Resourceful Designer: Strategies for running a graphic design business

Resourceful Designer is going on a short hiatus. Please stay subscribed for when I return with more great tips, advice and resources for starting and growing your design business. Stay Creative

It's the beginning of spring here in Canada. And with spring comes a desire to put all the messes of winter behind us and clean things up as we prepare for summer. That's where the term Spring Cleaning comes from. However, today, I'm not talking about packing away your sweaters and pulling out your shorts. Nor am I referring to cleaning the yard or washing the grime off the windows. Although, it is time to do all of those things. No. I'm talking about doing some spring cleaning of your design business. More specifically: Cleaning Your Computer Cleaning Your Office Cleaning Your Business Cleaning Your Branding Cleaning Up Your Computer. Spring is an excellent time to review your computer and see what you can clean up. Clean up your Backups. The first thing I suggest is examining your backup strategy. Are you doing everything possible to ensure your important files are adequately backed up? Do you have a good in-house as well as an online backup strategy? The price of hard drives is one thing that doesn't seem to be affected by inflation. You can get large-capacity hard drives for great prices these days. Paired with Time Machine on Mac or an equivalent solution for Windows or Linux can ensure you always have your backups on hand. I recommend Backblaze, a much more reliable backup system for online backups than Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive. And priced as low as $65US per year makes peace of mind very affordable. Speaking of backups. When was the last time you double-checked to ensure your backup files were backing up? You'd hate to have something happen only to discover your most recent backup is months old. Whatever backup strategy you're using, take a few minutes to ensure the backups are functioning and are current. Clean up client files. Clients come and go. So do design projects. After a while, you tend to accumulate a lot of outdated and even redundant files on your computer. Take some time to review your client files and see if you can get rid of anything. Delete or move files off your computer for any client who isn't in business anymore. If you want to keep something for nostalgia, keep the finished files which are often smaller. There's no reason to keep large working files for something you'll never use again. The same is true for old projects from active clients. If you don't think you'll ever need them again, get them off your computer. And all those stock images files you accumulate. Did you know that once you acquire them from a stock image site, you can re-download them anytime without paying again? So there's no reason to keep them on your computer. Clean up your Client List. One thing that can get out of hand in our business is our client list, especially if you do a lot of one-off projects. Depending on the system you use to keep track of your clients, you may want to divide them into Active and Inactive categories. It makes managing it much easier if you don't have to scroll through dozens or hundreds of inactive clients to find the one you're looking for. Clean up your email mailboxes. You may not realize how much hard drive space email takes up, especially in our field, where attachments weigh in at multiple megabytes. Chances are you save any attachments you receive to their respective client folder. It's the smart thing to do. But that means you have two copies of that attachment on your computer. One is stored in the client folder, and one is still attached to the email message. The same goes for attachments you send to clients. On a Mac, a duplicate copy is stored in the Library folder for your mail client. You can easily clean this up by highlighting a group of emails and telling your email client to delete the attachments. Clean up your Mail Lists. Another thing you may want to clean up is the email lists you're subscribed to. It's gotten to the point where you can't enter your email anywhere online without being subscribed to some email list. Take a few minutes to see what's in your inbox that you don't need, and unsubscribe from them. If you want to make it easy, look at unroll.me. Sign up to quickly unsubscribe from email lists you're no longer interested in. And get an easily consumed digest of the ones you want to keep. Clean up your Fonts. The next thing you may want to do is clean up your fonts. As of last year, Adobe software no longer supports PostScript version fonts. If you've been in this business for a while, you've probably accumulated many PostScript fonts. Since they're no longer usable, either get rid of them or convert your old PostScript version fonts to OpenType fonts using TransType 4 from FontLab. Clean up the rest. You can clean so many other things this spring on your computer. Take a few minutes to review your applications folder and delete any you don't use. Remove seldom-used icons from your Dock. Cull down your bookmarks. And update any passwords that need updating. And although it's not your computer. When did you last take inventory of the apps on

Have you ever thought of turning your design style into a niche? You're lying to yourself if you say you don't have one. Every designer has a design style. Even if your design style resembles many other designers, I bet something unique makes you different. Have you ever thought of how you came by your design style? Did you go to school for design and develop your style from what your teachers taught you? Did you learn your style by following design influencers? There are tons of great designers out there you could follow and learn from. Have you studied the history of design? You know, the Industrial Revolution, Art Nouveau, Bauhaus, Art Deco, Postmodernism, etc., have these periods in design history influenced your style? Did you come by your style from another artistic endeavour? I know of graphic and web designers who have fine art degrees. I bet that influences how they think about design. Do you sculpt, make pottery, paint, sew, craft or express yourself in any other creative outlet that may appear in your design style? Or maybe something else from your life is reflected in the projects you produce. There are so many things that can influence your graphic design style. And since no two people are the same, it is understandable that no two designers design the same way. And if you can figure out what makes your style unique, you can carve out a very lucrative business based on it. What is a design style niche? I got the idea for this podcast episode after Lauren joined the Resourceful Designer Community. Whenever someone joins my Community, I look at their website and portfolio. It helps me learn where they are in their design journey and how the Community can help them. Lauren told us when she joined the Community that she has a background as a creative director. So it's no surprise that her portfolio is top-notch. But what I loved most about perusing through her work is how different it is from mine. Reading Lauren's About Me page, I learned that she grew up on the streets of New York City and loves punk, emo and metal music. And I could see that influence in her design style. There's something edgy and wild about her compositions. And I found myself not just admiring them but studying them, trying to figure out how she did certain things. And trying to imagine her thought process as she worked on each design. You see, Her design style is foreign to me. It's not a direction I would ever take on a project. It's not that it's wrong, far from it. There's nothing wrong with her creations. It's just not in my design repertoire to do something similar. Sure, I could probably copy it if I needed to. But even though I consider myself an excellent designer. If you gave me a blank canvas, I couldn't develop something in that style without reference material. At least nowhere near as well as Lauren can. Lauren's design style is unique to her. And that individual style is something she could niche into. Creating a design style niche. I've talked about niches on the podcast, but mainly from the point of the clients you target or the work you produce, such as targeting the school branding niche with Craig Burton, where he shared how he's built a very lucrative business designing logos and other branding material for schools in New Zealand and beyond. Or how some people, such as Ian Paget of Logo Geek, specialize in designing logos. That's his niche, and he's widely known for it in the UK. I've shared how I knew a designer who designed websites exclusively for dentists and was killing it. I know another designer who only designs rock and metal band T-Shirts, and he's in high demand. These are all niches. And as the saying goes, the riches are in the niches. When you niche down, people automatically start viewing you as an expert in your niche and are willing to pay more for that expertise. That's precisely what I'm doing with my Podcast Branding business. I specialize in the podcast niche, and people recognize me. But what if you turn your design style into a niche instead of going after a specific target market or focusing on a particular design project? Lauren could easily promote herself as a designer specializing in punk/grunge-style design. I don't know if that's the right word for her style, but you get the idea. Maybe you like creating futuristic-looking designs, something very robotic or technical. You could embrace that style and promote it. Or what if you have a very illustrative style? Andrew, another member of the Resourceful Designer Community, is a great illustrator, and it's reflected in his portfolio. These days, strong yet feminine styles are in high demand. And although I've created some strong feminine pieces before, I'm probably not the first designer people think of for that design style. What about specializing in a country-western design style? There's a big call for that in certain areas. I mentioned Craig Burton earlier of School Branding Matters, he's based in New Zealand, and the New Zeal

This is a throwback episode, replaying episode 17, Being A Freelance Graphic Designer Could Hurt Your Business. For any links or to leave comments, please visit https://resourcefuldesigner.com/episode17

This is a throwback episode, replaying episode 195, Design Hacks To increase Productivity. For any links or to leave comments, please visit https://resourcefuldesigner.com/episode195

The second most common question among graphic and web designers, after how to attract clients, is how much to charge for our services. No matter what price we settle on, we're never sure it's right. Could you have gotten more for that job the client so readily agreed to? Probably. Is price the reason another client isn't replying to the proposal you sent? It could be. No matter how long we work in this industry. I don't think we will ever figure out the "right price." But that's ok if you feel adequately compensated for your work. Getting paid $200 for a logo design is a great accomplishment for some designers. In contrast, other designers won't consider a logo design project for under $2000. It all comes down to the value you feel you bring and the impression you give your clients. But let's look at this from the client's point of view. From their perspective, what's the difference between a $200 logo and a $2000 logo? You may say it's the value. It's the experience of the designer, their skills and their knowledge. And I can't argue with you there. More experienced designers do tend to charge more. But does that mean the experienced designer's $2000 logo is ten times better than the $200 logo from a less experienced designer? Maybe, and maybe not. The less experienced designer may end up creating a better logo. So why would a client hire a $2000 designer over a $200 designer? It can be summed up in one phrase. Price equals expectations. Let's look at another industry. Say you're going on vacation and need a place to stay. Your destination has two options (It's not a popular vacationing spot.) Those two options are a $49 per night motel and a $200 per night hotel. Not knowing anything about or seeing photos of either of these two places beforehand, what do you think your expectations are? Both the motel and hotel offer a bed for sleeping. Both include a TV and free Wifi. Both have breakfast included. They even both have positive online reviews. So you would expect the same experience at both places, right? Wrong! The fact that one of the places charges four times the price of the other creates a higher expectation. For $200 per night, you expect the beds to be more comfortable. You expect more offerings on TV and faster Wifi. You expect a more inclusive breakfast. You expect more from the hotel because they're charging a higher price. Even though, in the end, both places give you precisely what you need, a place to sleep at night. The same goes for graphic design services. The more you charge, the more clients expect from you. And I don't mean deliverables. However, that may be part of it. What I mean is your clients expect better communication from you. More professionalism. More attention to detail. And a more take-charge attitude. The more you charge, the more the client expects that you can get the job done with minimal involvement on their part. These expectations breed trust. And when you're clients trust you. They give you the freedom to do your work in the manner that suits you best. The less you charge, the fewer expectations they have. Which means lower trust. I speak from experience, and many designers can attest that the less you charge for your services, the more clients want to dictate exactly what you do. They don't want your knowledge or your experience. They only want to fork over a few dollars for your skills. It's almost like you're a rental designer. These are the type of clients who say, "I have an idea. I need you to create it for me." They expect less from you because it's what your prices tell them. Would a client hire a $2000 logo designer and say, "Here, I drew up this rough sketch of an idea. Can you clean it up for me?" No. That's because price equals expectations. Clients will treat you differently depending on how much you charge. Clients willing to pay more for design services expect higher service, expertise, and attention to detail. They expect you to understand design principles and are current on design trends and technologies. These clients will likely have more complex and demanding design needs and want to work with a designer who can deliver exceptional results. Designers who charge higher rates can expect to be treated more respectfully and professionally. They will also need to deliver a higher level of service to justify those rates. The more you charge, the more your clients expect. Price equals expectations. On the other hand, clients looking for more affordable design services are usually willing to sacrifice some level of expertise and customization in favour of a lower price point. It's up to you to decide whether to be a higher-rate designer or an affordable designer. But remember that setting too low rates can harm your business in the long run. While clients may be attracted to lower prices initially, they may also be wary of working with a designer who charges significantly less than their competitors. That trust between you and your clients never reaches

This isn't a standard episode of Resourceful Designer. Instead, I want to share two tips with you. Tip #1 Set up your Google Analytics 4 account ASAP. Google is turning on Universal Analytics on July 1st, 2023. Google has said the data collected in your UA account will not be migrated to your GA4 account. Unless you want to start again from zero, you need to set up your GA4 account now and start collecting data while you still have access to your UA information. Listen to the podcast episode to learn more. Tip #2 Never tell a client that you "Should" something. "I should be able to start your project next week, " or "I should have something to show you by Friday." etc. Instead, tell them you "plan." – "I plan to start your project next week." or "I plan on having something to show you by Friday." Saying "Should" instills doubt. It tells the client you are unsure of your abilities. Using "plan" instills confidence while not guaranteeing anything in case you cannot fulfill what you say. Using "plan" instead of "will" is also a good idea for the same reason. Planning on doing something but not succeeding is forgivable. Saying you will do something and not following through harms your reputation. Semantics can go a long way in helping you become a better business person.

Are you running or considering starting a graphic or web design business? If so, let me tell you, you're in for a wild ride! The graphic and web design industries are filled with opportunities and challenges, and understanding what to expect can be the difference between success and failure. In this Resourceful Designer episode, I'll look at some common challenges you will surely encounter. Here are four of the most common challenges you may face. Finding Clients. Finding clients is one of the most challenging aspects of running a graphic or web design business. You may be a very talented designer with the most fantastic portfolio in the world, but that doesn't do you any good if you can't get work from clients. To find clients, you'll need to focus on networking and marketing to increase your chances of success. Attend as many networking events as possible, especially when your business is young. Ask friends and family to refer you to people who can benefit from your services. Reach out to potential clients via email, social media, and other platforms. Whatever it takes. Clients can't hire you if they don't know who you are. This industry is all about connections and relationships. It's not who you know that will help you succeed. It's who knows you. Another great way to find clients is to build relationships with other designers or people in the industry. Working with other designers allows you to exchange ideas and resources and can lead to referrals and more business opportunities. Designer groups like the Resourceful Designer Community can help with this. A good client of mine reached out when his church was looking for a logo. I was in the middle of several large projects and couldn't take this on. But I knew that Ciera, a member of the Resourceful Designer Community, had shared several church branding projects she had designed. Thinking it was a perfect fit, I introduced her to my client, and now his church has a new logo they can be proud of. This is just one example from the Resourceful Designer Community of how connecting with other designers can benefit you. Finding clients is challenging, but you can make the task more manageable if you put in the effort. Staying Up-to-Date on Trends. The graphic and web design industries are constantly changing and evolving. What worked yesterday may not work today, or there may be a new and better way of doing it. You'll need to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and techniques to stay ahead. Devote time to reading graphic and web design blogs, articles and publications. Listen to podcasts and watch courses and videos. Try to attend conferences and workshops if you can afford them. Follow design influencers on social media to keep up with what's new in our field. You'll also want to stay abreast of the latest software and hardware developments. Tools and technologies are constantly changing. Take time to learn what's out there and how to use them effectively in your business. Staying up-to-date on trends will help you stay ahead of the competition and make you a more efficient designer. And allows you to provide your clients with the best possible work. Managing Time and Money. Time and money management are essential in the graphic and web design industry. You'll need to learn to manage your time to ensure you complete projects on time and within budget. This means setting realistic expectations and deadlines and charging enough for the work you produce. Don't undervalue yourself to land a client. You'll only regret it. Communicating realistic deadlines, schedules, and fair pricing with your clients will help things move smoothly. You'll also need to budget for overhead costs like software, hardware, and marketing. And don't forget the fees for design resources and subscriptions you may require. Everything from stock imagery to website hosting costs money and will eat your profit. Your monthly credit card bill shows you how much you need to make to cover the various expenses associated with running your business. You must learn how to price jobs accordingly to cover these expenses. You'll also need to manage your finances, both personally and professionally. Create a budget for yourself and your business, and track your income and expenses. You need to know how things stand if your design business income supports your business and personal expenses. Being organized and staying on top of your finances will help you remain profitable and ensure the success of your business. Finding Balance. Running a business can be incredibly rewarding, but it can also be stressful and time-consuming. To maintain a healthy work-life balance, you must be conscious of the time and energy you devote to each. It's so easy when working for yourself to lose track of time and put in 12 or more hours of work in a day. Yes, hustling is part of running a business, but doing it consistently will impede your health. Schedule regular breaks during the day and week. Take vacations. Making

Page Redirects. I know. Sound boring, right? I mean, how much can one talk about page redirects? After all, as the name implies, they redirect one web page to another—end of the story. Not so fast. Yes, Page redirects do redirect one web page to another. But there's a lot more power to them that you may not have thought of. When used correctly, page redirects can help attract clients. They can show authority. They can strengthen a website. They can even steal visitors from the competition. Yes, there's much more to the lowly page redirect than what it lets on. And maybe you can use one of these ideas for yourself. 1) Redirect alternate domain extensions. A page redirect is used to redirect one web page to another. Those two pages don't have to be on the same domain. Page redirects can be used to redirect one domain to another. The best use of this is with domain extensions. For example. I live in Canada, and many businesses use the .ca extension for their domain. It's highly encouraged, especially for companies that deal exclusively in Canada. But we all know that .com is the most popular domain extension. When in doubt, most people try the .com first. That's why I always recommend my clients purchase multiple domains, including the .ca and .com. Then, using a redirect, they can send people who type in the .com domain to the website with the .ca extension. Or vice-versa, depending on which extension they want to use. This also prevents someone else from registering and competing with the other domain extensions. 2) Redirect alternate spellings or misspellings. Alternate spellings or misspellings are also excellent for page or site redirects. For example, a food truck business called 2 Brothers In A Food Truck wants a website. Due to the possibility of mistyping their name, they may want to register multiple domains, 2brothersinafoodtruck.com twobrothersinafoodtruck.com toobrothersinafoodtruck.com They can then pick the one they want to use and redirect the others. Here's another example. Let's say your name is Shawn Johnston. And you start a business called Shawn Johnston Consulting. While talking to people, you tell people to visit your website at shawnjohnstonconsulting.com. But how do you spell that? Is Shawn spelled S-H-A-W-N, or is it S-E-A-N? What about Johnston, is that Johnson without a T or Johnston with a T? You can spell it out every time you say it. But there's no guarantee that someone else will spell it out when referring to you. A better option is to register the multiple spellings and redirect them to the correctly spelled domain. shawnjohnsonconsulting.com > shawnjohnstonconsulting.com seanjohnsonconsulting.com > shawnjohnstonconsulting.com seanjohnstonconsulting.com > shawnjohnstonconsulting.com 3) Redirect an old site to a new site. Redirects are extremely useful when building a new website either under the same or a different domain. Every website will accumulate what we in the industry call "Google Juice" over time. Google Juice is a way to measure the SEO power of a webpage. When building a new website or changing a website's domain, you don't want to lose that accumulated Google Juice and start from scratch. If you're changing a page's URL, you want to create a 301 redirect that tells the search engines that the old page is no more, and they should now assign its Google Juice to this new page. For example, Franklin & Barton Law office may have the URL franklinandbartonlaw.com. Beth Barton gets married and changes her name to Beth Jackson. She wants to change the company's name to Franklin & Jackson Law office and the URL to franklinandjacksonlaw.com. Changing the domain on a website is fairly easy. But if they don't want to lose their current search engine rankings, they need to redirect every page URL from the old site to the new one. franklinandbartonlaw.com redirects to franklinandjacksonlaw.com franklinandbartonlaw.com/about redirects to franklinandjacksonlaw.com/about franklinandbartonlaw.com/service redirects to franklinandjacksonlaw.com/service franklinandbartonlaw.com/contact redirects to franklinandjacksonlaw.com/contact And so on for every page on the original website. This ensures the new domain retains the power of the old domain. 4) Redirect to shorten a URL. We all know that the shorter something is, the easier it is to remember. Let alone tell someone else about it. The show notes for this podcast episode can be found at the difficult-to-remember URL https://resourcefuldesigner.com/8-Uses-For-Page-Redirects-rd312. That's why I use a redirect and tell you the show notes can be found at https://resourcefuldesigner.com/episode312. Which one do you think is easier? Easier for me to say and easier for you to remember. And it's not only for super long URLs. The URL for the Design Resources page on Resourceful Designer is https://resourcefuldesigner.com/design_resources. But I also have a redirect so that I can say https://resourcefuldesigner.com/resources. It's only one word

