This episode is incredibly bittersweet for us to share with you guys. We’ve been talking about our own goals a lot over the last six months, and we’ve both experienced so many changes personally and in our businesses over the past couple of years. Subscribe on iTunesWhen we started this podcast 2.5 years ago, there was very little education for designers. It’s been such a pleasure to create new content for you and content with you guys through this podcast, which makes this decision even more difficult. At this time, we’ve decided to end the Get Back to Design podcast. It’s not because we dislike each other or anything like that, the honest truth is that we don’t have the same time to put into the podcast anymore, especially since we’ve shifted our businesses a bit. Our content will stay available for the foreseeable future, though, so if you ever get stuck with something feel free to refer back to it. What’s Next For UsWe thought it would be great to share a sign off from us and some insight into what we’re working on next individually. KristaKrista is continuing to take limited development work with clients and projects that are truly a great fit. If you need a developer on retainer or have a great project that you need some custom development work for, you can learn more about her services here.Moving forward, though, Krista is moving most of her focus to Summit In A Box as it’s been really lighting her up to work on itKeep following KristaInstagramSummit In A Box websiteKoryKory is continuing growing her new virtual + creative assistant services for designers. If you’re looking to outsource some of your work so you can get back to design, you can learn more about her services here.Moving forward, her focus is split between assistant work and Coded Creative.Keep following KoryInstagramCoded Creative websiteAction StepsKeep moving forward!Use our 94 past episodes when you run into something you’re struggling with in your businessContinue spreading the word so other people can learnWhen you notice that something doesn’t feel right in your business, do something about itYou *can* build an incredible business that supports you The post 095: What’s Next for Us appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>This episode is incredibly bittersweet for us to share with you guys. </p><p>We’ve been talking about our own goals a lot over the last six months, and we’ve both experienced so many changes personally and in our businesses over the past couple of years. </p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><p>When we started this podcast 2.5 years ago, there was very little education for designers. It’s been such a pleasure to create new content for you and content with you guys through this podcast, which makes this decision even more difficult. </p><p><strong>At this time, we’ve decided to end the Get Back to Design podcast. </strong></p><p>It’s not because we dislike each other or anything like that, the honest truth is that we don’t have the same time to put into the podcast anymore, especially since we’ve shifted our businesses a bit. </p><p>Our content will stay available for the foreseeable future, though, so if you ever get stuck with something feel free to refer back to it. </p><h2>What’s Next For Us</h2><p>We thought it would be great to share a sign off from us and some insight into what we’re working on next individually. </p><h3>Krista</h3><p>Krista is continuing to take limited development work with clients and projects that are truly a great fit. If you need a developer on retainer or have a great project that you need some custom development work for, you can learn more about her services <a href="https://kristarae.co/services/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p>Moving forward, though, Krista is moving most of her focus to Summit In A Box as it’s been really lighting her up to work on it</p><h4>Keep following Krista</h4><ul><li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/summitinabox/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li><li><a href="https://www.summitinabox.co/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Summit In A Box website</a></li></ul><h3>Kory</h3><p>Kory is continuing growing her new virtual + creative assistant services for designers. If you’re looking to outsource some of your work so you can get back to design, you can learn more about her services <a href="https://korywoodard.com/virtual-assistant/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p>Moving forward, her focus is split between assistant work and Coded Creative.</p><h4>Keep following Kory</h4><ul><li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/codedcreative/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li><li><a href="https://codedcreative.co/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Coded Creative website</a></li></ul><h2>Action Steps</h2><ul><li>Keep moving forward!</li><li>Use our 94 past episodes when you run into something you’re struggling with in your business</li><li>Continue spreading the word so other people can learn</li><li>When you notice that something doesn’t feel right in your business, do something about it</li><li>You *can* build an incredible business that supports you </li></ul><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/095/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">095: What’s Next for Us</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

095: What’s Next for Us

Morgan Rapp

I’m so excited for today’s guest, Morgan Rapp to join us on the podcast! I’m guessing a lot of you love her as much as I do and I can’t wait for you to listen to our conversation together. Morgan has been creating brands and websites for over 8 years with experience as a Shopify expert and mentor to designers. She teaches them how to scale, get booked out, increase their prices and so much more. She spoke at my summit earlier this year about scaling and the presentation received so much positive feedback, I just knew we had to get her on the podcast as well! I’m excited to have her here to talk about the keys to scaling a design business to 6-figures. Subscribe on iTunesMorgan’s JourneyGrowing up Morgan always had a knack for design and creativity, tapping into those skills early, but she initially received a background and degree in public relations. While she isn’t really working in the public relations field nowadays, it certainly has impacted her work and how she mentors other designers currently. It wasn’t really until her final semester of college that she became really interested in graphic design thanks to a Photoshop course. From there, she would Google her way through projects and binged as many YouTube videos as possible to practice and learn about design. Various jobs and side hustles alongside her friend got her deeper into the design world and she was also introduced to the marketing that goes with running a business. While she remained at her full-time job, she was still able to invest in her side-gig with her friend and build a brand that became October Ink. Thanks to the demand of clients and Morgan’s love of design, she was able to quit her full-time job and take the leap into her business. Things have evolved over the years lead to so many new and exciting opportunities. Hitting That 6-Figure MarkWhen Morgan first got started on her own her business brought in around $30-50,000 each year for the initial four years. It was great for paying bills and being able to do something she truly loved. She among other designers tends to sit in that range of income for a while, but Morgan decided to switch things up to help increase that number. Morgan shared that a huge factor to making that income change came down to a mindset shift. She began to switch her mentality to a perspective of feeling worthy and deserving of making a really good income from design, going beyond just getting by to pay the bills. She started to understand that she owned a design business, but also a sales business. Honing in on her sales skills really helped her take the business to the next level. She started to work on herself and work on her business, not just in it. Undercharging was no longer an option because things were starting to pile up and stuff needed to change. Morgan invested in courses, changed her mindset and worked on her sales knowledge. This is what she really attributes to her success. Your mindset mattersMorgan often hears from designers that they can only charge “X amount” for a logo because they believe that is all businesses will pay. She said that all businesses have all kinds of budgets, you just have to not get stuck in that. Don’t show up to a meeting thinking that you will know what exactly a client is willing to pay because you’ll basically be bringing your own money beliefs into the call. You have to really work on what your money beliefs are and what mindset blocks are keeping you from bringing a different energy into your sales calls. Changing this mindset will empower you to ask for and charge more for your services. If you don’t believe it, you can’t expect a client to believe that you are worth the money. Set yourself up for success! Part of this is asking more about your client’s goals and their bigger vision. Tapping into that and understanding what they are wanting to accomplish can help position you as an expert for solving their problem. Morgan mentions to not be afraid to set into that expert role – you can do it! She was able to turn a $1,000 project into a $20,000 one based on asking the right questions and really diving deeper into what her client’s longterm goals were. She provided real action items based on what the client needed and wanted to elevate her services and get her to that higher price point. Charge the right wayMorgan also noted that most designers start out at hourly rates, but that is just an issue waiting to happen. She thinks that flat rates are the way to go over hourly because the client knows what they’re paying for through their work with you. They know what they are going to get. She did mention that this can be kind of tricky because you may underestimate the number of hours it will take you, this process takes a little bit of experimentation so be prepared for that. Another option is value-based pricing. This option does require more confidence and skills in the sales arena. Morgan shared that they are definitely some ways to experiment and transition into this pricing model. Practice makes perfectWhile sales calls with clients may be intimidating to you and sharing your pricing may cause you to break out in a sweat, practicing your calls is the way to go. Morgan recommends practicing talking numbers with yourself or a friend. Once you’ve got it down it is so easy to share those rates as opposed to being stressed and making up a cost on the spot. Make time for marketingMorgan mentions to make time and invest in your business marketing. As designers, we tend to forget or things get busy. However, marketing efforts really help plant the seeds for new clients instead of waiting for leads to dry up or new client inquiries seem to fade out. To have consistent clients, you need to be consistently planting those seeds through marketing. She thinks an easy solution is time blocking your day a few times per week, even just for 30 minutes to schedule social media content, interact with followers or take time for a coffee chat. These efforts can introduce new leads and clients to your roster. Scaling your businessA major step to scaling your design business to six figures is knowing your numbers along with having concrete goals. Morgan noted that things really turned around for her business when she made those serious goals for her business. Once you set those intentions and make yourself accountable, you can really make headway on those goals. Morgan also shared that some designers may be comfortable with their current income level but want to work with fewer clients. That is where the pricing structure comes in. You’ve got to get serious about those calculations to figure out what pricing works for your goals along with expenses and taxes. Action StepsConsider your business goals – where do you want your income to be in the next few months, years, etc?Determine what you need to do to achieve those goals – more time for your business, more clients, higher pricing, etc.About MorganMorgan Rapp is the woman in charge behind the October &amp; Ink brand. She’s a creative director, designer, shopify expert, educator and mentor helping you get confident and scale your dream bizWebsite | Instagram | Design Biz MasteryThe post 094: The Keys To Scaling A Design Business To 6-Figures with Morgan Rapp appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>I’m so excited for today’s guest, <a href="https://www.morganrapp.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Morgan Rapp</a> to join us on the podcast! I’m guessing a lot of you love her as much as I do and I can’t wait for you to listen to our conversation together. </p><p>Morgan has been creating brands and websites for over 8 years with experience as a Shopify expert and mentor to designers. She teaches them how to scale, get booked out, increase their prices and so much more. </p><p>She spoke at my summit earlier this year about scaling and the presentation received so much positive feedback, I just knew we had to get her on the podcast as well! I’m excited to have her here to talk about the keys to scaling a design business to 6-figures. </p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Morgan’s Journey</h2><p>Growing up Morgan always had a knack for design and creativity, tapping into those skills early, but she initially received a background and degree in public relations. </p><p>While she isn’t really working in the public relations field nowadays, it certainly has impacted her work and how she mentors other designers currently. </p><p>It wasn’t really until her final semester of college that she became really interested in graphic design thanks to a Photoshop course. From there, she would Google her way through projects and binged as many YouTube videos as possible to practice and learn about design. </p><p>Various jobs and side hustles alongside her friend got her deeper into the design world and she was also introduced to the marketing that goes with running a business. While she remained at her full-time job, she was still able to invest in her side-gig with her friend and build a brand that became October Ink. </p><p>Thanks to the demand of clients and Morgan’s love of design, she was able to quit her full-time job and take the leap into her business. Things have evolved over the years lead to so many new and exciting opportunities. </p><h2>Hitting That 6-Figure Mark</h2><p>When Morgan first got started on her own her business brought in around $30-50,000 each year for the initial four years. It was great for paying bills and being able to do something she truly loved. </p><p>She among other designers tends to sit in that range of income for a while, but Morgan decided to switch things up to help increase that number. </p><p>Morgan shared that a huge factor to making that income change came down to a mindset shift. She began to switch her mentality to a perspective of feeling worthy and deserving of making a really good income from design, going beyond just getting by to pay the bills. </p><p>She started to understand that she owned a design business, but also a sales business. Honing in on her sales skills really helped her take the business to the next level. She started to work on herself and work <strong><em>on</em></strong> her business, not just in it. </p><p>Undercharging was no longer an option because things were starting to pile up and stuff needed to change. Morgan invested in courses, changed her mindset and worked on her sales knowledge. This is what she really attributes to her success. </p><h2>Your mindset matters</h2><p>Morgan often hears from designers that they can only charge “X amount” for a logo because they believe that is all businesses will pay. She said that all businesses have all kinds of budgets, you just have to not get stuck in that. </p><p>Don’t show up to a meeting thinking that you will know what exactly a client is willing to pay because you’ll basically be bringing your own money beliefs into the call. </p><p>You have to really work on what your money beliefs are and what mindset blocks are keeping you from bringing a different energy into your sales calls. Changing this mindset will empower you to ask for and charge more for your services. </p><p>If you don’t believe it, you can’t expect a client to believe that you are worth the money. Set yourself up for success! </p><p>Part of this is asking more about your client’s goals and their bigger vision. Tapping into that and understanding what they are wanting to accomplish can help position you as an expert for solving their problem. </p><p>Morgan mentions to not be afraid to set into that expert role – you can do it! </p><p>She was able to turn a $1,000 project into a $20,000 one based on asking the right questions and really diving deeper into what her client’s longterm goals were. She provided real action items based on what the client needed and wanted to elevate her services and get her to that higher price point. </p><h2>Charge the right way</h2><p>Morgan also noted that most designers start out at hourly rates, but that is just an issue waiting to happen. She thinks that flat rates are the way to go over hourly because the client knows what they’re paying for through their work with you. They know what they are going to get. </p><p>She did mention that this can be kind of tricky because you may underestimate the number of hours it will take you, this process takes a little bit of experimentation so be prepared for that. </p><p>Another option is value-based pricing. This option does require more confidence and skills in the sales arena. Morgan shared that they are definitely some ways to experiment and transition into this pricing model. </p><h2>Practice makes perfect</h2><p>While sales calls with clients may be intimidating to you and sharing your pricing may cause you to break out in a sweat, practicing your calls is the way to go. </p><p>Morgan recommends practicing talking numbers with yourself or a friend. Once you’ve got it down it is so easy to share those rates as opposed to being stressed and making up a cost on the spot. </p><h2>Make time for marketing</h2><p>Morgan mentions to make time and invest in your business marketing. As designers, we tend to forget or things get busy. </p><p>However, marketing efforts really help plant the seeds for new clients instead of waiting for leads to dry up or new client inquiries seem to fade out. To have consistent clients, you need to be consistently planting those seeds through marketing. </p><p>She thinks an easy solution is time blocking your day a few times per week, even just for 30 minutes to schedule social media content, interact with followers or take time for a coffee chat. These efforts can introduce new leads and clients to your roster. </p><h2>Scaling your business</h2><p>A major step to scaling your design business to six figures is knowing your numbers along with having concrete goals. Morgan noted that things really turned around for her business when she made those serious goals for her business. </p><p>Once you set those intentions and make yourself accountable, you can really make headway on those goals. </p><p>Morgan also shared that some designers may be comfortable with their current income level but want to work with fewer clients. That is where the pricing structure comes in. You’ve got to get serious about those calculations to figure out what pricing works for your goals along with expenses and taxes. </p><h2>Action Steps</h2><ul><li>Consider your business goals – where do you want your income to be in the next few months, years, etc?</li><li>Determine what you need to do to achieve those goals – more time for your business, more clients, higher pricing, etc.</li></ul><h3>About Morgan</h3><p>Morgan Rapp is the woman in charge behind the October &amp; Ink brand. She’s a creative director, designer, shopify expert, educator and mentor helping you get confident and scale your dream biz</p><p><a href="https://www.morganrapp.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/octoberink/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.morganrapp.com/design-biz-mastery-waitlist" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Design Biz Mastery</a></p><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/094/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">094: The Keys To Scaling A Design Business To 6-Figures with Morgan Rapp</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

094: The Keys To Scaling A Design Business To 6-Figures with Morgan Rapp

We’ve talked about all kinds of ways to find more clients. In fact, we’ve covered coffee chats, content, and more. Today, we’re going to talk about Instagram specifically.Krista here! Instagram wasn’t always where my focus was for finding clients. For a while I used Facebook groups, did some other stuff for a while, and finally I started seeing the power of Instagram.Most of this episode is specifically about Instagram stories, but the same concepts apply to the feed. So in this episode, we’ll go over the areas we focus on with our Instagram accounts to attract the clients and projects we want to work with.Subscribe on iTunesTalk about your servicesSurprise! You have to actually tell people what you do. The easiest way to do this is to share while you’re working on a project. If you can get permission from clients to share sneak peeks of what you’re doing, I definitely recommend it. Not only can you share the exact project you’re working on, but you can share more of an overview of your process of working with clients. Think about things like doing research, making a moodboard, any design concepts, and wireframing. This is something you have to make a habit for yourself. It will feel totally unnatural at first, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. For example, you can start with a Work with Me Wednesday or something similar. In addition to talking about projects that are going on, share when you have an opening in your schedule. People can’t hire you if they don’t realize it’s an option. You can post graphics that share about the opening or record a video letting people know what the opening is for, when, and a little about what the process looks like. Share resultsSharing results is really powerful when it comes to getting clients from Instagram.You can share results by showing off completed projects. Give your followers a walkthrough of what you did for the client. This is a great way to catch the attention of people who love your aesthetic. To share results you can also share testimonials. Every time you get a testimonial or a client say something positive about working with you, share it! Even if it’s a quick piece of feedback in your project management software, take a picture, blur out your client’s name, and post it to your stories. Doing this consistently will make people so much more likely to hire you once they decide they’re ready to work with a designer. TeachIn addition to talking about your projects and sharing them once they’re finished, don’t be afraid to do a little teaching on your stories. Even showing up once per week for a minute or two will help solidify your expertise and appeal to people who like learning more than just the behind the scenes of your projects.On my Instagram stories for my Summit In Box business, I like to do this in a few ways. If someone asks a question that I think is really important, I’ll do a quick video series answering it. I also:Post a Q&amp;A box and answer each question either with video or textTeach a specific point each Wednesday of something to avoidShare a tip from each podcast episode as they go liveYou can start with once per week and go up from there.Share non-business as wellUp to this point everything I’ve shared has been related to talking about your business, specifically. However, people love non-business content as well.You don’t have to go crazy and share 10 videos of a concert or every single exhibit you see at a museum, but people love to see candid behind the scenes stuff. I like to do this by showing off videos of my daughter, what we’re up to on the weekend, or if something funny happens.Make connectionsNo matter how much of what we cover that you choose to implement, the most important thing you can do on Instagram is to make connections.Yes, it will feel super awkward at first to be commenting on posts and replying to stories of people you barely know, but it will get easier once you see how positively people tend to reply. When you’re doing this, make sure you’re keeping your responses genuine and natural. I have a rule that when I’m commenting on something my response has to be at least 5 words. If I can’t think of something that long to say when interacting with someone I don’t know, I won’t comment. When people comment on your post or message you, always respond. The more people you engage with, the more engagement you’ll see in return. You’ll be quite surprised how much more quickly your follower count increases once you actually start using the app the way it was intended to be used.Each connection you make is one more person who will start paying closer attention to the content you’re putting out on the platform, meaning more people you can work to convert to a client.Be consistentEvery time I open the app the first thing I look for is to see if my favorite 5 people have published new stories. A lot of times, if they haven’t, I’ll just close the app. If they have, I always watch and sometimes I’ll watch a few more stories as well.Be one of those people that everyone is looking for! You get to that place by showing up consistently.Action StepsOutline the kind of content you want to start promotingIf it makes it easier for you, give yourself a list of one thing to post each dayExample:Monday: Project Behind The ScenesTuesday: TipWednesday: Work with me WednesdayThe post 093: Using Instagram To Attract Dream Clients appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>We’ve talked about all kinds of ways to find more clients. In fact, we’ve covered coffee chats, content, and more. Today, we’re going to talk about Instagram specifically.</p><p>Krista here! Instagram wasn’t always where my focus was for finding clients. For a while I used Facebook groups, did some other stuff for a while, and finally I started seeing the power of Instagram.</p><p>Most of this episode is specifically about Instagram stories, but the same concepts apply to the feed. So in this episode, we’ll go over the areas we focus on with our Instagram accounts to attract the clients and projects we want to work with.</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Talk about your services</h2><p>Surprise! You have to actually tell people what you do. The easiest way to do this is to share while you’re working on a project. If you can get permission from clients to share sneak peeks of what you’re doing, I definitely recommend it. </p><p>Not only can you share the exact project you’re working on, but you can share more of an overview of your process of working with clients. Think about things like doing research, making a moodboard, any design concepts, and wireframing. </p><p>This is something you have to make a habit for yourself. It will feel totally unnatural at first, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. For example, you can start with a Work with Me Wednesday or something similar. </p><p>In addition to talking about projects that are going on, share when you have an opening in your schedule. People can’t hire you if they don’t realize it’s an option. You can post graphics that share about the opening or record a video letting people know what the opening is for, when, and a little about what the process looks like. </p><h2>Share results</h2><p>Sharing results is really powerful when it comes to getting clients from Instagram.</p><p>You can share results by showing off completed projects. Give your followers a walkthrough of what you did for the client. This is a great way to catch the attention of people who love your aesthetic. </p><p>To share results you can also share testimonials. Every time you get a testimonial or a client say something positive about working with you, share it! Even if it’s a quick piece of feedback in your project management software, take a picture, blur out your client’s name, and post it to your stories. Doing this consistently will make people so much more likely to hire you once they decide they’re ready to work with a designer. </p><h2>Teach</h2><p>In addition to talking about your projects and sharing them once they’re finished, don’t be afraid to do a little teaching on your stories. </p><p>Even showing up once per week for a minute or two will help solidify your expertise and appeal to people who like learning more than just the behind the scenes of your projects.</p><p>On my Instagram stories for my Summit In Box business, I like to do this in a few ways. If someone asks a question that I think is really important, I’ll do a quick video series answering it. I also:</p><ul><li>Post a Q&amp;A box and answer each question either with video or text</li><li>Teach a specific point each Wednesday of something to avoid</li><li>Share a tip from each podcast episode as they go live</li></ul><p>You can start with once per week and go up from there.</p><h2>Share non-business as well</h2><p>Up to this point everything I’ve shared has been related to talking about your business, specifically. However, people love non-business content as well.</p><p>You don’t have to go crazy and share 10 videos of a concert or every single exhibit you see at a museum, but people love to see candid behind the scenes stuff. I like to do this by showing off videos of my daughter, what we’re up to on the weekend, or if something funny happens.</p><h2>Make connections</h2><p>No matter how much of what we cover that you choose to implement, the most important thing you can do on Instagram is to make connections.</p><p>Yes, it will feel super awkward at first to be commenting on posts and replying to stories of people you barely know, but it will get easier once you see how positively people tend to reply. </p><p>When you’re doing this, make sure you’re keeping your responses genuine and natural. I have a rule that when I’m commenting on something my response has to be at least 5 words. If I can’t think of something that long to say when interacting with someone I don’t know, I won’t comment. </p><p>When people comment on your post or message you, always respond. The more people you engage with, the more engagement you’ll see in return. You’ll be quite surprised how much more quickly your follower count increases once you actually start using the app the way it was intended to be used.</p><p>Each connection you make is one more person who will start paying closer attention to the content you’re putting out on the platform, meaning more people you can work to convert to a client.</p><h2>Be consistent</h2><p>Every time I open the app the first thing I look for is to see if my favorite 5 people have published new stories. A lot of times, if they haven’t, I’ll just close the app. If they have, I always watch and sometimes I’ll watch a few more stories as well.</p><p>Be one of those people that everyone is looking for! You get to that place by showing up consistently.</p><h2>Action Steps</h2><ul><li>Outline the kind of content you want to start promoting</li><li>If it makes it easier for you, give yourself a list of one thing to post each day</li><li>Example:<ul><li>Monday: Project Behind The Scenes</li><li>Tuesday: Tip</li><li>Wednesday: Work with me Wednesday</li></ul></li></ul><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/093/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">093: Using Instagram To Attract Dream Clients</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

093: Using Instagram To Attract Dream Clients

Kory here! I’m so  excited about this episode because I love pulling back the curtain and sharing more about my business with you guys. If you’re an avid listened, you may know that I stopped taking 1:1 design clients last year because I needed a break and wanted to take my other business full-time. This past summer I decided to start taking clients again only something completely different.I thought it would be fun to share my experience of pivoting my business to show you that it’s okay to pivot and the steps that I took to do that.Subscribe on iTunesDeciding to take a break / pivotLike I mentioned before, last year I decided to take a break from client work. This was a really hard decision, but looking back I couldn’t be happier that I chose to do it.I’ve had some really amazing clients that I’ve been able to create some beautiful work for, but not all of my clients have been great to work with. I’ve had some real duds just what you guys deal with from time to time, and they’ve inspired a lot of the episodes I’ve lead here at GBTD.So when Krista decided to leave Coded Creative to pursue another business idea, I did some hard thinking about what I wanted with work and my schedule. I finished up with my last client and didn’t feel excited about going through all of the marketing mayhem, and I keep my daughter home with me so I’m limited on time to work anyway. Fortunately, my husband makes a majority of our income to cover our bills and such. All of those things together (plus a LOT of thinking and talking to people around me), I ultimately decided to take a break from client work.What I did after that decisionIt’s one thing to say you won’t take on more clients, but it’s another story to actually do something to stop getting inquiries. Again, I was thinking a lot about this decision, but ultimately I reverted my personal website back to being essentially just a blog and redirected traffic going to my services and other relevant blog posts over to Coded Creative. The decision to take on clients again + pivotThis past summer, during our Accelerator, one of the ladies in the group was talking about the rough time she was having with her virtual assistant. At the time my husband was on a deployment, I didn’t have a lot going on in my own business, and it sounded fun to help her. So I offered to step into that role. Very quickly after that another client signed on, and I knew I had a decision to make: do I go all in and tell people this is what I do now? Or do I just keep doing this on the side for my friends?I really loved what I was doing for those two clients and I liked the idea of bringing in more income again, so I went for it!Should you pivot your business?If you’re reading this and you’re thinking that this sounds like something you might want to do, I want you to ask yourself these questions:Is the work you’re doing bringing you fulfillment still?Are you consistently booked out?Do you need that client work?Is there something else you can do to bring money in?Pivoting your business is honestly a big, scary decision, but it’s important to remember that you can always come back to your original services. I knew when I stopped taking design clients that if I needed / wanted to, I could start marketing myself again and take on more work.How to pivot your businessI know that most people probably don’t find themselves in a situation where they’re thinking about completely changing the services that they offer, but I wanted to share some concrete steps with you in case you are thinking about this type of pivot.What to offerThe first thing you have to decide on is what you’re going to offer to clients or do to bring in money. If you already have passive income products, you could really just tell your audience that you’re no longer accepting clients and instead point them to your products (as long as they’re relevant to your services).If you’re thinking about offering something completely different, this is where it gets a bit tricker. You have to think about what you really enjoy doing and what you can do well for your clients. I really loved running my business and the admin side of things, plus I felt confident about being able to handle admin and small design tasks for my clients, which is why I decided to go for it with virtual and creative assistant services.Your pricingPricing services you’ve never offered before is difficult, too. If you’ve never done that type of work before, then it’s absolutely expected that you’d have a much lower hourly rate than what you may have in your current business.It’s a great idea to do market research to see what other people are charging, think about how much experience you have, the amount of money you need to cover your business expenses and personal bills when deciding on your pricing.Your systemsThis is one place I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t have figured out right away when I started telling people about my new services. Yes, you may have a contract and onboarding process for your current services, but likely things will change for your new services. Think about what you need to take on a new client:ContractWhen will you send invoicesOnboarding material like Intro packetUpdating workflows in your CRMCreate new services page(s) on your websiteOnly once you have all of the stuff above figured out should you start really thinking about your services page. This will help inform you of what to say on the page, and you’ll sound a lot more confident when it comes to inviting potential clients to inquire with you.Getting clients for your new servicesThis is where you have to start putting yourself out there and telling people that you’re offering completely new services. I was really nervous to do this, mostly because I was scared of what other people would think. Ultimately, though, I just decided to go for it. What’s the worst that could happen? When you’re getting ready to tell people about your new services you could:Post on InstagramSend an email to your listWrite a blog postPost in your favorite community (Facebook, Slack, etc)Also, think about directly reaching out to people who you know need that service. This can be just as scary as telling people that you’ve pivoted but you have to actually let people know. I got a few clients after directly reaching out to them when they mentioned on Instagram that they were looking for a new virtual assistant, and they had no clue that I’d pivoted my business despite the fact that I had posted about it (and they follow me).ResourcesEpisode 009 with The Crown Fox on pivoting your design businessAction StepsIf you’re feeling burnt out and like you need a change, start brainstorming what a break from clients or pivoting would look like for youThe post 092: Pivoting Your Design Business appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>Kory here! I’m so  excited about this episode because I love pulling back the curtain and sharing more about my business with you guys. </p><p>If you’re an avid listened, you may know that I stopped taking 1:1 design clients last year because I needed a break and wanted to take my other business full-time. This past summer I decided to start taking clients again only something completely different.</p><p>I thought it would be fun to share my experience of pivoting my business to show you that it’s okay to pivot and the steps that I took to do that.</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Deciding to take a break / pivot</h2><p>Like I mentioned before, last year I decided to take a break from client work. This was a really hard decision, but looking back I couldn’t be happier that I chose to do it.</p><p>I’ve had some really amazing clients that I’ve been able to create some beautiful work for, but not all of my clients have been great to work with. I’ve had some real duds just what you guys deal with from time to time, and they’ve inspired a lot of the episodes I’ve lead here at GBTD.</p><p>So when Krista decided to leave Coded Creative to pursue another business idea, I did some hard thinking about what I wanted with work and my schedule. I finished up with my last client and didn’t feel excited about going through all of the marketing mayhem, and I keep my daughter home with me so I’m limited on time to work anyway. Fortunately, my husband makes a majority of our income to cover our bills and such. All of those things together (plus a LOT of thinking and talking to people around me), I ultimately decided to take a break from client work.</p><h2>What I did after that decision</h2><p>It’s one thing to say you won’t take on more clients, but it’s another story to actually do something to stop getting inquiries. Again, I was thinking a lot about this decision, but ultimately I reverted my personal website back to being essentially just a blog and redirected traffic going to my services and other relevant blog posts over to Coded Creative. </p><h2>The decision to take on clients again + pivot</h2><p>This past summer, during our Accelerator, one of the ladies in the group was talking about the rough time she was having with her virtual assistant. At the time my husband was on a deployment, I didn’t have a lot going on in my own business, and it sounded fun to help her. So I offered to step into that role. </p><p>Very quickly after that another client signed on, and I knew I had a decision to make: do I go all in and tell people this is what I do now? Or do I just keep doing this on the side for my friends?</p><p>I really loved what I was doing for those two clients and I liked the idea of bringing in more income again, so I went for it!</p><h2>Should you pivot your business?</h2><p>If you’re reading this and you’re thinking that this sounds like something you might want to do, I want you to ask yourself these questions:</p><ul><li>Is the work you’re doing bringing you fulfillment still?</li><li>Are you consistently booked out?</li><li>Do you <em>need</em> that client work?</li><li>Is there something else you can do to bring money in?</li></ul><p>Pivoting your business is honestly a big, scary decision, but it’s important to remember that you can always come back to your original services. I knew when I stopped taking design clients that if I needed / wanted to, I could start marketing myself again and take on more work.</p><h2>How to pivot your business</h2><p>I know that most people probably don’t find themselves in a situation where they’re thinking about completely changing the services that they offer, but I wanted to share some concrete steps with you in case you are thinking about this type of pivot.</p><h3>What to offer</h3><p>The first thing you have to decide on is what you’re going to offer to clients or do to bring in money. </p><p>If you already have passive income products, you could really just tell your audience that you’re no longer accepting clients and instead point them to your products (as long as they’re relevant to your services).</p><p>If you’re thinking about offering something completely different, this is where it gets a bit tricker. You have to think about what you really enjoy doing and what you can do well for your clients. I really loved running my business and the admin side of things, plus I felt confident about being able to handle admin and small design tasks for my clients, which is why I decided to go for it with virtual and creative assistant services.</p><h3>Your pricing</h3><p>Pricing services you’ve never offered before is difficult, too. If you’ve <em>never</em> done that type of work before, then it’s absolutely expected that you’d have a much lower hourly rate than what you may have in your current business.</p><p>It’s a great idea to do market research to see what other people are charging, think about how much experience you have, the amount of money you need to cover your business expenses and personal bills when deciding on your pricing.</p><h3>Your systems</h3><p>This is one place I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t have figured out right away when I started telling people about my new services. Yes, you may have a contract and onboarding process for your current services, but likely things will change for your new services. </p><p>Think about what you need to take on a new client:</p><ul><li>Contract</li><li>When will you send invoices</li><li>Onboarding material like Intro packet</li><li>Updating workflows in your CRM</li></ul><h3>Create new services page(s) on your website</h3><p>Only once you have all of the stuff above figured out should you start really thinking about your services page. This will help inform you of what to say on the page, and you’ll sound a lot more confident when it comes to inviting potential clients to inquire with you.</p><h2>Getting clients for your new services</h2><p>This is where you have to start putting yourself out there and telling people that you’re offering completely new services. </p><p>I was really nervous to do this, mostly because I was scared of what other people would think. Ultimately, though, I just decided to go for it. What’s the worst that could happen? </p><p>When you’re getting ready to tell people about your new services you could:</p><ul><li>Post on Instagram</li><li>Send an email to your list</li><li>Write a blog post</li><li>Post in your favorite community (Facebook, Slack, etc)</li></ul><p>Also, think about directly reaching out to people who you know need that service. This can be just as scary as telling people that you’ve pivoted but you have to actually let people know. I got a few clients after directly reaching out to them when they mentioned on Instagram that they were looking for a new virtual assistant, and they had no clue that I’d pivoted my business despite the fact that I had posted about it (and they follow me).</p><h2>Resources</h2><ul><li><a href="/009" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Episode 009</a> with The Crown Fox on pivoting your design business</li></ul><h2>Action Steps</h2><ul><li>If you’re feeling burnt out and like you need a change, start brainstorming what a break from clients or pivoting would look like for you</li></ul><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/092/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">092: Pivoting Your Design Business</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

