Resourceful Designer - Resources To Help Streamline Your Graphic Design And Web Design Business.

Do you have an elevator pitch? Imagine running into an old high school classmate at the airport. Someone you haven’t talked to in years. After exchanging some pleasantries, you realise they would be a perfect design client for you. They ask you what you do for a living, and as you start thinking of the best way to pitch your services to them, their flight is called, and you’ve lost your chance. That’s where having an elevator pitch could have helped you. What is an elevator pitch? An elevator pitch sometimes referred to as an elevator speech, or elevator statement is a short persuasive speech you give to people that explains who you are in such a way that it sparks an interest in the listener. It typically explains what it is you do, who your services are for, why the people may need those services and how you go about completing those services. Your elevator pitch needs to be interesting, succinct, memorable and it needs to describe how you are unique amongst all the other designers out there. It also needs

Design should not be a commodity. I recently saw a conversation in a Facebook group discussing price lists on design websites. The consensus was that including fixed or package prices on your site diminishes the value of your services as a designer. This got me thinking. Are designers who include price lists positioning themselves as a commodity? What is a commodity? Let me share three definitions of a commodity that I found online. A commodity is a physical substance, which is interchangeable with another product of the same type. A commodity is a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors other than price. A commodity is a good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. Do any of those pertain to design? Are the designs you create easily interchangeable with designs from other designers? Are the services you offer so widely available from other designers that it dimini

What I learned by talking to new entrepreneurs I had the honour of presenting a "Branding Your Business" seminar to a group of new entrepreneurs this week. It was one of six in a recurring seminar series put on by my municipality's Business Enterprise Centre. They decided this time around that adding a "graphics" related seminar would be valuable to new business owners and they asked if I would be interested in presenting. The seminar I presented was advertised with the title “Graphic Design Basics” but, with permission from the person in charge of the seminar series I changed it to “Branding Your Business”. I knew I could provide more value to new entrepreneurs by teaching them the importance of proper branding over simply giving them graphic design tips, although I did interweave some into my talk. My decision to change the direction of the seminar proved the right one as the engagement and feedback I received both during and after presenting was all positive. In fact the Business Enterprise Centre asked me

Should you offer design discounts to your clients? Let me start off by saying I'm not a fan of offering discounts for design services. And by the looks of it, I'm not alone. In preparing for episode 113 of the Resourceful Designer podcast, I read a lot of articles about the pros and cons of offering design discounts, and almost all of them said it was a bad idea. The main reason is that offering a discount lessens the perceived value of you, your services and the overall brand you are building for yourself. By offering a discount people will start to view you as a discount designer. Once you've been given that label, it's hard to escape from it. However, that's not to say you should never offer discounts to your clients. Here are six situations that may merit design discounts. When to offer design discounts. There are occasions when offering a discount can strengthen your perceived value and your brand. 1) Passing on a discount. Passing a discount you receive from a supplier onto a client is a great way to bu

Taking your design business international. There are many ways to attract international design clients. You can travel the world and talk to people about your business. You can invest in an international marketing campaign. You can become an SEO wizard and draw clients from around the world to you. Or, you can do what I did and give something away for free. My first international client, without even trying. If you listen to the Resourceful Designer podcast, you may have heard me mention bits and pieces this story, but I don’t think I’ve ever shared it all in one place. I started podcasting in 2013 doing TV Fan Podcasts for some of the television shows I enjoy. I have podcasts covering the TV shows Under The Dome, Orphan Black, Killjoys, and The Expanse. You can find all of them on my podcast network at solotalkmedia.com Unbeknownst to me, the journey that led me to have international design clients started with my podcast for the television show Under The Dome. While making that podcast, I met Wayne Henderso

What makes up good impressions? The impressions you leave on your clients determine their willingness to work with you in the future. When good impressions outweigh bad impressions, clients will want to do business with you again. So how do you ensure you are making good impressions while dealing with your clients? Let me tell you a story About a year ago something happened to our washing machine. Every time we tried to do a load of clothes the washer would start up and then stop. Lights on the front panel would start flashing but nothing else. I tried the first trick in the book and banged it a few times, but it didn't help. It was time to make a service call. I called an appliance repair guy I had used in the past only to discover he had retired. He was kind enough to give me the names of several people I could contact, and I dialled the first one on the list. A woman answered the phone and seemed confused when I started talking. She interrupted me, asked me to "hold on" and put the phone down for what seem

What Is Value-Based Pricing? Value-based pricing is a way to not only get paid for your time and expenses but a way to get paid for the value of the services and products you provide to your clients. Value-Based Pricing = Time + Expenses + Value. With hourly pricing and project-based pricing, you are compensated only for your time and expenses. This way is ok for newer designers just starting out. But once you’ve established yourself and start to build a reputation as a skilled designer, you become more valuable to your clients than merely the time you spend on a project. At that point, you may want to consider switching your pricing method to value-based pricing. After all, If that new website or logo your designing will help your client’s business grow and perhaps earn them a half million dollars over its lifetime, that’s a great value to them, and your prices should reflect it. Establish a baseline price. Before you start using value-based pricing, you need to establish a baseline price. Your baseline pr

