Become A Lead Generation Machine (Easy Way To Get More Clients) Masterclass w/ Joana Galvao

if you're a freelancer or you run an agency i'd love for you to think like where do you get the majority of your clients from when i ask this to my friends who run agencies or freelancers or peers or students chris guess what they say and so if you want consistent predictable positive outcomes you really need to sit down and start to document and create processes and systems for everything that you do to me what success looks like is for my team to be in a good place mentally so the big question is how how tell us maybe i'm a big fish maybe i'm not but people do volunteer to help me out all the time guess what i'm not hiring you there's no point bringing in leads if you can't convert them this is not the right time for me to move forward the next time we'll see you will be in 14 years when your child is 16 years old and you have chris as three pillars of parenting it's permission it's performance and it's you know who knows what the perseverance you know it would be like that but do spend money on chris you know like to spend money on the future and do buy their courses it will help you but don't spend your money on all the other like you know it's like where do you draw the line joanna welcome to the show thank you for having me again i'm so happy to be here two years later i know right updated yeah so i know you've prepared certain things so why don't i just turn it over to you and let you drive and i'll i'll chime in where necessary i'm excited to be here guys and tell you all about the book solid designer how to be fully booked with your dream clients without burnout and even if you want to take a four-month maternity leave without checking email or a holiday which is what i did i've been asked by the future fam to talk a little bit about that so that's what you're gonna get in this presentation i'm the co-founder of gift design studios it's a design agency based out of porto portugal we specialize in brand identities and web design but a couple of things that i'm proud of just really quickly is that this year we turned seven i'm still having pinch me moments like how can i still have a business running like seven years later and also we've had a really fun run like we've had really amazing projects come our way that i've really loved working on the thing that i'm most proud of not only is it that we've been able to work with clients that i really get along with and that always helps make work a little bit easier and just like enjoy the ride of the ups and downs of running an agency but i was able to take a four-month maternity leave without ever checking email for four months that's probably just giving some entrepreneurs anxiety just hearing that like not even looking at your email for four months and you did it and you're still able to maintain and manage a successful business that's really really impressive and not only that but during a pandemic and we were able to have our most profitable months ever wow so the big question is how how tell us it took me two years exactly to figure out like how can i make this actionable for the future fam and i realized that it's it's three core pillars and they each have three component components that you need to have in place so also if you guys want to follow along and you're the type of person who wants to like write everything down you can grab the workbook and fill it along with us at the ambitiouscreatives.com forward slash the future and we'll include that in the description below so if you need to pause the video go download the resource then rejoin us okay and so the first thing the first pillar that we need to make sure is in place and and working is well we need to make sure we're marketing the right way we need to make sure that we're bringing the right leads in and i realized that there were three key things that we had done to make this work on autopilot whilst i was gone the first thing is well we need to choose what do i mean by that we need to get really clear on who our ideal client is what our ideal project is what i notice happens when you work with ideal clients and ideal projects is that you're lit up you're excited you're doing your best work your clients are feeling it they're feeling the energy that you're bringing to the project which in turn leads them to spread good words to their friends and because they are your ideal clients they're likely going to bring more like-minded people your way and so you're just in a happy cycle of hopefully ideal clients but the reverse can have the opposite effect right if you're working with clients that you don't really identify with you don't align in values they don't treat you with respect you're gonna start to resent them you're gonna start to resent your work you're going to start to resent your inbox you're going to not want to get out of bed to work and that can have a negative effect and so i think this is a really great place to start even if you're at a place where like oh well great jonah but i don't have many clients right now i can't give myself the luxury to say no to work just keep in mind that that can have a spiral effect either way and so the thing we did was just really define who's our ideal client and only letting those through the door or really trying to and that brings me to the next step is to connect with those people i found that this has been one of the key pieces in how we're doing our marketing is we're connecting with the right people so if you're a freelancer you run an agency i'd love for you to think like where do you get the majority of your clients from like when i ask this to my friends who run agencies or freelancers or peers or students chris guess what they say word of mouth word of mouth but it's funny because marketers will make us think well that's a dangerous way to run your business right because then you're depending on other people spreading the word and so they teach you all these marketing strategies and they tell you like no you need to be on instagram and maybe run some facebook ads and you go along and maybe you read a book you know like expert secrets which i've read and i started to implement all the things and your head is spinning with ideas and you put like your creator hat on and you start creating all this content and putting it out there but then sometimes what happens is you hear nothing