092: Pivoting Your Design Business

Kory here! This idea came to me several months ago when we were hosting our Get Back to Design Accelerator, and I was talking to one of our members about teaching clients how to use their designs. Oddly enough, the topic was really sticking out to me after hiring another business owner for a social media management project that didn’t go according to plan and ended poorly. Here’s the thing, you don’t want to send a client off with beautiful design work that ends up being so-so when they starting using it because you didn’t effectively educate them. So today I’m sharing a few ways you can work on educating your clients on how to use their new design effectively.Subscribe on iTunesFinal File OrganizationThe first place I would start when trying to educate your clients is with the organization of your final files. This is really basic and literally the easiest place to start. It also doesn’t cost you anything aside from a few minutes in getting your structure set up. Think about this: when you’re packaging files to send over to your clients, is it easy for your clients to navigate the folders? For example, if they’re looking for a PNG of their logo in web resolution, how long would it take for them to find that?Krista knows that I go a little overboard with my file organization, but when you’re sending final files to a client this is really handy. Having a good file structure helps your client easily know what file to use, find it quickly without emailing you, and it empowers them to actually use all of those files that you’re spending your time creating and saving. The depth at which you organize your file really depends on the type of work you’re doing, but here’s an example of what Krista’s final file delivery looked like when we worked together a few years ago: LogoPrimaryFor PrintPNGJPGFor WebVectorEPSSecondaryMarksPrimarySecondaryCollateral (simply contained the PSD or Ai file)Business CardsBlog Post Graphic templateFont System01. Headings02. Sub-heading03. Body FontStyle GuidePDF of a crazy good Style Guide (based on a template from Melissa Yeager)WebsiteWebsite strategyOther files that Krista only needed because she was developing her siteYou can take this a step further by being detailed with your file naming. For example, I name client files like this:KR_Primary_Logo_Black.pngThat tells a client that the file is their primary logo in the color black. Updating the names of your files may take a little bit depending on the number of files you send to a client, but I’d rather spend a few minutes making files easy to navigate for clients so they don’t have to email me for things they already have.Brand Guidelines PDFThe brand guidelines PDF that I sent to Krista was absolutely beautiful, and it was based on a template from Melissa Yeager. Brand guidelines are a much more in-depth way to educate your clients on how to use their new design and truthfully you can take them as far into their brand as you want.When I first got started I barely sent anything – maybe a PDF or PNG with color hex codes, the names of the fonts, and their logo. That’s not enough. As I got more skilled in creating branding for my clients and figured out what they needed, I tweaked my style guides until I had a template I felt really good about. I also love seeing templates from my peers (like the one I bought from Melissa) to see how I can improve my own client files and empower my clients even more. Krista’s brand guidelines included:Brand strategyMoodboardLogo + marksColor palette with a note on where to use CMYK vs. RGBFont system with a note on how to apply the fontsA list of file types, where they can be used, and the resolution she receivedA page explaining file typesOpening something like this could be overwhelming to some clients, but if you have a client who is likely going to end up DIYing their graphics or PDFs, giving them this amount of detail can go a long way in helping them create beautiful work that complements the branding you createdBrand guidelines walkthrough videoOne of the things I haven’t done, but I think would be amazing is to actually record a video walking your clients through their brand guidelines.This would be similar to a presentation video where you’re showing a logo or web concept. However, you’d essentially be explaining what files they’re receiving, navigating the final file folders, the actual brand guideline PDF, using their colors and fonts, what logo to use on their business cards, etc.This could also be made even better by actually showing an example in Illustrator or Canva of you creating a graphic and how you would apply color, which colors work together, etc.This would take a decent amount of time, and you wouldn’t be able to record just one for all of your clients. However, these extras that you send your clients will surprise and delight them, which will make them even happier that they worked with you.Template / website tutorial videosLast but not least, when you’re educating clients on using their new designs, please record videos for them. This can be for how to use any templates you created or even just how to update their website. I can’t tell you how frustrating it would be to need to create something, have the resource, and have no clue how to actually use it.We do not want to nickel and dime our clients and force them to come back to us every single time they need a new social media graphic (unless they WANT to hire you for that sort of thing, obviously).We want to empower them to take this thing they’ve likely invested thousands of dollars in and use it to help grow their brand and business.I’ve created tutorial videos on how to use Canva templates and how to update certain pages or content locations on the website for example.Yes, it takes extra time, but if I’m busy or if I didn’t particularly love the client, then I’d rather them be able to handle certain things than come back and ask me how to update a line of text on their Contact page.Action StepsIf you don’t do any of these things, then I challenge you to pick one right now that you’ll put into action at the end of the project for your current clientsIf you’re already doing a couple of these things, take a look at HOW you’re doing it to see if you can make it more effectiveThe post 091: Educating Clients to Use Their New Design Effectively appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>Kory here! This idea came to me several months ago when we were hosting our Get Back to Design Accelerator, and I was talking to one of our members about teaching clients how to use their designs. </p><p>Oddly enough, the topic was really sticking out to me after hiring another business owner for a social media management project that didn’t go according to plan and ended poorly. </p><p>Here’s the thing, you don’t want to send a client off with beautiful design work that ends up being so-so when they starting using it because you didn’t effectively educate them. </p><p>So today I’m sharing a few ways you can work on educating your clients on how to use their new design effectively.</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Final File Organization</h2><p>The first place I would start when trying to educate your clients is with the organization of your final files. This is really basic and literally the easiest place to start. It also doesn’t cost you anything aside from a few minutes in getting your structure set up. </p><p>Think about this: when you’re packaging files to send over to your clients, is it easy for your clients to navigate the folders? For example, if they’re looking for a PNG of their logo in web resolution, how long would it take for them to find that?</p><p>Krista knows that I go a little overboard with my file organization, but when you’re sending final files to a client this is really handy. </p><p>Having a good file structure helps your client easily know what file to use, find it quickly without emailing you, and it empowers them to actually use all of those files that you’re spending your time creating and saving. </p><p>The depth at which you organize your file really depends on the type of work you’re doing, but here’s an example of what Krista’s final file delivery looked like when we worked together a few years ago: </p><ol><li>Logo<ul><li>Primary<ul><li>For Print<ul><li>PNG</li><li>JPG</li></ul></li><li>For Web</li><li>Vector<ul><li>EPS</li></ul></li></ul></li><li>Secondary</li></ul></li><li>Marks<ul><li>Primary</li><li>Secondary</li></ul></li><li>Collateral (simply contained the PSD or Ai file)<ul><li>Business Cards</li><li>Blog Post Graphic template</li></ul></li><li>Font System<ul><li>01. Headings</li><li>02. Sub-heading</li><li>03. Body Font</li></ul></li><li>Style Guide<ul><li>PDF of a crazy good Style Guide (based on <a href="https://melissayeager.teachable.com/p/brand-guidelines-template" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">a template from Melissa Yeager</a>)</li></ul></li><li>Website<ul><li>Website strategy</li><li>Other files that Krista only needed because she was developing her site</li></ul></li></ol><p>You can take this a step further by being detailed with your file naming. For example, I name client files like this:</p><p><strong>KR_Primary_Logo_Black.png</strong></p><p>That tells a client that the file is their primary logo in the color black. </p><p>Updating the names of your files may take a little bit depending on the number of files you send to a client, but I’d rather spend a few minutes making files easy to navigate for clients so they don’t have to email me for things they already have.</p><h2>Brand Guidelines PDF</h2><p>The brand guidelines PDF that I sent to Krista was absolutely beautiful, and it was based on <a href="https://melissayeager.teachable.com/p/brand-guidelines-template" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">a template from Melissa Yeager</a>. </p><p>Brand guidelines are a much more in-depth way to educate your clients on how to use their new design and truthfully you can take them as far into their brand as you want.</p><p>When I first got started I barely sent anything – maybe a PDF or PNG with color hex codes, the names of the fonts, and their logo. That’s not enough. </p><p>As I got more skilled in creating branding for my clients and figured out what they needed, I tweaked my style guides until I had a template I felt really good about. I also love seeing templates from my peers (like the one I bought from Melissa) to see how I can improve my own client files and empower my clients even more. </p><p>Krista’s brand guidelines included:</p><ul><li>Brand strategy</li><li>Moodboard</li><li>Logo + marks</li><li>Color palette with a note on where to use CMYK vs. RGB</li><li>Font system with a note on how to apply the fonts</li><li>A list of file types, where they can be used, and the resolution she received</li><li>A page explaining file types</li></ul><p>Opening something like this could be overwhelming to some clients, but if you have a client who is likely going to end up DIYing their graphics or PDFs, giving them this amount of detail can go a long way in helping them create beautiful work that complements the branding you created</p><h2>Brand guidelines walkthrough video</h2><p>One of the things I haven’t done, but I think would be amazing is to actually record a video walking your clients through their brand guidelines.</p><p>This would be similar to a presentation video where you’re showing a logo or web concept. However, you’d essentially be explaining what files they’re receiving, navigating the final file folders, the actual brand guideline PDF, using their colors and fonts, what logo to use on their business cards, etc.</p><p>This could also be made even better by actually showing an example in Illustrator or Canva of you creating a graphic and how you would apply color, which colors work together, etc.</p><p>This would take a decent amount of time, and you wouldn’t be able to record just one for all of your clients. However, these extras that you send your clients will surprise and delight them, which will make them even happier that they worked with you.</p><h2>Template / website tutorial videos</h2><p>Last but not least, when you’re educating clients on using their new designs, please record videos for them. This can be for how to use any templates you created or even just how to update their website. </p><p>I can’t tell you how frustrating it would be to need to create something, have the resource, and have no clue how to actually use it.</p><p>We do <em>not</em> want to nickel and dime our clients and force them to come back to us every single time they need a new social media graphic (unless they <em>WANT</em> to hire you for that sort of thing, obviously).</p><p>We want to empower them to take this thing they’ve likely invested thousands of dollars in and use it to help grow their brand and business.</p><p>I’ve created tutorial videos on how to use Canva templates and how to update certain pages or content locations on the website for example.</p><p>Yes, it takes extra time, but if I’m busy or if I didn’t particularly love the client, then I’d rather them be able to handle certain things than come back and ask me how to update a line of text on their Contact page.</p><h2>Action Steps</h2><ul><li>If you don’t do <em>any</em> of these things, then I challenge you to pick one right now that you’ll put into action at the end of the project for your current clients</li><li>If you’re already doing a couple of these things, take a look at HOW you’re doing it to see if you can make it more effective</li></ul><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/091/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">091: Educating Clients to Use Their New Design Effectively</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

091: Educating Clients to Use Their New Design Effectively

Kaye Putnam

There are so many things that go into strong, strategic branding to help our clients grow their business and achieve their goals.One thing that many people might not be thinking about is the actual psychology aspect that can help you develop your clients’ brands. Truth be told, we’ve never thought about psychology when it comes to branding or design, in general.So today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Kaye Putnam, who has created her very own psychology driven angle, particularly using brand archetypes, to make sure that the designs she’s creating speaks to the core of who her clients are. Kaye is going to be spilling the beans on what all of this means and how you can start implementing this into your own work.Subscribe on iTunesKaye’s JourneyKaye started her first business when she was just 16 years old. Photography was her first introduction into entrepreneurship and business, and it made her more interested in how branding and marketing are.She took a traditional path working at a digital marketing agency, and shortly after her son was born 6 years ago she realized she wanted to go back to doing her own thing and working for herself. From her experience in the other businesses she worked for Kaye realized that there was something influencing whether or not a business was successful. It wasn’t just their marketing, promotions, or advertising. There was something at the core of who they were that was influencing their success. She realized all of this played right into the actual business’ brand, so she dove head first into psychology, decision making and how those two things are brought to life through design and messaging for the brand. Putting psychology driven branding into action for herselfAt first, Kaye admits, although she knew these things, she was struggling to put them into work for her own business. Even though she knew she should be connecting more with her audience on an emotional and authentic level, she just couldn’t figure out how to do that for herself. Then one day she stumbled upon a website that listed the 12 archetypes with descriptions of these different patterns and categories that show up over and over again. She ultimately learned a lot about her brand, what she was doing wrong, and how she could go forward.Designing based on trendsKaye says she always tells her clients that she wants to build their brand on truth not trends. What she means by that is that it’s so easy to look for inspiration online and begin to pull things out from other brands who have a completely different message and identity than what you have. You can totally like a design and think an incredible designer made it, but it could be completely wrong and misguided for your own story and your own brand.Designing based on truth and psychologyKaye shared that when she starts working with clients, she always begins by figuring out what they stand for first and foremost. She says this can feel like trying to read the label of the bottle from the inside, which is why it helps to have somebody who you’re working with that’s reflecting back some of the key messages that you’re saying. So Kaye always starts with client interviews and defining the right archetype for the client so that she can then express the client’s specific story through strategic design choices rather than the coolest new font that we found. What are archetypes?Kaye tells us that archetypes are categories or patterns that show up throughout human history. As much as technology and business changes, human psychology hasn’t changed that much. We all have very universal human vales, and each of the 12 archetypes connects to one of those values. Archetypes are very timeless because they’re connected to those deep, universal human values that we all hold.The process of designing based on an archetypeKaye says she always starts with an interview with the client, and she’s always listening for clues in their language that tells her what archetype the client is. She also has the client take the quiz to so both her and the client can figure out what archetype they are.Getting on a call with your client to discuss your initial brand questions and archetype related questions can be really beneficial. Kaye says she likes to do both because each reaches different parts of your brand and you can get different types of answers. Then Kaye asks her clients to make a Pinterest moodboard. She doesn’t do this until she’s had the conversation about brand archetypes with her clients, what the big idea of their brand is, so she does that first. Then she can send a client to Pinterest and help encourage them to pin things they like that relate to their archetype.After that research, Kaye starts thinking about how to actually express that through design. A great example is through color psychology. If you’re looking at a brand that signifies truth, virtue, and naturalness, you’d probably use whites or lots of white space to make those associations as a designer.Kaye’s opinion on designing solely for the target audienceShe says this is a major sticking point for her because she believes that designers should be creating work based on the brand not the target audience. In fact, Kaye says she tries to minimize the focus on the outside as much as possible, especially in the beginning. Kaye says the more you try to be who you think you should be, the more you’re diluting your natural strengths. So the more we’re trying to fit ourselves into being what we think this ideal client wants, the less authentic it really is. The biggest mistake Kaye sees people make with designShe says the clients she’s had the most trouble with are the ones where they haven’t taken the time to create that focus in the beginning. For example, when someone says they want to create a brand for all of the archetypes and appeal to everyone, then that’s typically a red flag. Kaye says you really have to stick to your guns and make sure that your clients are following your process that you know is successful. Educating potential clients on archetypesKaye says that she starts teaching and sharing as much as she can about archetypes and about positioning your brand and brand personality as she can. She’s also curated Pinterest boards for each of the archetypes, and she likes to use those as reference points to educate people. Ideally, before a client reaches out to her with an inquiry they’ve been through a lot of her education and indoctrination process. She prefers people to follow her and learn what she’s teaching for a while before actually working together so clients fully understand and appreciate this part of her process.ResourcesKaye’s PinterestKaye Putnam is the psychology-driven brand strategist for entrepreneurs. By working with hundreds of brands, she developed the Clarity Code framework for crafting an industry-leading brand. It gives you the clarity to scale your impact and income. When she’s not transforming brands, you might find her trekking the Himalayas, chilling with elephants in Thailand, or snuggled on the couch watching Game of Thrones (for the 8th time.)Website | Brand QuizThe post 090: Psychology-Driven Brand Strategy with Kaye Putnam appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>There are so many things that go into strong, strategic branding to help our clients grow their business and achieve their goals.</p><p>One thing that many people might not be thinking about is the actual <em>psychology</em> aspect that can help you develop your clients’ brands. Truth be told, we’ve never thought about psychology when it comes to branding or design, in general.</p><p>So today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Kaye Putnam, who has created her very own psychology driven angle, particularly using brand archetypes, to make sure that the designs she’s creating speaks to the core of who her clients are. </p><p>Kaye is going to be spilling the beans on what all of this means and how you can start implementing this into your own work.</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Kaye’s Journey</h2><p>Kaye started her first business when she was just 16 years old. Photography was her first introduction into entrepreneurship and business, and it made her more interested in how branding and marketing are.</p><p>She took a traditional path working at a digital marketing agency, and shortly after her son was born 6 years ago she realized she wanted to go back to doing her own thing and working for herself. </p><p>From her experience in the other businesses she worked for Kaye realized that there was something influencing whether or not a business was successful. It wasn’t just their marketing, promotions, or advertising. There was something at the core of who they were that was influencing their success. </p><p>She realized all of this played right into the actual business’ brand, so she dove head first into psychology, decision making and how those two things are brought to life through design and messaging for the brand. </p><h2>Putting psychology driven branding into action for herself</h2><p>At first, Kaye admits, although she knew these things, she was struggling to put them into work for her own business. Even though she knew she should be connecting more with her audience on an emotional and authentic level, she just couldn’t figure out how to do that for herself. </p><p>Then one day she stumbled upon a website that listed the 12 archetypes with descriptions of these different patterns and categories that show up over and over again. </p><p>She ultimately learned a lot about her brand, what she was doing wrong, and how she could go forward.</p><h2>Designing based on trends</h2><p>Kaye says she always tells her clients that she wants to build their brand on truth not trends. What she means by that is that it’s so easy to look for inspiration online and begin to pull things out from other brands who have a completely different message and identity than what you have. </p><p>You can totally like a design and think an incredible designer made it, but it could be completely wrong and misguided for your own story and your own brand.</p><h2>Designing based on truth and psychology</h2><p>Kaye shared that when she starts working with clients, she always begins by figuring out what they stand for first and foremost. She says this can feel like trying to read the label of the bottle from the inside, which is why it helps to have somebody who you’re working with that’s reflecting back some of the key messages that you’re saying. </p><p>So Kaye always starts with client interviews and defining the right archetype for the client so that she can then express the client’s specific story through strategic design choices rather than the coolest new font that we found. </p><h2>What are archetypes?</h2><p>Kaye tells us that archetypes are categories or patterns that show up throughout human history. As much as technology and business changes, human psychology hasn’t changed that much. We all have very universal human vales, and each of the 12 archetypes connects to one of those values. </p><p>Archetypes are very timeless because they’re connected to those deep, universal human values that we all hold.</p><h2>The process of designing based on an archetype</h2><p>Kaye says she always starts with an interview with the client, and she’s always listening for clues in their language that tells her what archetype the client is. She also has the client take the quiz to so both her and the client can figure out what archetype they are.</p><p>Getting on a call with your client to discuss your initial brand questions and archetype related questions can be really beneficial. Kaye says she likes to do both because each reaches different parts of your brand and you can get different types of answers. </p><p>Then Kaye asks her clients to make a Pinterest moodboard. She doesn’t do this until she’s had the conversation about brand archetypes with her clients, what the big idea of their brand is, so she does that first. Then she can send a client to Pinterest and help encourage them to pin things they like that relate to their archetype.</p><p>After that research, Kaye starts thinking about how to actually express that through design. A great example is through color psychology. If you’re looking at a brand that signifies truth, virtue, and naturalness, you’d probably use whites or lots of white space to make those associations as a designer.</p><h2>Kaye’s opinion on designing solely for the target audience</h2><p>She says this is a major sticking point for her because she believes that designers should be creating work based on the brand <em>not</em> the target audience. In fact, Kaye says she tries to minimize the focus on the outside as much as possible, especially in the beginning. </p><p>Kaye says the more you try to be who you <em>think</em> you should be, the more you’re diluting your natural strengths. So the more we’re trying to fit ourselves into being what we think this ideal client wants, the less authentic it really is. </p><h2>The biggest mistake Kaye sees people make with design</h2><p>She says the clients she’s had the most trouble with are the ones where they haven’t taken the time to create that focus in the beginning. For example, when someone says they want to create a brand for all of the archetypes and appeal to everyone, then that’s typically a red flag. </p><p>Kaye says you really have to stick to your guns and make sure that your clients are following your process that you know is successful. </p><h2>Educating potential clients on archetypes</h2><p>Kaye says that she starts teaching and sharing as much as she can about archetypes and about positioning your brand and brand personality as she can. She’s also curated Pinterest boards for each of the archetypes, and she likes to use those as reference points to educate people. </p><p>Ideally, before a client reaches out to her with an inquiry they’ve been through a lot of her education and indoctrination process. She prefers people to follow her and learn what she’s teaching for a while before actually working together so clients fully understand and appreciate this part of her process.</p><h2>Resources</h2><ul><li><a href="https://www.pinterest.com/kayeputnam/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Kaye’s Pinterest</a></li></ul><p>Kaye Putnam is the psychology-driven brand strategist for entrepreneurs. By working with hundreds of brands, she developed the Clarity Code framework for crafting an industry-leading brand. It gives you the clarity to scale your impact and income. When she’s not transforming brands, you might find her trekking the Himalayas, chilling with elephants in Thailand, or snuggled on the couch watching Game of Thrones (for the 8th time.)</p><p><a href="https://www.kayeputnam.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="https://www.kayeputnam.com/brandality-quiz/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Brand Quiz</a></p><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/090/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">090: Psychology-Driven Brand Strategy with Kaye Putnam</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

090: Psychology-Driven Brand Strategy with Kaye Putnam

We’re not really sure how we’ve made it 2.5 years of this podcast without recording this episode. There’s not a whole lot that’s worse than expecting an invoice to be paid by a client only to hear crickets in your inbox. It’s a common struggle, but it’s so important that you’re getting paid when you expect to. It can be difficult to handle this situation for most of us because we can be pretty laid back and sometimes a little more soft-spoken, which makes chasing someone down for a payment really uncomfortable.Krista here! That’s why we’re both so excited to talk to you about how you can get paid on time every time. Our goal with this episode is that when you send an invoice to a client you never have a second thought about it getting paid, and yes, that’s possible.Subscribe on iTunes1 | Require partial payment to book a projectThe easiest way to remove the issue of getting clients to pay their invoice is to require at least some of the cost up front when they’re booking the project. Make them pay before they’re considered a client. We typically do this in a few different ways depending on how far out we’re booked with clients, but it could look like this:3 payments w/ 25% or 33% downpayment2 payments w/ 50% downpayment2 | Make a clear payment timelineAlong with getting the first payment out of the way immediately, you can make things go smoothly by outlining the schedule for future payments, and then make it clear everywhere. We’re talking: Intro packet, proposal, contract, Welcome packet, and your project management software.Make your payment timeline based on dates rather than the progress of the project. This will protect you if you work with a client and the project seems to be getting drawn out longer than it should be.If you set your invoice to be due after the project is complete, ask yourself what happens if it’s never complete or if you have a nitpicky client who insists on adding more and more revision rounds?When your invoices are due based on a date (not progress), you get the money you’re owed on the date you expect it no matter what. If you don’t, then the project stops. Date based invoicing also keeps clients more accountable and quicker to respond or give you what you’re waiting on since they’ll want to see progress on the project before paying you more money.3 | Don’t deliver until the invoice has been paidWe have seen so. many. posts in Facebook groups where a designer finished a project, sent final files or website access, and then the final invoice is never paid. This is a terrible situation to be in, but it shouldn’t even be a possibility. Never give your clients final deliverables until you’ve been paid in full. It doesn’t matter if you’re sending final logo files, template files, or installing a website on their hosting. If you’re someone who delivers final branding files before starting the web design portion of the project, consider how you’d feel if the client ghosted you for the rest of the project, but started using the new logo everywhere. If you wouldn’t be okay with that, then it’s time to change your process. When you’re doing this, don’t overthink it. If you haven’t done it up until now, it’s going to feel a little weird at first. However, as long as it’s built into your process and you don’t seem like you’re questioning it, your clients won’t either.4 | Send automated payment remindersUnfortunately, even if your payment timeline is outlined all over the place, the date could still be missed. It’s easy to get frustrated when this happens, but clients don’t always mean harm when they miss a payment deadline.To avoid it, set up automated reminders for your invoices. I send one reminder 2 days before an invoice is due and another on the due date. My clients also get an extra reminder through Asana since “Pay invoice” is a task in our project together, and it’s assigned to them on the due date.When you’re getting your automated reminders set up, write scripts for yourself ahead of time, and either schedule them at the beginning of the project or use a tool like Dubsado (affiliate link) and their workflows to have it all taken care of automatically.In case you’re curious, my payment reminder script reads like this:Hey (Client Name)!This is a reminder that a payment of (Amount Due) is due on (Due Date) for our project together. Let me know if you have any questions!If you’re ready to get it taken care of early, here’s a link to do so.5 | Have late fees and stick to themWe talked about boundaries and how to stick to them in episode 34, but boundaries related specifically to payments are so important. Sometimes automated reminders and expectations set ahead of time might not do the trick, though, so it’s important to have an extra layer of protection.In your contract and welcome material, have a fee that is put into effect if an invoice is late. You can make this fee whatever makes sense for you. Some people do a certain percentage every day a payment is late, some do a flat fee. I charge $150 for a late fee and stop all work on the project if a payment is late. If the project is delayed by 3 days or more, I take it off my calendar and add a pretty hefty rescheduling fee. This is another thing to have a script for created ahead of time. It’s so nice to have a pre-written email you can send when a payment is late rather than trying to write a nice email when you’re feeling anxious and frustrated.As hard as it might be to enforce a policy like this, it’s so important that you do. You owe it to yourself for the hard work that you’re doing on the project.Hopefully, if you’ve done everything we’ve talked about up until this point, there’s no reason a client should ever be late on an invoice.ResourcesDubsado (affiliate link)Episode 34Action StepsFigure out what your late payment consequences look like + add them to all of your onboarding materials that you send to your clientsThe post 089: 5 Steps to Get Paid On Time, Every Time appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>We’re not really sure how we’ve made it 2.5 years of this podcast <em>without</em> recording this episode. </p><p>There’s not a whole lot that’s worse than expecting an invoice to be paid by a client only to hear crickets in your inbox. It’s a common struggle, but it’s so important that you’re getting paid when you expect to. </p><p>It can be difficult to handle this situation for most of us because we can be pretty laid back and sometimes a little more soft-spoken, which makes chasing someone down for a payment really uncomfortable.</p><p>Krista here! That’s why we’re both so excited to talk to you about how you can get paid on time every time. Our goal with this episode is that when you send an invoice to a client you never have a second thought about it getting paid, and yes, that’s possible.</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>1 | Require partial payment to book a project</h2><p>The easiest way to remove the issue of getting clients to pay their invoice is to require at least some of the cost up front when they’re booking the project. Make them pay before they’re considered a client. </p><p>We typically do this in a few different ways depending on how far out we’re booked with clients, but it could look like this:</p><ul><li>3 payments w/ 25% or 33% downpayment</li><li>2 payments w/ 50% downpayment</li></ul><h2>2 | Make a clear payment timeline</h2><p>Along with getting the first payment out of the way immediately, you can make things go smoothly by outlining the schedule for future payments, and then make it clear <em>everywhere</em>. We’re talking: Intro packet, proposal, contract, Welcome packet, and your project management software.</p><p>Make your payment timeline based on dates rather than the progress of the project. This will protect you if you work with a client and the project seems to be getting drawn out longer than it should be.</p><p>If you set your invoice to be due after the project is complete, ask yourself what happens if it’s never complete or if you have a nitpicky client who insists on adding more and more revision rounds?</p><p>When your invoices are due based on a date (not progress), you get the money you’re owed on the date you expect it no matter what. If you don’t, then the project stops. </p><p>Date based invoicing also keeps clients more accountable and quicker to respond or give you what you’re waiting on since they’ll want to see progress on the project before paying you more money.</p><h2>3 | Don’t deliver until the invoice has been paid</h2><p>We have seen <em>so. many.</em> posts in Facebook groups where a designer finished a project, sent final files or website access, and then the final invoice is never paid. This is a terrible situation to be in, but it shouldn’t even be a possibility. </p><p>Never give your clients final deliverables until you’ve been paid in full. It doesn’t matter if you’re sending final logo files, template files, or installing a website on their hosting. </p><p>If you’re someone who delivers final branding files before starting the web design portion of the project, consider how you’d feel if the client ghosted you for the rest of the project, but started using the new logo everywhere. If you wouldn’t be okay with that, then it’s time to change your process. </p><p>When you’re doing this, don’t overthink it. If you haven’t done it up until now, it’s going to feel a little weird at first. However, as long as it’s built into your process and you don’t seem like you’re questioning it, your clients won’t either.</p><h2>4 | Send automated payment reminders</h2><p>Unfortunately, even if your payment timeline is outlined all over the place, the date could still be missed. It’s easy to get frustrated when this happens, but clients don’t always mean harm when they miss a payment deadline.</p><p>To avoid it, set up automated reminders for your invoices. I send one reminder 2 days before an invoice is due and another on the due date. My clients also get an extra reminder through Asana since “Pay invoice” is a task in our project together, and it’s assigned to them on the due date.</p><p>When you’re getting your automated reminders set up, write scripts for yourself ahead of time, and either schedule them at the beginning of the project or use a tool like <a href="https://www.dubsado.com/?c=korywoodard" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Dubsado</a> (affiliate link) and their workflows to have it all taken care of automatically.</p><p>In case you’re curious, my payment reminder script reads like this:</p><blockquote><p>Hey (<strong>Client Name</strong>)!<br/>This is a reminder that a payment of (<strong>Amount Due</strong>) is due on (<strong>Due Date</strong>) for our project together. Let me know if you have any questions!<br/>If you’re ready to get it taken care of early, here’s a link to do so.</p></blockquote><h2>5 | Have late fees and stick to them</h2><p>We talked about boundaries and how to stick to them in episode 34, but boundaries related specifically to payments are so important. Sometimes automated reminders and expectations set ahead of time might not do the trick, though, so it’s important to have an extra layer of protection.</p><p>In your contract and welcome material, have a fee that is put into effect if an invoice is late. You can make this fee whatever makes sense for you. Some people do a certain percentage every day a payment is late, some do a flat fee. </p><p>I charge $150 for a late fee and stop all work on the project if a payment is late. If the project is delayed by 3 days or more, I take it off my calendar and add a pretty hefty rescheduling fee. </p><p>This is another thing to have a script for created ahead of time. It’s so nice to have a pre-written email you can send when a payment is late rather than trying to write a nice email when you’re feeling anxious and frustrated.</p><p>As hard as it might be to enforce a policy like this, it’s so important that you do. You owe it to yourself for the hard work that you’re doing on the project.</p><p>Hopefully, if you’ve done everything we’ve talked about up until this point, there’s no reason a client should ever be late on an invoice.</p><h2>Resources</h2><ul><li><a href="https://www.dubsado.com/?c=korywoodard" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Dubsado</a> (affiliate link)</li><li><a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/034" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Episode 34</a></li></ul><h2>Action Steps</h2><ul><li>Figure out what your late payment consequences look like + add them to all of your onboarding materials that you send to your clients</li></ul><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/089/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">089: 5 Steps to Get Paid On Time, Every Time</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