How much thought do you give client loyalty? When it comes to your business, everything you do and everything you don’t do tells your clients how they should feel about you and your business. Being a great designer isn’t enough to garner client loyalty. There are plenty of great designers out there. So why should someone choose you over any of them? It’s even more difficult in today's market with all the inexpensive crowdsourced or contest oriented design options available to clients these days. Not only do you need to prove you’re a good designer, but you also need to show you are worth the money you're charging for your services. You need to do everything you can to prove to your clients that their money is better spent with you. When you achieve that, you’ll be rewarded with a client that is loyal to you and your design business. So how do you accomplish this? Here are seven tips to help you build client loyalty. 1) Do What You Say You’ll Do The ability to follow through on your commitments is extremely va

Are you looking to become a freelance designer? At one point or another, every designer wonders what it would be like to become a freelance designer. Maybe you’re a student dreaming of tackling the world after graduation. Perhaps you’re an in-house designer tired of working 9-5 designing similar things for the same company year after year. Maybe you work for a design agency as part of a larger team of experienced designers, and you feel like you are not being used to your full potential. Regardless of where you are in your design career, the thought of becoming a freelance designer, to run your own business from home, to be your own boss, might be something going through your head. I’m a big advocate of freelancers. I’ve focused Resourceful Designer specifically on helping home-based designers. But I’m also the first person to say that not every designer is suited to freelancer life. That’s why I put together this list of 5 things you should consider before deciding to become a freelance designer. Why do you

If you want more design clients you need to follow-up. It requires many hats to run a successful home-based design business. Beyond being a designer, you need to wear the hat of a bookkeeper, a receptionist, a marketer, a salesperson and many more. Often it's the salesperson hat that scares people away, but it's one of the most important ones you will have to wear. To have a successful design business, you need to be a competent salesperson. You don’t have to be great. You don't even have to be that good at it. Just being competent is all you need to succeed. I know that being a salesperson has a certain stigma to it. Salespeople are often depicted on TV and the big screen as annoying, slimy people. But the fact of the matter is, everyone is a salesperson in one way or another. If you've ever convinced your spouse to go out for Italian food when they were in the mood for Mexican, you're a salesperson. If you've ever told your kids they can get a dessert if they eat all their vegetables, you're a salesperson.

Make a little progress every day to reach the next level. Building a successful design business isn’t easy. It takes skill, it takes time, and it takes effort, a lot of effort. Think of your design business’s success as a journey. One where you strive every day to make progress towards that next level of success. Every business starts off new, with all the potential in the world. To grow your business, you need to have a destination in mind of what next level you want to reach. Then you get to work and make progress towards that goal. Maybe that destination is to land that first paying design client. Maybe it’s to see something you designed in print. Maybe it’s hearing from your client that they’ve made their first sale on a website you built for them. Whatever your destination is, you need to work hard until you reach it. Of course, reaching that destination is not the end. It's a new beginning. Once you've reached that destination and achieved that goal, the next step is to progress to the next level. You d

Do you worry about isolation while working from home? Isolation is one of the major concerns when running a home-based design business. Spending day after day, week after week having minimal contact with other people can take its toll on some people. That's why working from home is not for everyone. When asked about working from home most people will give one of two responses. I wish I could do that. Be my own boss, work my own hours with nobody looking over your shoulder. I don't think I could do that. It would drive me crazy being by myself all the time. The type of person you are will determine if isolating yourself to run a home-based design business is right for you. After all, to live a healthy and fulfilling life you need to have close, interpersonal relationships. Which isn't always easy for home-based designers. Before I go any further, let me just state that I am not a qualified therapist or health professional. If you are feeling the effects of isolation to the point where you are feeling lonely

Are you failing on your To-Do list? One of the biggest mistakes people make on To-Do lists is mixing projects with tasks. A To-Do list should only contain tasks, items that require you to do only one thing to complete them. Projects, on the other hand, should be on a completely separate list. By separating the tasks from the projects, you make it much easier to organize, and your To-Do list will seem much less daunting. I talked about To-Do Lists, Tasks and Projects in episode 66 of the podcast titled "Tackle Your To-Do List With Tasks and Projects". If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I suggest you do before continuing with this one. The Project List Your project list is where you keep track of the various routines, responsibilities and of course, projects on your schedule. These items may be one time projects or recurring routines and responsibilities you don't want to forget about. Example of Projects Design new website for Good Sole Shoe Company Create a Facebook Ad campaign for Pump-R-Up Fitnes