This is a throwback episode, replaying episode 52, How A Great About Page Can Attract Design Clients. For any links or to leave comments, please visit https://resourcefuldesigner.com/episode52

This is a throwback episode, replaying episode 202, S.W.A.T. Analysis For Designers. For any links or to leave comments, please visit https://resourcefuldesigner.com/episode202

Monetizing Your Design Skills: Making money without clients. Do you dread interacting with clients? Have you ever considered monetizing your design skills to make money without working for clients? Since starting Resourceful Designer in 2015, I've received many emails from designers worldwide seeking advice. People have sought my opinion on everything from naming their design business to my thoughts on specific tools. The most popular questions I'm asked are about working with clients. It turns out, which should be no surprise, that many designers are introverted. And in some cases, these introverted designers have anxiety when dealing with clients. I can't tell you how many people say they want to start their own design business, but dealing with clients is holding them back. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it. Working for yourself as a home-based designer, or as some people call it, a freelance designer isn't for everyone. It takes a particular ability, personality and willpower to run your own business. And not everyone has what it takes. There's no shame if you don't fit that mould. You can have a long and prosperous career working for someone else. Besides, working for someone else is usually less stressful than working for yourself. But what happens when a designer reluctant to interact with clients starts their own business? Maybe they do it willingly, knowing their shortcomings. Or perhaps they're forced due to no fault of their own. Such as after a layoff? Either way, these designers need to make money now and working for themself is their only option. These designers have three choices. Temporarily push through their anxiety while searching for a job working for someone else. Face their fears and learn to interact with clients. Monetize their design skills and find a way to make money without working with clients. It's the third way I want to discuss today. Putting your design skills to work for yourself instead of for clients. Let me preface this by saying most of the things I will mention take time. Working on client projects is your best option if you need money soon. But let's say you do have time. Or, you want a way to supplement the income you get working with clients. Perhaps in the hopes of one day being able to forgo client work. What can you do? 11 Ways to monetize your design skills and earn money without working for clients. There are several ways you can monetize your graphic design skills and can make money without working for clients. Here are 11 I came up with that you could try: 1) Design premade layouts, templates and design assets. Suppose you like making logos, icons, and other graphics. Or you enjoy creating layouts for business cards, resumes, and social media posts but don't like dealing with clients. Why not create and sell them on marketplaces such as Creative Market or Etsy? There's a massive market out there for premade layouts and graphics. What's great about this is that once you create them, they can be sold multiple times, providing a passive income stream with little effort. Are you familiar with Cricut machines? They're becoming more and more popular. People use them for everything from creating custom birthday cards to printed t-shirts. Many Cricut owners rely on premade designs for their creations. I know one designer whose entire income is from selling Cricut designs on Etsy. 2) Selling merchandise via print-on-demand. As a designer, you can create graphics for merchandise such as t-shirts, mugs, phone cases, tote bags, etc. You then sell them through online print-on-demand platforms such as Redbubble, Zazzle, Society6 or TeeSpring. I have many designs across several P.O.D. platforms that earn me monthly money. 3) Create a course or write a book. Are you particularly good with specific software programs, or perhaps there's a particular design topic you know a lot about? Why not create and sell a course on platforms such as Udemy or Skillshare and teach others what you know? The same goes for design-related books. It's so easy these days to self-publish a book or ebook and sell it on platforms such as Amazon Kindle. Put your skills and knowledge to use in helping others. Once the product is created and marketed, it can continue to sell for years to come, providing passive income. 4) Sell stock photography, illustrations, graphics, videos and more. Have you considered selling stock Images? There's a massive demand for stock photography, illustrations, graphics, video and more. This is similar to the premade layouts and templates I mentioned earlier. Put your creative skills to use and come up with all sorts of designs and concepts you can sell online. If you're good at working with video, there are plenty of opportunities to earn income by creating YouTube intros and transitions where all someone has to do is add their logo to an existing file. Once your creations are licensed, you can earn money from them without additional effort. Shutterstock, iStock, Enva

This is a throwback episode, replaying episode 61, 12 Random Graphic Design Tips. For any links or to leave comments, please visit https://resourcefuldesigner.com/episode61

I had a conversation with a business coach recently. And he told me that no matter how innovative business people become, he keeps seeing the same issue crop up over and over that holds them back from their full potential. They're looking for solutions without problems. It's one of the biggest hurdles he faces with his coaching clients. I'll share his insights in a minute. But before that, I want to talk to you about technology. We live in an amazing time. As I write this, people use tools such as artificial intelligence to create previously undreamed things. Respected media outlets publish articles generated using automated technologies. And they acknowledged the fact with a disclaimer that the article was written by AI and edited by a human. Earlier this week, I needed an illustration for a design project. Instead of turning to stock imagery or hiring an illustrator, I used an AI Art generator to create the individual elements I required. Then I combined them in Photoshop to create the illustrated scene I needed. It makes me wonder what the future holds and how I can embrace it for my business. And I don't just mean artificial intelligence. Visit a site like AppSumo, and you will see dozens of innovative tools to help you achieve amazing things. Advancements in technology, both AI and otherwise, allow people to reach heights they would have never dreamed of. It seems that no matter what problems you face. There are tools on the market to help you overcome them. For the right price, of course. It's a fantastic time to be an entrepreneur. However, this abundance of available tools can also be a roadblock. Back to that business coach. He told me about his experience dealing with his clients and discussing it with other business coaches. He's noticed a recurring issue holding a lot of business people back. He said that many people have a terrible habit of finding solutions to problems they're not facing. And it takes up so much of their time that they should be spending more effectively on their business. Call it FOMO or Shiny Object Syndrome, but many people become enthralled with the abundance of tools available. The marketing of these tools makes them so desirable that you have to have them even if you don't currently need them. I know I'm guilty of this. I look at my AppSumo purchase history and see many "great deals" I bought and never used. I purchased them with the best intentions, but, as the business coach said, I purchased a solution to a problem I wasn't facing. Don't get me wrong. I'm not dissing AppSumo. I love the platform. I've bought many tools from them that I use regularly. And just because there are some I don't use doesn't mean they aren't great tools. People spend a lot of time and effort developing these tools because there is a need for them. Just not a need that I have. All of these tools were created to solve one problem or another. However, the possibility of one day facing said problems is not reason enough to waste time and money on a tool. No matter how enticing it is. This reminds me of a couple of episodes I did several years ago about Just In Time Learning. Episode 8 and Episode 94 if you're interested. The premise of Just In Time Learning is only to learn something when you require knowing it. There's no reason to watch a Photoshop tutorial on adding woodgrain to type if you don't have a project that calls for a font with woodgrain. You may be saying, but knowing how to add woodgrain to a font might be helpful. And I can't disagree with you. However, it's just as beneficial knowing there is a tutorial, should you ever need it. So bookmark it, or save it to watch later. Suppose you watch the tutorial video now when you don't need it. You'll probably end up watching it again when you do. So why not wait until you need it to watch it and use your time now for something better? That's the premise of Just In Time Learning. And it's the same thing with these tools I'm talking about. Why buy a tool on the off chance you may need it someday? Or why buy something that sounds amazing if you're not currently facing the problem it solves? For example. There's no sense in researching the best client management software if you only have a handful of clients to manage. Wait until your clients become too numerous and tedious to manage using your current method, and then research available solutions. Because that sparkly new system that looks so enticing today may be replaced by something better when you need it, even a lifetime deal is a waste of money if it doesn't help you now. So think hard before you purchase your next tool. Just because it's a great deal is not reason enough to buy it. Anyway, this business coach told me that he's seeing more and more people searching for "that right tool" instead of concentrating on what they should be doing—running their business. He told me there are only three tools businesses need to succeed. And they're the same three tools enterprises have used fo

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A look back at 2022 and a look ahead to 2023. Thank you for your continued interest in Resourceful Designer. You have no idea how much I appreciate you. Many great resources are available for learning and growing as a designer, and I'm humbled that you chose to spend a bit of your valuable time with me. I am continuing my annual tradition. This last podcast episode of 2022 is my Look Back, Look Ahead edition. It's where I reflect and share my year as a design business owner. Then I'll look ahead at what I want to accomplish in 2023. A Look Back at my 2022 goals. At the end of 2021, I set these goals for myself. FAIL: Talk at more conferences. Even though we were on the downslope of the pandemic, I chose not to travel in 2022. Therefore I wasn't able to talk at any conferences. I also made the decision not to speak at any virtual conferences. I've presented at virtual conferences and found the return wasn't worth the time commitment to prepare and give my talk. EVEN: Grow the Resourceful Designer podcast audience. Since the pandemic hit in 2020, my podcast listenership has dropped, but the total number of downloads has increased. I attribute this to older listeners giving up on the podcast while new listeners discover it and download multiple episodes. ACCOMPLISHED: Grow the Resourceful Designer Community. The Community is my pride and joy. One day, when I'm no longer doing the podcast, I'll look back at everything I did with Resourceful Designer, and I'm sure the Community will be my proudest accomplishment. The friendships formed and all the freely given help is more than I could have ever hoped. If you're looking for camaraderie with fellow designers and are not a Community member, I highly suggest you check it out. ACCOMPLISHED: Do more consulting work. Several clients paid for my consulting service, both in and outside the podcast space. I added podcast brand audit as a service under Podcast Branding which brought in several consulting clients. ACCOMPLISHED: Grow Podcast Branding. What started as an offshoot of my main design business has become my main business focus. Podcast Branding is earning me more money than my main business ever has, with much less effort. Some of my numbers from 2022 Resourceful Designer I released 30 podcast episodes. The lowest in a calendar year since I launched the podcast. As my Podcast Branding business increases, it's become harder to make the time to produce the podcast. It reached over 710k total episode downloads in 2022. That's an 80k increase over last year. Resourceful Designer released on Gaana, Boommplay, Deezer, JioSaavn and Resso. Resourceful Designer has listeners in 120 countries around the world. My design business NOTE: I didn't actively promote my design business in 2022. Instead, I concentrated on growing my other business, Podcast Branding. I continued working with existing clients but made no effort to attract new ones. Worked on 43 design projects for 22 different clients (one fewer client than in 2021) Gained one new client in 2022. I lost one client due to closure. I sent out 27 invoices in 2022 (down from 41 in 2021) Revenue increased over 2021. Podcast Branding My Podcast Branding business was my moneymaker this year. Worked on 66 different projects for 47 different clients (more projects but fewer clients than in 2021) Revenue increased by 27% compared to 2021. Primarily due to websites. Launched 12 new websites for clients. (up from 9 in 2021) I appeared as a guest on three podcasts to discuss podcast artwork and websites, increasing my exposure. Podcasters hired me for projects outside the podcast space. A Look Ahead at my 2023 goals. My previous goals will continue to carry over in the new year. Continue to grow the Resourceful Designer Community. Concentrate more on Podcast Branding and so forth. New Goal for 2023. Create new partnerships to grow what I offer at Podcast Branding. Expand the Resourceful Designer Community to include even more offerings than now. Do more consulting work. Explore video as a content platform for Resourceful Designer and Podcast Branding. Increase the number of website clients on my web maintenance plan. What about you? Did you accomplish your goals for 2022, and What are your goals for the new year? Are you a student getting ready to graduate? What are your goals once school is over? Are you still relatively new to the design world? What are your goals for honing your skills? Are you a veteran designer like I am? What are your goals for continued growth? Are you a designer working for someone else? Maybe you enjoy your job; perhaps you don't. Either way, what are your future goals? Or perhaps you're already a home-based designer, a freelancer if that's the term you use; what goals do you have to grow your business? Wherever you are in the world, your skill level, and your situation, please take some time to look back at 2022 and think about your accomplishments and shortcomings. Did you stop after your accomplishm

Before I start, let me preface this by saying I am not an expert in AI-Generated Art. These platforms are still in their infancy, and nobody knows what the future holds for them or their effect on the graphic design industry, but I doubt they'll ever replace graphic designers. I've experimented with various platforms, read articles, and watched videos. I've seen both sites of the debate argued. Some people don't see AI-Art as a threat to our industry, while others are all doom and gloom, saying designers should start applying to work at McDonald's as flipping burgers will soon become more lucrative than designing things. I don't see AI-Generated art as a threat to the graphic design industry. And I'll get to why in a bit. However, I'm not so sure about artists and illustrators. If that's your profession, I suggest you pay close attention to how AI-generated art matures, as it will affect those creative people much more than it will designers. As I said, I'm no expert here. And these AI Art Generators are evolving fast. So what I say today may change soon. Who knows? I also haven't tried all the various platforms nor used the ones I have tried to their fullest potential. So some of what I say today may be wrong. If that's the case, if you know something I don't, please reach out to me at [email protected]. I would love to be educated more on the subject. First, a story. Before I begin my discussion on AI-Generated Artwork, I want to tell you a story that will help put my beliefs into perspective. I entered the three-year Graphic Design program at my local college in 1989. The first two years were spent learning and applying design principles to our projects. We learnt things like design history, colour theory, using grids, layout hierarchy, typography and more. And we were taught the different tools of the trade, most of which are no longer in use and are considered archaic by today's standards. It wasn't until our third year, once we were familiar and comfortable with what being a graphic designer was, that we were granted access to the computer lab. Computers were still new to the industry back then, and very few design agencies used them. When I started working at the print shop after graduation, the first two years of my employment were spent designing everything by hand before I convinced the owner to invest in Macintosh computers. I don't remember what year it was, but during school, a few of my classmates and I made a trip to Toronto for a graphic design trade show. It was the largest show of its kind in Canada and the third largest in North America. All the big names were there, including Adobe, Quark, and Microsoft, to name a few. I remember overhearing a conversation between two design agency owners at a demonstration put on by Adobe. They were talking about the introduction of computers to the design industry. Both were concerned that computers would harm the design industry by minimizing what they considered a particular skill set, that of a graphic designer. To them, computers took the "Art" out of being a "Graphic Artist." With today's mindset, It's kind of crazy to think that back then, design agency owners thought computers would harm our industry. You can easily argue that computers have made the industry better. Having lived through that period, I can tell you that even though computers didn't harm our industry, they did change it. Drastically, in fact. QuarkXpress, Photoshop and Illustrator replaced the standard tools of the trade, such as wax machines, no-repro blu pencils and Letraset rub-on type. And I know a few designers who left the profession because they couldn't grasp the use of computers. So computers were introduced, the industry evolved, and the graphic design industry persevered. Microsoft Publisher Fast forward a few years, and personal computers are becoming more popular, with Windows-based machines outselling Apple. And Microsoft released a program called Microsoft Publisher that introduced an affordable means for anyone with a computer to "design" their material. Quark and Adobe software costs thousands of dollars which weren't feasible for most people. But Microsoft made Publisher affordable. And what do you think happened? The graphic design industry started to panic. With "design" software now available to the masses, designers would lose their jobs. But you know what? Microsoft Publisher was introduced, and some people changed their thinking about design, yet the graphic design industry persevered. WordPress. Around that same time, an innovation emerged called the World Wide Web. Businesses started embracing the idea of having a website—a way for people to find them over the internet. Computer programmers created the first websites. They were functional but lacked design aesthetics. And graphic designers worldwide took notice and realized an opportunity to apply their skills to something other than paper. Some learned to code, while others embraced WYSIW