or maybe you have a couple of peers commenting on like oh that's really great work really love that post but clients aren't coming in the door and so you're feeling really frustrated and you're wondering like what next what did i do wrong like why didn't like i followed these strategies that i learned like why aren't i getting clients and you know we actually i think i shared this with you the last time i was in la we spent a lot of money paying an agency to set up a funnel for us i think it was like 30 grand and then we spent three grand on ads we got zero oh no not to say that this is gonna happen to everyone if we looked at the data we saw that like most of our clients were just referring us through word of mouth you know and and if you think back to like when you need like when we renovated our house i didn't go on google and search for architects or builders i just asked like my closest network or people who i knew had just renovated their house like who did you hire did you have a good experience and um i also love this statistic like 91 of all b2b buyers are influenced by word of mouth and so what we decided to do is well let's turn word of mouth into a strategy and if we think about it like a referral is the key to the door to the of resistance like i love this quote from from bo bennett and so that's what we started to double down on like when we saw like where do our clients come from oh they always come from our other clients well how can we make how can we turn this into an actual marketing strategy so that we keep having leads coming in even when i'm away for four four months and so one of the things that i say a lot and i stand by and i i believe that this has contributed to the success of our agency is that the more people know about who you are what you do and for whom the more likely it is that they're gonna you know spread the word and bring in word of mouth referrals and so my philosophy is to always be planting seeds and watering them but if you're wondering well okay again how do we do that then if we turn to our workbook one of the things that i did with my operations manager is we sat down and we made three lists and you can do this in your own time the first one is leads that inquired in the past but never became clients and we just you know started jotting them down it helped that we had a sales pipeline in place because then we could just like pull all of those contacts and we had like a list of 900 people like i was shocked i was like 900. but over like six years we had like 900 leads of people who were like hey how much for a brand identity or i'd love to work with you and then you know at some point the conversation dropped off so that's the first list we did the second list was we listed our dream clients like the best of the best and the third one was other potential referral partners other people that were sending work our way were like copywriters photographers facebook ad strategists seo agencies who had worked with our clients and hopefully your audience will love this because i've included in the workbook the email templates we used to reach out to these people so for this first column we sent out this magic email that was coined i think by uh dean jackson it's the nine word email and it's basically hey name of the client are you still interested in you know brand identity and that's it joanna my ops manager in my absence she would send like 50 of those a day to our like list of 900 and at one point she had six sales calls a week booked and i think from that she was able to close like six clients like some of them you know they had inquired two years ago but now they had moved on to another project and also maybe with the timing of the pandemic everyone was like reinventing themselves or starting new businesses and so maybe that helped i don't know but i i'm still fascinated by it like how can that simple email that all you have to do is copy paste and send to all past leads can still bring in work the second email that we started sending is the dream client email that is something like thinking of you or loved working with you that's what you would include in the subject and hey client i was recently updating my portfolio and came across the work we did together i wanted to thank you once more for trusting me with your project it was by far the most and then you can insert you know what you felt was true about it and it was an absolute pleasure to collaborate with you on it i've been reflecting on my business plans for the future and honestly i would love more clients who are like and then you insert the description of you know what would make sense there like you and so it got me wondering you wouldn't happen to know just one person someone who just like you would benefit from and then you could say something like tripling your website conversions like we did for you this sentence i learned from phil jones and he breaks it down and so why it works so well is that the first part of the sentence you're challenging them you're saying well you wouldn't happen to know which i think what what it does in our brain is like well try me like let me see if i can solve this one then you're saying just one person so you're making the ask feel reasonable and when you say someone just like you you're flattering them because it's like we want to work with someone just like you like if only we all our clients were like you and then you were reminding them of the benefit you gave them and so we started sending that out to all our dream clients and slowly this this take this took a little bit longer to get some sales calls in the door but we slowly started to get more introductions and people sending work our way the other interesting thing that we had happen as well was clients saying things like oh we thought we you were like really busy so we weren't sending people your way it's amazing like what people assume right right and so that reminds me that you know the relationship isn't over when the project is over it's actually just begun and so it's it's really good practice to stay in touch with those really dreamy clients that you've had even if you're not working for them at the moment and so some ideas for staying in touch is like you could introduce them to some someone you i love doing that because you can you know you could be like oh i know that where i saw that you were looking for a copywriter i actually know