089: 5 Steps to Get Paid On Time, Every Time

How many times have you had a client need additional work and their projects and they try to sneak it in without paying extra? Kory here! I know that Krista and I have both certainly had this happen to us, and it is annoying and frustrating to deal with.We are so so thrilled to have Gigi from One 6 Creative join us on the podcast this week just to talk all about avoiding that scope creep with your client projects. Subscribe on iTunesGigi’s JourneyAfter getting a degree in marketing, Gigi landed a job as a marketing director at a consultancy. After a few years she landed in the brand executive role where she had high hopes of applying some of the design and marketing strategies she had learned into place for clients. However, things changed within the agency, and shortly after Gigi left her job.She began looking for freelance work to do on Fiverr and Upwork, which was a humbling experience. So after a couple of months of doing freelance work she founded One 6 Creative, which is a creative agency focused on conversion first and design second. Her experience with scope creep Gigi shared that she experienced a decent amount of scope creep early on in her business, especially when she was looking for work on sites like Fiverr. She believes some of the scope creep from those specific projects came from the fact that she didn’t quite have a direct relationship with the client. However, she did share one experience with us about a project she started three years ago. Gigi said it was a big project and she was super excited about it, but it’s still going on to this day. She continues to work on the project because she has a personal relationship with the client.Another experience with scope creep that Gigi had stemmed from miscommunication and a lot of red flags that she admits she should have pointed out from the very beginning.Questions to ask your clients to avoid scope creepNow, Gigi says, she generally has a gut instinct as to whether or not things will work out with a client.Gigi says that most designers think about their client experience and process specifically after they’ve started working with a designer, but it’s important to remember that your client experience starts before you actually start working on the project.With that in mind, Gigi changed the way potential clients reach out to her. Instead of just filling out a basic contact form she sends leads to a brand application. This gives her a much more detailed look at the clients’ brand, what the clients’ expectations are in working together and if they’d be a good fit.Specific questions she asks in her brand application:What are your goals for your business? What are your objectives?If our work is successful and we’ve done everything perfectly, what does this look like to you?Why did you start your business?Boundaries to set in placeGigi shares that contracts are an important thing to have when working with clients. She tries to keep her contracts simple and straight forward with clients so they understand that she’s not trying to trick them with any complicated lingo.In her contracts, she has a whole separate section about work that falls out of scope. This includes notes about how this work is billed at an additional fee, how extra work may effect the timeline of the project, and that she has the right to refuse additional work.Communicating about additional project feesGigi keeps things really simple here. Her focus with client projects is conversions, so when a client requests additional work (specifically certain features for example) she tries to refer back to the original goal of the project. She asks herself and the client if this additional work would help the client reach their goal, though sometimes the client wants something that looks good even if it doesn’t necessarily help with the overall project objective.When a client makes a request for work that’s out of scope, Gigi simply will remind them that this goes beyond the original agreed upon project scope and it will cost an additional fee because it will take her extra time to complete, which may push back the launch date.If a client is upset about the original cost, simply refer them back to the contract where you’ve been very clear about the cost and the deliverables. Most of the time clients won’t mind the extra cost, but if they do then you can decide to not move forward with the additional work.Dealing with scope creep while being booked outShe admits that she’s not the best to speak about being booked out as she was overbooked at the time of recording the episode; however, it comes down to setting and maintaining boundaries.Gigi shares that she has a strict policy on communication in her contract. She charges clients if they don’t communicate to her for 10 days, and if that extends to 3 weeks the project will be put on hold.Another option is to outsource the work if you’re really set on doing it for the client but you don’t have room in your schedule. You can charge a little bit extra to clients as well to cover your admin costs of managing the project if you’re handling things under your brand. Saying no to scope creep after you’ve already allowed some for freeGigi says it’s not too late to put your foot down, even if you’ve already allowed some scope creep in your client projects. Once you’ve started allowing favors it’s harder to say no to a client, but at some point it’s better for you that you say no.It can be as simple as saying that any further changes mean extra hours that you’ll need to spend on the project, which will require an additional fee. Again, you’ll want to refer them back to your contract and show the client that the additional work is outside of the original project scope. Learn more about GigiYevgeniya (or simply Gigi) is a Conversion-Led designer and strategist, focusing on creating brand and web solutions with growth and conversion in mind. She’s been running my design agency, One6Creative, for 3.5 years now, after quitting her corporate job as a Brand Executive for a consultancy in the education industry. The 9-5 world and the idea of climbing up the ladder didn’t end up being her cup of tea and she quit her job to join the crazy, passionate, unpredictable world of entrepreneurship, where she can truly make a difference and serve fellow business owners.Instagram | Website | Resource ShopThe post 088: Avoiding the Dreaded Scope Creep with One 6 Creative appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>How many times have you had a client need additional work and their projects and they try to sneak it in without paying extra? Kory here! I know that Krista and I have both certainly had this happen to us, and it is annoying and frustrating to deal with.</p><p>We are so so thrilled to have Gigi from One 6 Creative join us on the podcast this week just to talk all about avoiding that scope creep with your client projects. </p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Gigi’s Journey</h2><p>After getting a degree in marketing, Gigi landed a job as a marketing director at a consultancy. After a few years she landed in the brand executive role where she had high hopes of applying some of the design and marketing strategies she had learned into place for clients. However, things changed within the agency, and shortly after Gigi left her job.</p><p>She began looking for freelance work to do on Fiverr and Upwork, which was a humbling experience. So after a couple of months of doing freelance work she founded One 6 Creative, which is a creative agency focused on conversion first and design second. </p><h2>Her experience with scope creep </h2><p>Gigi shared that she experienced a decent amount of scope creep early on in her business, especially when she was looking for work on sites like Fiverr. She believes some of the scope creep from those specific projects came from the fact that she didn’t quite have a direct relationship with the client. </p><p>However, she did share one experience with us about a project she started three years ago. Gigi said it was a big project and she was super excited about it, but it’s still going on to this day. She continues to work on the project because she has a personal relationship with the client.</p><p>Another experience with scope creep that Gigi had stemmed from miscommunication and a lot of red flags that she admits she should have pointed out from the very beginning.</p><h2>Questions to ask your clients to avoid scope creep</h2><p>Now, Gigi says, she generally has a gut instinct as to whether or not things will work out with a client.</p><p>Gigi says that most designers think about their client experience and process specifically after they’ve started working with a designer, but it’s important to remember that your client experience starts <em>before</em> you actually start working on the project.</p><p>With that in mind, Gigi changed the way potential clients reach out to her. Instead of just filling out a basic contact form she sends leads to a brand application. This gives her a much more detailed look at the clients’ brand, what the clients’ expectations are in working together and if they’d be a good fit.</p><h3>Specific questions she asks in her brand application:</h3><ul><li>What are your goals for your business? </li><li>What are your objectives?</li><li>If our work is successful and we’ve done everything perfectly, what does this look like to you?</li><li>Why did you start your business?</li></ul><h2>Boundaries to set in place</h2><p>Gigi shares that contracts are an important thing to have when working with clients. She tries to keep her contracts simple and straight forward with clients so they understand that she’s not trying to trick them with any complicated lingo.</p><p>In her contracts, she has a whole separate section about work that falls out of scope. This includes notes about how this work is billed at an additional fee, how extra work may effect the timeline of the project, and that she has the right to refuse additional work.</p><h2>Communicating about additional project fees</h2><p>Gigi keeps things really simple here. Her focus with client projects is conversions, so when a client requests additional work (specifically certain features for example) she tries to refer back to the original goal of the project. She asks herself and the client if this additional work would help the client reach their goal, though sometimes the client wants something that looks good even if it doesn’t necessarily help with the overall project objective.</p><p>When a client makes a request for work that’s out of scope, Gigi simply will remind them that this goes beyond the original agreed upon project scope and it will cost an additional fee because it will take her extra time to complete, which may push back the launch date.</p><p>If a client is upset about the original cost, simply refer them back to the contract where you’ve been very clear about the cost and the deliverables. Most of the time clients won’t mind the extra cost, but if they do then you can decide to not move forward with the additional work.</p><h2>Dealing with scope creep while being booked out</h2><p>She admits that she’s not the best to speak about being booked out as she was overbooked at the time of recording the episode; however, it comes down to setting and maintaining boundaries.</p><p>Gigi shares that she has a strict policy on communication in her contract. She charges clients if they don’t communicate to her for 10 days, and if that extends to 3 weeks the project will be put on hold.</p><p>Another option is to outsource the work if you’re really set on doing it for the client but you don’t have room in your schedule. You can charge a little bit extra to clients as well to cover your admin costs of managing the project if you’re handling things under your brand. </p><h2>Saying no to scope creep after you’ve already allowed some for free</h2><p>Gigi says it’s not too late to put your foot down, even if you’ve already allowed some scope creep in your client projects. Once you’ve started allowing favors it’s harder to say no to a client, but at some point it’s better for you that you say no.</p><p>It can be as simple as saying that any further changes mean extra hours that you’ll need to spend on the project, which will require an additional fee. Again, you’ll want to refer them back to your contract and show the client that the additional work is outside of the original project scope. </p><h2>Learn more about Gigi</h2><p>Yevgeniya (or simply Gigi) is a Conversion-Led designer and strategist, focusing on creating brand and web solutions with growth and conversion in mind. She’s been running my design agency, One6Creative, for 3.5 years now, after quitting her corporate job as a Brand Executive for a consultancy in the education industry. The 9-5 world and the idea of climbing up the ladder didn’t end up being her cup of tea and she quit her job to join the crazy, passionate, unpredictable world of entrepreneurship, where she can truly make a difference and serve fellow business owners.</p><p><a href="http://www.instagram.com/one6creative" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a> | <a href="http://www.one6creative.com" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="https://one6creative.com/shop" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Resource Shop</a></p><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/088/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">088: Avoiding the Dreaded Scope Creep with One 6 Creative</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

088: Avoiding the Dreaded Scope Creep with One 6 Creative

So, this is a bit of a different episode than we normally record for you guys! A few months ago someone posted in our Facebook group about feeling down about herself because her path as a designer wasn’t the “traditional” path.Kory here! Honestly, I’ve felt the same self-doubt from time to time in my own business. It doesn’t always stem from the fact that your path is different.Today I wanted to do something different for this week’s episode and give you a bit of a pep talk plus some tips on overcoming self-doubt when it creeps in. Subscribe on iTunesYour Pep TalkFirst and foremost, it’s important for me to remind you that everyone has moments like this. Not many people post on social media about not feeling that way, so it seems like our peers never feel doubt about their business or working with clients. That’s totally not true.Regardless of whether you’re feeling doubt about your path as a designer, dealing with a bad client, or a slow period in your business, it doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad designer. If your path to running your own design business is different…Own it! It would be so dang boring if all of us had the same story and same path to running our business. A million times over I would rather my story be different and unique than blend in with everyone else.If you have a bad client…Remember we all have them! Sometimes you can learn from it and improve different parts of your business. However, sometimes you just have to chalk it up to a bad situation and move on. If you have a slow period…Use it as a chance to work on your business! Promote your services, improve your website, update your portfolio… the options are almost endless for what you can do when work is slow. Overcoming Self DoubtSo what can you do when you’re feeling that doubt creep in? A few things! Create a happy client folderOne of the best things you can do is to create a folder on your computer or in your inbox where you save kind words that you get from peers, clients, and more. This is a great thing you have so you can refer back to it on hard days!Take a break from workThis is by far the easiest thing you can do when you’re feeling doubt about what you’re doing. Taking a break from your work can be as simple as going for a walk or taking some time to watch your favorite show. However, you can also take a weekend or a week off. Give yourself some space from your work so when you come back you’re excited to get started and feel creative again.Connect with other peopleLast, but certainly not least, connecting with other people really helps put self-doubt into perspective. Like I mentioned before, everyone shares the good stuff on social media, so connecting with other business owners helps put into perspective what other people are going through. Having Krista and my other online friends has been one of the greatest things I’ve had in the 7+ years of my business!Action StepsCreate a happy client folder with kind words that you can refer back to on difficult daysThe post 087: A Pep Talk for Designers + Overcoming Self-Doubt appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>So, this is a bit of a different episode than we normally record for you guys! A few months ago someone posted in our Facebook group about feeling down about herself because her path as a designer wasn’t the “traditional” path.</p><p>Kory here! Honestly, I’ve felt the same self-doubt from time to time in my own business. It doesn’t always stem from the fact that your path is different.</p><p>Today I wanted to do something different for this week’s episode and give you a bit of a pep talk plus some tips on overcoming self-doubt when it creeps in. </p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Your Pep Talk</h2><p>First and foremost, it’s important for me to remind you that everyone has moments like this. Not many people post on social media about not feeling that way, so it seems like our peers never feel doubt about their business or working with clients. That’s totally not true.</p><p>Regardless of whether you’re feeling doubt about your path as a designer, dealing with a bad client, or a slow period in your business, it doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad designer. </p><h3>If your path to running your own design business is different…</h3><p>Own it! It would be so dang boring if all of us had the same story and same path to running our business. A million times over I would rather my story be different and unique than blend in with everyone else.</p><h3>If you have a bad client…</h3><p>Remember we all have them! Sometimes you can learn from it and improve different parts of your business. However, sometimes you just have to chalk it up to a bad situation and move on. </p><h3>If you have a slow period…</h3><p>Use it as a chance to work<em> on</em> your business! Promote your services, improve your website, update your portfolio… the options are almost endless for what you can do when work is slow. </p><h2>Overcoming Self Doubt</h2><p>So what can you do when you’re feeling that doubt creep in? A few things! </p><h3>Create a happy client folder</h3><p>One of the best things you can do is to create a folder on your computer or in your inbox where you save kind words that you get from peers, clients, and more. This is a great thing you have so you can refer back to it on hard days!</p><h3>Take a break from work</h3><p>This is by far the easiest thing you can do when you’re feeling doubt about what you’re doing. Taking a break from your work can be as simple as going for a walk or taking some time to watch your favorite show. However, you can also take a weekend or a week off. Give yourself some space from your work so when you come back you’re excited to get started and feel creative again.</p><h3>Connect with other people</h3><p>Last, but certainly not least, connecting with other people really helps put self-doubt into perspective. Like I mentioned before, everyone shares the good stuff on social media, so connecting with other business owners helps put into perspective what other people are going through. Having Krista and my other online friends has been one of the greatest things I’ve had in the 7+ years of my business!</p><h2>Action Steps</h2><ul><li>Create a happy client folder with kind words that you can refer back to on difficult days</li></ul><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/087-2/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">087: A Pep Talk for Designers + Overcoming Self-Doubt</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

087: A Pep Talk for Designers + Overcoming Self-Doubt

Jason Resnick

Krista here! Jason and I were originally introduced through a mutual friend, and the second I landed on his website I knew I had to get him on the podcast. Jason helps freelancers, especially web developers and designers, live the life of their own design through coaching and community so they can specialize their businesses and build recurring revenue. Unlike all of our other guests up to this point, Jason is actually a developer, not a designer, so I’m excited to the different point of view he’ll bring to the table.Today we’re going to talk to Jason about spotting bad clients and positioning yourself to be respected, which can make your design or development business so much more enjoyable.Subscribe on iTunesJason’s journeyWhen Jason was in high school and college he saw the internet as something that might be a vehicle to help him get to where he wanted to be. He originally started as a Java developer, went on to learn Ruby on Rails, custom PHP work, and landed in the WordPress space working with eCommerce clients.Jason focuses on helping his clients get more customers on repeat and raving fans. He does that through web development, email marketing, and some behavioral marketing, which ties the two together.Experience with bad clients + positioning himselfHe had one specific experience with a bad client where they had a need which led them to hire Jason, but there wasn’t a success metric that was tied to the project. They simply wanted more people coming to their website, opting in for their email list, and then signing up for a membership. After Jason had started working on the project, things started to unravel a bit. The client decided they wanted a brand new website. They had purchased a theme and wanted Jason to do some tweaking, which ultimately led to more and more work outside of the original scope. Ultimately, Jason said, the client saw him more as a pixel pusher. This experience was what led Jason to say he wanted to make sure this never happened again.How you can avoid getting bad clientsFirst things first, Jason pays special attention to a client’s personality when trying to decide whether or not they would be a good fit. So, when he’s on a call with a potential client, there has to be a connection between the two of them. Jason also has a rule that if there are two red flags, he won’t take on a client. This could be that they want to work with an email marketing provider he doesn’t work with.He also has a project application that helps him spot a bad client. If potential clients don’t want to fill the form out or they fill it out it out with short answers just to bypass it, those are red flags as well. So Jason uses the project application as a way to qualify whether or not he should work with a client. What to do if you’re in the middle of a project with a bad clientJason says how you handle this really is up to your discretion. For him, he delivers on what he says he’s going to do, so if it’s a short project then he’ll just push through and get it done. If it’s a longer project, though, he’ll have the conversation with the client about the situation to reset the project and relationship.Overall, though, the goal is to communicate with your client and get both of you back on the same page. You can simply say something’s misaligned, and you want to have a quick 5-10 minute chat to clear things up. Jason says typically this does a really great job at fixing things because it’s just a matter of communication and setting expectations. Benefits of positioning yourself to be respectedYou need to position yourself as somebody that’s going to be able to help and serve them in the right way, and this is a great way to help avoid ending up in the middle of a bad client situation. How you can position yourself to be respectedYou can do this in two ways. First by taking the time to follow up with them in a thoughtful way when you’re still in the inquiry phase of a project. Jason says he did research earlier this year that uncovered that most times a decision maker for a company needs to see something five times before they make a sale. So, knowing that conversion rate, it may make sense to increase your follow-up strategy a bit with potential clients.Another way you can position yourself as someone who’s going to help your clients is by educating them and helping the client understand what they really need and how you can help them. Your clients may not have the time to be reading articles to learn new things about design or conversions, for example, but this is where you can step in and help them better understand these things. It positions you as an expert, leads them to trust you more, and makes it less likely that you’ll end up dealing with a bad client.Action StepsCreate a red flag list that you can run potential clients throughWhile doing this, take careful consideration of the types of clients you like to work withResourcesRed Flags podcast episodeLearn more about JasonJason helps freelancers, especially web developers and designers, live the life of their own design through coaching and community so they can specialize their businesses and build recurring revenue. This is done through a framework to discover your ideal client, find out their value, how to market to them, and walk away with a plan to move forward and build recurring revenue. He’s an avid baseball fan of the NY Mets, loves to travel and spend tons of time with his family.Website | Feast | How to Start Freelancing SuccessfullyThe post 086: Spot Bad Clients &amp; Position Yourself To Be Respected with Jason Resnick appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>Krista here! Jason and I were originally introduced through a mutual friend, and the second I landed on his website I knew I had to get him on the podcast. </p><p>Jason helps freelancers, especially web developers and designers, live the life of their own design through coaching and community so they can specialize their businesses and build recurring revenue. Unlike all of our other guests up to this point, Jason is actually a developer, not a designer, so I’m excited to the different point of view he’ll bring to the table.</p><p>Today we’re going to talk to Jason about spotting bad clients and positioning yourself to be respected, which can make your design or development business so much more enjoyable.</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Jason’s journey</h2><p>When Jason was in high school and college he saw the internet as something that might be a vehicle to help him get to where he wanted to be. He originally started as a Java developer, went on to learn Ruby on Rails, custom PHP work, and landed in the WordPress space working with eCommerce clients.</p><p>Jason focuses on helping his clients get more customers on repeat and raving fans. He does that through web development, email marketing, and some behavioral marketing, which ties the two together.</p><h2>Experience with bad clients + positioning himself</h2><p>He had one specific experience with a bad client where they had a need which led them to hire Jason, but there wasn’t a success metric that was tied to the project. They simply wanted more people coming to their website, opting in for their email list, and then signing up for a membership. </p><p>After Jason had started working on the project, things started to unravel a bit. The client decided they wanted a brand new website. They had purchased a theme and wanted Jason to do some tweaking, which ultimately led to more and more work outside of the original scope. Ultimately, Jason said, the client saw him more as a pixel pusher. </p><p>This experience was what led Jason to say he wanted to make sure this never happened again.</p><h2>How you can avoid getting bad clients</h2><p>First things first, Jason pays special attention to a client’s personality when trying to decide whether or not they would be a good fit. So, when he’s on a call with a potential client, there has to be a connection between the two of them. </p><p>Jason also has a rule that if there are two red flags, he won’t take on a client. This could be that they want to work with an email marketing provider he doesn’t work with.</p><p>He also has a project application that helps him spot a bad client. If potential clients don’t want to fill the form out or they fill it out it out with short answers just to bypass it, those are red flags as well. So Jason uses the project application as a way to qualify whether or not he should work with a client. </p><h2>What to do if you’re in the middle of a project with a bad client</h2><p>Jason says how you handle this really is up to your discretion. For him, he delivers on what he says he’s going to do, so if it’s a short project then he’ll just push through and get it done. If it’s a longer project, though, he’ll have the conversation with the client about the situation to reset the project and relationship.</p><p>Overall, though, the goal is to communicate with your client and get both of you back on the same page. You can simply say something’s misaligned, and you want to have a quick 5-10 minute chat to clear things up. Jason says typically this does a really great job at fixing things because it’s just a matter of communication and setting expectations. </p><h2>Benefits of positioning yourself to be respected</h2><p>You need to position yourself as somebody that’s going to be able to help and serve them in the right way, and this is a great way to help avoid ending up in the middle of a bad client situation. </p><h2>How you can position yourself to be respected</h2><p>You can do this in two ways. First by taking the time to follow up with them in a thoughtful way when you’re still in the inquiry phase of a project. Jason says he did research earlier this year that uncovered that most times a decision maker for a company needs to see something five times before they make a sale. So, knowing that conversion rate, it may make sense to increase your follow-up strategy a bit with potential clients.</p><p>Another way you can position yourself as someone who’s going to help your clients is by educating them and helping the client understand what they really need and how you can help them. Your clients may not have the time to be reading articles to learn new things about design or conversions, for example, but this is where you can step in and help them better understand these things. It positions you as an expert, leads them to trust you more, and makes it less likely that you’ll end up dealing with a bad client.</p><h2>Action Steps</h2><ul><li>Create a red flag list that you can run potential clients through<ul><li>While doing this, take careful consideration of the types of clients you like to work with</li></ul></li></ul><h2>Resources</h2><ul><li><a href="https://rezzz.com/ask/client-red-flags/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Red Flags podcast episode</a></li></ul><h3>Learn more about Jason</h3><p>Jason helps freelancers, especially web developers and designers, live the life of their own design through coaching and community so they can specialize their businesses and build recurring revenue. This is done through a framework to discover your ideal client, find out their value, how to market to them, and walk away with a plan to move forward and build recurring revenue. He’s an avid baseball fan of the NY Mets, loves to travel and spend tons of time with his family.</p><p><a href="https://rezzz.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="https://rezzz.com, https://rezzz.com/feast" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Feast</a> | <a href="https://rezzz.com/how-to-start-freelancing-successfully/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">How to Start Freelancing Successfully</a></p><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/086/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">086: Spot Bad Clients &amp; Position Yourself To Be Respected with Jason Resnick</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

086: Spot Bad Clients & Position Yourself To Be Respected with Jason Resnick

Streamline and grow your business, ditch the code, and get back to design

This podcast is full of great tips and extremely actionable. Love it!

Kory and Krista are great!

I’m a new designer and love all of the helpful tips! I wish there were more frequent episodes!

Great Info

Get Back To Design: Design Business | Designer | Creative Business

Not being able to offer website design as a part of your business can feel like it’s holding you back. You can take on clients for amazing branding projects, but once it comes time for their website to be created, you have to refer them away. Krista here! We don’t think your coding skills (or lack of desire to code in the first place) should dictate what kinds of design services you can offer your clients, so today we’re going over 3 ways you can offer website design when you don’t know how to code.   Subscribe on iTunes Option 1: Learn to code Your first option is to learn to code. I went to school for 5 years to learn all about coding and software engineering and we’re definitely not saying you should do that. However, there are a lot of great resources out there like CodeAcademy and Treehouse where you can get an amazing start on your coding skills for little or no cost. If you decide to learn to code yourself, start out with HTML and CSS. After you have those mastered, add in PHP. And if you still want more, move on to JavaScript and jQuery to really set yourself apart from the rest Advantages  You can offer custom website designs to your clients You have full control over your projects You don’t have to be limited by the available Squarespace and WordPress templates It’s just you and your client that you have to worry about managing Not many web designers also offer custom coding  Disadvantages  It’s a big learning curve and will take you several months (at the least) to master Coding can be frustrating, no matter how good you get at it Offering development services yourself will take time away from what you could otherwise spend on branding and design  Option 2: Create your offerings to not require coding With all the technology and the different platforms available today, there are a lot of ways you can offer websites to your clients without having to code. A few ways we talked about doing this in the episode include using Squarespace templates, buying WordPress themes, or using page-builders like Divi or Beaver Builder (affiliate). You’ll definitely want to tune in and listen to Kory talk about how we’ll automatically shed a tear each time someone new starts using Divi. Advantages  You can offer websites to your clients You have control over your projects and don’t have to manage anyone extra  Disadvantages  Still can’t offer custom website designs and what you can do is limited Not all clients are a good fit for Squarespace or the pre-made WordPress templates out there Page-builders, like Divi, will leave shortcodes all over if your client decides to switch themes later on  Option 3: Work with a developer Last, and my personal favorite, you can team up with a developer to offer fully custom websites and ongoing support to your clients. With this, you have full control over you design and pass your Illustrator or Photoshop files off to a developer once you’re done. They’d then take care of brining your design to life in the form of a custom website. Advantages  You can focus all your time and energy on design and don’t have to worry about coding and tech You have time to get a good start on a new branding or web design project, if not fully finish one, while your developer is working on coding a custom website You have full control over your designs and don’t have to limit your creativity You can be confident that the website is coded correctly Collaborations between designers and developers are a blast  Disadvantages  You’ll likely have to raise your prices by hundreds or even thousands of dollars (Kory mentioned that her prices doubled once she started including my development in her packages)  It can be intimidating to pass your files over to a developer  Which option should you start with? We both agreed that if you’re just getting started with website design, that your best option is to start by taking existing themes and templates and tweaking them for your clients. This will help you get used to the overall process and become familiar with the standards you’ll see with most websites. However, we also agreed that if you’ve offered some sort of website design in the past and design is your favorite part of the project, that working with developer is likely the best option for you. To learn more about working with a developer, check out my free email series on getting started! Action Steps  If you’re not currently offering website design, take some time to think about whether that’s the direction you want your business to take. Do you want that additional offering or are you happy with what you current do for your clients? If website design is something you want to offer, review the three options we talked about today and take action on the one that will be the best for you and your clients.  Tweet That[clickToTweet tweet=”‘While I was working on mockups, I had to be aware of whether I knew how to code that’  – Kory” quote=”‘While I was working on mockups, I had to be aware of whether I knew how to code that’ – Kory”][clickToTweet tweet=”‘When you have web design in your back pocket, you don’t have to feel restricted’ – Krista” quote=”‘When you have web design in your back pocket, you don’t have to feel restricted’ – Krista”]The post 003: 3 Ways To Offer Website Design When You Don’t Know How To Code appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>Not being able to offer website design as a part of your business can feel like it’s holding you back. You can take on clients for amazing branding projects, but once it comes time for their website to be created, you have to refer them away.</p> <p>Krista here! We don’t think your coding skills (or lack of desire to code in the first place) should dictate what kinds of design services you can offer your clients, so today we’re going over 3 ways you can offer website design when you don’t know how to code.</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Option 1: Learn to code</h2> <p>Your first option is to learn to code. I went to school for 5 years to learn all about coding and software engineering and we’re definitely not saying you should do that. However, there are a lot of great resources out there like <a href="https://www.codecademy.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CodeAcademy</a> and <a href="https://teamtreehouse.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Treehouse</a> where you can get an amazing start on your coding skills for little or no cost.</p> <p>If you decide to learn to code yourself, start out with HTML and CSS. After you have those mastered, add in PHP. And if you still want more, move on to JavaScript and jQuery to really set yourself apart from the rest</p> <h3>Advantages</h3> <ul> <li>You can offer custom website designs to your clients</li> <li>You have full control over your projects</li> <li>You don’t have to be limited by the available Squarespace and WordPress templates</li> <li>It’s just you and your client that you have to worry about managing</li> <li>Not many web designers also offer custom coding</li> </ul> <h3>Disadvantages</h3> <ul> <li>It’s a big learning curve and will take you several months (at the least) to master</li> <li>Coding can be frustrating, no matter how good you get at it</li> <li>Offering development services yourself will take time away from what you could otherwise spend on branding and design</li> </ul> <h2>Option 2: Create your offerings to not require coding</h2> <p>With all the technology and the different platforms available today, there are a lot of ways you can offer websites to your clients without having to code.</p> <p>A few ways we talked about doing this in the episode include using Squarespace templates, buying WordPress themes, or using page-builders like <a href="http://www.elegantthemes.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=37122&amp;url=32682" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Divi</a> or <a href="https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/?fla=1078" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Beaver Builder</a> (affiliate). You’ll definitely want to tune in and listen to Kory talk about how we’ll automatically shed a tear each time someone new starts using Divi.</p> <h3>Advantages</h3> <ul> <li>You can offer websites to your clients</li> <li>You have control over your projects and don’t have to manage anyone extra</li> </ul> <h3>Disadvantages</h3> <ul> <li>Still can’t offer custom website designs and what you can do is limited</li> <li>Not all clients are a good fit for Squarespace or the pre-made WordPress templates out there</li> <li>Page-builders, like Divi, will leave shortcodes all over if your client decides to switch themes later on</li> </ul> <h2>Option 3: Work with a developer</h2> <p>Last, and my personal favorite, you can team up with a developer to offer fully custom websites and ongoing support to your clients. With this, you have full control over you design and pass your Illustrator or Photoshop files off to a developer once you’re done. They’d then take care of brining your design to life in the form of a custom website.</p> <h3>Advantages</h3> <ul> <li>You can focus all your time and energy on design and don’t have to worry about coding and tech</li> <li>You have time to get a good start on a new branding or web design project, if not fully finish one, while your developer is working on coding a custom website</li> <li>You have full control over your designs and don’t have to limit your creativity</li> <li>You can be confident that the website is coded correctly</li> <li>Collaborations between designers and developers are a blast</li> </ul> <h3>Disadvantages</h3> <ul> <li>You’ll likely have to raise your prices by hundreds or even thousands of dollars (Kory mentioned that her prices doubled once she started including my development in her packages)</li> <li> It can be intimidating to pass your files over to a developer</li> </ul> <h2>Which option should you start with?</h2> <p>We both agreed that if you’re just getting started with website design, that your best option is to start by taking existing themes and templates and tweaking them for your clients. This will help you get used to the overall process and become familiar with the standards you’ll see with most websites.</p> <p>However, we also agreed that if you’ve offered some sort of website design in the past and design is your favorite part of the project, that working with developer is likely the best option for you. To learn more about working with a developer, <a href="https://kristarae.co/get-back-to-design" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">check out my free email</a> series on getting started!</p> <h2>Action Steps</h2> <ol> <li>If you’re not currently offering website design, take some time to think about whether that’s the direction you want your business to take. Do you want that additional offering or are you happy with what you current do for your clients?</li> <li>If website design is something you want to offer, review the three options we talked about today and take action on the one that will be the best for you and your clients.</li> </ol> <h3>Tweet That</h3>[clickToTweet tweet=”‘While I was working on mockups, I had to be aware of whether I knew how to code that’  – Kory” quote=”‘While I was working on mockups, I had to be aware of whether I knew how to code that’ – Kory”]<br>[clickToTweet tweet=”‘When you have web design in your back pocket, you don’t have to feel restricted’ – Krista” quote=”‘When you have web design in your back pocket, you don’t have to feel restricted’ – Krista”]<br><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/003/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">003: 3 Ways To Offer Website Design When You Don’t Know How To Code</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