Scan the news these days, and you'd be hard-pressed not to come across a story about price increases. The price of gas has gone up. Rents are increasing, and groceries are at an all-time high. It's depressing, I know. But that's the world we live in. And your business should be no different. At some point, you'll have to raise your rates if you want to remain solvent. The one benefit of inflation is that people are getting used to price increases. So it won't be as much of a shock when you announce you're raising your rates. Be that as it may, you still want to do it the best way possible to soften the blow for your clients. So what's the best way to announce a price increase to your clients? Let me share some methods with you, along with some points that will make the task easier for you and make your clients more receptive to the news. Signs you should increase your prices. Before I get to how to increase prices, here are four signs indicating it's time for you to increase your rates. 1) Your operating costs are increasing. As the cost of subscriptions, software and other expenses go up. You need to raise your rates to offset the economy's effect on your business. 2) You're consistently busy. Suppose you have an abundance of projects that never seems to end. Or you find yourself turning down work because you don't have time for it. Raising your rates can help you offset things and enable you to engage the help of subcontractors to ease the burden. 3) You're prices are too low. Some clients won't take you seriously if your prices are too low. If you want to attract a higher level of clientele, you need to raise your rates. 4) You've increased your value. Over time, you'll gain experience and knowledge. As the value you offer increases, so should your prices. So now that you've deiced to raise your rates. Here's how to inform your clients of the price increase. Keep it short. Announcing a price increase is a serious matter, and you want to ensure your clients take notice. Keep it short and to the point, if you tell your clients via email. There's no reason to include any fluff or to go into the philosophy behind the price increase. If possible, announce the increase alongside more pleasant news, such as new or improved services you're offering. It will help soften the blow. And make sure you give the clients a way to contact you should they want to discuss your new rates. Tell only affected clients. Nobody likes to hear about price increases, even if they don't affect you directly. You may not be in the market for a new car, but hearing about rising automobile prices still leaves a bad taste in your mouth and may even affect your perception of the various auto manufacturers. Don't give your clients a reason to think negatively about you. If you're increasing the price of a business startup package you offer, there's no reason to notify already established businesses because it doesn't affect them. Suppose the price of your website hosting and maintenance is going up. Notify the clients already paying for your plan. There's no reason for you to tell clients whose websites you are not maintaining since it doesn't affect them. If you're raising your hourly rate, only notify those clients you charge by the hour. And there's no reason to notify clients of a price increase if you're not currently working on a project for them. They'll find out the next time you give them a quote. Only notify affected clients of these price increases. And if this means advising different clients about price increases for various services, so be it. Send out one letter to your web maintenance clients. Another note to your retainer clients. Another to your hourly rate clients, and so forth. Ensure your clients are notified only about the price increases affecting them. Don't give your clients a reason to think negatively about you if your price increase doesn't affect them. Give clients enough of a warning. The more time you give a client to accept and adjust to new prices, the better. Clients will resent a sudden price increase far more than a price increase that will occur in the future. The more time they're given to think about it, the easier it will be for them to accept the increase. Don't forget some clients may require time to adjust their budgets. More prominent companies may need approval from higher up the corporate ladder. The idea is to give clients time to come to terms with your higher rates. And if you're worried about losing clients due to a price increase, remember that it's much easier for them to pay your higher rates than finding someone new to deal with. The chances of losing clients are slim. But should it happen, the increased revenue you'll now receive from your other clients should make up for it. Giving enough warning also allows clients to place new orders before your prices go up. Don't make excuses or apologize for a price increase. Notifying your clients of a price increase is not the time to sugarcoat

One of the perks of running your own design business is the freedom it provides. You have nobody to answer to but yourself. Ok, sure, there are the clients. You do have to answer to them, to a degree. But it's your business, so you can dictate how you respond to them. If you don't want to work Friday afternoons, you can take them off. Nobody is stopping you if you want to try a new design technique or different software. And you get to decide how much you charge for your services and can change your rate any time you like. The freedom of working for yourself is one of, if not the main reason people choose the life of, and I'm going to say it, even though I disagree with the term, the life of a freelancer. It felt dirty just writing that. Want to know why? Listen to episode 17 of the podcast titled "Being a Freelance Graphic Designer Could Hurt Your Business." It will make you rethink calling yourself a freelancer. But where was I? Ah, yes, the freedom of running your own design business. For many of us, it's the ultimate dream. I will never work for an employer again. And I know many who feel the same. But, just because you're working for yourself, running your own business, doesn't mean you've made it. I hate to burst your bubble, but the purpose of every business is to grow. A business that doesn't grow will eventually fail. Many business studies have proven this. And your business will never grow to its full potential because of one thing holding it back. And that one thing is you. Yes, without you, there wouldn't be a business. However, you are also one of your business's most significant liabilities. How can that be? It's because of your limitations. Your limitations may include skills you lack. It may be a lack of time, the time to do things or learn things. Your knowledge may be limiting you. You can't expect to know everything. Or it could be any number of things. Don't feel bad. I'm not singling you out. Everyone has limitations. What will help your business grow is knowing your limitations and finding a way to overcome them. And one of the best ways for business owners to overcome their limitations is by working with people who offset those limitations. In other words. Your business will grow when you learn to outsource and hire subcontractors to do what you can't or shouldn't do. I know this may seem like a foreign concept. The whole point of going at it alone is just that, to be alone. But being alone will only get you so far. You need a team if you want to grow beyond your limited capabilities. I speak from experience. I ran my design business for several years, all by myself. In my mind, it was my business. Therefore I had to do everything myself. My clients were hiring me, after all. I didn't take on the project if a client asked for something I couldn't do. I was limiting my growth. I once turned down a $50,000 website project because I wasn't confident in my skills with PHP and MySQL. I kick myself to this day for that one. But I couldn't do it, so I said no. And I kept at it, Trudging away, taking on only the projects I could do and passing on the ones I couldn't. At the time, I was making decent money and thought I was doing well. But my business wasn't growing. Year after year, my income was pretty much the same. It wasn't going up as needed for growth. I had reached what I like to call now, my solo limit. I could only take my business so far on my own. I didn't know it then, but I was holding my business back. It wasn't until I started reading more business books and listening to business-related podcasts that I realized that most successful entrepreneurs don't work alone. They have a team that works with them to accomplish their business goals and help them grow. If I wanted my business to grow, I would have to build a team. Now I didn't jump in with both feet and hire a bunch of people. I took it slow. The first job I outsourced was when I ran into an issue with a client's e-commerce website. I wasn't sure how to handle the problem. Given enough time, I could probably fix it, but I had no idea where to start or how long it would take. Instead of spending hours researching and troubleshooting it myself. I hired a sub-contractor online who was an expert in that e-commerce platform and paid them to fix it for me. It cost me $100 for what I'm sure would have taken me an entire day's work to accomplish, if not more. Plus, I could charge my client a premium fee for the fix and profit from it. That's the case with most contractors. Sure, you have to pay them, but you mark up that expense and make a profit when you charge your client. So there's no downside to paying a contractor. That was my first experience in hiring a sub-contractor. And it was such a good experience that I started looking for other ways outsourcing to subcontractors could help me. Fast forward several years, and now I have an expanded team of contractors I can turn to for all sorts of situations. And through them, I've al

This is a throwback episode, replaying episode 11, Pricing Strategies For Your Graphic Design Business. For any links or to leave comments, please visit https://resourcefuldesigner.com/episode11

This episode is sponsored by Sticker Mule. Get 10 Custom Stickers for $1, plus free shipping. Visit stickermule.com/resourcefuldesigner It's well-established that it's easier to get a new design project from a past client than to land a project from a new client. You can run a successful design business with only a few good recurring clients. It's the 80/20 rule. 80% of your business will come from 20% of your clients. Therefore you must keep as many clients as you can. For the first few years of my design business, I had less than a dozen clients, and less than a handful of those clients kept me busy on an ongoing basis. According to Invesp, the probability of existing clients giving you work in the future is 60-70%, while the likelihood of getting work from new clients is 5-20%. So it's easy to see why client retention is so necessary. Clients know a talented graphic or web designer when they find one. But it takes more than being an excellent designer to keep them returning. I've said this many times on the podcast before. Clients prefer to work with a good designer they like rather than an amazing designer they don't like. The best way to keep your clients happy and coming back is to ensure they like you. And you do that by providing excellent service and building relationships with them. It's best to do everything possible to ensure your clients feel valued, appreciated, and satisfied with your services. Here are nine tips for doing just that and keeping your clients returning. And you'll notice repetition as I go through them, as many of these tips play off each other. Here are nine ways to make clients love working with you again and again. 1) Be Proactive Make sure your clients understand what they should expect from working with you. Be proactive and set expectations upfront, so there aren't any surprises down the road. Being proactive shows your professionalism and positions you as a leader instead of an order-taker. Clients will appreciate this and quickly learn to trust you. Think about the entire relationship—you're trying to land a client, not just a design project. And if you can change your mentality and think of them as partners instead of clients, you'll find the relationship even easier to build. Don't fall into the trap of viewing client projects as transactional, one-off projects. Instead, think of them as long-term relationships. Being proactive may also mean learning about your client and their industry. Do some homework and learn a little about them and their industry before meeting with them. Clients will appreciate your effort and are more likely to trust you with their project. Don't forget to keep in touch after the current project ends, as I discussed a couple of weeks ago in episode 303 about following up with dormant clients. If you do a good job setting expectations at the start, many clients will return to you for future projects. 2) Be Honest It's easy to tell clients what they want to hear, but delivering on those promises is much more challenging. A good designer is honest with clients about their limitations and how they plan to work within those constraints. It's ok to tell a client you don't know something. It's even better to show the client how you'll overcome those shortcomings. A good designer should be reliable enough to stick to their commitments. However, If you encounter any issues or setbacks during a project, be honest and let the client know. Clients want to work with someone they can trust and who will be truthful with them. If you are not honest with your clients, they will not return. So be honest with them from the start. This means being upfront about your prices, services, policies, limitations and timelines. You should also be honest about any problems or concerns your clients may have. If you are honest with your clients, they will appreciate it and will be more likely to come back to you. After all, honesty is the best policy for running a successful business. 3) Be Timely If you're a freelancer, you know how important it is to be timely. Deadlines are critical; you will not get repeat clients if you're not meeting them. That's why ensuring you're always meeting your deadlines is vital. If you're consistently meeting your deadlines, then clients will take notice. They'll see that you're reliable and that they can count on you to get the job done. This will keep them coming back to you time after time. So if you want to keep your clients happy (and keep them coming back), ensure you're always meeting your deadlines. It's the best way to ensure their satisfaction and ensure that they keep coming back for more of your great work. 4) Be Flexible You need to be flexible with clients. If you're unwilling to adapt to their needs, you will lose them as a client. Yes, It's your business, and you set the ground rules for how clients deal with you. That's part of being a professional. But it's not worth holding your ground if it means possibly losing a good cl

Google. Very few brands have transitioned beyond their original intent. But Google is one of them. What started in 1998 as a small company launched by two Stanford U students to promote their new search engine has grown to become one of the world's largest conglomerates. Not only that, but the name Google has evolved to become a noun, an adjective and a verb. Don't believe me? Google it for yourself. And even though Google now offers a wide gambit of technological solutions to improve people's life. At their core remains the search engine. Did you know that there are over two trillion Google searches every year? It's hard to fathom how big two trillion is, so let me put it in perspective. There are over 5 billion searches on Google every day. That's 228 million every hour, almost 4 million searches every minute. That's a lot of searching. With an entire planet using them to satisfy their curious minds, Google must ensure its platform is easy to use. Easy enough for young children and seniors alike. You type in what you're looking for in the search bar, and Google provides you with possible answers. It's that easy. Of course, Google's results aren't always what you're looking for. But they make it very easy to try again with another search. But what if I told you some simple tricks could help you get better results on the first try? Here are 16 search hacks to help you find things faster on Google. 1) Use quotation marks ("") in your search. Enclosing your search term in quotation marks will return results with that exact phrase. For example, searching for "How to start a graphic design business" will only show results with those words in that exact order. Using quotation marks in your search makes it easy to find precisely what you're looking for. NOTE: Using double quotations ("""") tells Google what's inside them MUST be in the search results. 2) Use a minus sign (-) to exclude words from your search. If your search produced nonrelevant results, try eliminating words by placing a minus sign in front of them. For example, if you want to know the top speed of a Jaguar, the cat, not the car. You could search for "jaguar speed -car" This will eliminate searches about the jaguar motor vehicle. 3) Use Site: only to show results from a specific website. Not every website has a search bar. But that doesn't matter if you know Google's site search function. Adding Site: followed by the website you want to search, along with your search term, will return results only from that website. For example, to find out how many computers you can install Photoshop on, you could search for "Site:adobe.com how many computers can I install Photoshop on?" The results will only give you answer from the Adobe website. 4) Use an Asterisk (*) as a wildcard in your search. An Asterisk is a star-looking character you get by pressing Shift-8 on your keyboard (*). Replace a word in your search with an Asterisk to see results with multiple possibilities. For example, if you're planning a trip to Disney land. Searching for "best * at Disney Land" will return results for the best food at Disney Land, the best rides at Disney Land, the best hotels at Disney Land, the best shows at Disney Land, etc. You get the idea. The Asterisk is very useful when combined with the Site: operator. For example, if you want to find results only from government websites, include site:*.gov in your search string, and you'll only get results from websites with a .gov extension. 5) use OR or AND in all-caps to find multiple results. Using OR or AND returns results from both sides of the operator. OR can be used to find multiple results. For example, you could search for "Christmas decorating ideas in blue OR Green." You'll get results showing blue ideas and results showing green ideas. AND can be similarly used to combine results. Searching for "Christmas decorating ideas in blue AND green" will show you results with ideas that combine blue and green. 6) Use Intitle: to find results from a web page's title. The Intitle: operator can be very useful in narrowing down your searches by only displaying results that include your search term in the web page's title. For example, if you search for intitle: "communicating with your design clients," Google will show you two results. Episode 284 of the Resourceful Designer podcast on https://resourcefuldesigner.com and the same podcast episode on YouTube. That's because no other web page in Google index has "communicating with your design clients" in the title. Intitle: is very useful for finding relevant pages specific to your search and not just mentioning your search term somewhere in the body. 7) Use Allinurl: to find results from a web page's URL. The Allinurl: operator is similar to the Intitle: operator, except this time, the search term is in the URL of the website instead of the title. For example, typing "Allinurl: Resourceful Designer niche" will return every web page containing the words Resourceful Designer and

Episode Sponsor: StickerMule How often do you follow up with dormant clients? I'm not talking dormant like they haven't replied to an email in a few days. However, following up is always a good idea when you don't receive an expected reply. I'm talking about following up with dormant clients months or even years after you've completed whatever project you did for them. In episode 72 of Resourceful Designer, I discussed getting new work from existing clients. It's proven that getting new work from existing clients is much easier than landing new clients. After all, you don't have to worry about the awkward introductory phase since you already know each other. You have a proven track record, so you and your client know what to expect. And yet, even though it's much easier to get new work from existing clients. Many designers don't actively seek out that work. Why is that? You may be thinking to yourself. "I don't want to bother them. The clients know me. If they have more work for me, they'll contact me." But that's not always the case. I'm not saying they won't contact you when they have more work. They probably will. The problem is clients don't always realize they have work for you. What? What are you talking about, Mark? No, it's true. It's a case of "out of sight, out of mind." Your dormant client isn't thinking about you; therefore, they aren't thinking of the work they could be sending you. I want to run an experiment with you right now. Last week I went to the dentist for a routine checkup. I'm happy to say they found nothing wrong with my teeth. I take dental hygiene seriously, so I scheduled a new appointment for a cleaning in 9 months. Now, let me ask you this. Did you think about your dentist and your next appointment? Chances are you did. Maybe you thought about an upcoming appointment. Or perhaps it made you think you should make an appointment if you don't already have one. Regardless, I'm pretty sure, even if only briefly, you thought about your teeth. Why is that? It's because of triggers. Triggers. Triggers, the verb, not the thing you squeeze to fire a gun, are something that can connect one event to another. The mention of my dental appointment triggered your thoughts about your dental hygiene. If I say I recently changed the tires on my car because they had worn-out threads. You probably just started wondering about the tires on your vehicle. If I say, I have no idea what I'm having for dinner tonight. Now you're probably thinking about your next meal. All of these are because of triggers. Our day is full of them. Most of the time, you don't even realize they're there. But triggers influence you in many ways. Triggers are often the correlation between one thing and another. Triggers and Dormant Clients. That brings me back to following up with dormant clients. Remember when I said the problem is clients don't always realize they have work for you? It's because they don't have anything with which to correlate that work. And that's very easy to fix. Just like me mentioning my dentist made you think of your dentist. Reconnecting with a client can trigger them to find new work for you. Remember, "out of sight, out of mind?" When the client isn't thinking of you, they're not thinking of projects you can do for them. The solution is to get them to think of you. You can do that by following up. Triggers in action. Resourceful Designer Community members are beta testing a weekly accountability group where we share long-term and short-term goals. We meet once per week for 10-15 minutes. Each person shares one thing they want to accomplish before our next meeting. This goal could be small, like adding a new case study to their website, creating social media posts, or getting organized for a presentation. The object is to share something to which you want to be held accountable. Because the following week, you have to share whether or not you completed that goal. My goal two weeks ago was to reach out and reconnect with four dormant clients. I ended up emailing six long-standing clients. Their dormancy ranged from six months to a couple of years since the last project I did for them. When I sent my email, I didn't ask them if they had any work for me. Instead, I asked them how they were doing, and in a couple of cases, I wondered if they were happy with the last project I did for them. Over the following few days, three of these dormant clients replied with new design projects for me. One wanted an update on a flyer I created for them a few years ago. Another asked me to refresh their website with updated text and photos. The third wants to meet next week to discuss a new project. All three thanked me for reaching out and said they wouldn't have thought of these projects if I had not sent them my email. But my message triggered an interest in these projects. Of the other three clients, two thanked me for reaching out and asked me to contact them in January at the beginning of their new fiscal year.

