because you have all these things designed, then you need customers, right. But right from the start you have already validated, you have already researched, you already did some kind of test or checked with demo, even spoken to them to see if that is something that they want and you can preempt or figure it out, or kind of know that hundreds and thousands of customers will come to you every year or every month.

Then this is a time to create your sales process, where you can promote your offer. Where you can kind of sound out in a way to get people to know more about you, to trust you and to eventually what we do. So after doing all the steps from one to nine, with your confidence in your operations, now you're able to support your customers if they were to increase in numbers along the way, right?

From the start, you may not have hundred, but I mean, it's a good, it's a good, um, it's good news, right? If, if you have hundred from the start. But of course it's not something that seems, um, you know, like it's possible right from the start. But, but if there is, you know, if you really get hundred customers right from the start, it's good and your operations are really designed that way, go for it.

Right. And it can go up to 1000. It can go up to as many as you want, because you can go through all the processes and whatever that you have designed. As, as mentioned in the points above you are ready for more customers. So no problem with that. So this is when you start growing your customer base, you start growing a team and employees and you start scaling your business.

Right? So now go do it. So see you on the next one. Take care. Good to go. Bye.

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Hey guys, this is the D S S design startup show. Today I would like to go through more of, um, on things like your niche or being a specialist rather than a generalist. I think many people get confused on. How to know your niche, right? Or niche or niche. I was confused as well when I first started, even now, I am also trying to find my bearings on, on my niche, right.

On something that I can specialize, where people will know that I am good in that certain area. And. You may have heard of many people talking about this, that you need to niche down more. Um, the volume niche, you know, the more you niche to painful it is, but the better is, uh, narrowing it down. Things like that, which I agree, uh, because I have been a generalist before and.

Niching down got me to be more focused. Right. So I'm going more into this today. Um, I think it's, it's difficult for, for you, if you are still starting out because you don't know what to focus on, right. You haven't really got your customer base, you just started. And how would you know, what kind of value can you provide to whom.

As a new B or a new business owner. Um, many people would probably tell you that it takes some time to understand this. Many people may say that, uh, you can try many things. And as the more you try, the more you gain the experience and it becomes clearer. I would say it is also possible that this could be one way to do it.

So one way is don't think so much about a niche first. Um, what is the general service that you are giving people? If it's, for me, if it's, you know, I, I did graphic design. I can do graphic design for many people. So what I did last time when I first started was whenever somebody has a graphic design related at work, for example, logo, logo creation I do.

And this logo can be a logo for a. For our dish washing company, let's say, I will do that. I'll design, I'll pass it on to them. And then that's it. Maybe another company that is doing finances banking will come to me and say, Hey, could you do a brochure for me? I will do it because I have the skill that can provide such a service for anyone who needs to kind of beautify their collateral.

So I was a yes and I, um, I get to work. So now I have, uh, done a logo for a dishwashing company. I've done a brochure for a financing company. I, you know, if you look at it, I am everywhere. Right. I do things for industry industrial, um, um, or manufacturing industries. I also work on things for banking, so they are both very different areas.

If somebody comes to me to say, Hey, can you just do a presentation for a sports group? I say, okay, I'll do it because I can kind of beautify their content. So now I'm also good with sports stuff. Then the problem comes when it comes to marketing myself. What should I say I can do, you know? So what I will do is if I, what I did for myself, when I at the start, when I did my, um, marketing, I would put down, I can do this guys.

I can do logo, brochure, presentation, website, book, cover. Uh, what else? Uh, seriously, anything named cards? I can do infographics t-shirts so you may have seen this before, where people, uh, market themselves to doing everything. And that's what I did. And guess what? People don't really get pay attention to what I've written, because there are too many things on the plate, right.

That does everything that, that I've, I'm giving them because I do anything, everything. So, uh, that is one. Problem. The second problem is I couldn't really Mark it because I don't know where to put my focus on if I want to do content. Let's say if I want to write, maybe say how to the top 10, 10 things a to B to, to design your logo.

Well, um, yeah, I would write about that. And then after that, I would have to write about the top 10 things to do well in to design your bushel and then it becomes. Too many things that are of different areas, the logo should no logo creation is different from a brochure creation. And it's also different from presentation creation.

These three things are basically different, different things already then. Yes, they require the same technical skill, but they are different things. So, um, what I've learned over the years is to really have to pick one. So some people may say that you have to do many things first in order to know what to pick.