someone really great can i make an introduction or or even like i saw that you're going on holiday to france i have a really good friend there i can make an introduction maybe they can send some recommendations because then what's gonna happen is every time those people connect they're gonna have you in common and that's gonna help you stay top of mind as well as you just added potentially a lot of value to their lives by bringing someone of quality into their lives you could send them an article a book recommendation a podcast recommendation you could comment on their social media that's another way just an easy way just to stay top of mind you can even share an idea that might help them improve their marketing or improve their business maybe you spend some time on this and see if anything comes up and then you just email the client you know tell them what you think or schedule a virtual coffee date or if you can now that things are opening back up maybe check for opportunity opportunities to meet them live and so like that's what i what we always try and do with like our past clients the third one is connecting with potential referral partners i noticed that i did this very early on sort of by accident i call this the big fish strategy i did this with like i with selena sue i don't know if you've heard of her she's a publicity expert and at the time she had a lot of clients that were like oh if only i knew those people like she seems like she knows a lot she might be a dream client to have or like just a really good person to know because she's not at the level where she's unreachable but she's at a level where she knows a lot of people and so i joined her newsletter and you know she in her welcome email she invites you to reply so i took that to start a conversation i always like try and connect with people with no agenda just to see if you know we get along or not and even though part of me is like well i hope we can be friends and i i can see how we can bring value to each other's lives like i try and like not you know i don't i don't pitch or anything and so you know i started asking about a training she was doing things like that which got us into a deeper conversation she asked like what what's your business model how much do you charge i told her like the fees this was back in 2014. i charge 950 for full branding guideline book 2500 for website i'm looking to work with women entrepreneurs and she starts giving feedback you know of what she thinks she starts talking about how she helped marie forleo and daniela port free of charge now i know this could go into a whole debate like you shouldn't do free wic work or you know but this is this was her experience she did some work for them free of charge and it majorly boosted her brand and it was responsible for a hundred thousand worth of business and so i thought okay well that's a good idea let me suggest the same so i was like well you know if you ever need anything i would never charge you she ended up saying like oh well there's a chance i might take you up on it i have someone working on sales page for me but i don't have super high expectations for the first draft and so i ended up doing a sales page for free for her i pulled an all-nighter this is my first year freelancing and that like helped deepen our relationship she started spreading the work the word about um me and what i did but then what i think really helped then take this to a whole other level was that she posted on facebook that she needed an assistant to help her set up an event she was doing a two-year business anniversary party and a mastermind and so i put my hand up and i was like i would love to volunteer and at the time i was living in london this was in la an unpaid internship for a week no no ellie sorry new york and she's like you're crazy you're gonna fly yourself over here and put yourself in a hotel and i was like yep because i think i could learn a lot from just being around you and you know i will do whatever you say and there is no task beneath me i ended up like doing things like picking up dry cleaning or going to the grocery store things like that but i was fine with it because then what ended up happening is we were spending like a lot of time in her apartment i was seeing a lot of the behind the scenes and then in down times we were going for like lunches and she took me to the spa once for a massage as a thank you for like doing all the work and by the end of the trip what was really i think career changing for me was that she invited me to her two-year business anniversary party as a guest instead of her assistant so she's introducing me and you might or might not recognize some people in the in this photo you know like jim quick he's the brain trainer of like richard branson and will smith and there's louis house in the back and they became clients like after i met them at this party and so i think that's like what i realized was a strategy is like connect with a big fish and then suddenly you might elevate your whole network so you know whether you do work for free or reduced rate that's up to you like when i reflect back on it i wonder if i hadn't like been up for volunteering and working for free for her you know i don't know i don't know if i would have attended that party met those people you know be been introduced to all those great people as like oh this is joanna a really great graphic designer rather than like this is my assistant can i break down that experience a little bit so here's the thing and i've recognized this about myself too maybe i'm a big fish maybe i'm not but people do volunteer to help me out all the time and even with the amount of free work that they're willing to do i often most times say no your situation is really unique in that you solve person of interest the key person of influence and you're like you know what i want to help this person i will make it so difficult for them to say no i will fly myself out i put myself in a hotel so you're taking on a lot of risks and expenses flying out and doing this thing but i think you recognize the opportunity for what it was which was i get to learn as an apprentice and this is how things were done way before jobs and job training in schools were even set up you sit next to a master you watch them work you help them i love your attitude and you literally said to them no task is beneath me and you did all those things with