Are you looking for opportunities to grow your business? [sc name="pod_ad"]It's a given, you want your design business to succeed. To accomplish that, you need to find opportunities to grow. Some of those opportunities take time and money and are well worth the effort. But some opportunities to grow are so small and simple that they are often overlooked. On this episode of the podcast, I share five such opportunities you can implement today to help grow your design business. Be sure to listen to the podcast for the full story, but here's a sample of what I discussed. 5 Overlooked Opportunities To Grow Your Design Business 1) Your Email Signature Most people's email signature consists of their name, title, perhaps their business name and contact information. If this sounds like your email signature, you are missing out on an opportunity to grow your design business. Include a short sentence or a bullet list mentioning the services you offer. Be specific. Go beyond simple print and web design and mentions thing

How do you retain your design clients? As a designer, you know how much work goes into acquiring new design clients. However, you also need to put some effort into retaining your existing design clients, or they may be taken away from you. The design industry is not like the retail market where people walk into a store, browse around and then decide if they want to make a purchase. Nor are we like other service businesses such as plumbers or auto mechanics. In those businesses, their clients call upon them whenever they have a problem that needs fixing like a leaky toilet or a car that won't start. Unfortunately, when it comes to the design industry, things are not so cut and dry. There are many businesses that would benefit from working with a designer, but they don’t because they don’t see the value in hiring a professional like you. They don't understand how a professional designer can help boost their business. Even worse, they do know the value of good design, but they are either misled to believe that c

Do you have the 3Cs required to run a successful design business? There’s a lot more to running a successful design business than just being a good designer. In fact, being a good designer may be the least important thing for your design business. Don't get me wrong. If you're a bad designer chances are your business won't succeed. However, I know many great designers who don’t have what it takes to run a successful design business either. There’s nothing wrong with working for an employer throughout your design career. Just like are some chefs are destined to run their own restaurants while other chefs are content working in someone else's kitchen. But if you are a designer who wants to run your own design business, it will take skill, determination and perseverance. Plus a little thing I like to call the 3 Cs. Be sure to listen to the podcast where I go into more detail on each of the following. Curiosity. As a designer, you need to be curious. Curiosity is what will keep you growing as designers. Curiosity

Celebrating 100 episodes of Resourceful Designer. [sc name="pod_ad"]To celebrate this 100 episodes milestone, I want to do something a bit different and share with you what being a graphic designer means to me. Please listen to the episode to get the full story. But before I do that, I want to take a quick moment to thank everyone who has helped Resourceful Designer become what it is. Wayne Henderson for his great podcast intro clips. Justin for the amazing job he does editing my shows. And of course, you, for being a loyal listener. Without you, there would be no Resourceful Designer. In case you don't know my history you can read it here. But the short version is, I didn't always want to be a graphic designer. I fell into this profession by accident and never looked back. My life as a graphic designer Graphic designers look at the world differently than everyone else. Most people see a billboard on the side of the road and either acknowledge the message or don't. However, being a graphic designer allows me

Does your community promote "Shop Local"? A "Shop Local" campaign is quite common in smaller communities. Especially those near large metropolitan areas. The purpose of these campaigns is to encourage people to support local businesses by shopping in their hometown. The city of Cornwall Ontario where I’m from is 1 hour from Ottawa Ontario, Canada’s capital, and 1 hour from Montreal Quebec, one of the largest cities in North America. With both of these metropolises so close, Cornwall is constantly encouraging its citizens to "Shop Local". Their marketing campaigns explain things like: The convenience shopping locally offers. Getting to know the people you deal with on a first name basis. Developing a sense of pride in supporting your community. Sure, these "Shop Local" campaigns are more geared towards retail stores, encouraging people to buy their groceries, clothing, and household items nearby. But these same principles are also adopted by many local businesses. It’s inevitable that as a designer, whether

How good are your Touchpoints? You know the saying you’re only as strong as your weakest link? When it comes to the success of your design business, you’re only As Strong As Your Weakest Touchpoint. What is a touchpoint? Touchpoints happen every time someone interacts directly with your brand. Touchpoints are the pivotal gateways when a potential client decides whether they want to take the next step towards working with you or to back away and look elsewhere. It doesn't matter how good a designer you are, if you have touchpoints that fail, you may be losing potential clients before they even get a chance to discover how great you are. Take inventory of your touchpoints. There are many touchpoints to ever business. They include everything from your website to business cards, flyers, any blog posts you write, and any advertising you do. They also include your voicemail message, your tradeshow presence, and the clothing you wear. Touchpoints include anything a potential client comes in “touch” with before, duri

Do your clients understand who their target markets are? As a designer, you need to know what target markets you are going after if you want your design campaigns to succeed. Every design campaign should have a type or group of people to target. Maybe you're designing for women between the ages of 25-35 with a toddler at home. Maybe it's balding men over the age of 50. It could be weekend warriors who like to surf. How about black businessmen between the ages of 22-35 who like driving fancy sports cars and jetting off for weekend parties in Las Vegas? All of these are target markets. Whatever target markets you are designing for, it's your job to get into the heads of those people and design something that appeals to them. But what happens when the marketing message your client wants you to create is more geared towards them than their target market? In this episode of the Resourceful Designer podcast, I discuss your position as the designer and how it's your job to educate your clients on what will and what