And I understand why it's, because I eventually came to a point of creating a, to, to, to serve people who need ongoing revisions and simple design is because I have already worked with like hundreds of clients over 10 years. So with that experience, I can ask my clients and I can also get them to take on my productized package.

Um, because they have really trusted me. So I know what package to create, and I know where to niche down. So that is one reason why some people give you the advice and it can work, but you may have to wait, right? It may take, it's a long game. You may have to kind of work for one year, two years to kind of figure out, okay, I'm better at web design for sports.

And then I do web design for sports, things like that. That is one way to do it. The second way that I think is a fossil way, is to understand where your strengths are in terms of industries and verticals. In terms of, let's say, for example, if you are really good in sports, if you are connected to a sports network or connected to a sports group, for example, you are in soccer, right?

Well, you can do t-shirts for your soccer team and other teams. There are so many teams in soccer, right? You can. Kind of on your website or portfolio, you can design, fix soccer, t-shirts for fit clubs, right. And just put them out there. And, and your blog posts me talk about things like articles on, um, uh, the, your blog, your, your t-shirt designs, anything about soccer.

Um, how do you, uh, kind of, um, Create the best soccer team, uh, based on, you know, mental toughness, uh, based on, uh, nutrition, or you can just go right into helping soccer teams and then you hone in on, uh, what can they do to, you know, put themselves out there better and recruit, recruit better players. So these are things that design can come into play and marketing a soccer team needs design as well for the collaterals.

So you can talk about marketing, uh, soccer, team marketing, um, to recruit players, things like that. So, so what I'm trying to say is, um, you gotta be self aware of what you're good at first, what you like to do on a recurring basis on an ongoing basis. If creating things for a soccer game. Our soccer soccer team is something that you, you are sure you can face it every single day.

There's a little bit of that passion in there. Um, yeah. And this is something you should try and never ever think that a niche has to stick on. You know, you can do soccer for one year and after that changed the tennis, right. It's fine. But you need to have some time, like three to six months off ongoing work to see some results.

So this is my take on niche and we will move on to, um, probably further in with, with, uh, more episodes in future. So see you then. Thank you for so much. Thank you so much for listening. Bye.

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Hey guys, you're on the design startup show. The DSS this is what I would like to call it in future.

I mean, because it's short and it's fast to see right? And it's easy to recognize. And today I have this question a lot this question where people ask me why I should give up solo freelancing, or why I kind of transit from freelancing to becoming an entrepreneur, what's wrong with freelancing, right?

That, well, there's nothing wrong with that. But I, I always believe after I've translated, I've always believed that one should give up freelancing eventually, it's great to start.

But there are many circumstances, many situations that affected my life. And that led me to find a better way to run my business rather than stay on as a freelancer. So being a freelancer I held on for 10 years and, and live was definitely better than being an employee. Because being a freelancer, your schedule is still flexible.

So you can take on and choose your clients. You can still select them, you can have your own processes, you can work in the morning, and not at night or in not in the morning, and yet work at night. So it's still up to you. Right? Because if you are an employee, then you have to follow the rules of a big company, isn't it?

That's it as Freelancer I mean, I could choose when to work and not work, but I still have to work no matter what. Meaning if let's say today, I don't, maybe I feel sick, I don't, I just can't move on, I'm injured, I can't move. I just can't work. Right. And and if I don't do that, I don't have income. Even if I've income, probably from insurance from, you know, from anything that or any access, I'm unable to be my brain. So what's the point, right, I ended up just ending up giving myself a full time job, right, just led by many bosses, who are my clients. So that to me, is not good for me, right?

Most of the time, I'll be doing what I can to help my clients and figure out design solutions for them. But I'm not really doing that for myself. I'm just bringing in an income. And then I had to start all over again, with a new client. Right. So that was how I worked when I was a freelancer. So in those days, I had no issues with my income. In those days, I was single in those days, I had no kids, and no mortgages, no employees, I could charge my clients up to 10,000 each project per month, and all for me to take home, I could even take up to three months of travel holiday without even you know working because my previous projects already paying for that.

So all I have to do is tell my clients the Hey, I'll be away this month, and then they won't give me anything to do for that month or for that three months. So that also worked as a freelancer and that was fine. But that was because I was lucky that my clients kept coming back to me, you know, without me having to keep selling them or upselling them.

You know, I would dive I would have to do any sales related activities in those days. So thank goodness, I mean, thank goodness, I didn't have to do that those days. But it was not good because I shouldn't be relying on referrals to write those days. My clients are my advocates, they helped me sell my service. They refer new clients to me. And they will also busy themselves.