Here's some valuable advice to help make you a more productive graphic or web designer. Stop wasting time on time management. I've been in the graphic design space for over 30 years. I've been running my own home-based design business since 2005. And I've been publishing the Resourceful Designer podcast since 2015. In all that time, I've had the opportunity to talk to many designers. Be it graphic designers, web designers, UI and UX Designers. I've spoken with generalists and specialists, such as those focusing on specific niches. I've talked to design strategists, consultants, directors, and even design influencers. Two answers come out on top whenever asked what their biggest struggle is. Finding new clients. And Time Management. It's that latter one I want to talk to you about today. What is Time Management? According to dictionary.com, time management is the analysis of how working hours are spent and the prioritization of tasks to maximize personal efficiency in the workplace. Sounds simple enough. You analyze how you spend your time and then prioritize what you need to do to maximize efficiency. But if time management is that simple, why do so many people struggle with it? I mean, if time management were so easy, there wouldn't be thousands of different "solutions" addressing it. A search on Amazon returns over 70,000 books covering the subject. YouTube has over half a million videos on Time Management. And Google has over 80 million search results. Time Management is such a popular topic because EVERYONE has problems with it. Let me share a revelation with you today. Time is impossible to manage. Contrary to confusing movies such as Tenet. Time moves in one direction at a steady pace. So you're not trying to manage time. You're trying to manage how you go about your day while time continues at its own pace, totally ignorant of your plight. If you're looking at your fellow designers and thinking, "They seem so organized. I don't know how they do it." I'll let you in on a little secret. They're thinking the same thing about you. Everybody wants tips, tricks and techniques to be able to get more things done. To do things faster, to be more productive, more efficient and to work better. But the truth is that stressing over these things makes you slower, less productive, and less efficient and impedes your work. In my opinion, the only people who succeed with Time Management, and I don't mean succeed AT time management, but WITH time management, are those with something to gain from it, which means the authors of all those books on Amazon. The creators of those YouTube videos. And the writers of all the articles found through Google. It's what they say. If you want to make money, find a solution to a widespread problem. That's what these people are doing—offering a solution in order to make money. But are they addressing the problem? I doubt it. Because if they did, then time management wouldn't be such a prevalent issue. And you know what? I guarantee you that the people who created these time management assets still struggle with time management. It's inevitable. Why is that? It's because of this little thing called LIFE. I'm sure you've experienced it. It's like the military saying, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." Similarly, no time management plan can survive contact with life. You can have the best laid-out plan. You have everything organized and scheduled down to the millisecond. And it all goes out the window when "life" happens. You're kid's school calls because they're feeling sick. You get a flat time on the way to a meeting. A storm knocks out your power. Your dog gets sprayed by a skunk. Your magic mouse dies in the middle of the day, and you can't work while it's charging. Why Apple, Why? Life has a way of interfering with your best plans. So you just have to learn to live with it. What to do about Time Management? So far, I've been pretty bleak. I haven't been very helpful if you started reading this because you're struggling with time management and were hoping for a solution. So let me talk a little bit about your options. First, there is no one solution to getting the most out of your time. Again, if there were, then time management wouldn't be an issue for most people. Every individual is different. And that includes you. You learn differently. You process information differently. You go about completing Your tasks differently than anyone else. That's why there's no Time Management system you can shoehorn to fit everyone. You have to figure out what works best for you, and the solution that ends up working for you may come from many different time management options. And believe me, the many different options and opinions regarding this topic can leave your head spinning. Just look at this list of popular time management solutions. Eisenhower Matrix Getting Things Done, or the GTD method Time Blocking Autofocus Iceberg Method Pomodoro Technique Agile Results Kanban System Bull

Episode Sponsor: StickerMule I want to talk to you about your tools (software). But first, I want to tell you a story. A couple of weeks ago, my daughter invited her mother and me for dinner, and we arrived mid-afternoon. As is always the case, Mother and daughter had lots to do and talk about, which left me to my own devices. So I turned on the TV, launched Disney+ and started scrolling through the menu to find something to watch. I knew there was the possibility they might need my help with something, so I didn't want to choose a show that would require my full attention. After some time, I decided to watch the Pixar movie UP! I hadn't seen it since my kids were young, but I remember it as a fun, feel-good movie. Plus, I wasn't concerned about missing part of it for whatever reason. In UP!, there's a character named Dug. Perhaps you're familiar with him. Dug is a dog that the two main characters meet along their journey. Dug wears a special collar his master made that allows him to talk. Now, I don't want to spoil too much of the movie if you haven't seen it. But let's say that Dug, like most dogs, is easily distracted. This is evident in the film every time he sees a squirrel. He might be mid-sentence explaining something important when suddenly, SQUIRREL. He's distracted. If you've ever heard the term Squirrel Syndrome to describe someone who is easily distracted, it came from Dug. A close sister to Squirrel Syndrome is Shiny Object Syndrome. Shiny object syndrome (SOS) is a continual state of distraction brought on by an ongoing belief that there is something new worth pursuing. According to Wikipedia, Shiny object syndrome is a psychological concept where people focus on a new and fashionable idea, regardless of how valuable or helpful it may ultimately be. While at the moment, it seems to be something worth focusing one's attention upon, it is ultimately a distraction. People who face a fear of missing out are especially susceptible, as the distraction of shiny objects in themselves clouds judgment and focus. I have a confession to share with you. For a long time, I suffered from Shiny Object Syndrome regarding software. Any time I saw or heard of a new tool, especially software, that might somehow make my life easier, I wanted it. Even if I had no idea how or why I would use it, it was FOMO, the fear of missing out. The pitch, ad, or recommendation made the software sound so helpful and desirable that I just had to have it. Someone would mention, or I would read, how this new software was the be-all, end-all of software. Using it can save you 10 hours of work per day, and your clients will start mailing you envelopes full of cash for all the fantastic features you can offer them because of it. It sounds too good to be true. But what if it isn't? And if I act right now, for a limited time, I will only pay $99 instead of the regular price of $9,000. What a deal. How could I pass that up? Ok, you know I'm exaggerating. But you also know there's some truth to what I'm saying. Looking through my Applications folder, I see several tools, and BTW, I'm using the terms tools and software interchangeably. Still, I see several tools I bought and never used or used for a short time before consciously giving up on them, or sometimes, just forgetting about them because it was not as helpful as I thought. I fell for the hype. And that's not counting all the online tools, memberships, subscriptions and communities I paid for and never used. We work hard for the money we make as designers. And we must be careful not to waste that money on tools we don't need. Case in point. Have you ever heard of Doodly? It's a tool that lets you easily create whiteboard animation videos. You know, the kind where you see a hand with a marker that quickly draws the animation. They're great for explainer videos. A few years ago, I saw a Facebook ad promoting a lifetime license for Doodly. It usually costs $39/month. But for a one-time purchase of $67, I would have access to it for life. There's no arguing. That's a fantastic deal. The problem is, I've never used it. The ad pitch for Doodly made it so appealing. I thought to myself. This would be an excellent service to offer my clients. And they hooked me in. I never considered that in my 30+ years in the design space, I've never needed to create a whiteboard animation video. Not once did I ever think, "you know what? A whiteboard animation video is exactly what this client needs. I wish I knew how to make them." The possibility of this tool blinded me. But in the three years since I fell for this deal. The opportunity to create a whiteboard animation video has never come up. So even though it was a fantastic deal. It was a waste of my money. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with Doodly. I still think it's a great tool. It just isn't a tool I need. Sure, the lifetime deal means I have it should I ever need it. But why spend money on something you may or may not ever need? Now

I need to put the Resourceful Designer podcast on a short hiatus. Episodes will return on October 17th, 2022. In the meantime, if you watch the new The Rings Of Power television series on Amazon Prime Video, please check out my new podcast. The Rings Of Power Podcast - Tales From Middle Earth. http://theringsofpowerpodcast.com/

When first starting in graphic or web design, firing a client may seem like a foreign concept. After all, isn't the whole point of building a business to increase your number of clients, not reduce it? But money is money, and as long as clients pay, they're worth having. Right? If you're strapped for cash and don't have a choice, then I say, sure, get every client you can. But as your client list grows and things become more stable, you'll inevitably notice that some clients are easier to work with than others. Or maybe it's not the client. It might be that you enjoy working on specific client projects more than other client projects. Like many of us, it's also possible that you may find yourself dealing with clients who frustrate you for one reason or another. These are the clients that make you sigh or groan every time they contact you. Dealing with them is more complicated than with your other clients. You can put up with these clients for a while. But if something isn't done to resolve whatever issues you have with them, the solution may be to let them go. Not every reason to let a client go is a negative one. As you'll see from the situations described below, there are times when you may want to let a client go because it's the right time to do so. You'll grow over time, as a designer and as a business person. This growth may lead you to pivot your business and perhaps narrow down on a niche, making some existing clients no longer a good fit for you. Whatever the reason, you will be faced with walking away from a client at some point, hopefully, in a way that minimizes the impact on your business. Here are 11 signs that it's time to let a client go. The client has unreasonable demands or is abusive. If you ever feel like a client is mistreating you or is outright abusive, it's time to let them go. Some clients expect you to behave like an employee. They want you at their beck can call, doing their bidding whenever they want. Just because they are paying you does not give them the right to treat you unprofessionally. You're a business person just like them, not their employee. Any Abusive behaviour or verbal attacks against you or your business should never be tolerated, regardless of the cost of a design project. This may sound like common sense, but many designers put up with unreasonable and abusive clients because the money is good. Let them go. You'll find better clients to replace them. The client negatively impacts your bottom line. Some clients are notorious for expecting special favours. Maybe they want special rates or discounts or expect you to provide services above and beyond your typical offerings. If your relationship with these clients no longer feels like a good business decision, let them go. The client refused to work your way. Any client who refuses to follow your guidelines or work the way you outline should be a concern for you. If you cannot resolve the issue with them, it's a sign they are not a good fit for you. Let them go. The client asks you to do the same monotonous work over and over. Some design projects often become repetitive. I had a client years ago that wanted their product photos to be on a white background. So all I did for them was close crop photos. It was easy money initially, but the work became tedious after several months. I realized the client didn't require anything else from me other than this dead-end project. I let them go and devoted my time to other client projects. The client has payment issues. Having to deal with a client who is consistently late with payments or wants to negotiate on every project isn't fun. Hopefully, a well-written contract will alleviate these problems. But if not, it's probably in your best interest to let the client go. After they pay you, of course. The client is not someone you enjoy working with. Not everyone gets along. That goes for designers and their clients as well. It's not necessarily because the client is a difficult person. Sometimes personalities just don't mesh. If you find yourself in a situation where you don't enjoy working with a particular client, it might be time to let them go and find someone better suited to you. The client expects more than what you agreed upon. You can't blame a client for trying to get the most from their investment. However, if a client keeps requesting additional work beyond the original agreed-upon project, and isn't paying for your extra effort, then there's a problem. Scope creep is quite common in our industry. It's best to put a stop to it right away before things escalate. If the work you are doing for your client keeps increasing, but they are not compensating you for it, it may be time to let the client go. You've outgrown your client. At some point, you may decide that a client is no longer a good fit. Maybe your business grows to the point where you don't want to deal with smaller-budget clients. Perhaps you narrow your focus on your services, and existing clients no longer

Find something to distract your creative mind. Nobody tells you when you get into the design industry that regardless of whether you're doing this part-time or full-time or how many hours you devote to working each day, being a graphic or web designer is a 24/7 job. The curse of creativity. Let me know if this sounds familiar to you. You're out doing errands. Maybe it's grocery shopping or going to an appointment. It doesn't matter. Whatever you're doing has nothing to do with design work. And yet, for some reason, you find your mind churning away at design-related things. It starts contemplating a problem your having with a client website. Hmm, what's the best way to accomplish that? Or it starts generating ideas for that new logo you're designing. What if I play around with using an abstract star in the logo? It could be something as mundane as imagining colours. I like the blue on the cereal box. I wonder how this blue would look on that poster I'm designing? Even though you're "off-the-clock," your mind keeps designing. You may be watching TV and only half paying attention to what's playing because part of your brain is crunching away at some design problem. Or worse, you're lying in bed in the pitch dark, wanting to fall asleep, but your brain has other plans. Have you ever found yourself in any of these situations? Call it the curse of creativity. Those gifted with it know that creativity can pop up at the most inopportune times. Now, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't have it any other way. I love how my mind works and all the creative things it comes up with. However, I could do without the sleep deprivation. But even that's a small price for something I love doing. But even though I embrace this wild creativity we designers possess. Sometimes it would be nice not to have my mind wander towards some design problem when I'm not working. Because letting it do this over and over can lead to burnout. If all we think about is our jobs as designers, we may end up resenting what we do for a living. A creative solution. Now there are various solutions to this "problem." Some people practice meditation to clear their minds. And I'm sure it's beneficial for them, but meditation isn't my thing. Some people listen to music or podcast. But just like watching TV, I find your mind can still wander away from these intended distractions. I can't tell you how often I found myself listening to a podcast or audiobook only to realize my mind started wandering, and I have no idea what was said over the last several minutes. Some people turn to exercise, which is never a bad thing. But I'm not sure how effectively it curbs a wandering creative mind. It doesn't take a lot of brain power to count repetitions. I found that the best way to stop a creative mind from wandering is to give it another creative outlet. That's right, fight creativity with creativity. Now I'm far from being a brain expert. But I think many of these scenarios I've mentioned don't require a lot of brain processing power. Walking down a grocery ails and picking out a cereal box doesn't need your undivided attention. Nor does putting one foot in front of another while out running. This "brain idling" leaves a significant portion of your mind with nothing to do. And what do most sentient things do when they have nothing to do? They get bored, and they start to wander. And that's why creativity is the best weapon against wandering creativity. It's kind of like fighting fire with fire. Or maybe it's not. I don't know. The best way to stop thinking about your job as a designer is to occupy your mind with another creative task. Since creativity uses a lot of brain power, it's difficult for your mind to think of two creative things simultaneously. So it focuses on the more immediate one. The creative outlet you choose is irrelevant. Maybe, instead of listening to music, you create music. Maybe, instead of reading, you try writing. Perhaps you try a sport instead of going to a gym to exercise. After all, most sports require creative thinking. Or it could be knitting, sculpting, dancing, scrapbooking, or even basket weaving if that's your thing. It doesn't matter, as long as it requires creativity. When it comes to creative outlets, there are unlimited choices. My creative outlet. My favourite creative outlet is woodworking. I may have mentioned it before on the Resourceful Designer podcast, but I love woodworking. If I hadn't become a designer, I probably would have become a carpenter or something in the woodworking field. I even have battle scars to prove it. Last year, while building a plant stand for my wife, I caught the tips of two of my fingers on my table saw. Luckily the damage was minimal. A couple of tiny scars are the only evidence of the mishap. But the dangers of woodworking aside, I love taking raw pieces of wood and creating something new and unique out of them. This past weekend I created a food cage for our cat. Don't worry. It's not as sinister or

In episode 89 of Resourceful Designer, I discussed checklists and your design business. As a bonus to that episode, I offered my WordPress Website Setup Checklist. That was five years ago, and things have changed. In that time, I've grown and expanded as a web designer. The tools I use to create websites have also grown and expanded. Here is an up-to-date list of the tools I regularly use to design and build WordPress websites. Don't build in WordPress? Don't worry. I share a few things that may help you regardless of the platform where you design websites. Conceptualizing the website. Before I get down to designing and building a website, I want to know what I'm building. These are the tools that help me in the conceptual stage. Dynalist: Dynalist is a great outlining app that helps you get work done. I use Dynalist to outline the structure of every website I build. I like to know what pages a site will have and where they sit in the hierarchy. Dynalist helps me do this. Coolors.co Coolors.co is a super fast colour palette generator. I use it to choose colours for a website before the build starts. It's also convenient for finding great colours to go along with a client's existing brand colours. Setting up the website. SiteGround SiteGround I host all my and my client's websites at SiteGround. They're inexpensive, reliable, easy to work with and score well in web host comparisons. What more could a web designer ask for in a web host? Siteground has a very convenient one-click WordPress install feature that gets me up and designing quickly. Their installation registers me as the site admin using my email address instead of the default "Admin," usually generated by WordPress. If your web host doesn't have this feature, then I suggest the first thing you do upon installing WordPress is create a new Admin user and delete the default one named "Admin." During installations, Siteground installs two of its own plugins, SiteGround Optimizer and SiteGround Security. These are great plugins; however, I disable them until I finish building the site. Assets and tools I use on just about every website. Envato Elements Envato Elements is the first place I look for any stock images, icons or graphics I may need during a website build. Their low monthly subscription allows unlimited downloads, which comes in handy while experimenting. Depositphotos Depositphotos is another excellent resource for stock images and vector graphics. They're inexpensive, and their quality matches higher price stock image sites. Grammarly Grammarly ensures my website copy is error-free and written most effectively. I've been using it for years and won't compose anything without running it through Grammarly. Squoosh Squoosh.app is a handy website that does one thing very well, it optimizes images. Every image I upload to a website passes through Squoosh first. Screenflow Screenflow is only available on Mac (sorry, windows users). It's a screen recorder that makes it very easy to create tutorial videos explaining to clients how to use their new website. Screenflow is also a powerful video editor which I use any time I need to do minor edits to a video before uploading it to a website. Handbrake Handbrake is a free video conversion tool. It allows you to change the format of a video which is very useful in reducing a video's file size. Building the website. Divi Theme Divi by Elegant Themes is the world's most popular WordPress page builder and is trusted by hundreds of thousands of website creators. Divi takes WordPress to a new level by allowing you to build a website visually. With Divi, there's practically nothing you cannot create. Divi Marketplace The Divi Marketplace: is a one-stop shop for everything Divi, including layouts, child themes and extensions. If you need a website to do something special, chances are the solution can be found in the Divi Marketplace. Divi Booster Divi Booster allows you to customize Divi without adding extra code. This plugin adds 100s of new configuration options to Divi. Divi Express Divi Express is a vast library of Divi layouts, sections, headers & footers, sub-pages and more that you can import into your Divi website. Using Divi Express has drastically reduced my website design time. Divi Supreme Divi Supreme Is an All-in-One Divi Plugin that adds over 50 new Modules and eight extensions to Divi. Divi Supreme eliminates the need to customize things with a ton of CSS, saving you time. Divi Extended Divi Extended offers over 50 Divi Child Themes and 11 unique plugins. Their Divi Plus plugin adds over 50 new Modules to Divi. I love their Divi Blog Extra and Divi Blurb Extra plugins. Divi Life Divi Life also offers Layouts, Child Themes and Plugins. My favourite plugins from Divi Life are the Divi Overlays and Divi Bars plugins that I've used on several client websites. Divi Engine Divi Engine also offers plugins and extensions for Divi. However, it's their one plugin Divi Machine that excites me. With Divi Mac