alacrity a lot of people would be griping like why am i doing the dry cleaning pickup and your attitude is really what got you these opportunities that happen later on because if you don't go into this with the open heart and a willingness to do everything the party probably would have not happened for you because people like us recognize that my gosh this person is giving me so much and you know i wasn't gonna share the secret but i'm going to because there's just a lot of reciprocity i feel so grateful for your help that i'm going to reciprocate so i imagine for you just that week-long unpaid internship was valuable in itself and then the icing on that was like i would have paid for it yeah well you kind of literally did in a way with equity with your flight in your hotel but the lesson that you learned apparently is worth more than that but you also got the invite to the party which i thought was a pretty cool thing for her to do not to introduce you as the assistant but as a guest because you're in the room with some pretty heavy brokers of influence themselves and so that led to all other kinds of opportunities i'm in 100 alignment with this now some people are going to listen to this and say hey are you advocating for free work yes and no when it's a big fish when it's part of your strategic and personal development and if you couldn't get that opportunity either way that's the way to do it if you're in a thriving business and you're not in that place anymore when somebody's coming to you and asking you to do free work without you thinking this is really valuable for me i would then say no turn that work down i think you also have to check in with your gut and and and see like well is this person taking advantage of me are they asking me to work for free in exchange for exposure or are they you know does this make sense and to me it just it just made total sense and i was also in a place where i could afford that without it hurting me too much but so i was thinking like okay well how can people replicate this how can people find their own big fish and you know start getting a pool of referrals coming their way through one person this specific example that i gave it was just maybe i was in the right place at the right time or connected with her at the right time there is another story that i would love to to share which is about delia monk i didn't know her from anywhere and she sends me this email hi joanna i loved all the training tips you've been giving on insta recently she goes on to like ego boost me for a few paragraphs like love what you're creating at gift design studios i was recently writing a website for a web designer analyze your website and feedback as part of my research process let's just say i was love at first click etc and then she transitions into an ask but i was curious as to whether you collaborate with copywriters or you might need some extra writing hands on deck at times then she goes into a pitch i'm a qualified conversion copywriter writing personality copy with detailed attention to tone of voice is my bag i would love to offer you and your clients the same attentive process that i deliver my private clients i am poised and professional enough to work directly with your clients but also a team player who's happy to hang behind the scenes making you look brilliant you know she's just giving me valuable information she's telling me well if i work with you i'm happy to be client facing or you know you can white label my works this is all relevant information for me to to see like does this align with even what we need for the agency i have worked with many web developers and designers who have said some lovely things about me spoiler alert they love my wireframes so i was like oh you provide copy and wireframes that's like another plus then she gives a testimonial of someone who's speaking really highly of her and asks so what do you think joanna need a hand on any projects you've got coming up p.s if you fancy a 20-minute virtual coffee with no pressure to have a chat about how i might help you you can book a slot here or want to vet me first wise you can get an insight into my writing style and process by reading my three-step plan to writing websites here we've received a lot of pitch emails recently and i do i am curious like i do read them all like and i'm like this is so bad like you clearly just copy and pasted it and sent it to everyone but this one i remember like even joanna and i were like this is a really good email like she wrote it really well she's like giving us all the things and then the next step is a really easy yes it's just like well let's just meet on zoom for 20 minute chat and fast forward seven months we've worked with delia on three of our own internal website projects we have hired her on retainer for our newsletter and we have referred her to like every single client since we've worked with her i was talking to delia before this presentation and she was like joanna like knowing you has amounted to 50 000 worth of business for me and so i guess like that's another way to create a relationship with a big fish not to say that i'm a big fish but she knew that i was someone who could be a potential referral partner right because i work with a lot of people who need copy and she could see that our clients kind of align our clients have been loving working with her and so yeah for anyone who's like oh i want to try that well then you can go to the workbook we've grabbed her email delia and i we turned it into a template that you can send and you can use this reminds me of the quote that you can't connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards like you might not have this luck with everyone every big fish you connect with but who knows maybe you connect with someone and you resonate with them and then that person could bring in like fifty thousand dollars with business so in this case delia you were the potential referral partner for her because she she showed the proof in the pudding in that she's like i'm a really good copywriter that can write copy that converts and i love the little expressions and turning of phrases like it was love at first click instead of it was love at first sight and so then you know she has a way with wordsmithing and crafting words and ideas and making you smile and so you can see the structure quite clearly like what she's doing and it's a