So they, they didn't have any time to look for anyone else who can charge lesser or anyone else who they thought would be better hands. I was the only designer at that point in time. So definitely very grateful and I serve all of them to the best of my abilities. I felt very indispensable then.

Then one day, something happened to my dad. So a 10 Cm malignant tumor was formed my dad's liver. Okay, so in order for him to carry on living longer than a few months, he has added that the time he had to remove it, but his liver had to go with it, which means he needed a new set of functioning liver to replace, to replace old one which is the cancerous or tumor one. So he had to undergo a liver transplant to have a good chance of survival.

So naturally, I volunteer to be the donor. And luckily, my lever was a good match. It was a huge operation. And anyone went through this will have to take you know at least a few months of rest to reach Cover properly, I was lucky not to have suffered from any infection. But for many months, I wasn't in the right physical and mental frame to take on client work like before. So as I've mentioned previously, no client work, no income.

I mean, if I had previous income, I could probably buffer myself, but but income will dry out right, eventually. So there won't be any current income because I have no work. My bank accounts shrunk overnight, you know, but I had to live with it. I'm not in the best condition, right to work. So once my surgery wound started healing, I bounced back quite quickly. And thank goodness, I have friends who sends clients my way. And then my income returned back to normal. So that's, that was fine after that, right. And then I thought, Okay, back to my comfort zone.

But two years after this operation, my dad had a relapse. And then cancer cells was suddenly found every part of his body, including his lungs and his back. And, and obviously, you know, the story, right. So he started to lose control of his body. So because I had to help him, I had to be his caregiver, it slowed down my freelance work, and similar to previous years, when when I was recovering from the transplant, you know, I start to see the same problem in my business, I just couldn't be at two places at one time.

And there's so much I can do within the time I have. So I had to reject most client work at that time, as well. Because I couldn't come in right and honor my word. So I couldn't hire as well, because my bank account is just going down, I have no capital, I couldn't even manage anyone with such little time that I have, because most of our time is to care for my dad.

And worse still, because I did not build a network at that time. And I did not have the entrepreneurial mindset of during a network of helping people. It was just more bring in income by being a freelancer. So with no network, I had no real, no one to rely on to partner past my past my work over temporarily. And then take it back again, you know, that kind of thing. But no, no such thing because I didn't have a proper group of friends who can do similar work as myself.

And as time passed, my dad passed away. And that was when I decided to do something better with my business, right? And I started to ramp up my fees. Right? I thought ramping up my fees will help with my income. I thought if I charge one client for one project, let's say $10,000, I only needed to work on just a few, maybe five other clients to be comfortable for the year. And in that case, I don't have to find more clients already, right.

So I did that for a few years, things went as planned. And yes, I was earning enough for myself or for for for each year. But in 2013, my first baby was born, I had a house, a new new place, which means mortgage debt is is in I had to care for my baby. Suddenly, my business had to go down again, because I couldn't take care of my baby. I couldn't take care of my customers at the same time, right. There's no proper care for both both sides. It just couldn't went well. And then I was half a million dollars in debt overnight, because I didn't have enough clients to cover my debts, my bills, and you know, I had a huge mortgage loan with a new place with a new home. So that was the darkest moment in my life.

So it was it was hard because you know, even if I have you know many customers coming to me, I have no ability to take care of all of them. So the more doesn't mean better for freelancers eventually right. But if you don't have more, you can kind of increase your income which also reduces your freedom. But if you have more clients, you also reduce your freedom because you have too much work to do, even if you're increasing your income.

So there's no way where you can be more than satisfied. Being a freelancer. In that sense. I've tried in many ways. So Well, the blessing disguise was that I was so free, with nothing to do, even if my debt was increasing, right, I had so much debt piling and piling and piling, but I had, I also had more time to self reflect and learn more about myself, the mobile, my mistakes and what I really wanted in my life. So that was the good part of that, right.

So, I love my work, but I didn't want to work when I don't want to, such as taking care of my baby, I want to be a good parent, I want to be a good doctor, right? I want to be a good designer to serve my clients. So I want to be, you know, good in every way. But I was struggling to be at two places at one time. So that was when I knew it was time for a change, a big change indeed. So my goal then was to build a business that can run on its own, I vowed to myself that I need to remove myself, from the day to day from the design work from the customer service, from the project management.