003: 3 Ways To Offer Website Design When You Don’t Know How To Code

Kelsey Baldwin

In episode 54 we talked about why it’s important and briefly touched on a few ways that you can niche your design business. The key takeaway from that episode is that with the ever growing list of designers available for our clients online, having a niche for your services makes you stand out tenfold to potential clients. We know that it can be overwhelming to actually work through the process of niching your design business, though. So today, we’re chatting with Kelsey Baldwin of Paper and Oats all about how she niched her business.We also talk briefly about how to avoid burnout with your business, in general, as we know all too well just how easy it is to find yourself just not feeling it anymore.Subscribe on iTunesKelsey’s JourneyShe started out going to school for design and actually dove into freelancing while in college. Kelsey says she got her first freelancing jobs as free work that she found on Craigslist, which were a great way for her to learn how to work with clients and work with different design programs. After graduating, Kelsey went on to work at a design agency for 5 years, where she got to work on a variety of projects and learned a ton of different things. While she was working there, she was freelancing with clients on the side and also had an Etsy shop. With some big changes happening in her personal life, ultimately after those 5 years at the agency she started transitioning into running her own design business and went full-time when her daughter was 6 months old. Around that time she started hearing about niching down and realized that doing all types of design projects were starting to lead to burnout. In 2015 Kelsey started doing more projects for digital products, including courses, and she ended up realizing that at the time no one else really offered those services. After having that lightbulb moment, she put together different packages specifically for people building courses and products. That lead to her getting a lot more steady work afterwards. Later, after working on digital product design for a while, she realized that she was starting to burnout again and ultimately decided to transition out of freelance work and into teaching through her courses. What made you narrow your offerings when you were still taking client work?The first client Kelsey worked with on a digital product design was her brother, which was a great way to learn a lot about the process and the differences in design for those types of projects. Once she finished the design for that first course, she realized she really enjoyed it. She also was realizing that designing someone’s brand for their business felt like a lot of pressure, and she was feeling burnt out trying to make sure her clients were happy.These things led her to narrow in on what she was offering her clients and niche her services.What were some of the benefits after niching your design business?The biggest two benefits Kelsey experienced after niching her services were that it was a lot less pressure on herself to do design for digital products and that she had a lot more creative freedom in the projects she was working on.In addition to that, once she established herself as a designer for just that one thing, she became the go to person for digital product design. What Kelsey recommends to designers wanting to niche their design businessThe first thing would be to look at the work you’ve already done and clients you’ve already worked with. Ask yourself if there were any specific parts of that that you were particularly fired up about. You can maybe think about how to turn that specific piece into what you niche down to and offer to clients. You can also think about your whole spectrum of different clients. Is there something in common with who you’ve worked with? Maybe a similar style, industry they were in, or type of project they hired you for. Those things can help give you hints at how you can niche your design business, as well.The key idea, though, is to look back at your whole portfolio of work and find patterns that you notice in your projects and clients that you really loved working with. That will be the biggest indicator of how you can niche your design business.If you’re a new designer who just needs to get clientsKelsey says it’s okay to take on any and every project you get. This is actually good to do because it helps you figure out what you like by doing a lot of different things. You might realize in doing this that you quickly find what you do or don’t like doing, and then you can niche your services and pursue what you like more after that.Kelsey’s experience with burnoutThere were a few times specifically that Kelsey felt burn out in her business. The first was when she was doing brand design for clients before she niched her services. Also, sometimes she even feels burnt out now when she’s working on smaller admin tasks that aren’t creative or don’t feel like they’re really helping move her business forward.How she overcomes those feelingsAs simple as it sounds, one way Kelsey overcomes those burnout feelings is by trying to identify the parts of her to do list that aren’t feeling good anymore. Then she thinks about how she can get rid of those things – either from her business or her to do list. How you can avoid burning outKelsey recommends building in time off into your schedule and rest time away from anything work related. Once that time comes up, make sure you actually take it and really unplug. That means don’t check your email in between episodes of your favorite show on Netflix. Learn more about KelseyKelsey Baldwin is an author, designer, and entrepreneur. She runs Paper + Oats, an online blog and resource for creative entrepreneurs looking to do business on their own terms. She helps fellow creatives organize, design, and market their digital products, so they can share what they know, and look good doing it. As a single mother, she is also an advocate for women learning to sustain themselves and gain independence through online business.Free InDesign Workshop | Getting Started with InDesign | WebsiteThe post 074: How to Niche Your Design Business and Avoid Burnout With Kelsey Baldwin appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>In <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/054/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">episode 54</a> we talked about why it’s important and briefly touched on a few ways that you can niche your design business. The key takeaway from that episode is that with the ever growing list of designers available for our clients online, having a niche for your services makes you stand out tenfold to potential clients. </p><p>We know that it can be overwhelming to actually work through the process of niching your design business, though. So today, we’re chatting with Kelsey Baldwin of Paper and Oats all about how she niched her business.</p><p>We also talk briefly about how to avoid burnout with your business, in general, as we know all too well just how easy it is to find yourself just not feeling it anymore.</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Kelsey’s Journey</h2><p>She started out going to school for design and actually dove into freelancing while in college. Kelsey says she got her first freelancing jobs as free work that she found on Craigslist, which were a great way for her to learn how to work with clients and work with different design programs. </p><p>After graduating, Kelsey went on to work at a design agency for 5 years, where she got to work on a variety of projects and learned a ton of different things. While she was working there, she was freelancing with clients on the side and also had an Etsy shop. </p><p>With some big changes happening in her personal life, ultimately after those 5 years at the agency she started transitioning into running her own design business and went full-time when her daughter was 6 months old. Around that time she started hearing about niching down and realized that doing all types of design projects were starting to lead to burnout. </p><p>In 2015 Kelsey started doing more projects for digital products, including courses, and she ended up realizing that at the time no one else really offered those services. After having that lightbulb moment, she put together different packages specifically for people building courses and products. That lead to her getting a lot more steady work afterwards. </p><p>Later, after working on digital product design for a while, she realized that she was starting to burnout again and ultimately decided to transition out of freelance work and into teaching through her courses. </p><h2>What made you narrow your offerings when you were still taking client work?</h2><p>The first client Kelsey worked with on a digital product design was her brother, which was a great way to learn a lot about the process and the differences in design for those types of projects. Once she finished the design for that first course, she realized she really enjoyed it. </p><p>She also was realizing that designing someone’s brand for their business felt like a lot of pressure, and she was feeling burnt out trying to make sure her clients were happy.</p><p>These things led her to narrow in on what she was offering her clients and niche her services.</p><h2>What were some of the benefits after niching your design business?</h2><p>The biggest two benefits Kelsey experienced after niching her services were that it was a lot less pressure on herself to do design for digital products and that she had a lot more creative freedom in the projects she was working on.</p><p>In addition to that, once she established herself as a designer for just that one thing, she became the go to person for digital product design. </p><h2>What Kelsey recommends to designers wanting to niche their design business</h2><p>The first thing would be to look at the work you’ve already done and clients you’ve already worked with. Ask yourself if there were any specific parts of that that you were particularly fired up about. You can maybe think about how to turn that specific piece into what you niche down to and offer to clients. </p><p>You can also think about your whole spectrum of different clients. Is there something in common with who you’ve worked with? Maybe a similar style, industry they were in, or type of project they hired you for. Those things can help give you hints at how you can niche your design business, as well.</p><p>The key idea, though, is to look back at your whole portfolio of work and find patterns that you notice in your projects and clients that you really loved working with. That will be the biggest indicator of how you can niche your design business.</p><h2>If you’re a new designer who just needs to get clients</h2><p>Kelsey says it’s okay to take on any and every project you get. This is actually good to do because it helps you figure out what you like by doing a lot of different things. You might realize in doing this that you quickly find what you do or don’t like doing, and then you can niche your services and pursue what you like more after that.</p><h2>Kelsey’s experience with burnout</h2><p>There were a few times specifically that Kelsey felt burn out in her business. The first was when she was doing brand design for clients before she niched her services. Also, sometimes she even feels burnt out now when she’s working on smaller admin tasks that aren’t creative or don’t feel like they’re really helping move her business forward.</p><h2>How she overcomes those feelings</h2><p>As simple as it sounds, one way Kelsey overcomes those burnout feelings is by trying to identify the parts of her to do list that aren’t feeling good anymore. Then she thinks about how she can get rid of those things – either from her business or her to do list. </p><h2>How you can avoid burning out</h2><p>Kelsey recommends building in time off into your schedule and rest time away from anything work related. Once that time comes up, make sure you actually take it and <em>really</em> unplug. That means don’t check your email in between episodes of your favorite show on Netflix. </p><h3>Learn more about Kelsey</h3><p>Kelsey Baldwin is an author, designer, and entrepreneur. She runs Paper + Oats, an online blog and resource for creative entrepreneurs looking to do business on their own terms. She helps fellow creatives organize, design, and market their digital products, so they can share what they know, and look good doing it. As a single mother, she is also an advocate for women learning to sustain themselves and gain independence through online business.</p><p><a href="https://www.theindesignfieldguide.com/webinar" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Free InDesign Workshop</a> | <a href="https://www.theindesignfieldguide.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Getting Started with InDesign</a> | <a href="https://paperandoats.com" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a></p><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/074/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">074: How to Niche Your Design Business and Avoid Burnout With Kelsey Baldwin</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

074: How to Niche Your Design Business and Avoid Burnout With Kelsey Baldwin

There’s a lot that goes into designing a website, especially if you’re trying to put some real thought and strategy into it. It can be really overwhelming if you find yourself trying to think of everything as a whole. To help with that, today we’ll break down one specific piece and talk about designing a strategic homepage. The homepage is one of the most important areas on a website and has a huge part to play in first impressions for your client. In this episode we’ll chat about where home pages go wrong, the goals of a homepage, and how to put all the pieces together.   Subscribe on iTunes Where home pages go wrong There are two big mistakes when it comes to designing home pages. First is using it just to show blog posts. Doing this is a waste of prime space on a website unless your client is really just a blogger, rather than a business owner. Not every single post someone writes is what they want to dictate someone else’s first impression of them. The second mistake is just throwing a homepage together based on what you see other people doing. Even people who are doing great make a lot of mistakes on their website. Instead of throwing something together, have a purpose behind every single item you add and make sure a few specific goals are met. Goals of a homepage There’s a lot that has to happen on a homepage, but it’s important to treat it as an area that will pull people into a website and get them started in the right direction. The goals of a homepage include:  Establish the “who” – Who is your client? Can they be trusted? Establish the “what” – What does your client do and who do they do it for? Establish the “where” – Where should they start? Encourage action – What is the very first and most important action someone should take?  These goals may sound like a lot for one page, but if you get creative it doesn’t have to be. Remember, these things don’t all have to be done through text. Use images, icons, calls-to-action, and the overall design layout. Let’s break each goal down into a little more detail: The who This piece quickly lets people know who your client is and whether they can be trusted. With this goal, be careful to avoid being too wordy. Your client has an About page for a reason, so you don’t need to include paragraphs of text here. Instead, include a headshot or image of your client working if there’s a personal element to your client’s business. This is great for building an immediate connection. You can also include a sentence or two about who they are and what they’re around to accomplish to help build that connection and filter out people who are in the wrong place. The what This piece is meant to get across who your client helps and what they do for them. This is somewhere you want to be sure to make it nice and clear. People shouldn’t have to go to the About page or Services page to get a general idea of what your client offers. Include things like imagery, calls-to-action for certain products and services, and a quick tagline or sentence explaining the goals they help their client or customers achieve. The where The “where” is meant to help people know where to start if they’re on the website for the first time. With this, it’s important to avoid asking for too much too soon. This isn’t the place to ask someone to book a consult call or view your client’s services. It can sometimes even be too soon to ask them to join an email list. Look at this as more of a fallback call-to-action – something with a super low commitment. Options like viewing the Blog or About page can help build authority and trust, which will help prepare them for the next steps. Encourage action This last one is similar to the “where”, but it’s more for the people who have been around a time or two and have that initial trust built. Think of it as the #1 action your client wants their visitors to take. Usually this will be something like opting in to an email list, joining a community, attending a free event, or hopping on a consult call. Put it all together Now that you have all the pieces, it’s time to put them together in a way that makes sense. Think of it as a journey and consider what order people should travel in. Do people need to know what your client does first? Or does some trust need to be built right away? Does it make the most sense for that higher-level call-to-action to appear right in the header for people who are ready for it or down towards the footer? It’s almost always good to have that low-commitment option we talked about as the last item to catch anyone who hasn’t found something to click on yet, but other than that, the order is up to you. And remember, anything is better than just displaying blog posts, so don’t be too hard on yourself  Action Steps  Grab a notebook and write down “who”, “what”, “where”, and “action” spread throughout the page Next to each item, write down what applies to you for your own website Go to your homepage and see if those 4 items are being supported If they’re not, get some changes made and apply the same process to your next client project  Resources Tweet That[clickToTweet tweet=”Know why you put things on the homepage, rather than looking at what others are doing – Kory” quote=”Know why you put things on the homepage, rather than looking at what others are doing – Kory”][clickToTweet tweet=”The homepage has a huge part to play in first impressions for your client – Krista” quote=”The homepage has a huge part to play in first impressions for your client – Krista”]The post 038: Designing An Effective Homepage appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>There’s a lot that goes into designing a website, especially if you’re trying to put some real thought and strategy into it. It can be really overwhelming if you find yourself trying to think of everything as a whole.</p> <p>To help with that, today we’ll break down one specific piece and talk about designing a strategic homepage. The homepage is one of the most important areas on a website and has a huge part to play in first impressions for your client. In this episode we’ll chat about where home pages go wrong, the goals of a homepage, and how to put all the pieces together.</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Where home pages go wrong</h2> <p>There are two big mistakes when it comes to designing home pages.</p> <p>First is using it just to show blog posts. Doing this is a waste of prime space on a website unless your client is really just a blogger, rather than a business owner. Not every single post someone writes is what they want to dictate someone else’s first impression of them.</p> <p>The second mistake is just throwing a homepage together based on what you see other people doing. Even people who are doing great make a lot of mistakes on their website. Instead of throwing something together, have a purpose behind every single item you add and make sure a few specific goals are met.</p> <h2>Goals of a homepage</h2> <p>There’s a lot that has to happen on a homepage, but it’s important to treat it as an area that will pull people into a website and get them started in the right direction.</p> <p>The goals of a homepage include:</p> <ul> <li>Establish the “who” – Who is your client? Can they be trusted?</li> <li>Establish the “what” – What does your client do and who do they do it for?</li> <li>Establish the “where” – Where should they start?</li> <li>Encourage action – What is the very first and most important action someone should take?</li> </ul> <p>These goals may sound like a lot for one page, but if you get creative it doesn’t have to be. Remember, these things don’t all have to be done through text. Use images, icons, calls-to-action, and the overall design layout.</p> <p>Let’s break each goal down into a little more detail:</p> <h3>The who</h3> <p>This piece quickly lets people know who your client is and whether they can be trusted.</p> <p>With this goal, be careful to avoid being too wordy. Your client has an About page for a reason, so you don’t need to include paragraphs of text here.</p> <p>Instead, include a headshot or image of your client working if there’s a personal element to your client’s business. This is great for building an immediate connection.</p> <p>You can also include a sentence or two about who they are and what they’re around to accomplish to help build that connection and filter out people who are in the wrong place.</p> <h3>The what</h3> <p>This piece is meant to get across who your client helps and what they do for them.</p> <p>This is somewhere you want to be sure to make it nice and clear. People shouldn’t have to go to the About page or Services page to get a general idea of what your client offers.</p> <p>Include things like imagery, calls-to-action for certain products and services, and a quick tagline or sentence explaining the goals they help their client or customers achieve.</p> <h3>The where</h3> <p>The “where” is meant to help people know where to start if they’re on the website for the first time.</p> <p>With this, it’s important to avoid asking for too much too soon. This isn’t the place to ask someone to book a consult call or view your client’s services. It can sometimes even be too soon to ask them to join an email list.</p> <p>Look at this as more of a fallback call-to-action – something with a super low commitment. Options like viewing the Blog or About page can help build authority and trust, which will help prepare them for the next steps.</p> <h3>Encourage action</h3> <p>This last one is similar to the “where”, but it’s more for the people who have been around a time or two and have that initial trust built. Think of it as the #1 action your client wants their visitors to take.</p> <p>Usually this will be something like opting in to an email list, joining a community, attending a free event, or hopping on a consult call.</p> <h2>Put it all together</h2> <p>Now that you have all the pieces, it’s time to put them together in a way that makes sense. Think of it as a journey and consider what order people should travel in.</p> <p>Do people need to know what your client does first? Or does some trust need to be built right away?</p> <p>Does it make the most sense for that higher-level call-to-action to appear right in the header for people who are ready for it or down towards the footer?</p> <p>It’s almost always good to have that low-commitment option we talked about as the last item to catch anyone who hasn’t found something to click on yet, but other than that, the order is up to you.</p> <p>And remember, anything is better than just displaying blog posts, so don’t be too hard on yourself </p> <h2>Action Steps</h2> <ol> <li>Grab a notebook and write down “who”, “what”, “where”, and “action” spread throughout the page</li> <li>Next to each item, write down what applies to you for your own website</li> <li>Go to your homepage and see if those 4 items are being supported</li> <li>If they’re not, get some changes made and apply the same process to your next client project</li> </ol> <h3>Resources</h3> <h3>Tweet That</h3>[clickToTweet tweet=”Know why you put things on the homepage, rather than looking at what others are doing – Kory” quote=”Know why you put things on the homepage, rather than looking at what others are doing – Kory”]<br>[clickToTweet tweet=”The homepage has a huge part to play in first impressions for your client – Krista” quote=”The homepage has a huge part to play in first impressions for your client – Krista”]<br><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/038/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">038: Designing An Effective Homepage</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

038: Designing An Effective Homepage

One thing we hear a lot from other designers is that once you get to a certain point in your business it’s hard to keep growing without trading more time for dollars. Enter passive income. This is easy for most business owners because logically the next step is to start teaching things through courses. However, most of us don’t want to create courses anymore. On the other end of the spectrum, a lot of people get hung up thinking that as a designer, the only option they have is to create website themes. If you’ve been wanting to introduce passive income to your design business, we have good news. There are tons of ways to create that stream of income, and today we’re going to chat all about it.   Subscribe on iTunes Decide on your target market The first and more important place to start when you’re thinking about passive income is who you’re going to create your products for. I highly recommend starting with your current target market with your design services. This way you avoid having to come up with a completely new set of people to work with, but you’ll also avoid “splitting” your business, which makes it much harder to keep your website and marketing efforts organized. If you don’t mind splitting things, think about a complementary market to your design services. Kory here! This is what I currently do through my products for designers. However, you don’t have to create products for designers. In fact, you probably shouldn’t so we aren’t each others’ competition in more than one arena  Start brainstorming ideas By far the hardest step is to figure out what you want to create. I mentioned this before, but the default is ecourses, and not everyone is into doing that. Instead, there are two ways you can think about helping your design clients: before and after a project with them. Before the project When you’re thinking about helping your client before they book custom work with you, think about what they’re struggling with before they inquire. For example, if they don’t quite have the budget to work with you yet, maybe you have a cheaper option to help them get the design work they need. A great example of that would be pre-made themes and logos. If you’re thinking you might want to do this, you can check out some of our favorite shops: obviously ours at Coded Creative, our friend Fran at 259 West, and Lindsay Humes! However, if you’re not interested in creating themes, you can also offer books or workbooks to help them nail down their branding before they hire you. I think this is a really unique idea for passive income, and it can help you make sure the clients you book are 100% ready for the project. My favorite example of this is the Brand Planner by Hello Function. After the project Aside from themes, creating products that clients can use once their project is over is another popular passive income plan. Why? Well, because most clients need help keeping their brand consistent after launching. Templates are a great way to do this, and you don’t necessarily have to give them ones that you create specifically for their brand. Instead, create and sell customizable graphics and maybe give your clients a discount to your shop so they can get what they need. Our favorite examples of this are the shops by January Made and Basil and Bark! Creating for a complementary market So, maybe you’re like me and find yourself wanting to help your fellow business owners. I know a lot of other designers that do this, and while it can be challenging, it all comes back to who you want to help. For me, I knew I wanted to help my fellow designers, which is why I created products for them. On the other hand, maybe you want to help other business owners in general. Although she doesn’t actively promote them, our favorite example of this is the Brand Mockups that Jamie at Spruce Rd sells for designers and other business owners to show off their branding on print products. It’s also important here to consider what exactly you want to create. If you want to design and just have fun, there are still things that you can sell to make a little extra income off of your creativity. A lot of designers we know have shops over at Society6, and one of my favorites is the Union Shore shop. I have bought several products from her shop over the years. Other great examples, though, are Mel Volkman and Eva Black who sell hand lettered fonts. Creating for a totally different market There’s nothing saying that you can’t create products for a totally different market than the one you do design work for, though. In fact, we have a few good friends that do this! Kelsey at Paper and Oats has built an incredible business partially on selling printable planners on Etsy.  Important things to consider When you’re getting ready to start selling products there are a few really important things to think about and the first is where you’re going to sell them. We recommend doing it on your site because other platforms like Creative Market and Society6 take a pretty big portion of your revenue, but the benefit of also being on those sites is that you’re getting your work in front of a large market who might not have seem it. It’s also important to consider how you’re going to market your products as well as your design services. Krista and I both know that it takes a lot of strategy to promote services and products because it splits your time, your content focus, and it can even take away from your services. So make sure you’re being intentional about your marketing plan. Action Steps:  If you want to add passive income to your business, set aside some time in the next week to start brainstorming on who you want to help with your products and what you want to create Take a look at some of the great examples we mentioned in this episode to get an idea of how they make passive income work while offering design services  The post 066: Introducing Passive Income to Your Design Business appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>One thing we hear a lot from other designers is that once you get to a certain point in your business it’s hard to keep growing without trading more time for dollars. Enter passive income. This is easy for most business owners because logically the next step is to start teaching things through courses. However, most of us don’t want to create courses anymore. On the other end of the spectrum, a lot of people get hung up thinking that as a designer, the only option they have is to create website themes.</p> <p>If you’ve been wanting to introduce passive income to your design business, we have good news. There are <em>tons</em> of ways to create that stream of income, and today we’re going to chat all about it.</p> <p><br/> </p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Decide on your target market</h2> <p>The first and more important place to start when you’re thinking about passive income is who you’re going to create your products for. I highly recommend starting with your current target market with your design services. This way you avoid having to come up with a completely new set of people to work with, but you’ll also avoid “splitting” your business, which makes it much harder to keep your website and marketing efforts organized.</p> <p>If you don’t mind splitting things, think about a complementary market to your design services. Kory here! This is what I currently do through my products for designers. However, you don’t have to create products for designers. In fact, you probably shouldn’t so we aren’t each others’ competition in more than one arena </p> <h2>Start brainstorming ideas</h2> <p>By far the hardest step is to figure out <em>what</em> you want to create. I mentioned this before, but the default is ecourses, and not everyone is into doing that. Instead, there are two ways you can think about helping your design clients: before and after a project with them.</p> <h3>Before the project</h3> <p>When you’re thinking about helping your client before they book custom work with you, think about what they’re struggling with before they inquire. For example, if they don’t quite have the budget to work with you yet, maybe you have a cheaper option to help them get the design work they need. A great example of that would be pre-made themes and logos. If you’re thinking you might want to do this, you can check out some of our favorite shops: obviously ours at <a href="https://codedcreative.co/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Coded Creative</a>, our friend <a href="https://www.259west.com/shop/themes/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Fran at 259 West</a>, and <a href="https://www.lindsayhumes.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Lindsay Humes</a>!</p> <p>However, if you’re not interested in creating themes, you can also offer books or workbooks to help them nail down their branding before they hire you. I think this is a really unique idea for passive income, and it can help you make sure the clients you book are 100% ready for the project. My favorite example of this is <a href="http://www.hellofunction.com/the-shop/the-brand-planner" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">the Brand Planner by Hello Function</a>.</p> <h3>After the project</h3> <p>Aside from themes, creating products that clients can use once their project is over is another popular passive income plan. Why? Well, because most clients need help keeping their brand consistent after launching. Templates are a great way to do this, and you don’t necessarily have to give them ones that you create specifically for their brand. Instead, create and sell customizable graphics and maybe give your clients a discount to your shop so they can get what they need. Our favorite examples of this are the shops by <a href="https://creativemarket.com/JanuaryMadeDesign" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">January Made</a> and <a href="https://creativemarket.com/basilandbark" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Basil and Bark</a>!</p> <h2>Creating for a complementary market</h2> <p>So, maybe you’re like me and find yourself wanting to help your fellow business owners. I know a lot of other designers that do this, and while it can be challenging, it all comes back to <em>who</em> you want to help. For me, I knew I wanted to help my fellow designers, which is why I created products for them. On the other hand, maybe you want to help other business owners in general. Although she doesn’t actively promote them, our favorite example of this is <a href="http://www.sprucerd.com/brand-mockups-print/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">the Brand Mockups that Jamie at Spruce Rd</a> sells for designers and other business owners to show off their branding on print products.</p> <p>It’s also important here to consider <em>what</em> exactly you want to create. If you want to design and just have fun, there are still things that you can sell to make a little extra income off of your creativity. A lot of designers we know have shops over at Society6, and one of my favorites is <a href="https://society6.com/creativeindex" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">the Union Shore shop</a>. I have bought several products from her shop over the years. Other great examples, though, are <a href="https://www.shopmelvolkman.com/collections/fonts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Mel Volkman</a> and <a href="http://shop.evablackdesign.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Eva Black</a> who sell hand lettered fonts.</p> <h2>Creating for a totally different market</h2> <p>There’s nothing saying that you can’t create products for a totally different market than the one you do design work for, though. In fact, we have a few good friends that do this! <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/paperandoats" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Kelsey at Paper and Oats</a> has built an incredible business partially on selling printable planners on Etsy. </p> <h2>Important things to consider</h2> <p>When you’re getting ready to start selling products there are a few really important things to think about and the first is where you’re going to sell them. We recommend doing it on your site because other platforms like Creative Market and Society6 take a pretty big portion of your revenue, but the benefit of also being on those sites is that you’re getting your work in front of a large market who might not have seem it.</p> <p>It’s also important to consider how you’re going to market your products as well as your design services. Krista and I both know that it takes a lot of strategy to promote services and products because it splits your time, your content focus, and it can even take away from your services. So make sure you’re being intentional about your marketing plan.</p> <h2>Action Steps:</h2> <ul> <li>If you want to add passive income to your business, set aside some time in the next week to start brainstorming on who you want to help with your products and what you want to create</li> <li>Take a look at some of the great examples we mentioned in this episode to get an idea of how they make passive income work while offering design services</li> </ul> <p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/066-2/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">066: Introducing Passive Income to Your Design Business</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

066: Introducing Passive Income to Your Design Business

One thing we know all business owners, especially designers, struggle with at one point or another in their business is how to make sure they’re attracting the right clients. It’s something we all obviously want to be doing, but sometimes it’s a whole lot easier said than done. Kory here! I see and hear people say they get a lot of inquiries, but it’s for people who won’t pay their prices or it’s for projects that they really don’t want to do. In fact, we also often see people asking how to get more ideal clients or how to get their current potential clients to be willing to pay more. At the end of the day, it really all boils down to making sure that you’re not only targeting but actually attracting the right clients to your business. So, in today’s episode we’re sharing a few tips on how to make sure you’re doing exactly that.   Subscribe on iTunes Know who you’re targeting It may seem sort of counter productive to have a specific niche that you target with your design services, but it’s really important for your business that you have one. If you just focus on targeting anyone, you’re likely going to get more inquiries for projects, but those inquiries might be for projects that you just don’t want or don’t enjoy doing. If you’ve been doing this, don’t fret! Krista and I were both there and doing the same thing when we just got started, and we think it’s beneficial for everyone to dip their toes in all sorts of projects before committing to one niche. If you’re not sure who to target If you’ve been working with all sorts of clients on all sorts of projects, then you’ll want to take a look at what you’ve done recently that you’ve enjoyed the most. Chances are you’ll notice that the projects you’ve been enjoying are all similar projects, and this will give you a great idea of who you want your target market to be. For example, if you’ve done a lot of blog designs for fashion bloggers or branding for local restaurants then you’ll want to target fashion bloggers and local restaurants. Something important to remember here: when you’re making a decision on who you want to target with your design services, whoever you pick doesn’t have to be a forever decision. You can certainly change your target audience in the future if you want to. However, picking your target market now will help you get on the right path sooner rather than later. Make sure your website reflects your target market Obviously once you’ve nailed down who exactly you’re target market is, you want to make some updates to your website to reflect that. This doesn’t mean that you have to go in and create a totally new design for your site, but there are a few key places you want to pay attention to. Your Copy It’s through the copy on your website where you’re getting that first impression across to people of who it is that you’re targeting. If you do not want to work with food bloggers or you don’t want to work with a certain kind of  people, then the opening line on your website should not mention anything about those people, right? So be clear on your Home page so people visiting your site know right away who you want to work with. However, don’t forget to talk about who your ideal client is on your About page, and explain who your services are for on your Services page. Your Portfolio A lot of times, especially new designers, we wind up putting all of our projects we’ve ever worked on in our portfolio no matter how old it is, no matter how much we hate it, no matter how much our design style has changed. When you’re just getting started, you sort of have to do this to just show off that you can design things. However, when potential clients look at your portfolio, they’ll see right away the type of work they’ll get from you. This is why it’s so important to frequently be auditing your portfolio. If you have projects in your portfolio that are really outdated because your style has changed or you didn’t like how they turned out as much, take those suckers off your website. There is no rule that you have to show every single project you’ve ever done. Use this space to curate your projects that are not only your best work and that you’re most confident in, but also that align to more of the type of work that you want to keep doing.  Your Content Last but not least, you can make sure you’re really attracting the right clients through your blog content. You don’t have to make every single blog post you publish be informative or educational, but 75-80% of it should be because it’s definitely going to help you appear more as an expert in your field and attract more of the right clients. A good example would be if you design invitations for weddings, then the kind of content that you’re putting on your website should be for women who are about to get engaged or who just got engaged and are planning their wedding so that you can get them in with that similar content. Once you have them on your website, you can include a link to your Services page and explain how you can help them with their new design needs. Network where your target market hangs out Once you know who you’re attracting and you know that your website and your social media everything aligns, you do want to make sure that you’re putting in the time to actually get your name out there. If you are not looking to work with other business owners, then being in Facebook groups or going to conferences with only other business owners attending or hanging out there – that means you are investing a lot of time to network with the wrong people. Instead, you want to focus on getting your name out there with the people who would actually hire you or at least be able to refer their clients to you. You can do this in a few ways. To start, obviously you can work on finding Facebook groups that your target market hangs out in. However, you can also search for online or in-person events that they would be attending. Regardless of where you’re networking, be sure to be helpful in general when you can instead of only trying to promote yourself. Action Items  Ask yourself who you really want to be working with. If you have an exercise that you walk your clients through to help determine their target market, try going through it yourself. Once you know who your target market is, make sure your website reflects that. Start hanging out and networking where your target market is  Tweet That [clickToTweet tweet=”‘I think it’s okay for everyone to start out broad then figure out who you really enjoy working with’ – Kory” quote=”I think it’s okay for everyone to start out broad then figure out who you really enjoy working with’ – Kory”] [clickToTweet tweet=”‘This can a gamechanger to get your name out here with people who target the same people that you do – Krista'” quote=”‘This can a gamechanger to get your name out here with people who target the same people that you do – Krista'”] The post 006: How to Target and Attract the Right Clients appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>One thing we know all business owners, especially designers, struggle with at one point or another in their business is how to make sure they’re attracting the right clients. It’s something we all obviously want to be doing, but sometimes it’s a whole lot easier said than done.</p> <p>Kory here! I see and hear people say they get a lot of inquiries, but it’s for people who won’t pay their prices or it’s for projects that they really don’t want to do. In fact, we also often see people asking how to get more ideal clients or how to get their current potential clients to be willing to pay more. At the end of the day, it really all boils down to making sure that you’re not only targeting but actually attracting the right clients to your business. So, in today’s episode we’re sharing a few tips on how to make sure you’re doing exactly that.<br/> </p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Know who you’re targeting</h2> <p>It may seem sort of counter productive to have a specific niche that you target with your design services, but it’s really important for your business that you have one. If you just focus on targeting anyone, you’re likely going to get more inquiries for projects, but those inquiries might be for projects that you just don’t want or don’t enjoy doing.</p> <p>If you’ve been doing this, don’t fret! Krista and I were both there and doing the same thing when we just got started, and we think it’s beneficial for everyone to dip their toes in all sorts of projects before committing to one niche.</p> <h3>If you’re not sure who to target</h3> <p>If you’ve been working with all sorts of clients on all sorts of projects, then you’ll want to take a look at what you’ve done recently that you’ve enjoyed the most. Chances are you’ll notice that the projects you’ve been enjoying are all similar projects, and this will give you a great idea of who you want your target market to be. For example, if you’ve done a lot of blog designs for fashion bloggers or branding for local restaurants then you’ll want to target fashion bloggers and local restaurants.</p> <p>Something important to remember here: when you’re making a decision on who you want to target with your design services, whoever you pick doesn’t have to be a forever decision. You can certainly change your target audience in the future if you want to. However, picking your target market now will help you get on the right path sooner rather than later.</p> <h2>Make sure your website reflects your target market</h2> <p>Obviously once you’ve nailed down who exactly you’re target market is, you want to make some updates to your website to reflect that. This doesn’t mean that you have to go in and create a totally new design for your site, but there are a few key places you want to pay attention to.</p> <h3>Your Copy</h3> <p>It’s through the copy on your website where you’re getting that first impression across to people of who it is that you’re targeting. If you do not want to work with food bloggers or you don’t want to work with a certain kind of  people, then the opening line on your website should not mention anything about those people, right?</p> <p>So be clear on your Home page so people visiting your site know right away who you want to work with. However, don’t forget to talk about who your ideal client is on your About page, and explain who your services are for on your Services page.</p> <h3>Your Portfolio</h3> <p>A lot of times, especially new designers, we wind up putting all of our projects we’ve ever worked on in our portfolio no matter how old it is, no matter how much we hate it, no matter how much our design style has changed. When you’re just getting started, you sort of have to do this to just show off that you can design things. However, when potential clients look at your portfolio, they’ll see right away the type of work they’ll get from you. This is why it’s so important to frequently be auditing your portfolio.</p> <p>If you have projects in your portfolio that are really outdated because your style has changed or you didn’t like how they turned out as much, take those suckers off your website. There is no rule that you have to show every single project you’ve ever done. Use this space to curate your projects that are not only your best work and that you’re most confident in, but also that align to more of the type of work that you want to keep doing.</p> <h3> Your Content</h3> <p>Last but not least, you can make sure you’re really attracting the right clients through your blog content. You don’t have to make every single blog post you publish be informative or educational, but 75-80% of it should be because it’s definitely going to help you appear more as an expert in your field and attract more of the right clients.</p> <p>A good example would be if you design invitations for weddings, then the kind of content that you’re putting on your website should be for women who are about to get engaged or who just got engaged and are planning their wedding so that you can get them in with that similar content. Once you have them on your website, you can include a link to your Services page and explain how you can help them with their new design needs.</p> <h2>Network where your target market hangs out</h2> <p>Once you know who you’re attracting and you know that your website and your social media everything aligns, you do want to make sure that you’re putting in the time to actually get your name out there. If you are not looking to work with other business owners, then being in Facebook groups or going to conferences with only other business owners attending or hanging out there – that means you are investing a lot of time to network with the wrong people.</p> <p>Instead, you want to focus on getting your name out there with the people who would actually hire you or at least be able to refer their clients to you. You can do this in a few ways. To start, obviously you can work on finding Facebook groups that your target market hangs out in. However, you can also search for online or in-person events that they would be attending. Regardless of where you’re networking, be sure to be helpful in general when you can instead of only trying to promote yourself.</p> <h2>Action Items</h2> <ol> <li>Ask yourself who you really want to be working with. If you have an exercise that you walk your clients through to help determine their target market, try going through it yourself.</li> <li>Once you know who your target market is, make sure your website reflects that.</li> <li>Start hanging out and networking where your target market is</li> </ol> <h3>Tweet That</h3> [clickToTweet tweet=”‘I think it’s okay for everyone to start out broad then figure out who you really enjoy working with’ – Kory” quote=”I think it’s okay for everyone to start out broad then figure out who you really enjoy working with’ – Kory”] [clickToTweet tweet=”‘This can a gamechanger to get your name out here with people who target the same people that you do – Krista'” quote=”‘This can a gamechanger to get your name out here with people who target the same people that you do – Krista'”] <p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/006/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">006: How to Target and Attract the Right Clients</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