I have a confession to make. I'm not perfect. Even though I've released 297 episodes of the Resourceful Designer podcast, a show I created to share tips and strategies for running a graphic and web design business. I still don't have all the answers. And even though I consider myself a successful entrepreneur. After all, I've been running my home-based design business for 17 years. Plus, I started my niche side business, Podcast Branding, just over three years ago, and it's doing better than I ever imagined. And yet, I still struggle. I don't struggle much with finding clients or design projects. I've been fortunate in that aspect. What I find myself struggling with from time to time is motivation. Feeling lazy. Some days, no matter how many things are on my to-do list, I don't feel like working. I feel lazy. I'll sit at my computer in the morning with the best intentions, having thought of everything I wanted to work on that day. But at the end of my work day, I look back and realize I didn't accomplish any of them. Sure I answered some emails. I read a few business-related articles. I watched some tutorials on YouTube. But actual work, the thing that makes me money, not so much. Not enough to compensate for an 8-hour work day. Luckily, one of the perks of working for yourself is you don't have to answer to anyone. As long as you get the work done, it doesn't matter how or when you do it. And everything would be fine if this was a sporadic occurrence. But that's the problem. Sometimes it isn't. When I get in a rut like this, it could last days. I'll chastise myself at the end of the day for my lack of drive, my laziness. And tell myself I'll work twice as hard tomorrow. But then tomorrow rolls around, and, for some reason, it happens again. Sure I'll get some small things done. But not nearly enough to satisfy me. A few weeks ago, I needed to start a website project. I intended to begin it on Monday. It was a big project, and I planned to get ahead of the timeline. But for some reason, I found other things to do. A lot of them non-productive. So Monday went by, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and I still hadn't started the website. To me, Friday is never a good day to begin something new. So I told myself I would finally start it on Monday. A week later than I initially wanted. And you know what? I didn't start it on Monday either. It's as if I knew how much work was involved with designing and building the website, and the laziness that had overcome me wasn't motivated to get started. I don't know what depression feels like. And honestly, I don't think that's what was happening. I honestly believe I was feeling lazy. But whatever it was, I was in a rut. When you're in a rut. Rut, what a funny word. I just looked up its meaning. A Rut is a habit or pattern of behaviour that has become dull and unproductive but is hard to change. That's exactly what I was going through. I had gotten into the behaviour of pushing off the big things on my to-do list because I was feeling lazy and unproductive. Maybe I should have called this post "Starting Is The Hardest Part." I know now, as I knew then, that everything would be fine once I started the website. Once I worked on it, I would find the motivation to keep going. Newton's first law of motion says, "An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion." There's more to Newton's law than that, but we're talking about laziness and work motivation here, not physics. However, the principle still applies. As long as I didn't start the website project, leaving it be was easier. But once I did start, I kept going and saw it threw to the end. Do you ever feel this way? Lazy, I mean? Do you ever stall or delay getting things started for no good reason? And I'm not talking about procrastination. I feel that procrastination is something different. I'm a notorious procrastinator. It used to drive my manager crazy when I worked at the print shop because I often waited until the last minute to start a project. But that was a conscious decision. And I still do that today. If I have a deadline in three weeks and know that it will only take me a couple of days to do the task, I'll often put it off until that third week and then plough through it. I like to think I work best under pressure. But these ruts I'm talking about are not the same. I'm not consciously deciding to put things off or procrastinate. It's the opposite; I want to start these projects. But somehow, I don't. At least until I don't have a choice because I'm running out of time. To me, that's a rut. And ruts come in spurts. I'll go months, if not years, where everything runs smoothly. And then, I find myself in a rut for no apparent reason. As I said earlier, I found myself in such a rut a few weeks ago. And what's worse is I knew I was in a rut, and it annoyed me. But being annoyed by my behaviour wasn't changing the fact that I felt lazy. I got so annoyed that I googled "How to get out of a ru

Has this ever happened to you? A new client contacts you looking for a designer. Their project sounds fun, and you seem to hit it off well with them. They verbally agree to your terms, and since everything sounds encouraging, you send them a formal proposal. And you wait in anticipation for them to approve your proposal and give you the go-ahead to get started on their project. And then you wait and wait, but you don't hear back. You send follow-up emails but don't receive any replies. The client has ghosted you. If you're not familiar with the term "ghosted," it's when someone ends all communication and contact with another person without any apparent warning or justification. Subsequently, they ignore any attempts to reach out or communication made by the person they're ghosting. And by that definition, this client is ghosting you. And it's not only with new clients. Sometimes an exiting client may ghost you in the middle of a project. You send them a proof and don't hear back. Or you ask them a question or for content you need, and you don't get a reply. This is any time you don't hear back from a client for whatever reason, even after several failed attempts at contacting them. What do you do? You send them The Magic Email, that's what. The Magic Email. What is The Magic Email, you ask? According to Blair Enns, Author and CEO of Win Without Pitching, a sales training organization for creative professionals. The Magic Email is a message you send to raise deals from the dead. That's its purpose, to solicit a response from someone who has been avoiding you. According to Enns, you must resist the temptation of sending an overly polite email. He suggests you do the opposite. Don't make excuses for your client's behaviour. And don't go soliciting a yes or any other answer from them. Enns suggests you strip away all emotions and let your prospect go matter-of-factly. And you that that with the following Magic Email. Within the last existing email thread, you had with your client, hit reply, change the subject to "Closing the Loop," and then write the following. Hi [FirstName]; I haven't heard back from you on [project/opportunity], so I'm going to assume you've gone in a different direction or your priorities have changed. Let me know if we can be of assistance in the future. Regards, [You] That's it. Enns says this removes the emotional reasons for the prospect to continue avoiding you. You are stripping out your neediness by no longer feigning politeness, by not asking how they've been or by being anything other than completely practical. This Magic Email says, "I can read between the lines, and you have decided we are not doing business together. No hard feelings – it's just business. You can call me if things change." What to expect after sending The Magic Email. You can expect one of three things to happen when you send The Magic Email. 1. Silence. Silence is the least likely scenario where you don't get a response at all. There's no longer any reason for the client not to wrap things up. All they have to do is send you a one-line acknowledgement email to remove this stress from their own lives. 2. Thank You. The client will send you a reply acknowledging that they have decided to cancel the project or they've moved in a different direction. This gives you closure and allows you to stop wasting energy over something that wasn't going to happen and move on to other clients and projects. There's no need to sulk about it. The deal was already done, probably a long time ago. The client just didn't tell you. 3. No, Wait! This is the response you're hoping for. According to Enns, by retreating unemotionally, where you might otherwise be inclined to advance, you suddenly become the one that might get away. The client stops seeing you as the predator that keeps sending them emails, to the prize they're about to lose. There's a psychological effect of this unemotional retreat that can be staggering in its effectiveness. And any resentment the client had over you harassing them turns into guilt about not replying to you earlier. This gives you the upper hand emotionally, and you suddenly become much more attractive to the client. You can learn more about all of this on Blair Enns site winwithoutpitching.com Variations of The Magic Email. Variation by Kai Davis We recently had a discussion in the Resourceful Designer Community about The Magic Email. Particularly about the different variations. Kai Davis of kaidavis.com adapted his Magic Email from Blair Enns' He says he split-tested it, and his version works better. His version is to send this one-sentence email. "Since I have not heard from you on this, I have to assume your priorities have changed." That's it, nothing else. Davis says it works because it's simple, intentionally vague, and effective. People are loss averse. Meaning their natural inclination is to reply immediately to keep you from walking away. You are taking back control of the situation by declar

There are two things I started doing that have helped me provide a better service to my clients. Which, in turn, makes me a better designer as far as they are concerned. I've been doing one of them for quite a while, while the other I only started doing a few years ago, and much more so since the pandemic began. What are these two things, you ask? Contemplation and Revision. Take time to contemplate after a design project. When you have a busy schedule, it's easy to finish one design project and immediately jump to the next. After all, with deadlines and clients to satisfy, you need to stop diddle-daddling and start that next project. If this is how you work, you are doing yourself a disservice. Some of the best insight you can gain is by taking time to contemplate after finishing a project. Think about the ups and the downs. What went right with the project? What went wrong? Were there any parts of the project that slowed things down or helped things along? Take the time to think about all aspects of the project and ask yourself, what could I have done to make things better? Is there anything I can learn from this project that I could use to improve my SOP, Standard Operating Procedure, so that future projects go smoother? If you have a team, talk it over with them. Ask your team if there's anything that could have made their part easier? Do this after every design project, and you'll quickly learn ways to make your life easier. I do things differently now than the way I did things when I first started my business. Heck, the way I do things now is different from how I did things a few months ago. All because I regularly take the time to contemplate how I've been doing things and if there's anything I can do to improve upon the way I work. Now I know you're probably thinking. I already do what you're suggesting automatically. If something works on a project, I'll implement it on future projects. That's well and good. And we should all do the same thing. But that's not the same thing as what I'm suggesting. Discovering something new and implementing it on future projects is great and should be automatic for you. But what I'm saying is that by dedicating 15, 30, or 60 minutes, depending on the size of the project, to contemplate the ups and downs of how the project went, you can learn valuable insights you may otherwise gloss over. Perhaps the way you've always done things isn't the best. Only by contemplating what you do can you spot areas for improvement. You get the idea. It's hard to remember and even harder to try and fix problems if you don't think about them again once a project is over. The same can be said of things that go well. If something goes very well with a project, you should figure out if there's any way to implement it in future projects. Contemplation: Dedicating time after completing a design project to figure out what went well, what didn't and how what you learn can improve your SOP on future projects. I've been doing this for years, and I can honestly say I'm a better designer for it. Record your conversations. The second thing I wanted to talk about that helped me become a better designer is recording my conversations with my clients. This one kind of started by accident. When I first started my side business, Podcast Branding, I began interviewing clients over Zoom in a quick discovery meeting. And even though I took notes, I would often need to follow up with a client for clarification. After doing this a few times, I started recording my Zoom meetings. And this became a game-changer for me. Now, If there's something I can't remember or I'm not quite sure of, I can rewatch our Zoom call and find the answer most of the time. Sometimes it might be a few days between when I talk to a client and start their project. I now make a point of rewatching the Zoom call before starting every project to ensure I do not forget anything. As I rewatch our meeting, I follow along with the notes I took. Sometimes, I'll pause or rewind to add to or clarify my notes. And I'll often catch something I may have missed during our live meeting, or maybe I didn't fully comprehend it at first but listening back helped me understand. Yes, relistening to your meetings adds more time to a project, but you would be amazed at how much it makes working on the project easier. Not just that, but listening again with fresh ears allows me to create better artwork that better meets the client's needs. And the clients appreciate how diligent I am, especially when I refer back to our conversation. It helps you become a better communicator. The other benefit of recording your conversations is you'll be able to pick up on things you said or didn't say and how you communicate with your clients. Listening to yourself on a recording will help you improve your communication skills. Did you sound confident? Were the questions you asked easy to understand? Did you answer your client's questions to the best of your ability? The mo

One of the best things about being human is our ability to make choices. If you're in the mood for a hamburger but also in a rush, you still have options. Do you go to Mcdonald's, Burger King, Wendy's or one of the other fast-food burger joints? If you're in the market for a new car, do you look at Ford, Dodge, Toyota, or Honda? Need a new computer? You can choose one of the many models of Pcs or go with a Mac. Regardless of your choices, the ultimate decision is still up to you. But how do you go about choosing? You do so by looking at what makes each option different and how those differences appeal to you. We all know that not all hamburgers are equal. McDonald's has consistently stated that "Great Taste" makes them different. I know, that's very subjective. But it is a recurring marketing slogan they've used over the years. Burger King claims it's the flame broiling that makes them different. At Wendy's, it's the fact that their meat is never frozen, so it taste's fresher. Ultimately, you decide which one of these differences appeals to you the most. And that's where you get your burger. This same concept of what makes something different can equally apply to designers. What makes you different from the other designers in your town? What would make a client choose you over one of them? If you can figure out this question and use it to your advantage, you may outpace your competition with more work than you can handle. So what makes you different? Culture and Heritage. Maybe your culture or heritage makes you different. People find it easier to deal with people similar to them or who understand them. It's currently the middle of May, which is Asian Heritage Month. As a white person, I would never expect someone to hire me to design a campaign for Asian Heritage Month. It's not that I don't think I could do a good job. It's just that I feel that an Asian designer is better suited for the project. After all, they can relate to the subject matter better than I ever could. Whatever your heritage or culture is, you should embrace it and find a way to use it. A member of the Resourceful Designer Community is an indigenous Canadian woman. She's using this to her advantage by marketing her design business to companies, organizations and groups run by First Nation people. And she's killing it. She had to halt a recent marketing campaign because her available time quickly filled up for the rest of the year. Wouldn't you like to be booked entirely for the rest of the year? She's become so busy that she's in the process of hiring another designer to help with the workload. How is this possible? Is it because she's terrific at marketing her services? That may be part of it. But her marketing message alone isn't what's bringing in so many new clients. It's who she's marketing to. First Nations people, just like everyone else, need help when it comes to design and branding. And when given a choice, they are more likely to choose someone like them who is a member of a First Nation. Someone who understands their culture doesn't need to be educated on what works and what doesn't for them. In other words, it means they are comfortable working with her because she understands them. And this makes it easy for them to choose her over another designer who isn't a member of a First Nation. Perhaps you can apply a similar strategy. Are you Hispanic, Asian, or a person of colour? Have you ever thought of marketing yourself to people of the same ethnic background? It may give you an advantage over others in your field as clients may prefer you over someone who isn't of the same ethnicity as them. It's worth a try. Gender and Orientation. There has never been so much discussion over gender and orientation as there is today. And that's a good thing. The more we talk about it, the more it will become accepted. And when it comes to your business, your gender and orientation could be an excellent opportunity for you to attract clients. If you are part of the LGBTQ community, you have an advantage over those of us who aren't. Like-minded people prefer to deal with like-minded people. It makes them feel safe and understood. And it's no different when it comes to business. I know it's not design-related, but I recently heard of a podcast editing company that only deals with LGBTQ clients. They've created a place where LGBTQ podcasters can feel safe and unjudged for the podcasts they make. The same concept can be applied to a design business. An LGBTQ entrepreneur may feel more comfortable working with a designer from the same community. The manager at the print shop I used to work at is gay. And I know we had many LGBTQ clients because they felt comfortable dealing with him. And when we talk about gender, it could be as simple as a female designer opting to work with women-led businesses. I've heard of several designers who do just this. They only work with companies that are run by other women. And they have plenty of work to keep them b

It's so easy to get caught up in what we do, be that logo design, vehicle wraps, websites, trade show booths; you name it. We forget that our clients don't live in the same world as we do. Our clients don't see the world through a designer's eye. When they look at a billboard, they see the message. When a designer looks at a billboard, not only do we take in the content and message. But we also take in the layout, the hierarchy, the use of negative space and the colour pallet. We note what fonts are used and what imagery they chose to relay their message. When we see something that isn't kerned correctly, we feel the need to point it out. We feel almost obliged to mention every stock image we recognize out in the wild. "See that photo of that happy family in that car insurance ad? I saw that exact photo on Depositphotos." And we stop to admire displays, posters, cards and everything else we think is well designed. After all, when you see something that you feel is well designed, don't you secretly start cataloging pieces of it away in your mind so you can "borrow" the idea for something you create in the future? As designers, our brains are just wired that way. We see the world through a designer's eye. But sometimes, we forget that non-designers don't see the world the way we do. My wife has perfected the eye roll she uses whenever I start talking design about something I see. Sometimes she'll feign interest, but I know that she doesn't care that the line spacing on the restaurant's menu is too tight. She just doesn't get it because she's not a designer. But neither are our clients. That's why they hire us for their projects. And sometimes, it's easy to forget that they don't have the same knowledge as us, nor the same interests. And they view the world through a different set of lenses than we do. That's why it's a good idea that before you say or present anything to a client, you try to consider it from their point of view. Case in point. A designer shared an intro packet PDF in a design group I belong to, asking for advice. The PDF is to give prospective website clients to explain what a CMS is, a Content Management System. She went into great detail, outlining everything there is to know about CMSs. I how thorough she was. However, I and several others pointed out that it wasn't suitable for clients. She explained how databases work, with columns and rows and entry IDs. and how you can edit a database directly with tools such as phpMyAdmin. Then she explained how she builds a custom portal for each client that allows them to easily add, delete, and edit posts in the database. And finally, she explained how the items in the database end up displaying on the web page. She even showed examples of the PHP code required to make it all happen. Nothing was wrong with anything she presented, except that most of them are redundant to clients. A client doesn't need to know how databases work or how the info from the database ends up on a web page. All the client needs to know is their website will have a CMS with an easy-to-use interface allowing them to add, delete and edit the content of their site. Remember, these are perspective clients. Meaning they haven't committed to working with you yet. You don't want to scare them away before they've had a chance to work with you. Donald Miller, the author of Building a StoryBrand, said it best. "If you confuse, you'll lose." Consider your marketing message from a design client's perspective. Let's say you specialize in logo design, and you showcase your three-step process on your website. Step 1) I start with a meeting. I have a list of over 50 questions I ask you, covering everything from how your company got started, to your mission, to where you see the future going. This allows me to get to know you and your business. Step 2) I take the answers you gave me and start the research process. I take a close look at what your immediate competition is doing. I examine your industry as a whole to determine if there are any trends we may want to follow. I may conduct focus groups to learn more about what your clients think of you. I then gather all this information and begin the concept stage, where I brainstorm and develop several different ideas. I then narrow it down to the most promising ones and fine-tune them until I'm satisfied. Step 3) I present you with the best ideas. If required, we then enter the revision process, where you are allowed three sets of revisions to tweak your logo until you are satisfied. Once done, I'll create a brand guide that outlines the rules for using your new logo and supply everything you'll need in various file formats. This shows a comprehensive process. And a designer may think this is perfect for showing the client why they're worth the price they're charging. However, it may have an adverse effect from a client's point of view. "50 questions? I just want a logo for my new business. Why does it have to be so complicated? Maybe I shou