And that was the only way that I can create a business that supports my lifestyle. So what this means is my business should be able to be built on to run on its own. So that I can also make that good enough income from the profits. I can also do creative work whenever I want for myself, to be an awesome mom, for my kids to travel around the world to do anything as and when I choose to, I need to have that option. So call it entrepreneurship.

Ideally, I can remove myself from it as and when I like. So if I, you know, in any event, I can't work at all, or if my family members need me to be dead due to health reasons, my kid is unwell. You know, all I want is that freedom to choose where to put my attention to while my income still comes in at the same time. So even if there's no work, there's still income.

So my business has to be there. And the purpose is to free me up to do the things I enjoy doing rather than, you know, be a business that holds me back or ties me down from the lifestyle I want to have. So being a freelancer, as a starting point has been great. And it should be great if you are at that stage. And freelancing can help bring in enough income.

But I would say after doing more than 10 years for me, it's not the best way to allow me to get to where I want to go in life. So if we are going through this similar situation, I find that there is a better way to doing more of what you live without having to live dollar to dollar and trading time for money.

Many things in a freelancing business do not have to be done by you. So what you can do is to list down everything that you have been you're doing, and then see who you can hire, you know, you can hire the right people, you can get the right automation, you can right get the right tech tools and apps to do all these things on your list.

So this should be done, you know, right at the beginning to free up your time. And I did this way too late. I am doing this like 10 years later than I should. Right from the start, you could have listed this down. If you feel that you're not ready to hire No worries, you can just keep going to the point where you know you are ready right where we are Yes, you have enough work to fill up the time. So although your business will not turn from a freelance model to a self running machine overnight, I feel that doing this is the first step.

And for me what took up most of my days time was the client's design work. So my first step when I first wanted to transit was to find designers who are willing to spend the time to help me with that work. Okay, once I've done that I have spare time. And with that spare time, I do marketing and sales to bring in more income by promoting my business more than I ever had before. So all these are the other times when I mean these are free times, right?

I mean, it's not really exactly free to, to just sit around. But I can choose. So I can I can segment my day with some time to do nothing. I can set my my time to play my kids. And I segments some other time to do marketing and sales. So there will be other free times where I can do my own projects. And that can satisfy my creative juices. My creative designer in me, right, which is what you may have as a graphic designer, as a web designer, some somebody who is creative.

You want to still do that. So there's no need for you to pass off creative work if you don't wish to. All right, you just have to look for bits of the whole process to hands off, so Let's say if you really love certain parts of the creative work, you can still keep it. But you are giving more time for yourself by letting off certain work like technical, technical graphic work, or things that there are many others who can also do that don't need you to be there to handle and then slowly just, you know, list them down and pass them off bit by bit. So, take your time with that.

It took me five years. So it may take you one year it may take you a few months. It's just based on your own circumstances and and how quick you want to let them go. And just go with it when you're ready. So yeah, so these are my thoughts and you know, on on why you should give up solo freelancing. So if you are Yeah, if you are flesh and blood just like me, there will be times when you're sick.

There'll be times when you can't just deal with work. A few that solo freelancing is not sustainable in the long run. And it's good to have a team it's good to leverage out say, people or automation or tools to partner up and work with you instead. So yeah, good to get ready with that.

Right, thank you. And that's all for today.

Bye. So I hope this is helpful and I will talk to you soon. Bye.

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Hey guys, thank you so much for being here.

Welcome to the design startup show. And I'm Marilyn Wo.
And just appreciate you for joining me here. This is the very first episode. So I would just like to give you kind of a rundown, and maybe a summary of what you would expect in the coming shots.

Basically, I have been through a lot of struggles, and experienced by about 10 years of freelancing, and challenges and getting out of my comfort zone for so long. And I hope to just share with you what I've been through what I how I overcome all of them.

And also the work that I'm going through right now. So it's a lot of past experiences, and work in public at the present moment. So I hope this is a good takeaway for you to also kind of use them use whatever the I share with you to apply to your own graphic design businesses. So I just want you to also have success in your business, rather than struggling all the time, with with the passion that you have in graphic design, because I have been there before as well.

So as a graphic design freelancer, I've i was i was just enjoying my time, you know, for the past for those 10 years since 2005. But I met a roadblock a very big one, when I had my first child. And that was in 2013. And the roadblock was was, was there because I had to care for my baby. And I had to care for my clients as well. So before that, there wasn't that much of an issue with freedom, right, because I was a solo freelancer. So you know, I can just choose to react to my clients were, that's what I used to do. And I can be there for them.

