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.

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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.

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 Us

We thought it would be great to share a sign off from us and some insight into what we’re working on next individually.

Krista

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 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 it

Keep following Krista

• Instagram
• Summit In A Box website

Kory

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 here.

Moving forward, her focus is split between assistant work and Coded Creative.

Keep following Kory

• Instagram
• Coded Creative website

Action Steps

• Keep moving forward!
• Use our 94 past episodes when you run into something you’re struggling with in your business
• Continue spreading the word so other people can learn
• When you notice that something doesn’t feel right in your business, do something about it
• You *can* build an incredible business that supports you

The post 095: What’s Next for Us appeared first on Get Back To Design.

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.

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Morgan’s Journey

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.

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 Mark

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.

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 matters

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.

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 way

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.

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 perfect

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.

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 marketing

Morgan 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 business

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.

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 Steps

• Consider 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 Morgan

Morgan Rapp is the woman in charge behind the October & Ink brand. She’s a creative director, designer, shopify expert, educator and mentor helping you get confident and scale your dream biz

Website | Instagram | Design Biz Mastery

The post 094: The Keys To Scaling A Design Business To 6-Figures with Morgan Rapp appeared first on Get Back To Design.

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.

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Talk about your services

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.

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 results

Sharing 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.

Teach

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.

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&A box and answer each question either with video or text
• Teach a specific point each Wednesday of something to avoid
• Share a tip from each podcast episode as they go live

You can start with once per week and go up from there.

Share non-business as well

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.

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 connections

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.

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 consistent

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.

Be one of those people that everyone is looking for! You get to that place by showing up consistently.

Action Steps

• Outline the kind of content you want to start promoting
• If it makes it easier for you, give yourself a list of one thing to post each day
• Example:
  • Monday: Project Behind The Scenes
  • Tuesday: Tip
  • Wednesday: Work with me Wednesday

The post 093: Using Instagram To Attract Dream Clients appeared first on Get Back To Design.

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.

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Deciding to take a break / pivot

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.

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 decision

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.

The decision to take on clients again + pivot

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.

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 business

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.

What to offer

The 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 pricing

Pricing 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 systems

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.

Think about what you need to take on a new client:

• Contract
• When will you send invoices
• Onboarding material like Intro packet
• Updating workflows in your CRM

Create new services page(s) on your website

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.

Getting clients for your new services

This 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 Instagram
• Send an email to your list
• Write a blog post
• Post 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).

Resources

• Episode 009 with The Crown Fox on pivoting your design business

Action Steps

• 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

The post 092: Pivoting Your Design Business appeared first on Get Back To Design.

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.

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Final File Organization

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.

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:

1. Logo
   • Primary
     • For Print
       • PNG
       • JPG
     • For Web
     • Vector
       • EPS
   • Secondary
2. Marks
   • Primary
   • Secondary
3. Collateral (simply contained the PSD or Ai file)
   • Business Cards
   • Blog Post Graphic template
4. Font System
   • 01. Headings
   • 02. Sub-heading
   • 03. Body Font
5. Style Guide
   • PDF of a crazy good Style Guide (based on a template from Melissa Yeager)
6. Website
   • Website strategy
   • Other files that Krista only needed because she was developing her site

You 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.png

That 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 PDF

The 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 strategy
• Moodboard
• Logo + marks
• Color palette with a note on where to use CMYK vs. RGB
• Font system with a note on how to apply the fonts
• A list of file types, where they can be used, and the resolution she received
• A page explaining file types

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

Brand guidelines walkthrough video

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.

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 videos

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.

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 Steps

• If 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 clients
• 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

The post 091: Educating Clients to Use Their New Design Effectively appeared first on Get Back To Design.

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.

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Kaye’s Journey

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.

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 herself

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.

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 trends

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.

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 psychology

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.

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 archetype

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.

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 audience

She 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 design

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.

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 archetypes

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.

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.

Resources

• Kaye’s Pinterest

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.)

Website | Brand Quiz

The post 090: Psychology-Driven Brand Strategy with Kaye Putnam appeared first on Get Back To Design.

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.

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1 | Require partial payment to book a project

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.

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% downpayment
• 2 payments w/ 50% downpayment

2 | Make a clear payment timeline

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 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 paid

We 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 reminders

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.

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 them

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.

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.

Resources

• Dubsado (affiliate link)
• Episode 34

Action Steps

• Figure out what your late payment consequences look like + add them to all of your onboarding materials that you send to your clients

The post 089: 5 Steps to Get Paid On Time, Every Time appeared first on Get Back To Design.

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.

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Gigi’s Journey

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.

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 creep

Now, 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 place

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.

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 fees

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.

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 out

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.

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 free

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.

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 Gigi

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.

Instagram | Website | Resource Shop

The post 088: Avoiding the Dreaded Scope Creep with One 6 Creative appeared first on Get Back To Design.

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.

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Your Pep Talk

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.

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 Doubt

So what can you do when you’re feeling that doubt creep in? A few things!

Create a happy client folder

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!

Take a break from work

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.

Connect with other people

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!

Action Steps

• Create a happy client folder with kind words that you can refer back to on difficult days

The post 087: A Pep Talk for Designers + Overcoming Self-Doubt appeared first on Get Back To Design.