Ask any designer, and they'll tell you that their number one way of landing new design clients is through word-of-mouth referrals. If you do an excellent job on a client's project, there's a good chance they'll pass your name along should they hear of someone requiring services you offer. I've built my entire business on this model. And chances are, so have you. But does that mean you should only rely on word-of-mouth referrals? No, it doesn't. Are you familiar with the term diversify? In short, it means "using different options." Such as "you should diversify your investments," meaning you should have multiple investments. If one of them isn't doing well, your other assets can help make up for it. Diversification can also apply to your income stream. If all your work comes from one client, and that client suddenly has financial difficulty and stops sending work your way, you'll be in trouble. That's why it's best to have multiple clients. If one stops sending you projects, you can still make a living from the rest. But I want to talk about diversity concerning how you obtain new clients. As I said, word-of-mouth is the most popular method in our field. But word-of-mouth has limits. That's why you shouldn't rely solely on it for your clients. This is how word-of-mouth works. Imagine a tree. The tree trunk s one client. You design a project for this one client. They may refer someone else to you via word-of-mouth if they like what you did. That someone else is now a limb on that tree. Again, you do a good job, and that someone else, the limb, tells another person about you. That new person becomes a branch on your tree, and so on. Every limb and every branch can trace itself back to the trunk, the first client. Now you have a big tree of clients, all somehow connected back to that initial client. And that's great. But there's more than one tree in a forest. This means many people could use your services but have zero connection to anyone in your tree of clients. And if they have zero connection to your existing clients, they'll never hear about you through word-of-mouth. That's why you should diversify how or where you find clients. Because every client you land that isn't connected to your other clients starts a new tree for you. Now there are many resources available on how to find clients. Searching the phrase "How to find graphic design clients" will produce more than 247,000,000 results. Have fun reading through all of them. But today, I want to share six unconventional ways you can find design clients. And just a note, I've successfully landed new clients using 5 out of 6 of these methods. And it's not because one didn't work. I just never tried it myself, but I know others who have. Also, note that some of these methods may require a small investment. So let's get started. Placing business cards in books. Leaving your business card in a book is a great way to introduce yourself to someone who may not know you. Look at your local library or book store for books on starting a business and insert your business card. If there happens to be a chapter on branding or marketing, place your card there. Should someone read the book, they'll come across your card at the point in the book where they're learning about the type of services you offer. This method worked for me recently. A client contacted me saying, "I found your business card in a book I bought." BTW, you could leave a business card as I did. Or, if you want to get more creative, you can have a special card made for just this purpose. Imagine someone reading a "How to start a business" book and coming across a card that reads, "Are you thinking of starting a business? I would love to help you with your website." Join a board of directors or committee. As I mentioned above, some of these methods require an investment on your part. This one isn't financial. It's time. We all know that networking is one of the best ways to become known for what you offer. After all, if someone doesn't know about you, there's very little chance they'll hire you. But networking doesn't have to be just at conferences or special events. You could join a local board of directors or a committee for an organization. What's good about this is you're not just meeting people once. You regularly interact with people when you're on a board or committee. This gives them a chance to get to know you. These relationships make it very easy for someone to consider you when they need a designer. Don't do this with the mindset of landing clients. If you're going to invest your time, it should be with an organization you believe in, even if it doesn't produce any clients. Advertise your design business on T-shirts. I've talked before about how when I first started my business. I had a T-shirt made with the message "Hi, I'm a website designer. Is your site working for you?" on the back. I wore this shirt to local events and trade shows. It landed me several new clients. But wearing a T-shi

Let me ask you something. How confident would you be buying a meal from a food truck that is so rusted and smoke-stained that you can't make out its name on the side? Or how confident would you be staying at a motel where the paint was peeling off the doors, siding was missing on the building, and duct tape held the cracked windows together? Or how confident would you be buying a car from an auto dealer whose windows were so dirty you couldn't see through them and whose sign was missing a couple of letters? I bet your confidence wouldn't be very high in those situations. How do you think a client would feel if they came across a website that contains errors while looking for a designer? I bet they wouldn't feel too confident in hiring that person. That's what I want to talk about today, making sure your messaging doesn't contain errors. Let me give you a bit of background here. I decided to talk about this today because someone sent me a message earlier this week. Now, if you've ever contacted me for whatever reason, there's a good chance I looked at your website. It's just something I do. Any time someone emails me or contacts me on social media, I'll try to find their website to see how they present themself. So, someone sent me a message earlier this week, and when I found their website, the first thing I saw was a spelling mistake. The very first line of the website was "I Designs Websites." Other places on the website included passages that lead me to believe this person is not a native English speaker. But I'll touch more on that later. And even though it was a beautifully designed website, and this person had a fantastic portfolio, those spelling and grammar mistakes made me question the quality of this person's work. Now imagine I was a client looking for someone to build a website for my new business. Those errors may be enough to make me second guess this person and move on to another web designer. Be careful with jargon. But it's not just spelling or grammatical errors that can hinder your chance of landing clients. Another section of this same website described their services and how they work. They mention that the first thing they do is build a wireframe to show the client before making their website using WordPress. Elsewhere on the site, it said their web hosting includes a CDN. You probably understand what I just said if you're familiar with websites. Imagine a client with no knowledge of websites other than knowing their business needs one. "Wireframe," "WordPress," and "CDN" don't mean anything to them. Reading these things may cause them more confusion, which may make them look elsewhere for a web designer. I talked about Jargon in episode 217 of the podcast. Jargon is common terminology in specific industries but maybe not so common outside of them. I'm a web designer, and I remember wondering what wireframes were the first time I heard someone use that term. It wasn't until I understood what a wireframe was that the word became part of my vocabulary. I'm not saying you shouldn't use these jargon terms in your communication. But if you do, you should add some clarity for anyone unfamiliar with them. For example: "We start by building a wireframe, a mockup layout of your website for you to approve before we start building the real thing in WordPress, a popular website platform, powering over 60% of the world's websites." "Our web hosting includes a CDN, a content delivery network that improves the efficiency and speed of your website and helps you rank higher in search engines." Even if a client doesn't recognize the jargon, they can still understand what you're saying because of the descriptions. A designer's job is communication. As designers, people think our job is to make things look good. And in part, it is. But more importantly, a designer's job is to ensure a message is told clearly and understandably. Design is about communication. And if the communicated message is confusing, then the person, company or organization behind that message will appear less competent. But what can you do? The first suggestion I have is simple. Spell and grammar check your work. A spell and grammar checker can help eliminate most problems, but only to an extent. They can identify misspelled words but are not as good at finding incorrect or better words. For that, I use a tool called Grammarly. I've been using Grammarly for years. Not only does it find spelling and grammar errors, but it helps improve my writing by suggesting alternatives. It helps me be a better writer by making me sound better. It's well worth the small price. Be wary of mistakes in headlines. I read a report that said there were more errors per capita in newspaper headlines than in the body copy. It said that, on average, there was one error for every 1000 words of body copy compared to four errors for every 1000 words of headline copy. Most people don't read headlines; they skim them—even the proofreaders whose job it is to find e

Hi there, it's Mark here. I'm sorry, but there won't be a typical podcast episode this week. But I will be back next week with more great content to help you with your design business. In the meantime, I have a proposition for you. If you know anything about website ranking and SEO, you know the importance of good quality backlinks. How would you like to get a backlink to your website from a very well-established site in the design space? I'm talking about https://resourcefuldesigner.com If you visit the Resourceful Designer website, you'll notice that it's divided into two sections. The podcast, and the blog. I started it that way with the best of intentions of maintaining both. And although I've done a great job of putting out new podcast content over the past 6 years. The same cannot be said of the blog section. And I'd like to remedy that. However, I don't have the bandwidth to produce a podcast and write a blog post every week. That's why I'm reaching out to you. I'm opening up the Resourceful Designer blog to guest authors and I'd love to give the first opportunity to listeners like you. If you have an idea that would benefit designers who are starting or running their own design business and want to write an article about it, please reach out to me at [email protected] and I'll send you the specifications to get started. I'll give you full credit for your article, including a do-follow link back to your website in your author bio. If you're interested, please reach out at [email protected]. Thanks for your time. I'll be back next week with another great episode of Resourceful Designer. Until then, stay creative.

The local tourism board where I live, a client of mine, in partnership with one of the local newspapers, produces a 72-page visitor guide every year for people visiting the area. The tourism director hired me to design a countertop display stand for these guides that they will place in various stores and businesses in the region. These visitor guides are an odd size. So I started researching companies that produce custom cardboard countertop display stands. And let me tell you, I was super impressed with one company I contacted. While browsing their website to see if they offer what I need, a chat bubble popped up saying, "Hi, I'm Frank. I'm available right now if you need to chat about anything." I took Frank up on his offer and asked what my best option was for the display stand I needed. He replied by requesting my phone number and asking if it was ok for him to call me, as it would be easier to discuss my needs over the phone. I agreed, and I was on the phone with him a minute later. Frank listened to what I needed, made a few suggestions and said he would email me a price by the end of the day. In my opinion, Frank and his company went above and beyond to impress me, a potential new client. But it didn't end there. Within a couple of minutes of hanging up the phone, I received a welcome email from Frank thanking me for agreeing to talk to him. In the email, he briefly outlined what we had discussed. And he attached an intro packet outlining the company for me to read. This intro packet upped my impression of the company tenfold. A couple of hours later, I received another phone call from Frank. He tells me he just emailed me the quote and asked if I have time to go over it with him. At this point, I felt like royalty. I was so impressed with the way they were treating me. I had never heard of this company before, and now I couldn't wait to tell everyone about them. Frank walked me through the various charges involved with my project, such as the price for a custom die, among other things. But when we finally reached the cost per unit, it was higher than I had hoped. Not overly so, but still more than I wanted to pay for them. When he asked me what I thought, I hesitated for a moment. And that's when Frank goofed up. Offer excellent customer service. Before I get to what Frank said, I want to emphasize the importance of excellent customer service and how it affects you and your design business. You may think of yourself as a designer, but designing is a small portion of what you do if you're running your own design business. And it might not even be the most critical portion. If you're working for yourself, your most important skill is the ability to sell yourself. Running your own design business requires you to be a good salesperson. Every client who agrees to work with you does so because you successfully sold them on you and your ability to do the job. They agreed to your price, had confidence in your skills, and trusted you to complete their project because you sold them on these things. This ability to sell goes way beyond the monetary aspect and is part of every interaction you have. It's what makes people like and what to work with you. Sometimes, even despite the price. If you lack this ability to sell yourself, you will be hard-pressed to find clients. I've said it many times before. Clients would prefer to work with a good designer they like, then work with an amazing designer they don't like. And it all comes down to your ability to sell yourself. What you should never do. Anyway, back to Frank. So as I said, the price per unit he quoted me was a bit higher than I hoped. And Frank sensed my hesitancy. And what he said next changed my impression of this company. When Frank sensed my hesitation, he told me, "Don't worry. All prices are negotiable." And at that point, the pedestal I had placed this company on crumbled. Frank had presented me with a reasonable price for what I needed, although higher than expected. But now he was telling me that price was negotiable. In other words, he was admitting that his company could do the job for less. So I asked him about it. My response was something like, "Are you telling me that the price you're showing me is not the best price you could have given me for this job? That you inflated your quote hoping that I would be gullible enough to agree to it?" Frank quickly went on the defensive, saying no, this is how much the job costs. However, if I wanted to negotiate, he would hear me out. I replied, "You're telling me that you would consider lowering the cost if I negotiated with you. That tells me that this price isn't really what this job costs and that you could easily do it for less. Otherwise, why tell me the price is negotiable? And even if you agree to take 5, 10 or 15 percent off the price, I will still wonder if you're conning me, and I could have gotten it for even less." At this point, I thanked Frank for the quote, told him I would get back to h

I had a conversation recently with fellow designers over how we refer to ourselves. This conversation started when one designer asked another why they referred to themselves as a freelancer? We then talked about the impression and stereotypes associated with the word freelancer. In the end, the designer acknowledged that it was in their best interest not to use the term freelancer anymore when referring to themself. And it would be best if you did the same. Stop calling yourself a freelancer. Why you should stop calling yourself a freelancer. There's a stigma associated with the term Freelance or Freelancer. In episode 17 of the Resourceful Designer podcast, I discussed how calling yourself a freelance graphic designer could hurt your business. I shared a story of when a company approached me for an in-house position. I turned them down, but I shared the name of a designer I knew would be perfect for the job. The company's CEO later told me the designer I told them about had all the right qualifications. However, The title she used on her resume was Freelance Graphic Designer, and they were looking for someone more serious than that for the position. She didn't get the job because she listed herself as a freelancer. I know it's crazy, but it's true. You see, the term freelancer is popular among designers. When I was in school, my classmates and I talked about how great it would be to be a freelancer. But outside of our sphere of peers in the design industry, the term freelancer is not as familiar. Or maybe I should say it's not as "prestigious" as we like to think it is. The term freelancer is akin to being quick and cheap, which reminds me of episode 71 of the podcast Good Design, Quick Design, Cheap Design. Pick Two. For many business people, freelancers are people you hire if you want something done fast and for a reasonable price, not necessarily if you want something designed well. For this reason, I tell designers who work for themselves to stop calling themselves freelance designers and instead say they run a design business. Even if you only do it as a side gig. In an article titled Stop Calling Yourself A Freelancer, author Andrew Holliday says that a company commands more respect than freelancers. And that freelancers are perceived as commodities. Meaning they're interchangeable. If you need a quick design job, hire a freelancer. In the future should you require more design work, you could hire the same freelancer, or you can hire someone else. It doesn't matter because freelancers are interchangeable. Anyone will do. And usually, the cheaper, the better. Hiring a freelancer is kind of like purchasing fuel for your vehicle. You know that all gas or petrol stations are basically the same, so you pick and choose where to fill up based on price. That's how many business owners perceive freelancers–as commodities. However, if you want a partner to help you develop your brand and marketing assets, someone you can work with long-term, then hire a design company, even if that design company is just one person. Holliday made another interesting point in his article that freelancers often fight for hourly work. Whereas companies typically get paid by the project. And therefore, your earning potential is much higher if you refer to yourself as a business owner and not a freelancer. But don't take his or my word on it. Earlier this week, I posted a poll in a large entrepreneur community where I'm a member. It's a community made up mostly of solopreneurs to mid-size business owners. In other words, the type of people you want as design clients. Here's what I asked. Who would you prefer to hire for design work: A: A graphic designer who runs their own design business? B: A freelance graphic designer? I know. It's a trick question since both answers are the same, but I wanted to see what people would say. Two hundred four people responded. 176 (86%) chose A: A graphic designer who runs their own design business. Compared to only 28 (14%) who chose B: A freelance graphic designer. What's even more interesting are the comments on my poll. Aren't they the same thing? But if I had to choose I would pick A. It sounds more professional. I would hire a freelance graphic designer. I'm just starting out and don't have a large budget and option A sounds more expensive to me. If I knew exactly what I wanted and just needed someone to implement it for me I would choose B. If I needed someone to help me develop new ideas I would choose A. Isn't hiring a freelancer kind of like hiring an employee who doesn't actually work for you, so it's less paperwork? I think the difference between the two is confidence and trust. I could trust that a design business owner is competent and knows what they are doing because they took the time to start a business. I know they'll be around for a long time should I need them again in the future. I wouldn't feel the same way about hiring a freelance graphic designer. I have a background in des