I can take care of them 24, seven, as long as I want. But I did not have the mindset that I was not creating my own asset. I was basically just helping my clients 24 seven. So I just I'm just, I was just doing things that build other people's assets rather than my own. So I didn't kind of reserved time for that. So only when I had my first baby, then I realized that I have been missing out on building my own asset that I can grow with and eventually be financially independent.

So this podcast is mainly to share with you this lessons learn to be able to help you to also build your own business assets, so that eventually you can become a business owner, or entrepreneur, where you don't really have to trade time for money. So we all definitely trade hours for dollars, even entrepreneurs in some sense. But are you trading the hours for yourself? Or are you trading the trading all the hours for your clients. So that was what I was doing when I was a freelancer.

And I didn't know that I couldn't go for a holiday without not getting income means if I go for a holiday, there is no money coming in. If I stopped working, there's no money coming in. But now I am building something, I'm building a business where even if I go for holiday, the work is going on on its own, with people of hire with automation with tech, you know that that that's built up.

So this is something that you can learn from this podcast as well. At the same time, I'm also going to talk about building wealth. Because, you know, as a graphic designer, it doesn't mean you have to ignore wealth and money. This is part of life. And this is part of having options to enjoy life. And this is what I will also touch on. Well, eventually, for me, my goal is to be financially independent. I am now the age of 40. And I would like to, you know, be able to be debt free in five years time.

And in 10 years time, I will have a residual income that can support my life, support my family's life, and also support my children's education so that they will will be debt free by the time they graduate rather than having to pay the bank all the time even after they have graduated. Right. So this podcast is also to share with you how I'm going to do that. And it's not all based on my graphic design business, but my graphic design business will also contribute in terms of the profits that come from.

The next thing is I've also been struggling with acquiring clients, keeping customers keeping clients. So the these are the things that you're also struggling with this podcast should help you because I have overcome that. And I'm also putting in the work to create new ways, and coming up with new methods to help with sales systems, marketing systems, as well as the internal operation processes to kind of maintain our customer base.

And this is what you will learn from this podcast as well. So all these will be pretty much in a way, salt solo, solo messages from me. But if I were to have any industry experts coming in, you will also hear interviews from us. So there are many things that you will learn from here. And I hope that this is something that can help you in your business.

You know, if you're a freelancer, hopefully this will help you translate to a business owner because, you know, as a freelancer, there's nothing wrong. And it's great, great to be a freelancer as well. I mean, there are also good things about it. But because I have kind of transformed from there, I would like to share the good things that came up from there.

Right. So I hope this is something that you will also learn. And the last thing is on how I did how I transform, right, how do I hire transit, because the transition doesn't just come about like that there are a lot of struggles in between, like, how did I kind of sell my services in a way where it's, it's a few, just a few steps, or even just one step, rather than so many steps with proposals, and with the back and forth and people are not paying my invoices, creating invoices, too many steps.

So I what I did was I productized my service. And if you have heard of this term, or if you have not productize is pretty much packaging your services so that your services are being sold like products. So if you know SaaS, which is as a Software as a Service, what I did to my design service was to make it like a design as a service or, or service as a service. Right. It's, it's, it's sort of like, you can call it a box of premix that you see in the supermarket.

So rather than then selling somebody that you're going to bake a cake for the person, you actually put in all the ingredients and the recipe in one box, and you sell that person that box, so you don't really have to be there to make that cake. But you either hire people, or you make machines, where these machines will pack up all these boxes of premix that is based on your instructions based on your recipe and ingredients.

And they will all be packed together. And you don't even have to be there, right? All these will be sold by supermarkets. So you do the distribution, and you create the operation system and get your secret out there. All your good stuff out there. Right. So this is basically what I have done to my service. And I will also run through that with you in detail over the course of this podcast.

And, and yeah, and so for work in progress and work in public, I will just post it up, put this up and you will just hear all the episodes with me. So just like this. So it's very, very quick. It can be very quick, five minutes, or up to 15 minutes of me sharing what I have learned for the day. Or it could be just yeah, just some time or 15 minutes up to 30 minutes off of what I've learned before.

So this is what you expect from me. So if this is your if this is what you did, you should just subscribe. Alright, subscribe, listen to it, and give a positive review as and when you can. And I truly appreciate that from you and I hope all success to you that you will become financially independent as well one day, and we can all grow together.

Thank you and see you in the next episode. Bye

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Marilyn Wo