perfect way to set up the pitch and the ask and and making the ass very very small and she also understands all the potential objections you might have and she incorporates that in a way that's fun so it feels like oh you must be reading my mind and there's something about that so it was very easy for you to see a situation where you would need this service or you would know someone who would need this exact service and so when people who send me emails about email copywriting for us if i don't read your email guess what i'm not hiring you and so people do all kinds of interesting strategies and i do pay attention to them the forgettable ones i read two lines i hit delete but there's a couple where i'll actually save and just like that's a freaking pretty good email and so if it works on me maybe it will work for other people so that's fantastic so you're saying look for people outside of your network that have common interests and alignment and complementary skill sets this is the important part because if she was another designer this probably would not be so effective but she provided something that designers need copywriting and guess what copywriters need designers designers need web developers and all of us probably need videographers and social media marketers and so you look for those complimentary relationships and it's a beautifully structured email thanks for sharing that joanna thank you delia for letting us share as well because i just like when i read this i was like this is like a case study email completely i loved it but back to the the framework so the final thing in marketing is to communicate your credibility and this is just to make sure that you are you know saying the right things in a way in her email she communicated her credibility by giving client testimonials and showing her examples of her work you can do this in your website in your social media so it's just it's part of like one of the core things you need in when marketing then if we move on to the second pillar to sell because there's no point bringing in leads if you can't convert them into clients the first thing we notice that made a huge difference in us being able to scale the agency and to be able to remove myself is to package package our services now i don't know if you've if you've read this book chris built to sell so in this book it's it's a fable that follows a design agency owner who's really frustrated with running the agency because like every day is different he's just stuck writing proposals and all the things and it's just all the pains that i think most freelancers and agency owner's experience and he hires a consultant who tells them to package his services and so it follows the journey of like how he implements each step of the way and this is a great book to read even if you never ever intend to sell because it's all about how to like systemize your business and optimize it for for growth so what we did we tried like a fun experiment and i'll show you the website we launched so we launched the website we designed brand identities.com and it was we doubled down on the package that we knew could work really well without me and could be really profitable and so the whole website is really just selling this package and it's saying everything that it includes that you would get it's telling you like optional add-ons a little bit about us the process and all the steps it even is saying the pricing we went back and forth and like should we include the pricing or not for my maternity leave specifically i wanted to make sure that my team wasn't getting on calls where people hadn't seen the price because they're not experienced in sales i needed this to only be bringing in clients who were ready to buy and then when they clicked to check out their packages our packages they had basically the same information and more depth with some testimonials more faqs and the next steps would be to book a call what this did was it just it meant that whoever went through this funnel already knew exactly what they were buying how long it took all the deliverables and how much it was and so that's what we set up for it to be really easy for my team to be able to sell the other key piece we needed in place was a process a process for the sale to happen and for leads not to fall through the cracks and so for that we needed to implement a sales pipeline and i would recommend everyone have one in place because we think we think like oh but i'm not gonna forget this lead that came in through the door today and asked about my work i'm gonna remember to follow up with them but when you start to get a lot like you probably are gonna forget one or two and had you followed up more diligently you might have gotten on a call with them and you might have closed the sale and so just like a quick overview and you can fill this in as well in the worksheet a sales pipeline is basically just mapping out the stages of the sale so you've got the lead in the lead can come in through you know a form on your website or an introduction then contact made this is you reaching back out to them and basically in a sales pipeline you just move that name along like bob introduced me to sophie i've contacted sophie sophie's now in this column then it's call booked and i do suggest everybody jump on calls with people because i think you're much more likely to close a client if you talk to them on the phone proposal sent and then won or lost this was one of the things that like i really geeked out on with my ops manager we automated a lot of these things and we created templates so she had templates for like all the emails for first contact a template for if this person is introduced by a client send this email if this person comes in through the website send this email customize this line with whatever we used pipedrive to then sync with calendly so that whenever a call was booked it would automatically moved columns so we tried to like automate as much as that as we could to save her as much time as possible because she was going to end up doing my job and hers so but some tools you can use to build a sales pipeline like you could literally just have names on post-its and have the columns up in your wall and just keep moving the post-its along you could do it in notion or trello if you prefer or then if you want something more robust there's pipe drive the final thing when it came to sales was perform