006: How to Target and Attract the Right Clients

Have you ever presented your designs on a call or through a video recording for your clients? It can be a total game changer when it comes to getting less revisions, looking more like the expert you are, and the client enjoying the process even more.Last year we talked about presenting your work to clients in episode 052, but today we wanted to bring on a guest who can share her experience in doing exactly that and how it’s helped her business.So today we welcome Abbey from Wayfarer Design Studio onto the show to chat about presenting your designs!Subscribe on iTunesAbbey’s JourneyAbbey shared that it wasn’t her intention to start a business at all. Her husband got an overseas job offer while she was in college, so the day after Abbey graduated they got married and moved to Australia. She originally applied for design jobs there but was unlucky since they weren’t exactly locals. She ultimately decided to freelance, even though she was not excited about it.Now, three years later, she feels a lot more stable and good about being a business owner and her business in general.Why it’s important to present workAbbey says she started thinking about this early in her business because she had the same struggles that most designers have. Clients weren’t understanding her work; they cared more about the way things looked than the meaning behind it. Then when clients were giving her feedback it wasn’t helpful. Abbey says she’d blame the client saying they just don’t understand or don’t know how to give feedback, but at some point she realized she needed to change her process.She says that the way you present your work can really make or break the entire project because as the designer, it’s not just your responsibility to make your clients happy but to make sure they actually understand what you’re creating for them. So in order for designers to really set your projects up for success and create a smooth process for ourselves and for clients, it’s important to put a lot of focus on presenting your work and communicating it well. How to present your designsAbbey says that she loves presenting her designs using screen recordings. She actually heard about us mention them in episode 52, and thought it would be fun to try. She said after she sent the first one to a client, she immediately got a great response saying the client thought it was amazing and to do more of them. Being able to talk through everything with a client really goes one step further in being able to help them understand things more and let it sink in a bit deeper. Calls are another great way to do presentations, but Abbey says she thinks it puts pressure on the client to give feedback right away, and we don’t want them to do that. It’s better to set the expectation that they should take a few days before they give feedback.Deciding what to sayAbbey said her screen recorded presentations are generally about 10 minutes long and pretty in-depth. She said her goal is to make it feel like she’s having a conversation with them, so she’s explaining everything she wants her clients to know. She also offers a written explanation that’s short and to the point and covers things about the designs she’s presenting for her clients who need to reference that outside of the video. This is especially important for Abbey because if she catches herself using too much design jargon in the video the written statements are a little clearer and may make more sense to her clients. Abbey also mentions that she created a set of fill in the blank statements that she uses over and over again to save time and help make sure she’s hitting the right points in her presentations. Getting over the nervesAbbey says that it was scary to have to present your work in design classes at school, but it’s a whole other level when you have your own business. She finds herself second guessing her choices just like the rest of us. However, she starts to think about the different strategies that she put into her processes. Abbey puts a lot of focus on there being a deeper meaning behind what she’s creating and that the client understands it. Putting that extra work into her designs forced her to step up her game and made her feel so much more confident in her work, which in turn makes her more confident when she’s presenting it.Design work you don’t need to presentAbbey says that some things are self-explanatory, especially when you get further along in a project, so you don’t necessarily have to present everything formally to a client. Once she gets toward the end of the branding process or just making little tweaks to things, the small changes just don’t warrant that extra explanation. She also says for some collateral things she doesn’t do videos or long explanations. If she’s jus expanding on the deeper meaning that she’s already explained to them, Abbey doesn’t feel like she needs to go into it again necessarily. Sometimes there are clients who need the extra hand holding, and you may need to explain every little detail, but those are few and far between.Unexpected benefitThe biggest benefit Abbey says she’s seen since presenting designs to her clients is just how much happier they are. Her clients go out of their way to say that the added information is so helpful and how much they appreciated her putting in the extra work to make sure they understand the process. She says that from her clients’ perspective they feel like they’re not just getting a new brand or new website. They’re getting a mini education on design and how it works, how it can be done well, and how they can use it on their own. Abbey also mentions that she feels more confident and that her services are more valuable in her clients’ eyes. The other benefit is that it’s led to less refinements. ResourcesEpisode 52, where we talk about presenting designsThe Designer Essentials Toolkit Learn more about AbbeyAbbey is the lady behind Wayfarer, a traveling design studio. Her approach is simple – to stop creating things that are just pretty and start creating things with deeper meaning + heart. When working with clients, she aims to share her process in a way that they can understand + feel confident in. Abbey also has an online course + shop for designers called The Designer Essentials Kit. The course is made to guide designers through Abbey’s own process + teach them how to present their work strategically, confidently + communicate more clearly with their clients.Website | Instagram | Designer Essentials ToolkitThe post 084: Presenting Your Design Work to Clients with Wayfarer Design Studio appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>Have you ever presented your designs on a call or through a video recording for your clients? It can be a total game changer when it comes to getting less revisions, looking more like the expert you are, and the client enjoying the process even more.</p><p>Last year we talked about presenting your work to clients in episode 052, but today we wanted to bring on a guest who can share her experience in doing exactly that and how it’s helped her business.</p><p>So today we welcome Abbey from Wayfarer Design Studio onto the show to chat about presenting your designs!</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Abbey’s Journey</h2><p>Abbey shared that it wasn’t her intention to start a business at all. Her husband got an overseas job offer while she was in college, so the day after Abbey graduated they got married and moved to Australia. She originally applied for design jobs there but was unlucky since they weren’t exactly locals. She ultimately decided to freelance, even though she was not excited about it.</p><p>Now, three years later, she feels a lot more stable and good about being a business owner and her business in general.</p><h2>Why it’s important to present work</h2><p>Abbey says she started thinking about this early in her business because she had the same struggles that most designers have. Clients weren’t understanding her work; they cared more about the way things looked than the meaning behind it. Then when clients were giving her feedback it wasn’t helpful. Abbey says she’d blame the client saying they just don’t understand or don’t know how to give feedback, but at some point she realized she needed to change her process.</p><p>She says that the way you present your work can really make or break the entire project because as the designer, it’s not just your responsibility to make your clients happy but to make sure they actually understand what you’re creating for them. </p><p>So in order for designers to really set your projects up for success and create a smooth process for ourselves and for clients, it’s important to put a lot of focus on presenting your work and communicating it well. </p><h2>How to present your designs</h2><p>Abbey says that she loves presenting her designs using screen recordings. She actually heard about us mention them in episode 52, and thought it would be fun to try. She said after she sent the first one to a client, she immediately got a great response saying the client thought it was amazing and to do more of them. </p><p>Being able to talk through everything with a client really goes one step further in being able to help them understand things more and let it sink in a bit deeper. </p><p>Calls are another great way to do presentations, but Abbey says she thinks it puts pressure on the client to give feedback right away, and we don’t want them to do that. It’s better to set the expectation that they should take a few days before they give feedback.</p><h2>Deciding what to say</h2><p>Abbey said her screen recorded presentations are generally about 10 minutes long and pretty in-depth. She said her goal is to make it feel like she’s having a conversation with them, so she’s explaining everything she wants her clients to know. </p><p>She also offers a written explanation that’s short and to the point and covers things about the designs she’s presenting for her clients who need to reference that outside of the video. This is especially important for Abbey because if she catches herself using too much design jargon in the video the written statements are a little clearer and may make more sense to her clients. </p><p>Abbey also mentions that she created a set of fill in the blank statements that she uses over and over again to save time and help make sure she’s hitting the right points in her presentations. </p><h2>Getting over the nerves</h2><p>Abbey says that it was scary to have to present your work in design classes at school, but it’s a whole other level when you have your own business. She finds herself second guessing her choices just like the rest of us. </p><p>However, she starts to think about the different strategies that she put into her processes. Abbey puts a lot of focus on there being a deeper meaning behind what she’s creating and that the client understands it. Putting that extra work into her designs forced her to step up her game and made her feel so much more confident in her work, which in turn makes her more confident when she’s presenting it.</p><h2>Design work you don’t need to present</h2><p>Abbey says that some things are self-explanatory, especially when you get further along in a project, so you don’t necessarily have to present everything formally to a client. </p><p>Once she gets toward the end of the branding process or just making little tweaks to things, the small changes just don’t warrant that extra explanation. She also says for some collateral things she doesn’t do videos or long explanations. If she’s jus expanding on the deeper meaning that she’s already explained to them, Abbey doesn’t feel like she needs to go into it again necessarily. </p><p>Sometimes there are clients who need the extra hand holding, and you may need to explain every little detail, but those are few and far between.</p><h2>Unexpected benefit</h2><p>The biggest benefit Abbey says she’s seen since presenting designs to her clients is just how much happier they are. Her clients go out of their way to say that the added information is so helpful and how much they appreciated her putting in the extra work to make sure they understand the process. </p><p>She says that from her clients’ perspective they feel like they’re not just getting a new brand or new website. They’re getting a mini education on design and how it works, how it can be done well, and how they can use it on their own. </p><p>Abbey also mentions that she feels more confident and that her services are more valuable in her clients’ eyes. The other benefit is that it’s led to less refinements. </p><h2>Resources</h2><ul><li><a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/052-2/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Episode 52</a>, where we talk about presenting designs</li><li><a href="https://thedesigneressentialskit.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">The Designer Essentials Toolkit</a> </li></ul><h3>Learn more about Abbey</h3><p>Abbey is the lady behind Wayfarer, a traveling design studio. Her approach is simple – to stop creating things that are just pretty and start creating things with deeper meaning + heart. When working with clients, she aims to share her process in a way that they can understand + feel confident in. Abbey also has an online course + shop for designers called The Designer Essentials Kit. The course is made to guide designers through Abbey’s own process + teach them how to present their work strategically, confidently + communicate more clearly with their clients.</p><p><a href="http://www.wayfarerdesignstudio.com" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/wayfarerdesignstudio/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a> | <a href="http://thedesigneressentialskit.com" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Designer Essentials Toolkit</a></p><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/084/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">084: Presenting Your Design Work to Clients with Wayfarer Design Studio</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

084: Presenting Your Design Work to Clients with Wayfarer Design Studio

Meg Summerfield

We talk a lot about WordPress on this podcast, and it’s because we both love the platform so much. However, we know that a lot of our listeners also work with Squarespace, so we knew it was time to get someone on to chat with us more about that platform. We couldn’t think of anyone better than Meg Summerfield. Although Meg was originally a print designer, she quickly fell in love with Squarespace and has established her studio around helping businesses get truly beautiful websites on the platform. Aside from design, Meg is also incredibly passionate about helping other designers, even her competition, which is why she created the Square Design Guild, a membership site for other designers who use the Squarespace platform. In addition to chatting a little more about Squarespace, we’re also asking her all about her process and how she suggests designers establish their own.   Subscribe on iTunes What Meg’s process looked like at first Meg started out with one process with her very first client and that’s actually what her process looks like today. She started by giving the client a mockup and then got to work figuring out how to make the Squarespace site look like her mockup. While she didn’t feel she was ready to get that in depth, she knew the process was good. But with her second client, she caught herself starting in Squarespace without a mockup to start with. Although none of the sites turned out bad (we can believe that!), she admits that doing it this way created a lot of extra work in terms of work arounds and edits. How her process looks different After a few projects doing things straight in Squarespace, she knew she had enough skills to go back to the original plan: create a mockup and then manipulate the site to look like it. Her process now starts with a detailed site map. Then she starts working on the mockups, and then she sends a PDF and a video over to her clients to present the work she’s created for her clients. Once the work has been approved, she then gets to work in Squarespace. Figuring out what works best for her When it came to figuring out what worked best for her and her clients, she wanted to make sure that her clients were getting a full understanding of what they were getting. When she realized that wireframing wasn’t communicating the design well to her clients, she eventually kicked that part of her process, even though it took her a while to feel confident doing things her own way. For her first client, Meg admits that she made up a lot of her process, but she also studied what worked well for the industry and and how she could translate it to such a different type of platform. She also pulled a lot of her process from things that she learned in grad school. Why Meg loves the Squarespace platform The key reason Meg likes the Squarespace platform so much isn’t necessarily for herself, it’s for her clients: she wants to make it as easy as possible for them to take their site and make edits as they need to. While you can obviously teach people how to edit their WordPress site, it’s a lot less intense to share with them how to go in and fix or change things on the Squarespace platform. This is important to Meg because she wants to set her clients up for success. Instead of essentially forcing them to spend more money to hire a tech person or always come back and pay her if they need something changed, she wants even the smallest businesses she works with to be able to make changes without breaking the bank financially. What inspired her to create Square Design Guild After being up late, writing code, trying to fix a problem and emailing other Squarespace designers, she felt like it was silly to be so secretive and hiding things that had nothing to do with running a design business or getting clients. It’s not about being a better designer, it’s finding workarounds for things that happen in Squarespace. She didn’t find any sort of community like this, so she decided to start her own so she could not only help a small group of people and showcase what she can do with Squarespace, but also help lift other people up and elevate the work Squarespace designers are creating as a whole. Why she’s passionate about helping her competition She gets this question a lot (even from her mom), and every time she answers that she believes there are enough clients out there for all of us. She also really enjoys sharing her skill and being a mentor. She said that she’d be a mentor and help contribute to our online design community regardless of whether Squarespace ever goes away. Learn More About Meg At a young age, Meg was always designing brands – from neighborhood lemonade stands to fashion design brands. Today, armed with her MFA in graphic design from SCAD and loads of Squarespace knowledge, she runs her own studio Meg Summerfield Creative, as well as her food blog Summerfield Delight. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Square Design Guild, a membership group for designers who use the Squarespace platform.   Website | Instagram | Square Design Guild Tweet That [clickToTweet tweet=”Showing them that there’s something coming that’s really great in the end is reassuring to the client that you’re not just taking their money and running – Meg” quote=”Showing them that there’s something coming that’s really great in the end is reassuring to the client that you’re not just taking their money and running – Meg”] The post 045: Figuring Out Your Process + Working With Squarespace With Meg Summerfield appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>We talk a lot about WordPress on this podcast, and it’s because we both love the platform so much. However, we know that a lot of our listeners also work with Squarespace, so we knew it was time to get someone on to chat with us more about that platform. We couldn’t think of anyone better than Meg Summerfield.</p> <p>Although Meg was originally a print designer, she quickly fell in love with Squarespace and has established her studio around helping businesses get truly beautiful websites on the platform. Aside from design, Meg is also incredibly passionate about helping other designers, even her competition, which is why she created the Square Design Guild, a membership site for other designers who use the Squarespace platform.</p> <p>In addition to chatting a little more about Squarespace, we’re also asking her all about her process and how she suggests designers establish their own.</p> <p><br/> </p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>What Meg’s process looked like at first</h2> <p>Meg started out with one process with her very first client and that’s actually what her process looks like today. She started by giving the client a mockup and then got to work figuring out how to make the Squarespace site look like her mockup. While she didn’t feel she was ready to get that in depth, she knew the process was good.</p> <p>But with her second client, she caught herself starting in Squarespace without a mockup to start with. Although none of the sites turned out bad (we can believe that!), she admits that doing it this way created a lot of extra work in terms of work arounds and edits.</p> <h2>How her process looks different</h2> <p>After a few projects doing things straight in Squarespace, she knew she had enough skills to go back to the original plan: create a mockup and then manipulate the site to look like it.</p> <p>Her process now starts with a detailed site map. Then she starts working on the mockups, and then she sends a PDF and a video over to her clients to present the work she’s created for her clients. Once the work has been approved, she then gets to work in Squarespace.</p> <h2>Figuring out what works best for her</h2> <p>When it came to figuring out what worked best for her and her clients, she wanted to make sure that her clients were getting a full understanding of what they were getting. When she realized that wireframing wasn’t communicating the design well to her clients, she eventually kicked that part of her process, even though it took her a while to feel confident doing things her own way.</p> <p>For her first client, Meg admits that she made up a lot of her process, but she also studied what worked well for the industry and and how she could translate it to such a different type of platform. She also pulled a lot of her process from things that she learned in grad school.</p> <h2>Why Meg loves the Squarespace platform</h2> <p>The key reason Meg likes the Squarespace platform so much isn’t necessarily for herself, it’s for her clients: she wants to make it as easy as possible for them to take their site and make edits as they need to. While you can obviously teach people how to edit their WordPress site, it’s a lot less intense to share with them how to go in and fix or change things on the Squarespace platform.</p> <p>This is important to Meg because she wants to set her clients up for success. Instead of essentially forcing them to spend more money to hire a tech person or always come back and pay her if they need something changed, she wants even the smallest businesses she works with to be able to make changes without breaking the bank financially.</p> <h2>What inspired her to create Square Design Guild</h2> <p>After being up late, writing code, trying to fix a problem and emailing other Squarespace designers, she felt like it was silly to be so secretive and hiding things that had nothing to do with running a design business or getting clients. It’s not about being a better designer, it’s finding workarounds for things that happen in Squarespace.</p> <p>She didn’t find any sort of community like this, so she decided to start her own so she could not only help a small group of people and showcase what she can do with Squarespace, but also help lift other people up and elevate the work Squarespace designers are creating as a whole.</p> <h2>Why she’s passionate about helping her competition</h2> <p>She gets this question a lot (even from her mom), and every time she answers that she believes there are enough clients out there for all of us. She also really enjoys sharing her skill and being a mentor. She said that she’d be a mentor and help contribute to our online design community regardless of whether Squarespace ever goes away.</p> <h3>Learn More About Meg</h3> <p>At a young age, Meg was always designing brands – from neighborhood lemonade stands to fashion design brands. Today, armed with her MFA in graphic design from SCAD and loads of Squarespace knowledge, she runs her own studio Meg Summerfield Creative, as well as her food blog Summerfield Delight. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Square Design Guild, a membership group for designers who use the Squarespace platform.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="https://www.megsummerfield.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/megsummerfield_studio/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.squaredesignguild.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Square Design Guild</a></p> <h3>Tweet That</h3> [clickToTweet tweet=”Showing them that there’s something coming that’s really great in the end is reassuring to the client that you’re not just taking their money and running – Meg” quote=”Showing them that there’s something coming that’s really great in the end is reassuring to the client that you’re not just taking their money and running – Meg”] <p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/045/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">045: Figuring Out Your Process + Working With Squarespace With Meg Summerfield</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

045: Figuring Out Your Process + Working With Squarespace With Meg Summerfield

A big question among all designers is whether or not we should be doing one type of design or work with one type of client instead of doing a little bit of everything for everyone. In the past, designers could get away with working with all types of clients doing all types of design work. However, now it’s important to focus on niching your design business in one way or another to help you stand out from the competition for your ideal clients. So, in this episode, we’re going to really dive deep and talk about why you should niche your services and how exactly you can go about doing it.   Subscribe on iTunes Addressing your hesitation Before we get to the good stuff in this episode, let’s take a second to address the number one hesitation we see when it comes to this topic: won’t I start losing clients because I’m narrowing down what I do and who I do it for? The answer to that question is yes, you may be missing out on some clients, but the keyword here is some. While it’s better to work with a variety of clients when you’re just getting started to help figure out who you like to work with and what you like to do, niching your design business can actually help you make more money in the long run – even if you’re not marketing yourself to everyone who needs design work. Why you should niche your business Both of us have worked on niching our business, and we’ve seen some great benefits from doing so. However, we don’t want you to just take our word for why this is a good idea. So, here are the biggest benefits: You stand out when you have a specific focus Kory here! News flash: there are tons of designers out there. I follow a lot of them in one way or another online, and I’ll be honest with you: most designers just blend in with their competition in my eyes. You don’t really stand out (to anyone – not just me) unless you have work that someone really, really likes or if you have a specific focus. A great example of this is Kaitlyn of The Crown Fox, who we talked to in episode 9. She’s niched her design business to be focused on being a design assistant to business owners instead of a traditional brand or website designer. So, when someone is looking for a design assistant, she’s the first person we think of because she’s done a really good job of streamlining her business. It becomes easier to market your business The biggest marketing tool you have for your business is your blog, which is something that most designers push back on creating content for. I don’t blame you; it’s hard to consistently come up with new content for blog posts. However, once you’ve niched your blog, that takes all of the guesswork out of figuring out what content to create. You can now focus on creating content specifically for your target market. So, here are a few examples: if you’re a designer for photographers, you could write content about how getting a professional website design can help them book more photoshoots. Another great example is if you’re a wedding invite designer, you can write content for brides-to-be. The obvious benefits Aside from those two things, the obvious benefits of niching your business is you can start to focus on doing design work that you enjoy with clients you enjoy working with. No longer do you have to force yourself to create branding for clients if you don’t enjoy doing it. You also can make sure that you’re taking on the types of clients that get you really excited about working. How to niche your business Niching your business can be broken down in a few ways. You can start only doing specific services (like Kaitlyn did) or you can start working with only a specific target market (which is what Krista did). At the end of the day, you want to focus on doing design work that you enjoy for people you enjoy working with. When you’re a new designer When you’re just starting your design business, you have no idea what your niche is, so it’s obvious that you’ll have to do a little experimenting. Take notes along the way so you can work on avoiding the types of projects or clients that are troublesome. For example, if you realize that you dread doing any type of print work, you can take that off of your list of offerings. If you’re having a tough time booking clients, remember that you don’t want to niche yourself too soon. You may not have enough experience for the niche you want to work with or you may miss out on figuring out the exact type of client you get the most excited about working with. On the other hand, don’t wait until it’s too late. You’ll end up having a difficult time marketing your business and booking clients or you’ll get a lot of inquiries and projects that you don’t necessarily enjoy. When you’re an experienced designer If you’ve been designing for a while, you’re in a much better position to start niching your business today. First, you obviously want to take a look at the projects and clients that you’ve enjoyed working with the most and see if you can find any similarities in them. Ask yourself things like:  What did the client hire you to do? What made the project successful? What did the client do?  You should begin to see a pattern that will lead you to develop your niche. When I did this for my business, and I noticed that I really enjoyed working with professional bloggers who were focused on making great content and earning an income from their blog. I also enjoy working with business owners because it gave me a more hands on approach to their whole brand. Thus, I formed my niche of professional bloggers and lifestyle brands. Action Steps  Take a look at your service offerings and see if you can narrow in on 2-3 packages that you enjoy the absolute most Look at the clients you’ve enjoyed most – what do they have in common? Consider using those similarities to start developing your more niched target market    Resources  70 design niche ideas  The post 054: Why + How to Niche Your Design Services appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>A big question among all designers is whether or not we should be doing one type of design or work with one type of client instead of doing a little bit of everything for everyone. In the past, designers could get away with working with all types of clients doing all types of design work.</p> <p>However, now it’s important to focus on niching your design business in one way or another to help you stand out from the competition for your ideal clients. So, in this episode, we’re going to really dive deep and talk about why you should niche your services and how exactly you can go about doing it.</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Addressing your hesitation</h2> <p>Before we get to the good stuff in this episode, let’s take a second to address the number one hesitation we see when it comes to this topic: <em>won’t I start losing clients because I’m narrowing down what I do and who I do it for</em>?</p> <p>The answer to that question is yes, you may be missing out on <em>some</em> clients, but the keyword here is <em>some</em>. While it’s better to work with a variety of clients when you’re just getting started to help figure out who you like to work with and what you like to do, niching your design business can actually help you make more money in the long run – even if you’re not marketing yourself to everyone who needs design work.</p> <h2>Why you should niche your business</h2> <p>Both of us have worked on niching our business, and we’ve seen some great benefits from doing so. However, we don’t want you to just take our word for why this is a good idea. So, here are the biggest benefits:</p> <h3>You stand out when you have a specific focus</h3> <p>Kory here! News flash: there are tons of designers out there. I follow a lot of them in one way or another online, and I’ll be honest with you: most designers just blend in with their competition in my eyes. You don’t really stand out (to anyone – not just me) unless you have work that someone really, really likes or if you have a specific focus.</p> <p>A great example of this is Kaitlyn of The Crown Fox, who we talked to in <a href="http://getbacktodesign.co/009/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">episode 9</a>. She’s niched her design business to be focused on being a design assistant to business owners instead of a traditional brand or website designer. So, when someone is looking for a design assistant, she’s the first person we think of because she’s done a really good job of streamlining her business.</p> <h3>It becomes easier to market your business</h3> <p>The biggest marketing tool you have for your business is your blog, which is something that most designers push back on creating content for. I don’t blame you; it’s hard to consistently come up with new content for blog posts. However, once you’ve niched your blog, that takes all of the guesswork out of figuring out what content to create. You can now focus on creating content specifically for your target market.</p> <p>So, here are a few examples: if you’re a designer for photographers, you could write content about how getting a professional website design can help them book more photoshoots. Another great example is if you’re a wedding invite designer, you can write content for brides-to-be.</p> <h3>The obvious benefits</h3> <p>Aside from those two things, the obvious benefits of niching your business is you can start to focus on doing design work that you enjoy with clients you enjoy working with. No longer do you have to force yourself to create branding for clients if you don’t enjoy doing it. You also can make sure that you’re taking on the types of clients that get you really excited about working.</p> <h2>How to niche your business</h2> <p>Niching your business can be broken down in a few ways. You can start only doing specific services (like <a href="http://getbacktodesign.co/009/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Kaitlyn</a> did) or you can start working with only a specific target market (which is what Krista did). At the end of the day, you want to focus on doing design work that you enjoy for people you enjoy working with.</p> <h3>When you’re a new designer</h3> <p>When you’re just starting your design business, you have no idea what your niche is, so it’s obvious that you’ll have to do a little experimenting. Take notes along the way so you can work on avoiding the types of projects or clients that are troublesome. For example, if you realize that you dread doing any type of print work, you can take that off of your list of offerings.</p> <p>If you’re having a tough time booking clients, remember that you don’t want to niche yourself too soon. You may not have enough experience for the niche you want to work with or you may miss out on figuring out the exact type of client you get the most excited about working with. On the other hand, don’t wait until it’s too late. You’ll end up having a difficult time marketing your business and booking clients or you’ll get a lot of inquiries and projects that you don’t necessarily enjoy.</p> <h3>When you’re an experienced designer</h3> <p>If you’ve been designing for a while, you’re in a much better position to start niching your business today. First, you obviously want to take a look at the projects and clients that you’ve enjoyed working with the most and see if you can find any similarities in them. Ask yourself things like:</p> <ul> <li>What did the client hire you to do?</li> <li>What made the project successful?</li> <li>What did the client do?</li> </ul> <p>You should begin to see a pattern that will lead you to develop your niche. When I did this for my business, and I noticed that I really enjoyed working with professional bloggers who were focused on making great content and earning an income from their blog. I also enjoy working with business owners because it gave me a more hands on approach to their whole brand. Thus, I formed my niche of professional bloggers and lifestyle brands.</p> <h2>Action Steps</h2> <ul> <li>Take a look at your service offerings and see if you can narrow in on 2-3 packages that you enjoy the absolute most</li> <li>Look at the clients you’ve enjoyed most – what do they have in common?<br><ul> <li>Consider using those similarities to start developing your more niched target market</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <h3>Resources</h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://millo.co/how-to-find-your-design-niche" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">70 design niche ideas</a></li> </ul> <p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/054/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">054: Why + How to Niche Your Design Services</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