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.

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Jason’s journey

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.

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 himself

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.

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 clients

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.

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 client

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.

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 respected

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.

How you can position yourself to be respected

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.

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 Steps

• Create a red flag list that you can run potential clients through
  • While doing this, take careful consideration of the types of clients you like to work with

Resources

• Red Flags podcast episode

Learn more about Jason

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.

Website | Feast | How to Start Freelancing Successfully

The post 086: Spot Bad Clients & Position Yourself To Be Respected with Jason Resnick appeared first on Get Back To Design.

We are currently in the middle of working with 8 amazing women in the Get Back to Design Accelerator, and we have been enjoying helping them with their design businesses so much.

Last month we were talking to them about simplifying the client process, and when we were covering that the topic of revisions came up. Around the same time, Kory also was coaching one of the members on how to reduce revisions in general.

We know revisions are a big frustration for designers, and we’re shocked we haven’t covered this topic already. Today we’re covering how to manage revisions with clients and sharing a few tips on how you can reduce them.

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What are revisions (versus changes)

Let’s start by covering what a revision actually is. To us “revision” means changes or general updates to the design that was originally agreed upon. A “change,” on the other hand, is an update to the project scope, something that wasn’t mentioned at the beginning of the project.

Revisions and changes differ throughout the project. For example, it might be a revision to change how the header is laid out during the web design stage, but once that design is approved and the site goes off to development, that same update would be considered a “change”.

How many should you offer?

This depends on your process and timeline with client projects. When Kory first started, she offered 3 revisions for the two main parts of her projects (3 for branding and 3 for web design). However, as she got more experience as a designer and working with clients, she reduced those down to 2 for branding and 1 for the website design.

When you’re deciding on how many revisions you want to offer your clients, think about the flow of working on your projects. It’s helpful to look at how many revisions previous clients have requested or needed to get a good idea of how many you’ll need.

How long should you give clients for revisions?

The deadline you set for clients to give you feedback on the work really depends on your project timeline. We both recommend around 2-3 days for this, though. It’s long enough that they can have time to review your work and really be thoughtful in what they’re requesting. It’s also not too long that they forget about it altogether.

What do you do after that?

Once you hit the included number of revisions, most designers will bill an additional fee for the work that’s being done. We find it’s important to keep going on a project instead of forcing your client to settle with the work so you can ensure that the client is happy.

However, it’s really important to take a look at the project and consider why there have been so many revisions. There may be a disconnect between what the client was expecting and what you are creating. Instead of continuing revisions, you may have to go back to the drawing board entirely, and that’s okay. If you find yourself in that situation, you may want to work on how you’re onboarding your clients and the beginning stages (like the strategy phase) of your process.

How to reduce revisions

Let’s transition a bit here and talk about how you can actually start to reduce the number of revisions you’re working through with your clients.

“Refinements” not “revisions”

There’s something in the psychology about the difference in word choice here. Instead of asking your clients if they have any “revisions,” reframe that for them and call it the “refinement” stage. The word “revision” naturally opens up the door pretty wide to clients, especially if they aren’t sure what you’re looking for in terms of feedback or requests.

Whereas there’s something about the term “refinement” that feels more specific and would encourage a client to request smaller tweaks instead of major design changes.

Set boundaries around what’s included

Kory shared that one of the members of our Accelerator realized she was doing a lot of revisions and some of it was copyediting for her clients’ site copy. If you don’t mind doing this type of stuff for your clients, then that’s okay. The time for copy changes is not during the design phase, though.

So many designers find themselves in that place of clients asking for things beyond what the designer should be working on in the revision phase. This is why it’s important to set boundaries around what you’re going to do in the revision stage for your clients. This can be done in your contract, Intro packet, Welcome packet, Asana (or other project management software), and it also doesn’t hurt to remind them throughout the process.

Present your work

Abbey was just on the podcast last week, and she talked a lot with Kory about presenting your design work. One of the major benefits of taking this extra step in your projects is that presenting your work allows your clients to understand the decisions you’ve made, which naturally cuts down on a lot of changes.

Keep clients updated on how many rounds are left as you go

Another great way to reduce revisions with clients is to simply remind them of how many are left while you’re working. When you send the design to them for the first round, tell them it’s their first round of revisions. When you start the last round, remind them that you’re at the last round of revisions that’s included in their project.

This doesn’t have to be overly complicated. I usually include one casual sentence in my Asana task description so clients know where we’re at on the number of revisions.

Have them physically sign off after each portion of the project

If you don’t want to open revisions to a specific part of the project back up after it’s been approved, have your clients physically sign off on a sub-contract. It can be super short, just saying they approve what has been done and explaining what will happen if they want additional revisions on that portion moving forward.

Resources

• Revision Survival Guide (linked at the bottom)
• Episode 84
• Episode 52

Action Steps

• Decide how many rounds of revisions you want to include
• Decide what will you do with clients if they need to go over your set number of revisions
• Identify problem areas in your onboarding or process – do you need to improve anything to limit how many revisions are needed?
• Update your onboarding material and project process to make revisions clear + keep clients updated throughout the process

The post 085: Managing + Reducing Client Revisions appeared first on Get Back To Design.