On Monday, when I sat down to start my week, I had an email in my inbox from a client giving me their approval to launch their new website. I anticipated this, and the site was live within an hour and a half. Satisfied with another completed project, I opened Plutio, my project management software of choice, to see what I was to work on next. And what I found was nothing. I had no website projects. I had no podcast cover artwork to design. My to-do list of client work was blank. I can't remember the last time this happened. I didn't even have proofs out with clients that may come back. I had nothing, nil, nada, zip, zilch and whatever other ways I could say it. I had no client work. It's now Friday afternoon as I write this, and not a single new project came in this week. For the first time in over a year, an entire week went by without a single order from my Podcast Branding website. For the first time in an even longer period, I didn't have a client website on the go. This lack of work is a situation that many self-employed designers may face. It doesn't only happen to new designers trying to grow their business. It can happen to anyone at any time. Maybe it's how the planets have aligned, or Lady Luck decided to take a vacation. I don't know, but it happens. It just happened to me. And it can happen to you. But experiencing a lull like this shouldn't make you worry. I've been in this line of work for a long time, and I can tell you, lulls never last. Give it a little time, and once again, you'll feel overwhelmed from having too much on your plate. What to do when facing lulls. The best way to face lulls is by embracing them. Please take advantage of the time they provide you because it won't last. This past week was one of the most productive for me in a while. I had no client work to hold me back, allowing me to accomplish many things. On Tuesday, my daughter asked if I could build her a website. She has an Etsy store but wants to move off that platform to one of her own. What she wanted was very simple. And there was no rush. She told me I could get to it whenever I had the time. Well, guess what? I had the time. So I got right to it, and in a matter of hours, I had completed her new eCommerce website. I did say what she wanted was very simple. So it didn't take long. And the look on my daughter's face when I showed it to her that same day was priceless. You got to win those parenting points whenever you can. Am I right? But that wasn't all. I met with a client the week before this. They're looking for a website redesign and expect a proposal from me. I have a multi-page website proposal template, which makes submitting proposals very easy. I open the template, update the information about whatever project I'm proposing, save it as a PDF file and send it to the client. Easy peasy. I've been using this template for a few years now, and it was getting a bit dated. But I never had the time to update it until now. It would typically take me 20 to 30 minutes to complete a proposal like this one. Instead, I devoted a couple of hours to redesigning my proposal template before sending it to the client. I've been thinking of redesigning it for a long time, and because of this lull, I was able to scratch it off my to-do list. I also had the opportunity to look at my Podcast Branding website and make many minor changes. I changed some wording here and there and updated a few of the images on the site. I also decided to eliminate one service I wasn't keen on doing anymore. And I added some clarification to the other services to increase conversion. I closed many of the browser tabs I had opened by reading articles I was "saving for later" or watching tutorial videos for various things. And I didn't feel guilty about any of it because I wasn't taking time away from client work. After all, I didn't have any. And of course, I did take the time to reach out to several old clients that I haven't heard from in a while, to get in touch and let them know I'm still here should they need me. Every day this week, I worked from 9-5, and I wasted none of that time even though I had no client work. I didn't feel self-pity or down in the dumps. Because I knew this lull wouldn't last, and I wanted to take advantage of every minute of it. We often put off working on our own business. And then we forget about it when we have a bit of time we could devote. I usually say you should treat your own business as a client and block off time to work on it. But a lull is the perfect opportunity to get as much of it done as possible. It helps if you have recurring revenue. I would feel much worse if I didn't have recurring revenue streams in this situation. In episode 216 of the podcast, I talked about offering website maintenance to earn extra income. This service provides peace of mind for my clients since they don't have to worry about the security or maintenance of their websites. If they have a blog or podcast, all they have to do is pu

Don't you hate that feeling when you can't find what you're looking for? It could be anything. You can't find your wallet or your car keys. Have you misplaced your phone? Maybe it's that scrap of paper you scribbled that critical information on that you can't find. Regardless of whatever it is you can't locate, you're left with an empty feeling inside—a feeling of unfulfillment. A similar feeling occurs when you land on a website only to see those three words – No Results Found. It's so frustrating. Maybe you clicked a link in an article you were reading, anticipating a solution to a problem you're facing, only to be disappointed by where it brought you. Perhaps you used the search field on a website hoping to find something only to come up short. Or it could happen while navigating a website, and you have no idea how you got there. Regardless of the circumstances, you've landed on the dreaded 404 page. A page that mocks you with those three words – No Results Found. It might as well say - ha, ha, you lose, we don't have what you're looking for. It's so frustrating. Then what do you do? Do you go back and click the link again, hoping that you get better results this time around? Do you randomly start clicking around, hoping to stumble upon what you were looking for? Or, do you shrug your shoulders in defeat and close the page, or go looking elsewhere for your answer? It doesn't matter when or why. Landing on a No Results Found page is never fun unless the person who designed the website makes it fun for you. You can customize the 404 page. The 404 page is something that every website in the world has, whether the site owner knows it or not. And it's a page that's landed on more often than you would think. And yet, very few websites take advantage of this "popular" page. And you should take advantage of it. Whether it's your website or sites you create for your clients. You may or may not know this, but you can customize the 404 page on a website. If you're a Divi user, it's as easy as creating a new page layout in the Divi theme builder and assigning it to the 404 page. That's how I do it for the sites I build. Other WordPress themes and builders, as well as platforms such as Squarespace Wix, Weebly, etc., should allow you to do so as well. If not, you can install plugins that will enable you to edit the 404 page. Why should you customize the 404 page? But what's the point, you may ask? The fact is, the default 404 page is a stepping-off point for some visitors. When someone arrives at the No Results Found page, it's a signal for them to leave the site. And no website owner ever wants visitors to leave their site unsatisfied. But if you customize the 404 page, you can improve visitor retention by giving them something to do other than leaving the page. And this goes for your website too. Do you want visitors to your site who happen to stumble upon your 404 page to leave? Of course, you don't. So give them an incentive to stay. Look at the Resourceful Designer 404 page, for example. I've designed the 404 page to capture visitors' interest in the site. Upon landing on the 404 page, the first thing they see is a whimsical "Oops" image. Followed by the heading: "Looks like someone forgot to proofread." The paragraph below says, "The page you are looking for is nowhere to be found. Not to worry, there are plenty of other great pages for you to see. Here are some popular posts that may interest you." A list follows, showing three popular podcast episodes and three blog posts that may interest visitors to the site. I also ask them if they want a copy of my Four Week Marketing Boost and provide a way to acquire it. So even though someone arrived on this page because the content they were looking for isn't available, they still have something to engage with. And you know what? It works. I track where people sign up for my Four Week Marketing Boost, and many of them came from my 404 page. I made it a bit simpler on my Podcast Branding website. The page shows an image of a man, seen from behind, scratching his head in confusion. The heading reads, "Uh oh!" followed by "I don't think this is what you were looking for, was it? No worries, if you're starting a podcast or you're looking for help with your show's visual branding, you're in the right place, just not the right page. Why don't you click this button to see how Podcast Branding can help you?" Then, a button labelled "LEARN MORE" takes them to the home page. It's simple, and it works. Do you get my point? You can make the 404-page look however you want. The point is to give visitors something to do instead of simply leaving the site. I like to have fun with these pages by making them whimsical. I put a photo of an older woman holding her hand up to her ear on a hearing aid website as if she couldn't hear. The heading reads, "Say that again, I didn't quite catch it." Followed by a search field. On a tech and electronics site, I wrote, "It looks like we have a bro

Wants and needs. What an interesting juxtaposition. I want a new sword for my collection. But I don't need another sword. I want a cheeseburger and poutine for supper. But I don't need all that fat or those calories. I want enough money to do whatever I want in life. However, I only need to make enough money to cover my expenses. Wants and needs. They govern a lot of our decisions, don't they? Your clients' wants and needs. What about you and your design business? How do wants and needs factor into what you do for your clients? As a design business owner, your goal is to make money. After all, a business that doesn't make money doesn't remain a business for very long. Sure, it's great to do some pro-bono work from time to time, but I don't know of any designer who cherishes working for free. No, you want to make money so that you can pay your bills, support your family, take vacations, and perhaps indulge yourself from time to time. To make money, you need to charge your clients for the services you offer. And the more clients you have and the more design work you do, the more money you earn. As a design business owner, it can be tempting to simply give clients what they want in order to make a sale. Like when a client comes to you with an idea in mind and asks if you can design it for them. You know you can, and it would be easy money. And so many designers across the globe work this way. They do exactly what the client wants. But the problem is, clients don't always know what they want, or what they think they want isn't the best option because they don't know any alternatives. Adopting this strategy of doing what your client wants is not conducive to growing a successful design business. You may get work. Maybe even lucrative work. But your business will eventually reach a cap if all you ever do is what your clients ask you to do. To be successful, you need to figure out how to deliver what your clients need, not just what they want. How do wants differ from needs? Now don't get me wrong. You'll have clients whose wants and needs are in line with each other—those who are business savvy and understand what is required for their businesses to grow. You'll enjoy working with those clients because you'll be able to communicate with them on an even level. However, many clients don't understand that their wants and needs may differ. I find this especially true with newer entrepreneurs–people who have left corporate life to start their own businesses. They'll often get their ideas from what others are doing and falsely think they'll experience the same success if they do the same thing. They see someone else grow their business by sending out postcards, so they believe they should send out postcards as well. That's not the proper way to think about or grow a business. Giving clients what they want might make them happy in the short term, but they'll eventually realize that it doesn't solve whatever problem they're trying to fix. And clients always come to you, a designer, to fix a problem, whether they know it or not. That's what we do as designers. We're problem solvers. Just doing what a client wants can lead to unfulfilled expectations and frustration on the client's part. "I spent good money on these postcards; why aren't they working?" It's because postcards weren't what the client needed. Your job as a designer is not to fulfill your client's every desire or cater to their every whim; it's about understanding their needs and addressing them in a way that meets those needs and exceeds their expectations. When you give your clients what they need, you are helping them achieve their goals and solve their problems. When you manage that, your clients will view you in a whole new light, and they'll want to work with you more. Do you ignore what a client wants? Does this mean you ignore what the client wants? Of course not. The key is to balance what the client wants and what will work best for their business. For example, a client may want you to redesign their website because they're not getting enough traffic and low sales. They think that getting more traffic to their site will increase sales and solve their problem. When more traffic isn't the solution, better-qualified traffic is. Having 1,000 random people visit a website probably won't increase sales as much as attracting 100 targeted visitors. The client wants more visitors, but what they need is better-targeted visitors. And it's your job to explain this to them. My own experience. One of my clients is a hearing aid clinic. When they first opened and were trying to build up their client list, they wanted to get as much exposure as possible. One of the marketing strategies they wanted to explore was placing ads in local magazines. The salesperson they contacted at a nearby distributor represented several magazines. He convinced them that they would get the most exposure by placing an ad in a local outdoor life magazine that covered hiking, bicycling, ca

NDAs or Non-Disclosure Agreements is a very popular topic here on Resourceful Designer. The previous episode I did on NDAs is one of the most searched posts on this site. I recently had the privilege of talking NDAs with attorney Gordon Firemark. Gordon practices entertainment law in California, the USA, where he helps artists, writers, producers, and directors achieve their dreams in the fields of theatre, film, television and new media. But what does that have to do with graphic or web design, you might be thinking? Well, every theatre production, film and movie, television show and other forms of new media such as YouTube and podcasting, at some point require the expertise of a designer. And many times, those designers are brought into the mix long before the entertainment product is ready to go public. And of course, the person hiring said designer wants to protect their intellectual property. That's where Non Disclosure Agreements come into play. They help protect their IP by setting the boundaries of what the designer can say or not say about the projects they're working on for their clients. To learn more, be sure to listen to the episode. Here are some topics we covered. What is an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)? Is an NDA a separate contract? In what situation would you be asked to sign an NDA? Are your contractors covered by an NDA you sign? What should you look for in an NDA? What should you look out for in an NDA? What is covered under an NDA? When should an NDA end? Are NDAs negotiable? When is it ok to break an NDA? What are your obligations to materials provided to you under an NDA? When should you ask a client to sign an NDA for you? Is a Non-Complete Agreement the same as an NDA?

Communication: According to the dictionary, communication is the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs. But that definition doesn't do it justice. Communication is so much more than that. Without communication, conflicts could escalate. Governments would collapse. Businesses fail. And loved ones may never get together. Communication is one of the most crucial reasons for our species survival. I know. I'm getting a bit heavy here. But I want to emphasize the importance of communication. Your design business will grow or fail based on communication. How you interact with your design clients can drastically impact your success. But is there a right or wrong way of communicating with your clients? The short answer is no. I don't believe so. But there may be some ways that are better than others. Better for both you and your client. Let's list some ways of communicating with your clients to get started. Email Telephone Text Social Media DM Chat Apps (WhatsApp, Messenger) Video Chats Video Messages CRMs Mail In-Person I'm sure I'm missing some, but you get the idea. There are many ways of communicating with your design clients. This past week, I posted several polls in the Resourceful Designer Facebook Group asking various questions about communicating with design clients. I know this isn't a very scientific study, but I figure you may be interested in the results nonetheless. Phone Calls Let's start with phone calls. I bet that most designers have a phone of some sort at their disposal. But there are different types of phones and various phone services you can use. According to my poll 50% of those who responded use a cellular phone for personal and business use. 33% Use cellular phones but have a separate business phone number through a third-party service or app, such as Google Voice or eVoice. 12% have a dedicated landline for their business 5% responded that they don't use a phone at all. Personally, my cell phone is for friends and family only. The only clients who have my cell number were people I was acquainted with before they became clients. I still have a landline for personal family use, but I also have a dedicated business number that rings through my landline. It's a service called Ident-A-Call offered through Bell Canada. When someone calls the home number, my phone rings like usual, ring, ring, ring, but if they reach the business number, it rings differently, ring-ring, ring-ring. These distinctive rings let my family know who the call is intended for and whether they should answer it or not. The service comes with two voice mailboxes. When someone calls, they have the option of pressing 1 to leave a message for the Des Cotes family or pressing 2 to leave a message for my design business. This system has worked well for me for over 15 years. I like having a separate phone number for my business that I can ignore if I want. Although if I were setting things up today, I would probably take advantage of my iPhone's dual SIM option and have two different cell numbers, one for family and one for business. On the Facebook poll, Dustin said he uses Hubspot to forward his landline to his cell phone, which I think is pretty cool. And Col said not only does he use a landline for his business, but it goes to his virtual assistant. Then his VA decides if he needs to take the call. Text Messages With the invention of smartphones, text messages, or texting as it's commonly called, surpassed phone calls as a way of communicating. Heck, sometimes I think my kids forget they can make calls on their phones. But what about clients? Do you text them? I do not text with my clients. It makes sense. If I don't share my cell number with them, there's little chance of them texting me. But according to the Facebook poll, I'm in the minority. 58% of respondents said they communicate via text message with their clients. 24% said they don't 12% said they communicate using Watsapp. 4% said they do use text messages but with some exceptions. 2% said they don't use text messages except for a few exceptions What are those exceptions, you ask? Suzanna says she tries not to but does have a few clients who use text. However, she never accepts work over text. Tammi, on the other hand, uses both text and WhatsApp. She likes the quicker responses as compared to waiting for an email. Greg said absolutely not. It's too easy for vital communication to get lost or forgotten. Plus, he likes to unplug from work, and if clients can text him, he's never truly away. Minja said not for changes, pricing, or other project-related things. But texts are ok for other communications, such as scheduling meetings or sending verification codes. I feel you, Minja. Verifications codes are the bane of all web designers. How do you accept changes or approvals? Next, I asked how people accept changes or approvals for design projects from their clients. This time around, I allowed them to select multiple a

Last week, I talked about how you should view your worth. How you are a one-person team. I gave the example of a website project you might start where you take on the role of salesperson, researcher, UX and UI designer, developer, bookkeeper, etc. and how each one of those "people" should be compensated accordingly. That episode relayed a precious message that many designers don't understand. That message is that you are worth more than you think you are, and you are probably not charging your clients enough for what you do for them. Because, if you needed to hire each one of those people individually, chances are you would pay them more than what you are charging your client for the same services. But what if the situation wasn't figurative? What if you did have to hire each one of those people? Would you know how to go about it? That's what I want to talk about today, building your team. I know that many designers are not comfortable hiring contractors. I know, I used to be one of them. I used to have the mentality that my clients hired me; therefore, I needed to do the work myself. I even turned down projects because I didn't know how to do parts of them. I've shared before how I turned down a $50,000 website project because I didn't know how to code in PHP. I kick myself now for that decision. But that was my mentality back then. If I couldn't do it, it wasn't a project I could take on. A couple of years after that, I stumbled upon a line in some self-help book. I wish I could remember which one, but I don't. But I do remember the line that stuck with me. Client's don't hire you to do a job. They hire you to get a job done. And there's a vast difference between those two statements that many designers don't get. You're job, the reason clients hire you is that they have a problem they can't solve themselves. In many cases, you, with all your skills, can solve it for them. But there are some situations where your skills alone are not enough. Or your skills are not the most proficient option. Or perhaps you don't have the time to do everything yourself. That's where building a team comes in—a team of people who possess the skills required to complete the job for your client. Do you think the head chef at a restaurant cooks and prepares every meal all by themself? Of course not. There's no way one person could do that. A Chef has a sous-chef, station chefs, junior chefs, and other people working with them. They all form a team that prepares the meals they serve their guests. And yet, people still visit fancy restaurants because of the reputation of the head chef. They want to experience what it's like to eat one of their meals even though many other people are involved in preparing those meals. Think of yourself as a head chef. Everyone on your team is there to help you prepare what your clients are served. But, even with this knowledge, many designers still worry about what their clients might think if they "farm out" work. I have news for you. Your clients won't care. Remember, they didn't hire you to do a job. They hired you to get a job done. Think of it this way, would you be upset if you brought your car in for repair and the mechanic told you he traced the issue to your transmission, so he brought in a transmission specialist to work on it? I'm going to hazard a guess and say no, you wouldn't be upset. You wouldn't say, "no, I brought my car to you; therefore, I want you and only you to work on it." You would probably be grateful that your mechanic knows someone who can do the job in the best and most proficient manner. That's how your clients will react when you tell them about your team. They'll think it was an intelligent decision to hire you because you know how to get the job done. Teams are a powerful thing. Teams allow you to take on more work. Teams allow you to take on bigger and better projects Teams will enable you to offer services you couldn't provide alone. Teams can help your design business grow and go further. There's an African proverb that says, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." That's what having a team can do for you. It can help you go far. How do you build a design team? It's one thing to know you should build a team. It's an entirely other matter to put one together. To be clear. When I say a team, I'm talking about contractors, not employees. Sure, you can hire employees to be on your team, but that's a whole other conversation with additional complexity involved. I'm talking about contractors or freelancers that you hire on an as-needed basis. Some of them you may repeatedly use, while others may be for a single one-off job. Simply put, your team is a network of people you can call upon should the need arise. First, let me break down the type of people you may want on your team before I get into how to find them. Since there's no way I could list or even know all the types of team members you may need, I'll use the ones I've hired myself