054: Why + How to Niche Your Design Services

Bonnie Bakhtiari

Something we’ve noticed this year is that brand strategy is starting to become more popular in the design industry. There are some really great designers, like today’s guest, talking and teaching about it, which means that more people are sharing that they walk their clients through a brand strategy process as part of their branding project. However, some newer designers are curious about what brand strategy includes and how they can start helping their clients with these things, and more experienced designers are curious about how to get their clients more excited and involved in that part of the process. So we wanted to bring Bonnie Bakhtiari from B Is For Bonnie Design onto the podcast so she can share a little bit more with us on what it looks like to start introducing brand strategy to your client process.   Subscribe on iTunes Bonnie’s Journey Bonnie tells us that she feels her journey hasn’t been exactly what she expected, which many of creatives can relate to. She fell into design when she was in college, where she studied journalism. While there, she learned about design by laying out editorials. As she started learning more and playing around, Bonnie realized she was really excited and passionate about design, and that led her to open an Etsy shop with pre-made designs in her last semester of college. While the Etsy shop is no more, it was the big transition into what her business is today. Although she started from scratch and didn’t spend a lot of money to help her grow her business, she has learned so much about what it takes to run a business and enjoyed the journey of building things from the ground up. What is brand strategy? Bonnie defines brand strategy as a long-term plan designed to propel a brand toward a very specific set of goals. That looks like diving deep into a client’s vision, mission, core values, differentiators, brand message, and their ideal clients so you can take the strong foundational work and turn that into visual assets that deliver results and propel them forward in that direction. She says it doesn’t have to be a complicated or overwhelming idea, but instead if we, as designers, break it down step-by-step it can actually be something really easy to guide our clients through so then we can transform the results we can deliver for them when we hand over a final brand or website. Why she started introducing brand strategy into her process She started incorporating brand strategy into her process pretty early on in her business because she quickly realized there was a lot of designers, and she was blending it with her work. So in order for her to make it when she was getting started, she felt like she had to do something different to be able to stand out. The easiest way she thought to do that was to take a look at her services and find a way to elevate them. She started by looking at her process, and considered what it would look like if she was able to take her clients deeper into the process than just design. Because she had the background in journalism, she’s really passionate about people’s stories, and that led her to think about creating a brand strategy process that really does get to the heart of her client’s brands and then she can weave that into the visual side of the brand. How to stand out when everyone is doing brand strategy Bonnie mentions that it’s great that so many designers are beginning to leverage brand strategy, but it’s important that collectively as designers we’re on the same page about what brand strategy looks like. She says this is vital because so many designers think they’re guiding their clients through a brand strategy process, but sometimes we’re only scratching the surface with what we’re walking our clients through. For people who are trying to stand out, it’s important to think about the way your brand strategy process can deliver results. In her own experience, Bonnie found that her brand strategy process really helps clients who are pivoting their business or need a new ideal client and need their brand to reflect that. So, she focuses on speaking to potential clients who fit that mold and in her messaging she shares those results of helping clients transition their business to help her stand out more from other designers who also do brand strategy. How she starts the strategy process with her clients Bonnie doesn’t do any sort of specific audit with her clients when she’s just getting started, which might be what most people think you need to do through the brand strategy process. Instead, she knows that her clients typically already have a business and are just needing help transitioning. Since they already have a brand and a logo, she’ll generally have her clients self-audit in a way. This means she’s asking them questions about what they’re seeing about their current branding:  What needs is your current branding not meeting for you? In what ways is your current branding holding you brand? What do your ideal clients have to say about your current branding? What kinds of inquiries are you receiving as a result of what you’re putting out there?  When she’s asking these questions, it helps her become aware of the pain points that her clients have with her current branding so she can be sure to help with those. However, it also helps her realize the client’s values when it comes to how they perceive branding. These are things Bonnie can keep in mind while she’s working on designing the brand for her client. Getting clients engaged in the process A lot of designers struggle with guiding clients through the brand strategy process in terms of getting meaningful answers. To avoid that, Bonnie definitely recommends being very proactive and educating your clients about the importance of brand strategy so when you dive into their work, they understand that the strategy work you do at the beginning of the project will directly impact the result that they’ll see with their final work. If you’re being proactive and are still getting clients who want to skip this step, then it might be time to try to make it more fun. So instead of asking clients to fill out a dozen worksheets, it might be worthwhile to get on strategy calls to work through the questions together. Bonnie also recommends to think about how you can encourage your clients to think about strategy outside of just your questionnaire. She’s asked her clients to create an inspiration board or a playlist of music that looks or sounds like their brand. The key parts of brand strategy If she had to narrow it down to the key pieces to include in your strategy, Bonnie says start with your client’s brand values, their differentiators, their long term vision for their brand, their mission, definitely spending a lot of time on their ideal clients, and their key brand message. That seems like a lot, and any one of those could be broken down into it’s own 1:1 call or its own set of worksheets. Depending on how deep you want to go with the brand strategy process, she recommends if you want the process to be cohesive then touching on each of those points along the way with your clients. How to introduce brand strategy into their client process It’s really important to adapt an open mindset around education and investing in yourself. There are so many great resources out there to learn more about brand strategy, so look out for places you can learn more about brand strategy. Maybe you work 1:1 with another designer who can help you expand your process a little more through a mentoring session. There are lots of great courses about brand strategy out there. However, don’t forget about the great free content that can give you the opportunity to soak up as much knowledge about the different topics within brand strategy so you can put together an approach that will work for you and your clients. Kory here! If you’re wanting to learn more about brand strategy and specifically Bonnie’s process, head over and check out her Brand Strategy School course. I have taken it, and I loved learning more about how deep she goes with her clients in terms of brand strategy, and it gave me a lot of ideas on how I can expand my own strategy process. Doors open for the course on August 22, 2018. Also, if you have any questions about the course, please feel free to email us or ask in the Facebook group, and I’ll help you decide if it’s right for you! Learn More about Bonnie Hello, new friend! I’m Bonnie Bakhtiari, wife to my college sweetheart, pet parent to the most rambunctious golden retriever this side of the Mason-Dixon, and the founder and creative director of b is for bonnie design, a boutique branding studio for creatives. As a brand designer and strategist, I partner with my clients to craft brands that are an authentic reflection of their life’s best work. In addition to being a brand designer and strategist, I’m also a small business educator, and founder of the Illume Retreat, which is an intimately restful three-day retreat for entrepreneurs striving to build businesses grounded in a clear sense of purpose. I believe in living life with joy, fierce love and abundant grace as you chase what matters most. Website | Brand Strategy School The post 062: Introducing Brand Strategy as Part of Your Client Process With Bonnie Bakhtiari appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>Something we’ve noticed this year is that brand strategy is starting to become more popular in the design industry. There are some really great designers, like today’s guest, talking and teaching about it, which means that more people are sharing that they walk their clients through a brand strategy process as part of their branding project.</p> <p>However, some newer designers are curious about what brand strategy includes and how they can start helping their clients with these things, and more experienced designers are curious about how to get their clients more excited and involved in that part of the process.</p> <p>So we wanted to bring Bonnie Bakhtiari from B Is For Bonnie Design onto the podcast so she can share a little bit more with us on what it looks like to start introducing brand strategy to your client process.</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Bonnie’s Journey</h2> <p>Bonnie tells us that she feels her journey hasn’t been exactly what she expected, which many of creatives can relate to. She fell into design when she was in college, where she studied journalism. While there, she learned about design by laying out editorials. As she started learning more and playing around, Bonnie realized she was really excited and passionate about design, and that led her to open an Etsy shop with pre-made designs in her last semester of college.</p> <p>While the Etsy shop is no more, it was the big transition into what her business is today. Although she started from scratch and didn’t spend a lot of money to help her grow her business, she has learned so much about what it takes to run a business and enjoyed the journey of building things from the ground up.</p> <h2>What is brand strategy?</h2> <p>Bonnie defines brand strategy as a long-term plan designed to propel a brand toward a very specific set of goals. That looks like diving deep into a client’s vision, mission, core values, differentiators, brand message, and their ideal clients so you can take the strong foundational work and turn that into visual assets that deliver results and propel them forward in that direction.</p> <p>She says it doesn’t have to be a complicated or overwhelming idea, but instead if we, as designers, break it down step-by-step it can actually be something really easy to guide our clients through so then we can transform the results we can deliver for them when we hand over a final brand or website.</p> <h2>Why she started introducing brand strategy into her process</h2> <p>She started incorporating brand strategy into her process pretty early on in her business because she quickly realized there was a lot of designers, and she was blending it with her work. So in order for her to make it when she was getting started, she felt like she had to do something different to be able to stand out. The easiest way she thought to do that was to take a look at her services and find a way to elevate them.</p> <p>She started by looking at her process, and considered what it would look like if she was able to take her clients deeper into the process than just design. Because she had the background in journalism, she’s really passionate about people’s stories, and that led her to think about creating a brand strategy process that really does get to the heart of her client’s brands and then she can weave that into the visual side of the brand.</p> <h2>How to stand out when everyone is doing brand strategy</h2> <p>Bonnie mentions that it’s great that so many designers are beginning to leverage brand strategy, but it’s important that collectively as designers we’re on the same page about what brand strategy looks like. She says this is vital because so many designers think they’re guiding their clients through a brand strategy process, but sometimes we’re only scratching the surface with what we’re walking our clients through.</p> <p>For people who are trying to stand out, it’s important to think about the way <em>your</em> brand strategy process can deliver results. In her own experience, Bonnie found that her brand strategy process really helps clients who are pivoting their business or need a new ideal client and need their brand to reflect that. So, she focuses on speaking to potential clients who fit that mold and in her messaging she shares those results of helping clients transition their business to help her stand out more from other designers who also do brand strategy.</p> <h2>How she starts the strategy process with her clients</h2> <p>Bonnie doesn’t do any sort of specific audit with her clients when she’s just getting started, which might be what most people think you need to do through the brand strategy process. Instead, she knows that her clients typically already have a business and are just needing help transitioning. Since they already have a brand and a logo, she’ll generally have her clients self-audit in a way. This means she’s asking them questions about what they’re seeing about their current branding:</p> <ul> <li>What needs is your current branding not meeting for you?</li> <li>In what ways is your current branding holding you brand?</li> <li>What do your ideal clients have to say about your current branding?</li> <li>What kinds of inquiries are you receiving as a result of what you’re putting out there?</li> </ul> <p>When she’s asking these questions, it helps her become aware of the pain points that her clients have with her current branding so she can be sure to help with those. However, it also helps her realize the client’s values when it comes to how they perceive branding. These are things Bonnie can keep in mind while she’s working on designing the brand for her client.</p> <h2>Getting clients engaged in the process</h2> <p>A lot of designers struggle with guiding clients through the brand strategy process in terms of getting meaningful answers. To avoid that, Bonnie definitely recommends being very proactive and educating your clients about the importance of brand strategy so when you dive into their work, they understand that the strategy work you do at the beginning of the project will directly impact the result that they’ll see with their final work.</p> <p>If you’re being proactive and are still getting clients who want to skip this step, then it might be time to try to make it more fun. So instead of asking clients to fill out a dozen worksheets, it might be worthwhile to get on strategy calls to work through the questions together. Bonnie also recommends to think about how you can encourage your clients to think about strategy outside of just your questionnaire. She’s asked her clients to create an inspiration board or a playlist of music that looks or sounds like their brand.</p> <h2>The key parts of brand strategy</h2> <p>If she had to narrow it down to the key pieces to include in your strategy, Bonnie says start with your client’s brand values, their differentiators, their long term vision for their brand, their mission, definitely spending a lot of time on their ideal clients, and their key brand message. That seems like a lot, and any one of those could be broken down into it’s own 1:1 call or its own set of worksheets. Depending on how deep you want to go with the brand strategy process, she recommends if you want the process to be cohesive then touching on each of those points along the way with your clients.</p> <h2>How to introduce brand strategy into their client process</h2> <p>It’s really important to adapt an open mindset around education and investing in yourself. There are so many great resources out there to learn more about brand strategy, so look out for places you can learn more about brand strategy. Maybe you work 1:1 with another designer who can help you expand your process a little more through a mentoring session. There are lots of great courses about brand strategy out there. However, don’t forget about the great free content that can give you the opportunity to soak up as much knowledge about the different topics within brand strategy so you can put together an approach that will work for you and your clients.</p> <p>Kory here! If you’re wanting to learn more about brand strategy and specifically Bonnie’s process, head over and check out her <a href="http://bisforbonniedesign.com/brand-strategy-school" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Brand Strategy School</a> course. I have taken it, and I loved learning more about how deep she goes with her clients in terms of brand strategy, and it gave me a lot of ideas on how I can expand my own strategy process. Doors open for the course on August 22, 2018. Also, if you have any questions about the course, please feel free to <a href="mailto:hello@getbacktodesign.co">email us</a> or ask in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/getbacktodesign/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">the Facebook group</a>, and I’ll help you decide if it’s right for you!</p> <h3>Learn More about Bonnie</h3> <p>Hello, new friend! I’m Bonnie Bakhtiari, wife to my college sweetheart, pet parent to the most rambunctious golden retriever this side of the Mason-Dixon, and the founder and creative director of b is for bonnie design, a boutique branding studio for creatives. As a brand designer and strategist, I partner with my clients to craft brands that are an authentic reflection of their life’s best work. In addition to being a brand designer and strategist, I’m also a small business educator, and founder of the Illume Retreat, which is an intimately restful three-day retreat for entrepreneurs striving to build businesses grounded in a clear sense of purpose. I believe in living life with joy, fierce love and abundant grace as you chase what matters most.</p> <p></p><center><a href="http://bisforbonniedesign.com" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="http://bisforbonniedesign.com/brand-strategy-school" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Brand Strategy School</a></center><p></p> <p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/062/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">062: Introducing Brand Strategy as Part of Your Client Process With Bonnie Bakhtiari</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

062: Introducing Brand Strategy as Part of Your Client Process With Bonnie Bakhtiari

A lot of our episodes are geared more toward experienced designers who have been in business for several years. However, we know that there are a lot of people who are just starting their design businesses or are thinking about starting their business. So, we wanted to create an episode for you with things we think you should focus on when you’re just starting your business! In this episode, we’re sharing 4 things that you should make a priority whether you’re just getting started now or are in your first couple of years of business to help establish your business and start booking clients.   Subscribe on iTunes Decide on the “boring” details Unfortunately, the first thing you have to figure out when you’re starting your business is exactly what you’re going to offer and who you’ll market those services to. In episode 54, we talked about why it’s so important to niche your design business. If you start out with a specific niche, you’re going to stand out even more among your competition and be able to grow a little faster. While you’re deciding on what your services and target market will be, it’s also important to work out what your prices will be. When you’re just starting out, your prices may be a little lower than you’d like them to be. It’s okay to start low and then work your way up every 4-5 clients as you gain more experience and expertise. A few other things you’ll want to try to nail down in the first year or two of your business are your process and how you’ll manage your project. Get your website up Once you have all of those details figured out, it’s obviously time to start working on your website. There are a few things you have to have if you want to be able to book clients, and we went over some of those in episode 47. I wanted to outline a few important things again here, though: Your portfolio If you want anyone to be interested in booking you, then you have to show off your work in one way or another. Be sure that you’re giving a little background information about the project as well as decent sized graphics to view what you’ve created. If you don’t have any previous client work, that’s totally okay. Instead, share work you’ve done in school or personal projects you created on your own. Your About page We’ve both said in past episodes that we wouldn’t hire someone if we didn’t know anything about them, and this is true for a lot of people. When you’re creating your About page, be sure to share what you do and who you do it for. Also, be sure you share a headshot on this page, especially if you don’t have a photo of you anywhere else. Your Contact page Just like the Portfolio page, you need some sort of way for people to contact you. You may have your email listed, but it’s a great idea to also include a form on your site. This gives you a chance to ask questions upfront about the project so you don’t potentially waste time on a client who isn’t the best fit. Start sharing consistently After you’ve built your website, you want to start getting yourself out there. The main way to do this is to share content consistently. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to blog, but publishing blog posts is a great way to establish your expertise, share your work, and have a place to consistently share new things. If you don’t want to blog, at least make sure you’re on social media. Pinterest and Instagram are great for designers because they’re very visual. I can tell you without a doubt that when I don’t take the time to stay active online in someway, I can definitely tell the difference! Network, network, network Last but not least, you want to get out there by actually meeting people. This can be your peers (other designers), but it should also be with people in your target market. A good way to do this is to get active in Facebook groups, which we talked about in episode 27. I know Facebook groups aren’t as big as they used to be, but they’re still a great place to start building up your name. A couple of other ways you can network would be to do coffee chats, which helped Krista really establish her business when she was still getting started, and networking in person. Check out conferences that you’re interested in that your target market would also attend. The Conference Connection is a great resource when you’re looking up events you can attend! Action Steps  If you’re thinking about starting your own design business, go back through the show notes for today’s episode and start creating a game plan for launching your business Once you’re launched, let us know!  The post 057: Things to Focus on When You’re Just Starting Your Business appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>A lot of our episodes are geared more toward experienced designers who have been in business for several years. However, we know that there are a lot of people who are just starting their design businesses or are thinking about starting their business. So, we wanted to create an episode for you with things we think you should focus on when you’re just starting your business!</p> <p>In this episode, we’re sharing 4 things that you should make a priority whether you’re just getting started now or are in your first couple of years of business to help establish your business and start booking clients.</p> <p><br/> </p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Decide on the “boring” details</h2> <p>Unfortunately, the first thing you have to figure out when you’re starting your business is exactly what you’re going to offer and who you’ll market those services to. In <a href="http://getbacktodesign.co/054/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">episode 54</a>, we talked about why it’s so important to niche your design business. If you start out with a specific niche, you’re going to stand out even more among your competition and be able to grow a little faster.</p> <p>While you’re deciding on what your services and target market will be, it’s also important to work out what your prices will be. When you’re just starting out, your prices may be a little lower than you’d like them to be. It’s okay to start low and then work your way up every 4-5 clients as you gain more experience and expertise.</p> <p>A few other things you’ll want to try to nail down in the first year or two of your business are your process and how you’ll manage your project.</p> <h2>Get your website up</h2> <p>Once you have all of those details figured out, it’s obviously time to start working on your website. There are a few things you <em>have</em> to have if you want to be able to book clients, and we went over some of those in <a href="http://getbacktodesign.co/047/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">episode 47</a>. I wanted to outline a few important things again here, though:</p> <h3>Your portfolio</h3> <p>If you want anyone to be interested in booking you, then you have to show off your work in one way or another. Be sure that you’re giving a little background information about the project as well as decent sized graphics to view what you’ve created. If you don’t have any previous client work, that’s totally okay. Instead, share work you’ve done in school or personal projects you created on your own.</p> <h3>Your About page</h3> <p>We’ve both said in past episodes that we wouldn’t hire someone if we didn’t know anything about them, and this is true for a lot of people. When you’re creating your About page, be sure to share what you do and who you do it for. Also, be sure you share a headshot on this page, especially if you don’t have a photo of you anywhere else.</p> <h3>Your Contact page</h3> <p>Just like the Portfolio page, you need some sort of way for people to contact you. You may have your email listed, but it’s a great idea to also include a form on your site. This gives you a chance to ask questions upfront about the project so you don’t potentially waste time on a client who isn’t the best fit.</p> <h2>Start sharing consistently</h2> <p>After you’ve built your website, you want to start getting yourself out there. The main way to do this is to share content consistently. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to blog, but publishing blog posts is a great way to establish your expertise, share your work, and have a place to consistently share new things. If you don’t want to blog, at least make sure you’re on social media. Pinterest and Instagram are great for designers because they’re very visual. I can tell you without a doubt that when I don’t take the time to stay active online in someway, I can definitely tell the difference!</p> <h2>Network, network, network</h2> <p>Last but not least, you want to get out there by actually meeting people. This can be your peers (other designers), but it should also be with people in your target market. A good way to do this is to get active in Facebook groups, which we talked about in <a href="http://getbacktodesign.co/027/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">episode 27</a>. I know Facebook groups aren’t as big as they used to be, but they’re still a great place to start building up your name.</p> <p>A couple of other ways you can network would be to do coffee chats, which helped Krista really establish her business when she was still getting started, and networking in person. Check out conferences that you’re interested in that your target market would also attend. <a href="https://www.theconferenceconnection.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Conference Connection</a> is a great resource when you’re looking up events you can attend!</p> <h2>Action Steps</h2> <ul> <li>If you’re thinking about starting your own design business, go back through the show notes for today’s episode and start creating a game plan for launching your business</li> <li>Once you’re launched, let us know!</li> </ul> <p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/057/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">057: Things to Focus on When You’re Just Starting Your Business</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

057: Things to Focus on When You’re Just Starting Your Business

Alysha DeMarsh

One of the most popular topics of conversation for online business owners, particularly designers, over the past year has definitely been how to create more passive income. In fact, it’s such a big deal that in episode 66, we broke down a variety of ways you can do exactly that for your brand, including tons of examples.We know that many of you are curious about how you can make passive income or even transition your business to solely passive income, so we invited Alysha DeMarsh from Basil and Bark onto the show!In this episode she shares all about how she built up a successful shop on Creative Market, stopped taking on 1:1 client work, how she gets ideas for new products and more!Subscribe on iTunesAlysha’s JourneyAlysha originally started at a small agency where she was focused on creating editorial work for one client. She loved it so much, but it was a super small agency so she went to work for a start up. Unfortunately, 8 months later she was laid off, and within the next 5 weeks she and her boyfriend packed up, flew across Canada, bought a house, and moved over.At the end of 2017 she started freelancing, and Alysha shares that her project was creating graphics for a Pinterest consultant and her business just went from there.Where her interest in digital products came fromSince her first client was a Pinterest consultant, she had created templates that she could use to quickly create graphics and send over to the client. The client told Alysha that it would be a good idea to sell templates even before Alysha had a website (talk about a great client!). Around March of 2018, Alysha didn’t want to chase clients and was doing pretty well in terms of getting potential clients to come to her. So, she wanted to spend her free time creating products that she could just sell. Since a lot of people had been complimenting her Pinterest graphics, she decided to create her first products. Why she started on Creative MarketWhen she launched her products initially, she just had a simple page on her website to sell them, and it went pretty well. However, another business owner mentioned to Alysha that she should put her templates on Creative Market, so she put them on the platform thinking that there were so many shops and products that no one would buy anything she sold. Anytime someone asks her about selling on Creative Market, she recommends starting over on that platform and building up a good amount of income there before you transition everything on your website to mention your digital products. Why she transitioned away from clients to focus on digital productsWith the type of services she was offering, her clients wanted a quicker turnaround. So, Alysha always wanted to provide clients with the best turnaround, which meant usually within 3 days she would give something back to them. While that was good for her clients, that wasn’t something she wanted to keep up herself since she likes to have more freedom with the amount of work she’s doing and when.She says she really enjoys just spending days playing around with making different products and selling them, which is her perfect job so she wanted to continue to focus on just doing that.The steps she took to help make that transitionOne of the main steps she took to make the transition from clients to passive income was to change her website copy. It took her a little while to change what she had created and build it back up with the new direction of her business.Also, working on starting to become known more for her templates than her client work. Alysha shared that there were a lot of people messaging her on Instagram who were interested in getting her templates or were sharing that they had just purchased them. That ultimately made her more comfortable and confident since the audience she had built up was interested in her templates not just her services.Alysha’s tips on growing her shopShe says there’s an idea that a lot of people believe about creating a product once and then just letting it sell itself, but she believes in taking the time to refine and improve what she’s selling. So she works on developing her existing products more as well as creating new products to sell.Alysha also points out that if customers like the products you sell, why not give them more to choose from to keep them coming back for more? She uses a great analogy that a clothing store provides a lot of different options that make us want to go back and buy more, and you can run your digital product shop the same way. How to get ideas for digital productsAlysha says even though it sounds really corny, it’s so important to know your customer. Once she figured out the exact point her audience was in their business and what they were really struggling with + what they’d be Googling to solve that problem, that was the point she realized what sort of system of products she needed to be selling. She says now it’s obvious to look at her ideal customer and know exactly what they need. How she decides what to create first for her shopShe says part of it comes down to which ideas her audience has been asking for more recently because that means she has the opportunity to let those people know that the product is available. She’ll also try to look at product ideas that aren’t already on Creative Market or that aren’t terribly popular yet. Tips on how you can get started with passive incomeAlysha’s recommendation is to take a look at what your clients are continuously asking you for – whether it’s a specific product or a certain style. Her clients consistently were asking her for roadmap templates, so she made a roadmap template to sell in her shop. She says when you have a client who asks you for something and are willing to pay good money for it, there are probably 5-10 people who can’t afford working with you 1:1, but they also need that thing that your client does. Also, Alysha says check Creative Market to see if your product would fit there, which she says that as a designer it likely would. Learn more about AlyshaAlysha is the designer behind Basil &amp; Bark, a freelance design business turned template shop that she named after her pets. Through selling social media and content marketing templates on Creative Market and on her Squarespace shop, Alysha has been able to help thousands of online business owners instead of just the ones she could fit into her schedule. She’s also been able to triple her previous salary while living a life on her own terms. Alysha is also the founder of Digital Product Boss, an online course that teaches designers and creative service providers how to start and scale digital product shops with Creative Market.Creative Market | Website | 4 Essential Steps to Transition from Designer to Digital Product BossThe post 076: Transitioning from Clients to Passive Income with Alysha DeMarsh appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>One of the most popular topics of conversation for online business owners, particularly designers, over the past year has definitely been how to create more passive income. In fact, it’s such a big deal that in episode 66, we broke down a variety of ways you can do exactly that for your brand, including tons of examples.</p><p>We know that many of you are curious about how you can make passive income or even transition your business to solely passive income, so we invited Alysha DeMarsh from Basil and Bark onto the show!</p><p>In this episode she shares all about how she built up a successful shop on Creative Market, stopped taking on 1:1 client work, how she gets ideas for new products and more!</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>Alysha’s Journey</h2><p>Alysha originally started at a small agency where she was focused on creating editorial work for one client. She loved it so much, but it was a super small agency so she went to work for a start up. Unfortunately, 8 months later she was laid off, and within the next 5 weeks she and her boyfriend packed up, flew across Canada, bought a house, and moved over.</p><p>At the end of 2017 she started freelancing, and Alysha shares that her project was creating graphics for a Pinterest consultant and her business just went from there.</p><h2>Where her interest in digital products came from</h2><p>Since her first client was a Pinterest consultant, she had created templates that she could use to quickly create graphics and send over to the client. The client told Alysha that it would be a good idea to sell templates even before Alysha had a website (<em>talk about a great client!)</em>. </p><p>Around March of 2018, Alysha didn’t want to chase clients and was doing pretty well in terms of getting potential clients to come to her. So, she wanted to spend her free time creating products that she could just sell. Since a lot of people had been complimenting her Pinterest graphics, she decided to create her first products. </p><h2>Why she started on Creative Market</h2><p>When she launched her products initially, she just had a simple page on her website to sell them, and it went pretty well. However, another business owner mentioned to Alysha that she should put her templates on Creative Market, so she put them on the platform thinking that there were so many shops and products that no one would buy anything she sold. </p><p>Anytime someone asks her about selling on Creative Market, she recommends starting over on that platform and building up a good amount of income there before you transition everything on your website to mention your digital products. </p><h2>Why she transitioned away from clients to focus on digital products</h2><p>With the type of services she was offering, her clients wanted a quicker turnaround. So, Alysha always wanted to provide clients with the best turnaround, which meant usually within 3 days she would give something back to them. While that was good for her clients, that wasn’t something she wanted to keep up herself since she likes to have more freedom with the amount of work she’s doing and when.</p><p>She says she really enjoys just spending days playing around with making different products and selling them, which is her perfect job so she wanted to continue to focus on just doing that.</p><h2>The steps she took to help make that transition</h2><p>One of the main steps she took to make the transition from clients to passive income was to change her website copy. It took her a little while to change what she had created and build it back up with the new direction of her business.</p><p>Also, working on starting to become known more for her templates than her client work. Alysha shared that there were a lot of people messaging her on Instagram who were interested in getting her templates or were sharing that they had just purchased them. That ultimately made her more comfortable and confident since the audience she had built up was interested in her templates not just her services.</p><h2>Alysha’s tips on growing her shop</h2><p>She says there’s an idea that a lot of people believe about creating a product once and then just letting it sell itself, but she believes in taking the time to refine and improve what she’s selling. So she works on developing her existing products more as well as creating new products to sell.</p><p>Alysha also points out that if customers like the products you sell, why not give them more to choose from to keep them coming back for more? She uses a great analogy that a clothing store provides a lot of different options that make us want to go back and buy more, and you can run your digital product shop the same way. </p><h2>How to get ideas for digital products</h2><p>Alysha says even though it sounds really corny, it’s so important to know your customer. Once she figured out the exact point her audience was in their business and what they were really struggling with + what they’d be Googling to solve that problem, that was the point she realized what sort of system of products she needed to be selling. She says now it’s obvious to look at her ideal customer and know exactly what they need. </p><h2>How she decides what to create first for her shop</h2><p>She says part of it comes down to which ideas her audience has been asking for more recently because that means she has the opportunity to let those people know that the product is available. She’ll also try to look at product ideas that aren’t already on Creative Market or that aren’t terribly popular yet. </p><h2>Tips on how you can get started with passive income</h2><p>Alysha’s recommendation is to take a look at what your clients are continuously asking you for – whether it’s a specific product or a certain style. Her clients consistently were asking her for roadmap templates, so she made a roadmap template to sell in her shop. </p><p>She says when you have a client who asks you for something and are willing to pay good money for it, there are probably 5-10 people who can’t afford working with you 1:1, but they also need that thing that your client does. </p><p>Also, Alysha says check Creative Market to see if your product would fit there, which she says that as a designer it likely would. </p><h3>Learn more about Alysha</h3><p>Alysha is the designer behind Basil &amp; Bark, a freelance design business turned template shop that she named after her pets. Through selling social media and content marketing templates on Creative Market and on her Squarespace shop, Alysha has been able to help thousands of online business owners instead of just the ones she could fit into her schedule. She’s also been able to triple her previous salary while living a life on her own terms. Alysha is also the founder of Digital Product Boss, an online course that teaches designers and creative service providers how to start and scale digital product shops with Creative Market.</p><p><a href="http://www.creativemarket.com/basilandbark" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Creative Market</a> | <a href="http://www.basilandbark.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="https://basilandbark.mykajabi.com/a/14332/D7GVaphv" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">4 Essential Steps to Transition from Designer to Digital Product Boss</a></p><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/076/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">076: Transitioning from Clients to Passive Income with Alysha DeMarsh</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