the sales call and i'm not saying that you should put on a personality that you're not and you know perform but just like a performer like an actor would follow a script and would follow a flow you might want to consider having a flow for your sales calls just to make sure you're in the driver's seat you know what information you need by the end of the call so you can you know lead the call in a way that it's not going to take too long i feel that that's a mistake people make at the beginning is that they don't really know how to lead the sales call and direct the lead and so the call can go on for two hours and you're just there giving away strategy and so i really loved like what i learned from you chris which was why this you know why now and why me or why us and essentially because the leads were coming in through that funnel that's really all she had to say you know so why why the new brand identity okay cool why now oh and why do you think would be a great fit and they'd be like oh because i saw your pdf and i loved it and then really she was like jonah sales calls are 15 minutes long i'm like great this is awesome this is exactly what we want so yeah that's what we ended up doing for sales you've automated the process and helped to bet and filter out poor fits and therefore by the time they book the call with you it can be 15 minutes either yes or no and you're done and we get it right and if you can't articulate reasonable answers to those questions then you're like this is probably not the right time to move forward the clients talk themselves out or into whatever it is that they want to do but it's interesting because it's like it works really well for that specific package i'm back to like taking calls with just like especially if they're friends of our clients i don't want to funnel them into like oh well you need this package because i want to be able to also land bigger projects and so i'll have like a more maybe i won't follow this slow exactly but for my maternity leave this is what we did and it worked great and even we're still getting like even today we got another lead from this funnel and i just told my ops manager because i'm going away on holiday next week i'm like okay well you take the call that's fine i trust you she read the pdf so she knows how much it is she says she's ready so you do it and so it's been yeah really great to be able to like get a lot of this off my plate and so the final pillar is well we need to deliver we need to deliver great work but besides the living great work it's also about having a well-oiled machine in the back helping the delivery go smoothly as well as creating a great client experience and so the key three things we need for deliver is the first one delight delight our clients with a great experience think about going beyond just aligning them with great design because unfortunately like that's not all our clients care about they care about like great communication us being able to keep deadlines but also the small little things like we send them a postcard in the mail when they sign up to work with us or maybe like you jot down their birthdays and send them a birthday gift or send them a gift at christmas you know think of ways that you can delight them throughout the experience or even just like do what delia does and put a lot of thought into email communication because that's one thing that i told delia is like every time i open one of your emails it's like i can't wait to read it and be taken on a journey because it's not just like oh here's the deliverable and here's one i need feedback by yeah they're just nice to read then the second thing is to document now we spent a lot of time doing this and setting this up in notion before i left for maternity leave as well was just documenting like every single step of that brand identity process we created templates for the proposal we created documents for like what happens after the proposal is sent well this file this folder is created in the drive and then this is done and then the client is sent the questionnaire and then this happens and this happens and we had um sops for designers we had sops for my ops manager in case anything happened then they needed extra hands on deck or someone to substitute we had all of that documented and ready for someone to take over and be able to just follow along and the final thing and this is where like if you've mastered all of these things and have them in place and you can use like the traffic light system like how am i feeling about you know how i'm packaging my service maybe you're feeling yellow and so you want to focus on that first before thinking of removing yourself from the business but we were feeling pretty green about it all thankfully and so the final thing is to just delegate in delegating one a great resource that i really highly recommend is the book run like clockwork design your business to run itself it's written by mike mikalowitz and adrian dorrison she's not featured in this cover but she she co-wrote the book and mike mccullough he's the author of like profit first and other really great business books and so the whole book is also about like how to get your business to run without you and so we read the book and we took a lot from them we also like ended up working with them which was really fun because like by the time they inquired adrian had had the kid at the same time as i did we're both having our second one as well together so we're just like oh yes like i'm excited to be working with your brand because you know we implemented your philosophy and this is what was what allowed me to take a maternity leave and so a key framework that i'm gonna go into is they talk about it on their podcast and i have their permission to share and it's ipo so this is what i went through with my ops manager this is her on screen and the idea is that when you delegate you need to have these three things i stands for information so am i giving her all the information she needs to be able to execute what i need her to execute now if this was something simple like can you go to the shop and buy me some pens information could be i want to make sure that they're black i like this type of pen or i like this brand specifically but if there is not this brand then i like this other brand and you can only spend this much money per pen this is like information when you delegate a task in this