I want to start with a story. A business coach client hired me for a design project about a dozen years ago. He had just finished writing his second book and wanted me to design and format it for him for publication. The project also included an accompanying bookmark and a small website related to the book. I had given him a quote for the project, which he readily accepted, and we got underway. Once the project was completed and paid for, this business coach told me how impressed he was working with me. He said everything went so smoothly that he would have paid three times the amount for the great work I provided him. Now I brushed this statement off as hyperbole from a grateful client. I mean, how many times have you received excellent service somewhere and thought, "I got more than I paid for?" But then he said he wasn't exaggerating and proceeded to explain why he thought that way. And what he said next changed the way I looked at pricing my projects from that day forward. How do you determine your pricing? I'll get to what that business coach told me in a moment. One of the most challenging tasks freelance designers or design business owners have is determining what to charge for their services. I mean, how much does a website or a logo cost? It's as arbitrary as asking how long is a piece of string? It never fails. Whatever number you come up with for a design project, you will always wonder if it's too little or too much. Let me put your mind at ease on one of those fronts. "Too much." is never the correct answer to that question. And I'll explain why in a bit. Coming up with applicable fees is difficult because many factors are to consider. Your level of experience will influence what you charge. The quality of the work you do is also a factor. The type of clients you work with can significantly affect your pricing. Where you live, city, state or province, country all play a part in your pricing structure. Even culture may play into it. With everything to consider, no wonder pricing is such a debated topic among designers. One designer may think $2000 is a lot for a website, while another won't consider a web project for less than $10,000. I'm saying that there are no right or wrong answers regarding how much you should charge for your design services. You charge what you think you're worth. But that's what I want to talk about, what you're worth. Because there's a good chance, you're undervaluing that number. Let me ask you a question. How much do you think it would cost if you had to pay someone else to do your job? If you think it would cost more than what you charge, then there's your answer. You're not charging enough. However, you might think that it would cost a very similar or maybe even a lower amount to what you charge your clients. And that may be true. It's hard to tell. But let me rephrase my question. How much do you think it would cost if you had to pay individual people to do everything you do for your clients? Now it gets more complicated. Let's take a website project, for example. We tend to group all our services into one easy-to-explain package called a "website design" and slap a price on it. But what exactly goes into a website design? Let's break it down. Of course, everyone will have their way of working on a website, so this is just a simplified example. For a website project, You'll probably start things off with some form of discovery meeting to determine what the client needs and the problem the website will solve. With what's entailed determined, you and the client need to settle on a proposal and sign a contract. Once that's out of the way, you'll do some research. You'll look into what others in the industry are doing, especially your client's competition. You may research adjacent sectors as well. You may search for new and innovative ways to meet your client's needs. Next, you may start wire-framing or thought mapping out the website with all this info in hand, figuring out the best structure and hierarchy to use. Then you'll start with the design: Colour palette, font choices, styles, image aesthetics and all the other visual elements that go into a website. Maybe you'll need animations or videos. After all, the client wants the website to POP, don't they? Next, there's development. The nitty-gritty of connecting all the pieces together, so you have a functioning website. This may involve more research as you look into plugins and third-party solutions to help with your build. Sales funnels, eCommerce platforms, email lists, calendar scheduling tools are just a few things you may have to incorporate into the build. Then, the client wants the website to be found, so you'll do your best at implementing SEO strategies to help with find-ability. Finally, you'll send your last invoice and get paid for the project once the website is complete. Whoa, good job. You worked your butt off, and everything worked out great. The client got the site they wanted and paid the fee yo

Networking is all about getting your name out there. It's not about selling or pitching. It's about gaining recognition, building a reputation, if you will. Networking is the building block to every successful design business. Networking can take place anywhere and everywhere. You don't need to be at a conference, trade show or special networking event. Nor does it have to be with a particular sort of person or even a potential client. Every person you talk to, including family, friends and strangers alike, is a form of networking. And the more you do it, the better at it you'll become and the more successful you'll be. It's no secret that the number one way a graphic design business grows is through word-of-mouth referrals. And for word-of-mouth referrals to happen, people have to know four things about you. 1. Who you are. 2. What you do. 3. Your reliability. 4. Your likeability. When someone knows these four things about you, there's an excellent chance they will share your name with others. Now you'll notice how I didn't mention how good a designer you are. Believe it or not, your skills as a designer have little impact on the referrals you get. Some fantastic designers rarely get referred. Like some questionable designers are referred all the time. Why? It all boils down to those four elements. So let's break them down. 1. Do they know who you are? This one is self-explanatory. If someone doesn't know you, There's zero chance they'll share your name with others. Now luckily, you have two avenues to remedy this: yourself and your business. As long as one of these two is known, there's a possibility someone shares it. A person may not know who you are, but they may know your business. Or vice versa, they don't know your business, but they know you. In either of these situations, they have the opportunity to spread the word based on what they know. If they don't know you or your business, the chances of referring you are zero. 2 Do they know what you do? Someone may know who you are, but they won't recommend you to others if they don't know what you do. And don't confuse "what you do" with "the career you have" someone may know you're a graphic designer, but graphic design is an extensive term, so it doesn't tell them what you do. It's like saying someone is a mechanical engineer. That tells you their career, but it doesn't explain what they do. Two mechanical engineers can have two completely different skillsets and work in different industries. They are mechanical engineers with the same degree, but neither does the same work as the other one does. Graphic design is the same thing. For example, some graphic designers work with video. Other graphic designers don't know anything about video. Some are illustrators; others aren't. Some designers design for the web, and some design only for print. Titles such as UX Designer, Multimedia Designer, Production Designer, etc., are great for people in the industry. But for the general client, titles like this don't explain what a designer does. The idea here is to know what you do; people need to know more than what career you have. 3. Are you reliable? To pass your name on to someone else, people need to know if you are reliable. Or maybe more accurately, that they know that you are not unreliable. If someone asks you for a recommendation and you know of someone suitable for the task, you'll probably share their name even if you know very little about them. However, if the person you're thinking of is unreliable, you probably won't share their name because it will reflect poorly on you. A few episodes ago, I shared a story about my roof needing new shingles and my problems with the person I hired. Well, to give you an update. That was November, and he promised he would do my roof before winter. It's now the end of January, there are several feet of snow outside, and my roof still isn't done. Now, if someone asks me if I know anyone who does roof repair, you know I won't be sharing this guy's name because he's shown himself to be unreliable. So even though I know who he is, and I know what he does. The fact that I think he's unreliable stops me from referring him. The same applies to you. If you do something that makes people think you are unreliable, they will not refer you. 4 Are you likeable? I've said it many times on this podcast before. Clients would prefer to work with a good designer they like than with an amazing designer they don't like. Think about it. When was the last time you wanted to work with someone you didn't like, regardless of how good they were at what they do? The more someone likes you, the more they'll want to work with you and the more they like you, the more they'll be willing to share your name with others. So these four things: 1. Knowing who you are. 2. Knowing what you do. 3. Knowing that you're reliable. 4. Knowing that you're likeable. These are the four key ingredients to getting referrals. How do they work? Now that we have a cle

A look back at 2021 and a look ahead to 2022. Thank you for your continued interest in Resourceful Designer. You have no idea how much I appreciate you. There are so many great resources available for learning and growing as a designer, and I'm humbled that you chose to spend a bit of your valuable time with me. I am continuing my annual tradition. This last podcast episode of 2021 is my Look Back, Look Ahead edition. It's where I reflect, and of course, share, what my year was like as a design business owner. Then I'll look ahead at what I want to accomplish in 2022. A Look Back at my 2021 goals. At the end of 2020, I set these goals for myself. FAIL: Talk at more conferences. For obvious reasons (hint, there was a pandemic), I failed at this one. I talked at two virtual conferences at the beginning of the year, but I didn't enjoy the experience and opted not to apply anymore. FAIL: Grow the Resourceful Designer podcast audience. When the pandemic hit in 2020, my podcast listenership took a big hit like many other podcasts. A lot of people listen to podcasts on their commute. And with the elimination commutes, people didn't have time to listen as much. I was hoping that the numbers would tick back up this year. But I'm still way below what I used to get before the pandemic hit. ACCOMPLISHED: Grow the Resourceful Designer Community. The Community is my pride and joy. One day, when I'm no longer doing the podcast, I'll look back at everything I did with Resourceful Designer, and I'm sure the Community will be my proudest accomplishment. The friendships formed and all the freely given help is more than I could have ever hoped. If you're not a member of the Community and you're looking for camaraderie with fellow designers, I highly suggest you check it out. Registration will open up again in February 2022. ACCOMPLISHED: Grow Podcast Branding. I think I made the pivot this year from Podcast Branding being a side business to my main business. I know financially, it's much more lucrative than my long-standing design business. Some of my numbers from 2021 Resourceful Designer I released 41 podcast episodes. The lowest in a calendar year since I launched the podcast. The number is down because I took several weeks off this summer after my father passed away. Reached over 630k total episode downloads in 2021 (Over 63k of which were in 2021) Resourceful Designer released on Samsung devices. My design business COVID-19 continued to affect my business in 2021. I lost several clients due to closure. And many who remained were affected financially and didn't ask me for anything. Worked on design projects for 23 different clients (up from 9 in 2020) No new clients in 2021. I sent out 41 invoices in 2020 (up from 14 in 2020) Lost five long-standing clients due to various reasons but mostly COVID-19 related. Started consulting work with our local Business Enterprise Centre. NOTE: I didn't actively promote my design business in 2021. Instead, I concentrated on growing my other business, Podcast Branding. Podcast Branding My Podcast Branding business was my moneymaker this year. Worked with 64 different clients (up from 51 in 2020) Launched nine new websites for clients. (down from 16 in 2020. However, revenue from those nine websites was more significant than the 16 last year.) It was featured as a guest on two podcasts that brought in new business. A Look Ahead at my 2020 goals. My previous goals will continue to carry over in the new year. Continue to grow the Resourceful Designer Community. Concentrate more on Podcast Branding and so forth. New Goal for 2020. Create new partnerships to grow what I offer at Podcast Branding. Expand the Resourceful Designer Community to include even more offerings than now. Do more consulting work. What about you? Did you accomplish your goals for 2021, and What are your goals for the new year? Are you a student getting ready to graduate? What are your goals once school is over? Are you still relatively new to the design world? What are your goals to hone your skills? Are you a veteran designer like I am? What are your goals for continued growth? Are you a designer working for someone else? Maybe you enjoy your job; perhaps you don't. Either way, what are your future goals? Or perhaps you're already a home-based designer, a freelancer if that's the term you use; what goals do you have to grow your business? Wherever you are in the world, whatever your level of skill, whatever your situation is, I want you to take some time to look back at 2021 and think about your accomplishments AND your shortcomings. Did you stop after your accomplishments? Or did you plow right through them, happy with yourself but reaching even further? What about your shortcomings? Did they discourage you or create a sense of want even higher than before? Think about what prevented you from reaching those goals. So long 2021. As 2021 comes to an end. I encourage you to reflect. Think about everything you've learned. Y

Make the most out of print brokering. In episode 49 of the Resourceful Designer podcast, I talked about offering print brokering as a means to supplement your design business. If you do print design and do not offer print brokering, you're losing out on a lot of potential income. I made over $1,000 from three different print jobs this past week alone. And that's not counting how much I charged for creating the designs themselves. One of those three jobs was reprinting an existing flyer for a client. It took me less than 3 minutes to find the print file, send it to the printer along with specifications for the order, including instructions to deliver the finished job to my client. Then I sent an invoice to my client. That 3 minutes of work earned me over $300 in print brokering commission. What is print brokering? If you are unfamiliar with print brokering, it's when you act as the middleman between your client and the printer. In some cases, you mark up the printing price to invoice your client, and in other cases, you get a discount from the printer and charge your client the non-discounted cost, keeping the difference for yourself. Clients like it when you offer this service because they don't have to deal with the printer directly. Printers like this setup because they get to deal with someone who understands how things work. Listen to episode 49 of the podcast to learn more about print brokering. Today I'm sharing ways to augment the money you make by print brokering. And not simply by increasing your markup. However, that is a way to do it. No, I'm talking about ways to improve your revenue, and at the same time, your client feels like they're getting a better deal. Upselling and Cross-Selling. Let's start with upselling and cross-selling. What are they, and what's the difference between the two? Upselling is when you offer more of the same thing. Think of McDonald's when they offer to upgrade your medium drink to a large for only $0.25 more. That's an upsell. You get a larger drink, and they get more money. Cross-selling is when you offer an additional thing. When you order a burger and drink, McDonald's will always ask you if you want to make a combo? That's a cross-sell. In this case, you get something else, fires, and they collect more money. Upselling and Cross-Selling Print Brokering. How do you use these two concepts in print brokering? Upselling. You can upsell a print job in many different ways. But the easiest is through the paper stock and printing options. Printing on a specialty paper stock will improve the look and appeal of a printed job, which may interest your client. It will also increase the cost, which in turn increases your profit. Printing using spot colours is a great way to improve the look of some printed pieces. I have a client who is a lawyer. She insists on using spot colours for her business card. We could accomplish a similar result using CMYK, but she likes the flat look of the spot colours and is willing to accept the higher printing costs to get the look she wants. And in turn, I make more money on every print run. Novelty stocks are a great upsell. Do you have a client who's a window washer? Suggest clear business cards. How about a client in the construction or industrial industry? Suggest laser engraved metal cards. A client in the outdoor space may be willing to spend more on wooden business cards. Embossing foil stamping die-cutting rounding corners Gilded edges specialty folds laminations or special coatings. These are all printing options you can upsell to your clients. Another way to upsell is to suggest larger quantities. Most of the operating costs in a print run occur in the setup stage–pre-press, printing plates, press set up, ink, etc. After that, all that's left is paper and time. That's why in most cases, the more you order, the less per unit the printing costs. Five hundred business cards may cost $50. Doubling the order to 1000 cards may only be $65. That's an easy thing to sell a client on. They get more for their money spent. And you get more as your commission. Cross-selling. Like the McDonald's combo, cross-selling a print order involves additional items. When a client comes to you for business cards, you may want to suggest additional items such as thank you cards. If you're asked to design invitations for an event, you could offer table cards or place cards. If it's for a wedding, you could also suggest thank you cards and perhaps gift tags the couple can attach to whatever gifts they're handing out to their guests. Many designers offer stationery packs or bundles that include business cards, letterheads and envelopes. The bundle is less expensive than ordering each individually, which is great for your client. But it's also usually more than what they initially thought to order. I can't tell you how many times I've convinced a client to order envelopes to go with letterhead or maybe an invoice or other form. And it all means more revenue for me.

Don't confuse clients with rates that don't match your brand. I'd like you to imagine this scenario. There's a neighbourhood in your city that you love. It has beautiful homes with big yards and lots of green space around. It's close to amenities like schools and shopping. And the internet infrastructure is state of the art, which we know is a must for what we do as designers. It's the type of neighbourhood that you occasionally drive through and think to yourself; I would love to live here. The problem is, home prices in this neighbourhood are way out of your budget. You figure you can afford maybe $350k. Perhaps you can push it to $400k. But unfortunately, homes in this neighbourhood typically sell for over $700k. But you can dream, can't you? Then one day, while driving through the neighbourhood, you see a FOR SALE sign in front of what could be your dream home. You've admired the homes in this neighbourhood for a long time, but always from the outside. But here's your chance to get a peek on the inside because there are sure to be photos on the realtor's website. When you get home, you fire up your browser to take a peek. As you're navigating to the page, you play the guessing game in your head. You guess its listing price at $795K. But when the page loads, that beautiful house, the one you've been admiring for years, is listed at $295k. What do you think your first thought would be in this situation? Or maybe second thought after you realize you can afford it. You would probably start wondering, what's wrong with it? Why is it listed so low? What mess would you be getting yourself into if you were to make an offer? I'm sure you've experienced this feeling before. Maybe not with a house. But perhaps with a car, or something else. Especially when the item in question is something previously owned, what's wrong with it that's making the seller offer it for such a low price? It's not just houses. Something similar happened to a designer friend of mine just a couple of weeks ago. He was at a business conference, and on one of the days, they divided people up into small groups—kind of a Mastermind format where each person in the group had time to present their business. Being prepared as only designers can be, my designer friend had a presentation ready and walked everyone through his business. He showed them what he does, how he does it, his processes, and his annual billing and 3-year financial snapshot. It was a business conference, and he was very transparent in everything he shared. After his presentation, One of the attendees, a woman he had met earlier at the conference, approached him to talk. She told him that after the 5-minute conversation they had when they first met, she thought, "this guy knows what he's doing, but there's no way I can afford him." But after seeing his numbers on paper, she told him she could easily afford him. And that's not good a good thing because his prices conflict with the brand image he's putting out. Do you do this? You're a designer, you're proud of what you can do, and I'm sure you like to showcase the best of it in how you present yourself. After all, you know that if you only put in a half-baked effort, you're doing yourself a disservice. But what happens if the brand image you present to the world conflicts with the prices you charge for your services? Just like the house in my opening story, people may wonder, what's wrong with you. They may be hesitant to hire you because the prices you charge seem too good to be true compared to the skills you showcase. And you know that when something looks too good to be true, it usually is. Could this be happening to you? Could it be that you're not getting enough work because you're not charging enough for the talents you possess? My own story. About a year or two after I started working from home, I was working for a department of the Canadian government located in town. They were pleased with my work, so they passed my name up the chain. It wasn't long before I had the chance to bid on a big federal government project. I received the RFP (Request For Proposal) and read it over several times to ensure I understood what was involved. I then calculated every aspect of the job. I figured out how long it should take me, what assets I may need to purchase, and what contractors I may need to hire. I then added in time for revisions, and, like all good designers, I added in some padding for anything unexpected that may come up. The price I came up with was $8,000. It was going to be my biggest project to date. Satisfied with my quote, I submitted the proposal, already designing the project in my head. But a week later, I found out I didn't win the project. Reaching out to my contact at the local government office, I asked if she knew how much I was outbid by. But to my surprise, she found out that I hadn't been outbid. I was, in fact, the lowest quote. The issue was my price was too low. The government agency had received four bi