076: Transitioning from Clients to Passive Income with Alysha DeMarsh

We’ve talked a lot in previous episodes about presenting your work to your clients, but we’ve never really gone that much into detail with it. We both think it’s important to have a process for presenting designs instead of just sending over what you’ve created and saying something like, “So, what do you think?” Because we see the value in doing this and we know a lot of designers want to improve how they present their work to clients, today we’re going to talk about things to keep in mind when presenting your work and how exactly to go about the presentation process!   Subscribe on iTunes Why it’s important to present your work We’ve touched on the benefits of presenting your design work to your clients in past episodes, but let’s go over the three biggest benefits again: It reminds your client that you’re the expert While our clients know that we’re the expert, sometimes they forget why they hired you. I’m sure you’ve worked with a few clients who treated you like they were the design expert, and it’s no fun to put it politely. When you take the time to explain the rationale behind your design decisions, it can really highlight that you know what you’re doing. This will encourage them to trust you even more with their project. It helps clients understand what you’ve done specifically Most clients know the value of design and what it can do for their business, but sometimes they can forget those things and look at your work as something just aesthetically pleasing to look at. However, when you’re presenting the work to your client, you can help them avoid getting hung up on the aesthetics alone. The important thing to remember, though, is that you don’t want to over-explain what you’ve done, but we’ll talk about that a little more later. It can help reduce the number of unnecessary revisions When the client has a better understanding of what you’ve done and why you’ve made the decisions you’ve made, their revisions are less likely to be lots of little tweaks. Instead, they’ll be able to focus more on the overall aspects of the design and relate those things directly to their audience and their goals (two things you can remind them to think about in your presentation). Preparing to present your work There are a few things you’ll want to take into consideration when you’re getting ready to present your work to your clients. By intentionally preparing for your presentation, you’ll be able to ensure that it’s successful. Decide how you’ll present your work This is obviously the first thing that you want to figure out. Most designers, myself included, aren’t too terribly interested in taking calls, but as Meg pointed out in episode 45, it’s important to keep in mind that your client may understand you better in a different way than you’re comfortable with. So, consider the three ways you can present your work: Over the phone We heard Jamie mention in episode 35 that her and her team do it this way. She had a great tip that they simply explain their design decisions and ask if there are any questions but avoid getting feedback until the client has more time to look over the work. Video recording If you’re not super comfortable with taking phone calls, this is a great option because it still lets you verbalize your rationale. Also, keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need any fancy software to do this. You can get away with using your Apple headphones with a mic and QuickTime on your computer. Krista also shared that Loom is her favorite tool to use for this. Project Management If you’re really not into the other two options or can’t make time to do them, the last option is to include your rationale in your project management when you upload your designs. This is the easiest way to do it, but it’s not necessarily the most effective. Make notes about your decisions while you’re designing If you’re not used to explaining your rationale to anyone, then it’s a good idea to start getting into the habit of taking notes while you’re working. This will help you know the exact points you want to make when presenting your work to your clients when the time comes. You’ll also eventually get more and more confident, which means you won’t always have to take notes. Presenting your work Okay, you’ve made it this far! Now you’re ready to actually present your work to your clients. There are a few things you want to keep in mind when you’re getting ready to do your presentation. Have a loose outline of exactly what you’ll say Take your notes from when you were working and turn them into an outline. This will help you stay focused and organized while you’re on the phone or creating your video presentation. A few things you can mention while you’re creating your outline are:  Their goals and current struggles Your design rationale Strategy / benefits they’ll see – especially if you’re presenting website design!  Remember to educate but not overwhelm your client In episode 42 we talked about why it’s important to educate your clients, and when you’re presenting your designs you’re obviously doing a little bit of this in explaining why you made some of the decisions that you made. However, you do want to make sure that you’re avoiding overwhelming the client with too many details. Remember – you don’t have to explain color psychology or design theory. It’s also important to avoid too much industry jargon. Your client likely doesn’t understand these things, so unless they ask for more detail, it’s okay to leave a certain amount of it out. Slow it down When you’re presenting over the phone or by a video presentation, make a note on your outline to literally take a deep breath. If you think I’m being silly, think back to the last time you were on the phone or a video call with a client. Did you leave that call feeling a little winded? Like you’d just ran a marathon? That’s because it’s all too easy to get nervous or just flat out excited about what you’re talking about and end up talking way too fast. Slowing it down will help you sound even more confident and make sure that you’re not going too quickly for your client to keep up. Action Step  Create a plan for presenting your work to your next client  Resources  Loom  The post 052: Presenting Designs to Your Client appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>We’ve talked a lot in previous episodes about presenting your work to your clients, but we’ve never really gone that much into detail with it. We both think it’s important to have a process for presenting designs instead of just sending over what you’ve created and saying something like, “<em>So, what do you think?</em>”</p> <p>Because we see the value in doing this and we know a lot of designers want to improve how they present their work to clients, today we’re going to talk about things to keep in mind when presenting your work and how exactly to go about the presentation process!</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Why it’s important to present your work</h2> <p>We’ve touched on the benefits of presenting your design work to your clients in past episodes, but let’s go over the three biggest benefits again:</p> <h3>It reminds your client that you’re the expert</h3> <p>While our clients <em>know</em> that we’re the expert, sometimes they forget why they hired you. I’m sure you’ve worked with a few clients who treated you like they were the design expert, and it’s no fun to put it politely. When you take the time to explain the rationale behind your design decisions, it can really highlight that you know what you’re doing. This will encourage them to trust you even more with their project.</p> <h3>It helps clients understand what you’ve done specifically</h3> <p>Most clients know the value of design and what it can do for their business, but sometimes they can forget those things and look at your work as something just aesthetically pleasing to look at. However, when you’re presenting the work to your client, you can help them avoid getting hung up on the aesthetics alone. The important thing to remember, though, is that you don’t want to over-explain what you’ve done, but we’ll talk about that a little more later.</p> <h3>It can help reduce the number of unnecessary revisions</h3> <p>When the client has a better understanding of what you’ve done and why you’ve made the decisions you’ve made, their revisions are less likely to be lots of little tweaks. Instead, they’ll be able to focus more on the overall aspects of the design and relate those things directly to their audience and their goals (two things you can remind them to think about in your presentation).</p> <h2>Preparing to present your work</h2> <p>There are a few things you’ll want to take into consideration when you’re getting ready to present your work to your clients. By intentionally preparing for your presentation, you’ll be able to ensure that it’s successful.</p> <h3>Decide how you’ll present your work</h3> <p>This is obviously the first thing that you want to figure out. Most designers, myself included, aren’t too terribly interested in taking calls, but as Meg pointed out in <a href="http://getbacktodesign.co/045/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">episode 45</a>, it’s important to keep in mind that your client may understand you better in a different way than you’re comfortable with. So, consider the three ways you can present your work:</p> <h4>Over the phone</h4> <p>We heard Jamie mention in <a href="http://getbacktodesign.co/035/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">episode 35</a> that her and her team do it this way. She had a great tip that they simply explain their design decisions and ask if there are any questions but avoid getting feedback until the client has more time to look over the work.</p> <h4>Video recording</h4> <p>If you’re not super comfortable with taking phone calls, this is a great option because it still lets you verbalize your rationale. Also, keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need any fancy software to do this. You can get away with using your Apple headphones with a mic and QuickTime on your computer. Krista also shared that Loom is her favorite tool to use for this.</p> <h4>Project Management</h4> <p>If you’re really not into the other two options or can’t make time to do them, the last option is to include your rationale in your project management when you upload your designs. This is the easiest way to do it, but it’s not necessarily the most effective.</p> <h3>Make notes about your decisions while you’re designing</h3> <p>If you’re not used to explaining your rationale to anyone, then it’s a good idea to start getting into the habit of taking notes while you’re working. This will help you know the exact points you want to make when presenting your work to your clients when the time comes. You’ll also eventually get more and more confident, which means you won’t always have to take notes.</p> <h2>Presenting your work</h2> <p>Okay, you’ve made it this far! Now you’re ready to actually present your work to your clients. There are a few things you want to keep in mind when you’re getting ready to do your presentation.</p> <h3>Have a loose outline of exactly what you’ll say</h3> <p>Take your notes from when you were working and turn them into an outline. This will help you stay focused and organized while you’re on the phone or creating your video presentation. A few things you can mention while you’re creating your outline are:</p> <ul> <li>Their goals and current struggles</li> <li>Your design rationale</li> <li>Strategy / benefits they’ll see – especially if you’re presenting website design!</li> </ul> <h3>Remember to educate but not overwhelm your client</h3> <p>In <a href="http://getbacktodesign.co/042/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">episode 42</a> we talked about why it’s important to educate your clients, and when you’re presenting your designs you’re obviously doing a little bit of this in explaining why you made some of the decisions that you made. However, you do want to make sure that you’re avoiding overwhelming the client with too many details. Remember – you don’t have to explain color psychology or design theory. It’s also important to avoid too much industry jargon. Your client likely doesn’t understand these things, so unless they ask for more detail, it’s okay to leave a certain amount of it out.</p> <h3>Slow it down</h3> <p>When you’re presenting over the phone or by a video presentation, make a note on your outline to literally take a deep breath. If you think I’m being silly, think back to the last time you were on the phone or a video call with a client. Did you leave that call feeling a little winded? Like you’d just ran a marathon? That’s because it’s all too easy to get nervous or just flat out excited about what you’re talking about and end up talking way too fast. Slowing it down will help you sound even more confident and make sure that you’re not going too quickly for your client to keep up.</p> <h2>Action Step</h2> <ul> <li>Create a plan for presenting your work to your next client</li> </ul> <h3>Resources</h3> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.useloom.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Loom</a></li> </ul> <p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/052-2/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">052: Presenting Designs to Your Client</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

052: Presenting Designs to Your Client

One question we see asked a lot on our Facebook group and in others has to do with pricing. People are often at a loss on what to charge, how to establish their pricing, when to raise their rates, and so much more. Kory here! I know from experience that figuring out your pricing can be really tricky, but unfortunately, this isn’t one you can turn to your peers to get the answer to. Today, we’re bringing you a sort of broad episode on pricing to help you feel more comfortable and confident making decisions on what your pricing strategy should be for the new year.   Subscribe on iTunes Hourly vs. Package pricing One of the first things you want to think about is how you’re going to price your services. There are two main ways to do this: hourly projects or packages. Krista and I like to have main packages that we offer clients because it’s a lot simpler. However, we still customize our packages or do hourly work when we need to. One downside to package pricing is that it definitely ignores the size of the business you’re working with, which is tough primarily if you work with businesses of different scales. For example, you may find yourself charging an experience business owner and new hobby blogger the same price, when it might be easier to charge the business more than the blogger. The alternative to packages is working based on the number of hours you put into a project. These types of projects are trickier because you really need to have a good idea on how long it will take you to do things rather than taking a guess. I do offer hourly projects, but they’re usually only small projects like making tweaks to a past client’s website. Coming up with your prices When trying to come up with your prices, it might seem the easiest to just charge the same or less than what your peers do. However, that’s not a good way to develop your pricing strategy. Instead, you want to consider your experience and what you’re giving your clients. When you’re just starting out, it’s okay to have a lower price point than others and slowly work your way up. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to help establish your pricing:  How much experience do you have compared to your competitors? How many similar projects have you done in the past? Do you have any unique skills that boost your experience level? Will you spend the entire project googling how to do things?  If you ask yourself these questions while deciding on your hourly or package prices, you’re going to have a much more realistic idea on how much you should charge. When to raise your prices The biggest thing that people seem to ignore or overthink is when to raise their rates. I’ve totally been there: either charging too low for too long or thinking about bumping up my prices before it’s time. There are a few great signs that it’s a good time to raise your rates, though.  When you’re consistently getting inquiries and booking new projects If you’ve made a change to your packages and are offering more in them to your clients If you’ve learned a lot and gained a lot of experience in your area of design  It doesn’t hurt to re-evaluate your pricing about 2 times a year to make sure that your prices are still good. After the first of the year is good because this is usually when you’re making changes to your business and can evaluate what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown over the past year. Sometime in the middle of the year is also a great time to consider your prices. When to discount your services I’ve seen a lot of designers ask in various groups when they should discount their services. This is definitely a personal preference; some people are more comfortable with discounting their services more often than others. However, I’ve seen some situations where the designer doesn’t know if the specific situation is a good time to discount their prices. There are two important things to consider here – How excited are you about the project? I’ve seen several designers get inquiries from local businesses, startups, friends, family, and nonprofits for example, and these are when most designers would think to discount their prices. I’ll be honest, the only time I discount my services now a days is when I’m doing work for my dad. That’s it. I know Krista doesn’t discount her services very often either. However, if you’ve had someone reach out to you with a project you’re really excited about, you can definitely give them a discount on their project. Are they not wanting to pay what you’re worth? Unless you absolutely need the project to be able to eat this month, I don’t recommend discounting your prices. A lot of times potential clients will reach out to you to get a quote when they know already that they don’t want to pay it, then they’ll nickel and dime you trying to get you to come down as much as possible. This isn’t a good way to start the project; in fact, it’s a huge red flag for us. Really consider how much you need or want the project before doing any sort of discounts for these people. Why we post prices on our sites The last thing we see talked about a lot is whether or not you should put your prices on your website. This always made me think of the saying “If you have to ask, it costs too much.” If your prices aren’t listed on your site, then a lot of potential clients are going to just assume they can’t afford to work with you. Not only that, but it can also lead to getting a ton of inquiries from people who can’t afford you since they don’t know what you charge. For this reason, I’ve almost always listed my prices on my site. I would rather lose out on a few inquiries than not get any or spend an entire day each week responding to people with much smaller budgets. If you typically have a lot of custom packages, a great way to still list your prices is to have a “Starts at” price listed. Action Steps  Spend some time in the next few weeks taking a look at your pricing and decide if you need to raise your rates for this year If you aren’t already, post your prices on your website  Tweet That[clickToTweet tweet=”I like to do packages because they simplify what I offer – Kory” quote=”I like to do packages because they simplify what I offer – Kory”][clickToTweet tweet=”Your prices may also depend on how many clients you’re booking – Krista” quote=”Your prices may also depend on how many clients you’re booking – Krista”]The post 039: Pricing + Your Design Services appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>One question we see asked a lot on our Facebook group and in others has to do with pricing. People are often at a loss on what to charge, how to establish their pricing, when to raise their rates, and so much more.</p> <p>Kory here! I know from experience that figuring out your pricing can be really tricky, but unfortunately, this isn’t one you can turn to your peers to get the answer to. Today, we’re bringing you a sort of broad episode on pricing to help you feel more comfortable and confident making decisions on what your pricing strategy should be for the new year.</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Hourly vs. Package pricing</h2> <p>One of the first things you want to think about is how you’re going to price your services. There are two main ways to do this: hourly projects or packages. Krista and I like to have main packages that we offer clients because it’s a lot simpler. However, we still customize our packages or do hourly work when we need to.</p> <p>One downside to package pricing is that it definitely ignores the size of the business you’re working with, which is tough primarily if you work with businesses of different scales. For example, you may find yourself charging an experience business owner and new hobby blogger the same price, when it might be easier to charge the business more than the blogger.</p> <p>The alternative to packages is working based on the number of hours you put into a project. These types of projects are trickier because you really need to have a good idea on how long it will take you to do things rather than taking a guess. I do offer hourly projects, but they’re usually only small projects like making tweaks to a past client’s website.</p> <h2>Coming up with your prices</h2> <p>When trying to come up with your prices, it might seem the easiest to just charge the same or less than what your peers do. However, that’s not a good way to develop your pricing strategy. Instead, you want to consider your experience and what you’re giving your clients. When you’re just starting out, it’s okay to have a lower price point than others and slowly work your way up.</p> <p>Here are a few questions to ask yourself to help establish your pricing:</p> <ul> <li>How much experience do you have compared to your competitors?</li> <li>How many similar projects have you done in the past?</li> <li>Do you have any unique skills that boost your experience level?</li> <li>Will you spend the entire project googling how to do things?</li> </ul> <p>If you ask yourself these questions while deciding on your hourly or package prices, you’re going to have a much more realistic idea on how much you should charge.</p> <h2>When to raise your prices</h2> <p>The biggest thing that people seem to ignore or overthink is when to raise their rates. I’ve totally been there: either charging too low for too long or thinking about bumping up my prices before it’s time. There are a few great signs that it’s a good time to raise your rates, though.</p> <ul> <li>When you’re consistently getting inquiries and booking new projects</li> <li>If you’ve made a change to your packages and are offering more in them to your clients</li> <li>If you’ve learned a lot and gained a lot of experience in your area of design</li> </ul> <p>It doesn’t hurt to re-evaluate your pricing about 2 times a year to make sure that your prices are still good. After the first of the year is good because this is usually when you’re making changes to your business and can evaluate what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown over the past year. Sometime in the middle of the year is also a great time to consider your prices.</p> <h2>When to discount your services</h2> <p>I’ve seen a lot of designers ask in various groups when they should discount their services. This is definitely a personal preference; some people are more comfortable with discounting their services more often than others. However, I’ve seen some situations where the designer doesn’t know if the specific situation is a good time to discount their prices. There are two important things to consider here –</p> <h3>How excited are you about the project?</h3> <p>I’ve seen several designers get inquiries from local businesses, startups, friends, family, and nonprofits for example, and these are when most designers would think to discount their prices. I’ll be honest, the <em>only</em> time I discount my services now a days is when I’m doing work for my dad. That’s it. I know Krista doesn’t discount her services very often either. However, if you’ve had someone reach out to you with a project you’re <em>really</em> excited about, you can definitely give them a discount on their project.</p> <h3>Are they not wanting to pay what you’re worth?</h3> <p>Unless you absolutely <em>need</em> the project to be able to eat this month, I don’t recommend discounting your prices. A lot of times potential clients will reach out to you to get a quote when they know already that they don’t want to pay it, then they’ll nickel and dime you trying to get you to come down as much as possible. This isn’t a good way to start the project; in fact, it’s <a href="http://getbacktodesign.co/020/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">a huge red flag</a> for us. Really consider how much you need or want the project before doing any sort of discounts for these people.</p> <h2>Why we post prices on our sites</h2> <p>The last thing we see talked about a lot is whether or not you should put your prices on your website. This always made me think of the saying “If you have to ask, it costs too much.” If your prices aren’t listed on your site, then a lot of potential clients are going to just assume they can’t afford to work with you. Not only that, but it can also lead to getting a <em>ton</em> of inquiries from people who can’t afford you since they don’t know what you charge.</p> <p>For this reason, I’ve almost always listed my prices on my site. I would rather lose out on a few inquiries than not get any or spend an entire day each week responding to people with much smaller budgets. If you typically have a lot of custom packages, a great way to still list your prices is to have a “Starts at” price listed.</p> <h2>Action Steps</h2> <ul> <li>Spend some time in the next few weeks taking a look at your pricing and decide if you need to raise your rates for this year</li> <li>If you aren’t already, post your prices on your website</li> </ul> <h3>Tweet That</h3>[clickToTweet tweet=”I like to do packages because they simplify what I offer – Kory” quote=”I like to do packages because they simplify what I offer – Kory”]<br>[clickToTweet tweet=”Your prices may also depend on how many clients you’re booking – Krista” quote=”Your prices may also depend on how many clients you’re booking – Krista”]<br><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/039/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">039: Pricing + Your Design Services</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

039: Pricing + Your Design Services

Retainers are a huge part of Krista’s business and she can’t imagine not having it included in her business operations. We can’t believe we haven’t talked about this topic before already! This subject is something that came up a lot in this year’s online summit, so today’s episode is all about retainers. We are covering what they are, the benefits, a few ways to offer them to a client and what exactly goes into them. We will also be taking a look at how Krista has her packages set up!Subscribe on iTunesWhat are retainersRetainers are usually monthly packages with a set cost per month. For a retainer, you’re either working with a specific number of hours or delivering a certain number of final products to a client. So instead of a usual one off project that you may be accustomed to, this is a package that you’re working with a client on every month.  The benefitsOne of the benefits of retainer work is that tasks tend to be easier and faster to complete since you are working with the same client. You can develop a relationship with your clients and get really excited about the work you are doing. It is nice to have smaller tasks on your plate that provide recurring, guaranteed (mostly) income. If you’re used to custom branding, design or development – these are great tasks to include in your retainer work.Ways to offer retainer servicesThere are a few different ways to package your retainer services for clients. This may take a little bit of adjusting here and there to find the right combo for your business, but it will be worth it in the end. Set number of hours per monthOne of the package offerings you can include in your retainer services is through a set amount of hours per month. Your client can choose from a number of packages you create or just let people select how many hours they want.You can also offer a client a slight discount for when they select a larger package. This provides an incentive for them to pick the higher offering and gives you the advantage of the additional income. With the available retainer package you offer, you can position each tier by providing examples of the types of work you can do within each package. Maybe within your smallest package you can cover their monthly social media images or your mid-tier could include social graphics, PDFs and workbook design. The highest tier could be all of the previous tiers plus promo graphics, launch material, etc. You get the idea!Specific deliverables per monthSpecific deliverable contracts are another available package option for your retainer clients that could work best for your business. However, this will only work if you do a very specific thing. For example: 20 social media graphics per month or 10 graphics plus one 5-page workbook design. This package is based off of line items.For those of you who don’t love the idea of hourly packages, this is what you should go with. Price this package based on what the client will be provided through your services.What goes into these servicesThere are a few different factors to consider with building out retainer services as an option in your business model. Keep all of these in mind when developing your plan!How many clients to takeYou have to set aside time in your schedule for these retainer clients. This really is the only way you can offer this type of service without it driving you nuts. Plus, having a structure to your schedule for these items will help with avoiding going over time and messing up your other work tasks.Having this schedule will also determine how many clients you can take on at a time. For Krista’s business, she sets aside 2 hours, 3 times a week for the retainer work. She also guarantees her retainer clients a 5-day turnaround for small projects and a 10-day turnaround for larger projects. Krista usually high balls her estimated time for project completion, but this allows her the chance to overdeliver to the client. She can also have a better grip on her workload thanks to this time buffer, especially if she has multiple clients assign things to her at the same time. Krista knows she’s covered thanks to this schedule set up. We recommend blocking out spaces in your schedule and starting with a low estimate on how many clients you can take on. Whether you move forward with hourly rate packages or deliverables. From there, you can always increase your client roster after a few months of seeing what the process is like. Consider turnaround timeWe’ve covered a bit about what turnaround time looks like for Krista, but you’ll also need to think about this for yourself. How quickly will you turn around material? Don’t offer a 24-hour turnaround if you can’t offer that same courtesy to all of your clients at the same time. Determine how your hours will work from month-to-monthWhat happens if someone doesn’t use off of their hours – will it carry over to the next month? Some client may use up all of their hours consistently while other clients barely make it. Determine if there will be a certain number of hours that can carry over or if you will allow an unlimited amount to be transferred. If you don’t want to allow hours to be carried over, make that very clear to your clients.If someone ends up wanting more hours than what is included in their contract, handle it on a case-by-case basis. Don’t guarantee it anywhere. If you have room in your schedule and you are fired up about the work, you can consider it, but don’t always make it a yes. Be smart about what is on your plate!Make your policies clearWhatever you determine for the above topics, make those policies clear in your paperwork and information to your client. You can incorporate this info in a FAQ page on your website or within an introduction/welcome package. Absolutely include this information in a contract. Cover your bases! An onboarding video covering this could also be a good idea. As needed, be sure to remind your clients as well of your policies. Positioning your packagesA topic that we hear a lot from designers is that they are worried that they aren’t delivering enough value with their services. Retainers are a great way to add value to your client experience. They make your clients lives easier and solve specific problems for them. The package your offer, if not just doing hourly, will be a specific solution for who you are working with. For example, Krista has a designer on retainer that saves her a TON of time through her work. Each time she does something, not only does she save space in Krista’s schedule, but her work looks way more professional that whatever Krista could have created. What Krista’s packages look likeThese packages include maintenance for past clients mainly through hourly retainer packages. She includes a minimum hourly offering as well as a maximum. It doesn’t really serve her any benefit to working with a client who wants my services for less than 2 hours per month. It can be dangerous for Krista to have more than 8 hours per month for a client in case someone decides to use all 8 hours at work. The hours available to her clients can roll over up to 1 month. So for example, if they book 2 hours, they can carry over up to 2 from last month. Any hours over 2 are lost when the new month starts.Krista includes a 5-10 day turnaround for the tasks, but if a client needs a quicker turnaround she will bill double her rate. She does this when she has to fit in additional work outside of the usual business hours or if a client takes advantage of my overtime. If she can’t fit it into her schedule or it’s not worth the rush rate, Krista just tells them she can’t do it. From Krista’s perspective, she likes an hourly rate setup. A lot of people argue that you aren’t getting paid for what you are worth with hourly billing, BUT if your hourly rate is high enough, you do get paid your worth. Krista has a pretty high hourly rate and she does tend to get things done insanely fast. She has had a client tell her that tasks she’s completed in a matter of minutes would have taken them hours. One time, Krista finished a task for a client in literally 11 seconds was something they had fought with for 3 hours the night before. There’s your value displayed right there. Retainers are a great way to add recurring, reliable income to your business. While you need to take some time to set up proper policies and packages before you dive in, there is a lot of flexibility in how it can work for you!Action StepsConsider if a retainer offering is something you’d like to add to your businessBrainstorm what your packages options will look likeDecide on your policies and implement them in your processThe post 078: Offering Retainer Services To Your Design Clients appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>Retainers are a huge part of Krista’s business and she can’t imagine not having it included in her business operations. We can’t believe we haven’t talked about this topic before already! </p><p>This subject is something that came up a lot in this year’s online summit, so today’s episode is all about retainers. We are covering what they are, the benefits, a few ways to offer them to a client and what exactly goes into them. We will also be taking a look at how Krista has her packages set up!</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p><h2>What are retainers</h2><p>Retainers are usually monthly packages with a set cost per month. For a retainer, you’re either working with a specific number of hours or delivering a certain number of final products to a client. </p><p>So instead of a usual one off project that you may be accustomed to, this is a package that you’re working with a client on every month.  </p><h2>The benefits</h2><p>One of the benefits of retainer work is that tasks tend to be easier and faster to complete since you are working with the same client. You can develop a relationship with your clients and get really excited about the work you are doing. </p><p>It is nice to have smaller tasks on your plate that provide recurring, guaranteed (mostly) income. If you’re used to custom branding, design or development – these are great tasks to include in your retainer work.</p><h2>Ways to offer retainer services</h2><p>There are a few different ways to package your retainer services for clients. This may take a little bit of adjusting here and there to find the right combo for your business, but it will be worth it in the end. </p><h3>Set number of hours per month</h3><p>One of the package offerings you can include in your retainer services is through a set amount of hours per month. Your client can choose from a number of packages you create or just let people select how many hours they want.</p><p>You can also offer a client a slight discount for when they select a larger package. This provides an incentive for them to pick the higher offering and gives you the advantage of the additional income. </p><p>With the available retainer package you offer, you can position each tier by providing examples of the types of work you can do within each package. Maybe within your smallest package you can cover their monthly social media images or your mid-tier could include social graphics, PDFs and workbook design. The highest tier could be all of the previous tiers plus promo graphics, launch material, etc. You get the idea!</p><h3>Specific deliverables per month</h3><p>Specific deliverable contracts are another available package option for your retainer clients that could work best for your business. However, this will only work if you do a very specific thing. </p><p>For example: 20 social media graphics per month or 10 graphics plus one 5-page workbook design. This package is based off of line items.</p><p>For those of you who don’t love the idea of hourly packages, this is what you should go with. Price this package based on what the client will be provided through your services.</p><h2>What goes into these services</h2><p>There are a few different factors to consider with building out retainer services as an option in your business model. Keep all of these in mind when developing your plan!</p><h3>How many clients to take</h3><p>You <strong><em>have</em></strong> to set aside time in your schedule for these retainer clients. This really is the only way you can offer this type of service without it driving you nuts. Plus, having a structure to your schedule for these items will help with avoiding going over time and messing up your other work tasks.</p><p>Having this schedule will also determine how many clients you can take on at a time. For Krista’s business, she sets aside 2 hours, 3 times a week for the retainer work. She also guarantees her retainer clients a 5-day turnaround for small projects and a 10-day turnaround for larger projects. Krista usually high balls her estimated time for project completion, but this allows her the chance to overdeliver to the client. She can also have a better grip on her workload thanks to this time buffer, especially if she has multiple clients assign things to her at the same time. Krista knows she’s covered thanks to this schedule set up. </p><p>We recommend blocking out spaces in your schedule and starting with a low estimate on how many clients you can take on. Whether you move forward with hourly rate packages or deliverables. From there, you can always increase your client roster after a few months of seeing what the process is like. </p><h3>Consider turnaround time</h3><p>We’ve covered a bit about what turnaround time looks like for Krista, but you’ll also need to think about this for yourself. How quickly will you turn around material? Don’t offer a 24-hour turnaround if you can’t offer that same courtesy to all of your clients at the same time. </p><h3>Determine how your hours will work from month-to-month</h3><p>What happens if someone doesn’t use off of their hours – will it carry over to the next month? Some client may use up all of their hours consistently while other clients barely make it. Determine if there will be a certain number of hours that can carry over or if you will allow an unlimited amount to be transferred. If you don’t want to allow hours to be carried over, make that very clear to your clients.</p><p>If someone ends up wanting more hours than what is included in their contract, handle it on a case-by-case basis. Don’t guarantee it anywhere. If you have room in your schedule and you are fired up about the work, you can consider it, but don’t always make it a yes. Be smart about what is on your plate!</p><h3>Make your policies clear</h3><p>Whatever you determine for the above topics, make those policies clear in your paperwork and information to your client. You can incorporate this info in a FAQ page on your website or within an introduction/welcome package. Absolutely include this information in a contract. Cover your bases! An onboarding video covering this could also be a good idea. As needed, be sure to remind your clients as well of your policies. </p><h3>Positioning your packages</h3><p>A topic that we hear a lot from designers is that they are worried that they aren’t delivering enough value with their services. Retainers are a great way to add value to your client experience. They make your clients lives easier and solve specific problems for them. The package your offer, if not just doing hourly, will be a specific solution for who you are working with. </p><p>For example, Krista has a designer on retainer that saves her a TON of time through her work. Each time she does something, not only does she save space in Krista’s schedule, but her work looks way more professional that whatever Krista could have created. </p><h2>What Krista’s packages look like</h2><p>These packages include maintenance for past clients mainly through hourly retainer packages. She includes a minimum hourly offering as well as a maximum. It doesn’t really serve her any benefit to working with a client who wants my services for less than 2 hours per month. It can be dangerous for Krista to have more than 8 hours per month for a client in case someone decides to use all 8 hours at work. </p><p>The hours available to her clients can roll over up to 1 month. So for example, if they book 2 hours, they can carry over up to 2 from last month. Any hours over 2 are lost when the new month starts.</p><p>Krista includes a 5-10 day turnaround for the tasks, but if a client needs a quicker turnaround she will bill double her rate. She does this when she has to fit in additional work outside of the usual business hours or if a client takes advantage of my overtime. If she can’t fit it into her schedule or it’s not worth the rush rate, Krista just tells them she can’t do it. </p><p>From Krista’s perspective, she likes an hourly rate setup. A lot of people argue that you aren’t getting paid for what you are worth with hourly billing, BUT if your hourly rate is high enough, you do get paid your worth. </p><p>Krista has a pretty high hourly rate and she does tend to get things done insanely fast. She has had a client tell her that tasks she’s completed in a matter of minutes would have taken them hours. One time, Krista finished a task for a client in literally 11 seconds was something they had fought with for 3 hours the night before. There’s your value displayed right there. </p><p>Retainers are a great way to add recurring, reliable income to your business. While you <strong><em>need</em></strong> to take some time to set up proper policies and packages before you dive in, there is a lot of flexibility in how it can work for you!</p><h2>Action Steps</h2><ul><li>Consider if a retainer offering is something you’d like to add to your business</li><li>Brainstorm what your packages options will look like</li><li>Decide on your policies and implement them in your process</li></ul><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/078/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">078: Offering Retainer Services To Your Design Clients</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

078: Offering Retainer Services To Your Design Clients

Offering unique design services is a challenge, whether you’ve been in business for years or are just starting out. It’s common to feel like you need to offer the same types of design services as everyone else – especially the people who are seeing great results and growth in their business. In today’s episode, we’re chatting with Kaitlyn of The Crown Fox about how you can find out what you really want to offer to your clients to make you happiest, get your clients results, and make your business stand out from all the other designers out there.   Subscribe on iTunes How Kaitlyn’s business started Kaitlyn started her business the way a lot of designers tend to. You see a few websites offering branding or website design along with a general price range, and decide to go for it. She jumped in by offering branding and Squarespace websites like a lot of the other designers she was seeing around. However, even though she had good clients she didn’t feel fulfilled in the way she always expected to. Even though she loved branding, she realized she didn’t like doing branding for people on her own. What the transition looked like Even though Kaitlyn knew she wasn’t doing the right thing, she was very resistant to the change at first. She tried to power through and keep going, while trying different things to see what stuck. If you’ve followed her for a period of time, you might be surprised to learn that she was even looking for full-time jobs for a while. During a conversation with a dream client that she was doing retainer work for, Kaitlyn mentioned that she wished she could work with all clients like her…and that’s where the real transition started. She quickly started signing on more retainer clients and knew that she was meant for a design assistant role, rather than a web or brand designer. She can now look back at the old work she was doing and say that she didn’t enjoy it because:  It felt like a constant struggle with clients with everything from pricing to choosing the right logos She felt like she was there to click buttons  But on the flip side, she’s totally in love with what she’s doing now because:  She’s on a team There are other people excited about what she’s doing She can be excited about the direction someone else’s business is going Her clients aren’t always standing over her shoulder  Kaitlyn transferred between her two types of services in a way that she wouldn’t necessarily recommend to others, but she completely stopped accepting the types of projects she had been doing. Even though that meant she didn’t know where money would be coming in, she decided she was done. However, everything seemed to line up perfectly and as she was wrapping up her final two projects, an amazing new client found her way through the door. Instead of completely cutting off your work before having new clients lined up, Kaitlyn recommends slowly making the transition. So while finishing up a current project, also spend time marketing your new services and signing on new clients. She also recommends that you give any longer-term clients that you’d no longer be working with a heads up that things would be changing and a referral to a new designer. How the new clients started coming in so fast If you listen in to the episode, you’ll learn that Kaitlyn filled up her new spots pretty quickly. She credits this much to the fact that she stood out to people as a graphic design assistant and was exactly what they needed. The word choice she used in crafting her new title was huge. When coming up with your own unique service offerings, rather than trying to be creative in your name, consider what exactly your dream clients would be looking for if they needed someone like you. How changing up her offerings transformed her business Since finding design offerings that she really loves, Kaitlyn has found herself working a lot more – but in a good way! It’s crazy how much more excited you can be about your work when it really lights you up and is exactly what you want to be doing. Because of working more on projects she loves with the perfect clients, Kaitlyn has also found herself feeling more motivated, productive, and happy overall. Action Steps If you’ve found yourself feeling like you’re not offering the right services and that you’re already mentally checked out, Kaitlyn has some great tips for you:  Acknowledge the fact that you need to decide what’s next, whether it’s a full-time job or creating new services Think back to the work you’ve done over the past year and take note of when you were the happiest Build services based on that (and don’t be afraid if it’s super specific!)  Learn More About Kaitlyn Kaitlyn is a graphic design assistant to creative entrepreneurs. She’ll handle anything you need visually, while you keep growing your empire! Website | Instagram | Weekly Wine Down Tweet That[clickToTweet tweet=”‘Now I’m excited to do the work, happier, motivated, and a lot more productive.’ – @thecrownfox” quote=”‘Now I’m excited to do the work, happier, motivated, and a lot more productive.’ – @thecrownfox”][clickToTweet tweet=”‘A lot of us offer more than what we show on our websites’ – Kory” quote=”‘A lot of us offer more than what we show on our websites’ – Kory”][clickToTweet tweet=””Acknowledge that what you’re doing right now isn’t working’ – Krista” quote=”‘Acknowledge that what you’re doing right now isn’t working’ – Krista”]The post 009: How to Discover What Services to Offer Your Clients with Kaitlyn of The Crown Fox appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>Offering unique design services is a challenge, whether you’ve been in business for years or are just starting out. It’s common to feel like you need to offer the same types of design services as everyone else – especially the people who are seeing great results and growth in their business.</p> <p>In today’s episode, we’re chatting with Kaitlyn of <a href="https://thecrownfox.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">The Crown Fox</a> about how you can find out what you really want to offer to your clients to make you happiest, get your clients results, and make your business stand out from all the other designers out there.</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>How Kaitlyn’s business started</h2> <p>Kaitlyn started her business the way a lot of designers tend to. You see a few websites offering branding or website design along with a general price range, and decide to go for it.</p> <p>She jumped in by offering branding and Squarespace websites like a lot of the other designers she was seeing around. However, even though she had good clients she didn’t feel fulfilled in the way she always expected to. Even though she loved branding, she realized she didn’t like doing branding for people on her own.</p> <h2>What the transition looked like</h2> <p>Even though Kaitlyn knew she wasn’t doing the right thing, she was very resistant to the change at first. She tried to power through and keep going, while trying different things to see what stuck. If you’ve followed her for a period of time, you might be surprised to learn that she was even looking for full-time jobs for a while.</p> <p>During a conversation with a dream client that she was doing retainer work for, Kaitlyn mentioned that she wished she could work with all clients like her…and that’s where the real transition started. She quickly started signing on more retainer clients and knew that she was meant for a design assistant role, rather than a web or brand designer.</p> <p>She can now look back at the old work she was doing and say that she didn’t enjoy it because:</p> <ul> <li>It felt like a constant struggle with clients with everything from pricing to choosing the right logos</li> <li>She felt like she was there to click buttons</li> </ul> <p>But on the flip side, she’s totally in love with what she’s doing now because:</p> <ul> <li>She’s on a team</li> <li>There are other people excited about what she’s doing</li> <li>She can be excited about the direction someone else’s business is going</li> <li>Her clients aren’t always standing over her shoulder</li> </ul> <p>Kaitlyn transferred between her two types of services in a way that she wouldn’t necessarily recommend to others, but she completely stopped accepting the types of projects she had been doing. Even though that meant she didn’t know where money would be coming in, she decided she was done.</p> <p>However, everything seemed to line up perfectly and as she was wrapping up her final two projects, an amazing new client found her way through the door.</p> <p>Instead of completely cutting off your work before having new clients lined up, Kaitlyn recommends slowly making the transition. So while finishing up a current project, also spend time marketing your new services and signing on new clients. She also recommends that you give any longer-term clients that you’d no longer be working with a heads up that things would be changing and a referral to a new designer.</p> <h2>How the new clients started coming in so fast</h2> <p>If you listen in to the episode, you’ll learn that Kaitlyn filled up her new spots pretty quickly. She credits this much to the fact that she stood out to people as a graphic design assistant and was exactly what they needed. The word choice she used in crafting her new title was huge.</p> <p>When coming up with your own unique service offerings, rather than trying to be creative in your name, consider what exactly your dream clients would be looking for if they needed someone like you.</p> <h2>How changing up her offerings transformed her business</h2> <p>Since finding design offerings that she really loves, Kaitlyn has found herself working a lot more – but in a good way! It’s crazy how much more excited you can be about your work when it really lights you up and is exactly what you want to be doing.</p> <p>Because of working more on projects she loves with the perfect clients, Kaitlyn has also found herself feeling more motivated, productive, and happy overall.</p> <h2>Action Steps</h2> <p>If you’ve found yourself feeling like you’re not offering the right services and that you’re already mentally checked out, Kaitlyn has some great tips for you:</p> <ol> <li>Acknowledge the fact that you need to decide what’s next, whether it’s a full-time job or creating new services</li> <li>Think back to the work you’ve done over the past year and take note of when you were the happiest</li> <li>Build services based on that (and don’t be afraid if it’s super specific!)</li> </ol> <h3>Learn More About Kaitlyn</h3> <p>Kaitlyn is a graphic design assistant to creative entrepreneurs. She’ll handle anything you need visually, while you keep growing your empire!</p> <p><a href="https://thecrownfox.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thecrownfox/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://thecrownfox.com/join" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Weekly Wine Down</a></p> <h3>Tweet That</h3>[clickToTweet tweet=”‘Now I’m excited to do the work, happier, motivated, and a lot more productive.’ – @thecrownfox” quote=”‘Now I’m excited to do the work, happier, motivated, and a lot more productive.’ – @thecrownfox”]<br>[clickToTweet tweet=”‘A lot of us offer more than what we show on our websites’ – Kory” quote=”‘A lot of us offer more than what we show on our websites’ – Kory”]<br>[clickToTweet tweet=””Acknowledge that what you’re doing right now isn’t working’ – Krista” quote=”‘Acknowledge that what you’re doing right now isn’t working’ – Krista”]<br><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/009/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">009: How to Discover What Services to Offer Your Clients with Kaitlyn of The Crown Fox</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

009: How to Discover What Services to Offer Your Clients with Kaitlyn of The Crown Fox

As a designer, you’re always worrying about other people’s branding, graphics, website, or all of the above. When you’re focused on keeping your clients happy and on the right track, it’s easy to forget about making time for yourself. The problem with that is that your website and business may be suffering as a result! Today we’ll talk about website mistakes that could be costing you clients and how to fix them.   Subscribe on iTunes Mistake #1: Focusing on what you do, rather than the benefits If your website focuses on the fact that you offer different types of branding and design services, rather than the reason your clients should be hiring you in the first place, you’re making a super common mistake. For example, if the tagline on your website or call-to-action in your header just mentions the fact that you’re a designer, you’re definitely missing out. But don’t worry, it’s an easy fix! Instead of focusing on what you do, focus on what results your clients get from working with you. What are the main reasons your clients are hiring you in the first place and the biggest benefits they see after your project is complete? Mistake #2: Your services page Listing features, but not benefits Similar to the first mistake, if your services page just lists out what your clients will get in their package, rather than what they’ll get out of it, you’re missing out. Use your services page as an opportunity to remind clients of their struggles and the huge difference you can make in their business. Offering too many services If you’re offering everything from website design to VA work to social media consulting, you’re scaring away every experienced business owner out there. People who have been in business for any length of time (you know, the people who are willing to hand over their money) want to know that you are amazing at what you do. When you’re offering too many services, it looks to those people like you’re just kind of throwing everything out there to see what sticks, rather than specializing in one thing that you can help them with. Not listing specific packages (or having too many) Offering specific packages is an important part of being a designer. Your clients don’t know exactly what they need when they come to you in order to get the best results. You do! Having these set packages also deters people from asking for services that you don’t want to offer. Come up with 3 specific packages at different price points that will help your clients to move forward in whatever stage of business they’re in. Making booking too difficult Booking with you or scheduling that first consult call should be super easy. We don’t want to put any extra boundaries in the way of people trying to hire us. The best options are to have buttons that allow potential clients to directly:  Schedule a call Fill out a form specific to the service they’re interested in Pay a down payment  Mistake #3: A portfolio with just a gallery of images As a designer, your portfolio is a big selling point. Potential clients want to see examples of the work you do before booking to make sure your style aligns with theirs and that you’re really as good as you say you are. However, a lot of designers have portfolios that are simply a gallery of images that don’t open to any more information. This type of layout doesn’t give potential clients what they need to get excited and really see what you can do. Instead, have each item on your portfolio page open to a new page containing more information on the project, additional screenshots, and a link to the website (if applicable). Mistake #4: Linking your main call-to-action to your services page This one is nice and simple. If the main call-to-action on your website is to view your services page, you’re likely missing out on some great website real estate that could do a whole lot more for you. Kory found that when she tried this, it increased the page views on her services page, but she didn’t see an increase in clients at all. If people are visiting your website for the first time or are just there to scan around, they’re not ready to just go and hire you and you asking them for it isn’t going to change their mind. Instead, bring them to your blog posts or email list where you can build a relationship with them and show them just how you can help improve their business. Mistake #5: Starting your homepage or services page with questions Listing off questions on part of your website where you’re trying to get potential clients to hire you shows that you’re unsure of who your ideal client is. Instead of asking questions, rephrase them into statements. That will show a lot more confidence and your potential clients will both agree and realize that you know and relate with them p.s. Kory does not agree with this point Mistake #6: Not showing your face Trusting someone with a website design or branding is a big step. People want to know who you are, what your personality is like, and feel a connection before they reach out to work together. But if your website doesn’t have a picture of you, you’re making the connection much more difficult for people to feel. I know that having your face on your website isn’t always the most fun thing. But if you’ve been putting it off until now, start with having a picture on just your About page and homepage. Action Steps  Go through the above mistakes and take note of any you’re making on your website Set a reminder on your calendar to fix one mistake per week  Tweet That[clickToTweet tweet=”You don’t meet someone &amp; ask them to buy a house on the 1st date – services are the same – Kory” quote=”You don’t meet someone &amp; ask them to buy a house on the 1st date – services are the same – Kory”][clickToTweet tweet=”‘You are not going to catch anyone’s attention by saying you do design’ – Krista” quote=”‘You are not going to catch anyone’s attention by saying you do design’ – Krista”]The post 016: Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Design Clients appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>As a designer, you’re always worrying about other people’s branding, graphics, website, or all of the above. When you’re focused on keeping your clients happy and on the right track, it’s easy to forget about making time for yourself. The problem with that is that your website and business may be suffering as a result!</p> <p>Today we’ll talk about website mistakes that could be costing you clients and how to fix them.</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Mistake #1: Focusing on what you do, rather than the benefits</h2> <p>If your website focuses on the fact that you offer different types of branding and design services, rather than the reason your clients should be hiring you in the first place, you’re making a super common mistake. For example, if the tagline on your website or call-to-action in your header just mentions the fact that you’re a designer, you’re definitely missing out.</p> <p>But don’t worry, it’s an easy fix!</p> <p>Instead of focusing on what you do, focus on what results your clients get from working with you. What are the main reasons your clients are hiring you in the first place and the biggest benefits they see after your project is complete?</p> <h2>Mistake #2: Your services page</h2> <h3>Listing features, but not benefits</h3> <p>Similar to the first mistake, if your services page just lists out what your clients will get in their package, rather than what they’ll get out of it, you’re missing out. Use your services page as an opportunity to remind clients of their struggles and the huge difference you can make in their business.</p> <h3>Offering too many services</h3> <p>If you’re offering everything from website design to VA work to social media consulting, you’re scaring away every experienced business owner out there. People who have been in business for any length of time (you know, the people who are willing to hand over their money) want to know that you are amazing at what you do. When you’re offering too many services, it looks to those people like you’re just kind of throwing everything out there to see what sticks, rather than specializing in one thing that you can help them with.</p> <h3>Not listing specific packages (or having too many)</h3> <p>Offering specific packages is an important part of being a designer. Your clients don’t know exactly what they need when they come to you in order to get the best results. You do!</p> <p>Having these set packages also deters people from asking for services that you don’t want to offer.</p> <p>Come up with 3 specific packages at different price points that will help your clients to move forward in whatever stage of business they’re in.</p> <h3>Making booking too difficult</h3> <p>Booking with you or scheduling that first consult call should be super easy. We don’t want to put any extra boundaries in the way of people trying to hire us.</p> <p>The best options are to have buttons that allow potential clients to directly:</p> <ul> <li>Schedule a call</li> <li>Fill out a form <em>specific</em> to the service they’re interested in</li> <li>Pay a down payment</li> </ul> <h2>Mistake #3: A portfolio with just a gallery of images</h2> <p>As a designer, your portfolio is a big selling point. Potential clients want to see examples of the work you do before booking to make sure your style aligns with theirs and that you’re really as good as you say you are.</p> <p>However, a lot of designers have portfolios that are simply a gallery of images that don’t open to any more information. This type of layout doesn’t give potential clients what they need to get excited and really see what you can do.</p> <p>Instead, have each item on your portfolio page open to a new page containing more information on the project, additional screenshots, and a link to the website (if applicable).</p> <h2>Mistake #4: Linking your main call-to-action to your services page</h2> <p>This one is nice and simple. If the main call-to-action on your website is to view your services page, you’re likely missing out on some great website real estate that could do a whole lot more for you. Kory found that when she tried this, it increased the page views on her services page, but she didn’t see an increase in clients at all.</p> <p>If people are visiting your website for the first time or are just there to scan around, they’re not ready to just go and hire you and you asking them for it isn’t going to change their mind. Instead, bring them to your blog posts or email list where you can build a relationship with them and show them just how you can help improve their business.</p> <h2>Mistake #5: Starting your homepage or services page with questions</h2> <p>Listing off questions on part of your website where you’re trying to get potential clients to hire you shows that you’re unsure of who your ideal client is. Instead of asking questions, rephrase them into statements. That will show a lot more confidence and your potential clients will both agree and realize that you know and relate with them</p> <p><em>p.s. Kory does not agree with this point</em></p> <h2>Mistake #6: Not showing your face</h2> <p>Trusting someone with a website design or branding is a big step. People want to know who you are, what your personality is like, and feel a connection before they reach out to work together. But if your website doesn’t have a picture of you, you’re making the connection much more difficult for people to feel.</p> <p>I know that having your face on your website isn’t always the most fun thing. But if you’ve been putting it off until now, start with having a picture on just your About page and homepage.</p> <h2>Action Steps</h2> <ol> <li>Go through the above mistakes and take note of any you’re making on your website</li> <li>Set a reminder on your calendar to fix one mistake per week</li> </ol> <h3>Tweet That</h3>[clickToTweet tweet=”You don’t meet someone &amp; ask them to buy a house on the 1st date – services are the same – Kory” quote=”You don’t meet someone &amp; ask them to buy a house on the 1st date – services are the same – Kory”]<br>[clickToTweet tweet=”‘You are not going to catch anyone’s attention by saying you do design’ – Krista” quote=”‘You are not going to catch anyone’s attention by saying you do design’ – Krista”]<br><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/016/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">016: Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Design Clients</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

016: Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Design Clients

Jean Coelho

A solid services page is a huge part of landing clients and, more importantly, the types of clients you actually want to work with. But to work with dream clients and charge premium prices, a good services page isn’t enough. You also need a positive mindset to go along with it. In this week’s episode, we’re chatting with Jean Coelho about the changes she made to her services page to land her first $6k client and the mindset shift that went along with it.   Subscribe on iTunes Jean’s Journey Jean has always had a passion for art, starting with drawing. She was discouraged from a young age from pursuing art as a career so she grew up not thinking of it as an option. She went to 4 different colleges and finally decided to get her associates degree. After she had that out of the way, she enrolled in art school – her dream beginning to come true! She wanted to work in a corporate space, since that’s what she grew up around. Once she met her husband, she moved to a small town and started a family. By trying to keep her passion alive while raising her family, she found herself tossed into the world of freelancing. For 14 years she struggled her way through running a business and after that she realized it was time for a change. The big services page mistake Before Jean made the changes that landed her a $6,000 client, she was treating her business more like a hobby and not thinking of herself as a professional. Her services page wasn’t aimed at a specific audience and was talking to anyone who needed a designer. Because of this, she wasn’t answering her audience’s questions, which made it very unlikely that anyone was going to pass over a large sum of money. The important changes that led to a $6k branding client Jean started focusing on pain points of her target audience in her copy, rather than how great she was at design. Not focusing on herself and highlighting her audience’s struggles was a game-changer. From there, she created a downloadable package pricing document, which she saw huge results from. Her new services page spelled out absolutely everything a new client wanted to know and that’s exactly why her $6,000 client decided to book. Her fears were taken care of, her questions were answered, and she knew she was going to have a great experience. The most important aspect of a design services page that converts Through Jean’s experience, she’s found that in order to have a services page that converts you need:  Package pricing A firm call-to-action To focus on the pain points that your audience is struggling with  If you’re not sure what your audience’s pain points are, Jean suggests heading to the blog or social media accounts of influencers with a similar audience and looking at the comments people leave! Is mindset a factor in landing larger clients? Mindset was a huge part of Jean starting to land higher-priced clients. She realized that she wanted to look like the professional she was, rather than a work-from-home mom working part-time. She had to imagine herself in a different place and totally change her marketing message. Aside from being able to charge higher prices, a positive mindset brought up strength she needed to get through hard times in both life and business. How to change a negative mindset If you’re someone with a negative mindset, there are steps you can take to change it including things like:  Taking care of your body – a healthy mind stems from a healthy body! Being mindful of things that have happened in the past that effect your mindset Acknowledge where negative thoughts are stemming from  Action Steps  Head to your services page and make changes based on Jean’s tips. Make sure you’re speaking to your audience’s pain points, have packages for them to choose from, and are giving a full call-to-action.  Learn More About Jean After being stuck in the feast or famine cycle for 14 years, Jean decided she was done. She dove in head first with a month of research and took her very first course about using Pinterest. She restructured her design services page and, just one week after the changes went live, landed her first $6,000 full brand client. 4 years later, she’s sharpened her skills as an online business owner and teaches those skills to others. She provides online education to freelance graphic designers that want to become creative entrepreneurs. Her core mission is to supply designers, new to the online space, with all of the tools that they need to profit from their passion, in the form of templates, cheatsheets and e-courses.   Website | Facebook Group | Biz Templates The post 060: A Services Page That Converts + Pricing Mindset with Jean Coelho appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>A solid services page is a huge part of landing clients and, more importantly, the types of clients you actually want to work with. But to work with dream clients and charge premium prices, a good services page isn’t enough. You also need a positive mindset to go along with it.</p> <p>In this week’s episode, we’re chatting with Jean Coelho about the changes she made to her services page to land her first $6k client and the mindset shift that went along with it.</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Jean’s Journey</h2> <p>Jean has always had a passion for art, starting with drawing. She was discouraged from a young age from pursuing art as a career so she grew up not thinking of it as an option. She went to 4 different colleges and finally decided to get her associates degree. After she had that out of the way, she enrolled in art school – her dream beginning to come true!</p> <p>She wanted to work in a corporate space, since that’s what she grew up around. Once she met her husband, she moved to a small town and started a family. By trying to keep her passion alive while raising her family, she found herself tossed into the world of freelancing.</p> <p>For 14 years she struggled her way through running a business and after that she realized it was time for a change.</p> <h2>The big services page mistake</h2> <p>Before Jean made the changes that landed her a $6,000 client, she was treating her business more like a hobby and not thinking of herself as a professional. Her services page wasn’t aimed at a specific audience and was talking to anyone who needed a designer. Because of this, she wasn’t answering her audience’s questions, which made it very unlikely that anyone was going to pass over a large sum of money.</p> <h2>The important changes that led to a $6k branding client</h2> <p>Jean started focusing on pain points of her target audience in her copy, rather than how great she was at design. Not focusing on herself and highlighting her audience’s struggles was a game-changer.</p> <p>From there, she created a downloadable package pricing document, which she saw huge results from.</p> <p>Her new services page spelled out absolutely everything a new client wanted to know and that’s exactly why her $6,000 client decided to book. Her fears were taken care of, her questions were answered, and she knew she was going to have a great experience.</p> <h3>The most important aspect of a design services page that converts</h3> <p>Through Jean’s experience, she’s found that in order to have a services page that converts you need:</p> <ul> <li>Package pricing</li> <li>A firm call-to-action</li> <li>To focus on the pain points that your audience is struggling with</li> </ul> <p>If you’re not sure what your audience’s pain points are, Jean suggests heading to the blog or social media accounts of influencers with a similar audience and looking at the comments people leave!</p> <h2>Is mindset a factor in landing larger clients?</h2> <p>Mindset was a huge part of Jean starting to land higher-priced clients. She realized that she wanted to look like the professional she was, rather than a work-from-home mom working part-time. She had to imagine herself in a different place and totally change her marketing message.</p> <p>Aside from being able to charge higher prices, a positive mindset brought up strength she needed to get through hard times in both life and business.</p> <h3>How to change a negative mindset</h3> <p>If you’re someone with a negative mindset, there are steps you can take to change it including things like:</p> <ul> <li>Taking care of your body – a healthy mind stems from a healthy body!</li> <li>Being mindful of things that have happened in the past that effect your mindset</li> <li>Acknowledge where negative thoughts are stemming from</li> </ul> <h2>Action Steps</h2> <ol> <li>Head to your services page and make changes based on Jean’s tips. Make sure you’re speaking to your audience’s pain points, have packages for them to choose from, and are giving a full call-to-action.</li> </ol> <h3>Learn More About Jean</h3> <p>After being stuck in the feast or famine cycle for 14 years, Jean decided she was done. She dove in head first with a month of research and took her very first course about using Pinterest. She restructured her design services page and, just one week after the changes went live, landed her first $6,000 full brand client.</p> <p>4 years later, she’s sharpened her skills as an online business owner and teaches those skills to others. She provides online education to freelance graphic designers that want to become creative entrepreneurs. Her core mission is to supply designers, new to the online space, with all of the tools that they need to profit from their passion, in the form of templates, cheatsheets and e-courses.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="https://sweetbluebirddesignco.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/the.fab.freelance.designer.collective" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook Group</a> | <a href="https://sweetbluebirddesignco.com/creative-biz-development-templates/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Biz Templates</a></p> <p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/060/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">060: A Services Page That Converts + Pricing Mindset with Jean Coelho</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

060: A Services Page That Converts + Pricing Mindset with Jean Coelho

Cathy Olson

This week’s guest on the podcast is the talented Cathy from Love Inspired. Cathy has an impressive background with a minor in 3D animation, a major in Art + Design, and taught herself coding, creating her first website 20 years ago. In 2008 she used her design and web background to create her business, Love Inspired, where 10 years later she’s worked on over a thousand projects for female business owners. For the past 5 years she’s also been teaching and speaking at conferences all over the United States to inspire other creative business owners. Recently, Cathy learned all about what a difference sales funnels can make in a design business, which isn’t something we get to hear much about. So today we’re excited to welcome her on the podcast to give us a little look at what it’s done for her business and how we can get started implementing our own funnels.   Subscribe on iTunes Cathy’s discovery of sales funnels Cathy thought what she had set up in her business was a sales funnel, and it’s what a lot of us would consider a funnel, but what the general business owner thinks of when they think of funnels isn’t the whole story. She had a specific picture of where she wanted her business to go, including how much recurring revenue she wanted. With that option, her options were to hire someone to launch courses for her every month or to automate it all. From there she made the decision to move forward with a more robust sales funnel. The transformation her business has seen thanks to sales funnels Cathy’s vision with creating a sales funnel was to allow herself to take about 1/3 of the client’s she’s been taking at a more premium price point. But even with that, she still wanted some additional revenue coming in and the opportunity to build her community of people at a lower price point. With funnels, she’s able to serve both her 1:1 clients as well as other parts of her community that can’t work with her in that capacity. The most difficult part of getting started with funnels A lot of people try to make sales funnels sound easy to set up, but Cathy wasn’t scared to tell us that is anything but easy. For Cathy, the most difficult part was creating the offer and the product. If your product isn’t great, you find yourself pushing and having to do a lot more hard-selling. But if your product is great, everything else falls into place. However, making that perfect offer isn’t an easy thing to do. The difference in sales funnels between product and service based businesses Cathy recommends thinking of your service as a product, if possible. At least if you don’t want your sales funnel to take up too much of your time. So consider what you offer your clients and find a way to package that up in a way that provides immense value for the people who can’t work with you 1:1. However, if you’re creating a funnel directly to your services you’ll find that your offer will be at a higher price point and will have to be sold in a different way. For example, the people in your funnel have to be warmed up and then sold to. With products, it’s easier to sell to a cold audience. From there you’d likely add evergreen webinars and consult calls onto what you hear about with creating sales funnels for product-based businesses. Action Steps If you want to get started with your own sales funnel, Cathy recommends the following steps:  Know that it’s going to be difficult Determine what you want your business to look like and how a funnel fits in with your current business (rather than adding more overwhelm and stress) Spend time creating an amazing offer, based on your goals and what your audience needs From there, create an opt-in that relates to your product, but doesn’t solve the problem Determine if you need to hire someone to help or if you’ll be learning everything you need to know about putting the funnel together and Facebook ads  Learn more about Cathy   Cathy Olson has been beautifying brands and designing experiences of digital delight for over 17 years, working with multi-million dollar brands like Costco, Best Buy and Disney. Now the founder of Love Inspired, an international branding and web design studio with a boutique approach, she helps flourishing creatives package their expertise in a way that excites eyes, hugs hearts, and cues cha-chings. When Cathy’s not innovating for talented clients, she shares her multifaceted expertise through Digital Summits, Webinars, e-Courses or on her YouTube Channel. She has a passion for putting the fun in functional, the purpose in pretty, and the meaning in details. Her heart’s mission: To help talented creatives feel proud to share their ideas and passions with others, and inspired to stretch their businesses to new heights. Website | YouTube | Instagram | Designer For A Day   Tweet That[clickToTweet tweet=”‘When your offer is great, everything else in your funnel falls into place’ – @LoveInspired” quote=”‘When your offer is great, everything else in your funnel falls into place’ – @LoveInspired”]The post 040: Sales Funnels For Your Design Business with Cathy Olson appeared first on Get Back To Design.

<p>This week’s guest on the podcast is the talented Cathy from Love Inspired. Cathy has an impressive background with a minor in 3D animation, a major in Art + Design, and taught herself coding, creating her first website 20 years ago.</p> <p>In 2008 she used her design and web background to create her business, Love Inspired, where 10 years later she’s worked on over a thousand projects for female business owners. For the past 5 years she’s also been teaching and speaking at conferences all over the United States to inspire other creative business owners.</p> <p>Recently, Cathy learned all about what a difference sales funnels can make in a design business, which isn’t something we get to hear much about. So today we’re excited to welcome her on the podcast to give us a little look at what it’s done for her business and how we can get started implementing our own funnels.</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/get-back-to-design-design-business-designer-creative/id1215076478" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe on iTunes</a></p> <h2>Cathy’s discovery of sales funnels</h2> <p>Cathy thought what she had set up in her business was a sales funnel, and it’s what a lot of us would consider a funnel, but what the general business owner thinks of when they think of funnels isn’t the whole story.</p> <p>She had a specific picture of where she wanted her business to go, including how much recurring revenue she wanted. With that option, her options were to hire someone to launch courses for her every month or to automate it all. From there she made the decision to move forward with a more robust sales funnel.</p> <h2>The transformation her business has seen thanks to sales funnels</h2> <p>Cathy’s vision with creating a sales funnel was to allow herself to take about 1/3 of the client’s she’s been taking at a more premium price point. But even with that, she still wanted some additional revenue coming in and the opportunity to build her community of people at a lower price point.</p> <p>With funnels, she’s able to serve both her 1:1 clients as well as other parts of her community that can’t work with her in that capacity.</p> <h2>The most difficult part of getting started with funnels</h2> <p>A lot of people try to make sales funnels sound easy to set up, but Cathy wasn’t scared to tell us that is anything but easy.</p> <p>For Cathy, the most difficult part was creating the offer and the product. If your product isn’t great, you find yourself pushing and having to do a lot more hard-selling. But if your product is great, everything else falls into place.</p> <p>However, making that perfect offer isn’t an easy thing to do.</p> <h2>The difference in sales funnels between product and service based businesses</h2> <p>Cathy recommends thinking of your service as a product, if possible. At least if you don’t want your sales funnel to take up too much of your time. So consider what you offer your clients and find a way to package that up in a way that provides immense value for the people who can’t work with you 1:1.</p> <p>However, if you’re creating a funnel directly to your services you’ll find that your offer will be at a higher price point and will have to be sold in a different way. For example, the people in your funnel have to be warmed up and then sold to. With products, it’s easier to sell to a cold audience.</p> <p>From there you’d likely add evergreen webinars and consult calls onto what you hear about with creating sales funnels for product-based businesses.</p> <h2>Action Steps</h2> <p>If you want to get started with your own sales funnel, Cathy recommends the following steps:</p> <ol> <li>Know that it’s going to be difficult</li> <li>Determine what you want your business to look like and how a funnel fits in with your current business (rather than adding more overwhelm and stress)</li> <li>Spend time creating an amazing offer, based on your goals and what your audience needs</li> <li>From there, create an opt-in that relates to your product, but doesn’t solve the problem</li> <li>Determine if you need to hire someone to help or if you’ll be learning everything you need to know about putting the funnel together and Facebook ads</li> </ol> <h3>Learn more about Cathy</h3> <p> </p> <p>Cathy Olson has been beautifying brands and designing experiences of digital delight for over 17 years, working with multi-million dollar brands like Costco, Best Buy and Disney. Now the founder of Love Inspired, an international branding and web design studio with a boutique approach, she helps flourishing creatives package their expertise in a way that excites eyes, hugs hearts, and cues cha-chings.</p> <p>When Cathy’s not innovating for talented clients, she shares her multifaceted expertise through Digital Summits, Webinars, e-Courses or on her YouTube Channel. She has a passion for putting the fun in functional, the purpose in pretty, and the meaning in details. Her heart’s mission: To help talented creatives feel proud to share their ideas and passions with others, and inspired to stretch their businesses to new heights.</p> <p><a href="http://love-inspired.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a> | <a href="http://loveinspired.tv/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">YouTube</a> | <a href="http://instagram.com/loveinspired" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://designerforaday.co/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Designer For A Day</a></p> <p> </p> <h3>Tweet That</h3>[clickToTweet tweet=”‘When your offer is great, everything else in your funnel falls into place’ – @LoveInspired” quote=”‘When your offer is great, everything else in your funnel falls into place’ – @LoveInspired”]<br><p>The post <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co/040/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">040: Sales Funnels For Your Design Business with Cathy Olson</a> appeared first on <a href="https://getbacktodesign.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Get Back To Design</a>.</p>

040: Sales Funnels For Your Design Business with Cathy Olson

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