case because i was delegating the task of being the ceo for four months it was a lot more information than that but this gives you an idea the p stands for permission so are you giving this person the permissions necessary to be able to fully delegate the tasks so things like for the pens example it could be like if they don't have these two brands i give you permission to pick whatever because the important thing is that i have pens that work and i don't want to be bothered about it or permission could be like here's the company card you have permission to spend up to this much in the case of my ops manager i gave her permission to make any decision for the company as if it was her own at this point we had been working together for five years and i really trust her and i also gave her permission to call me should she not be confident about the decision she's making so essentially that was the permission that i gave her and the outcome i told her like you have done your job right if we survive like that's all we need to do i don't care about profit i just want us to survive in my absence so that's the outcome that's the desired outcome but luckily it not only survived it thrived that is the big picture of all the things we put in place to be able to have my maternity leave survival for you is just to break even just cover overhead and salaries right don't piss off any clients don't alienate don't destroy and torture our reputation just to make sure that when i return we're still in the black alive that's all we need to do you know break even is the mantra and because you are so good at defining basically all the key functions of your job and try to remove as much variable or variability in in how you do what you do i think blair ends says something like this low variability in process equals low variability and outcome and so if you want consistent predictable positive outcomes you really need to sit down and start to document and create processes and systems for everything that you do and to automate as much as possible because you also acknowledge that what used to be done by two people is now going to be done by one person and you want to simplify everything so like the the budget may not like you don't need to do value-based pricing it's a fixed fee if you want us to do something it's going to cost this low variability there you don't have to have someone be very savvy at sales and pricing the client and not the job you just systematize the whole thing you productize your entire service design business essentially in greg hickman's kind of language and you made it pretty easy so now from this you kind of have your own clockwork formula just in case everybody's not paying attention i know there's a lot of really helpful information to absorb there are three components and you use alliteration in all three it's the marketing part which is how you can maximize word of mouth referral even for clients you don't have today and you gave us very detailed tactical steps on the kinds of emails and the templates that you need to follow to do that and you give several examples then you talk about like when you have a lead well now you need to learn how to sell one way that you can do this one could argue this was also in the marketing part but packaging up what you do so it's very easy to understand developing the process and then performing meaning learning how to actually conduct yourself on the sales call you removed all the variabilities there as well by saying how the person who's taking the call just ask three questions be quiet listen and reflect that's all you need to do and the client will select themselves meaning i want to work with you or you're right this is not the right time for me to move forward no pitching no convincing no defending beautiful thing you've done and the last part is like once sold the venture just begins and for a lot of people we start to check out because we want the client the exciting part and then we start to let it fall apart and this will ultimately hurt your long-term marketing and your ability to sell or call upon an existing client for referral or new business so you said delight document and then delegate which is a very hard thing for a lot of people now for you you have a very natural barrier to your ability to do the work you're busy being a mom yeah you know i'm thankful that i was forced to do that because it really forced me to have to do this because it's it's still uncomfortable delegating always has been you have another human being who's dependent on you for their survival and so that's going to take precedent over i need to check an email i need to do a social media post or something you did say one thing which i wanted to follow up with you on but i didn't want to interrupt you was maintain the relationships that you have follow up with people it's all the low-cost high-touch stuff that you do commenting on things paying attention to what your clients needs are if they have a new baby or they're going on a trip if it's an anniversary to genuinely wish them well so were you doing some of that in the times in which you were either dealing with a baby or you had a minute to yourself or did you just totally check out for four months no i was doing that a lot on the lead up to it and i was telling everybody yeah [Laughter] i think i really checked out you know like it was the transition into motherhood it was like being hit by a bus like physically and mentally i remember thinking like what what happened to my brain am i gonna be able to work again because with the sleep deprivation and all the things a woman's body goes through i really started questioning like oh my god is the business gonna have to run without me forever because i don't feel like going back into the office and when i started to slowly after four months it was really hard like i wasn't half as sharp as i can be today did you have any guilt in the four months that you're away like i need to get back in why am i doing this i'm not being a good steward of my own business or you're like you know what they got it no i i don't think i was feeling guilty i was just feeling really grateful i was also making sure that i was checking in with joanna our ops manager and just being like you hanging in there is everything cool and you know she could have had the house on fire and she would have been like yeah yeah no worries everything's going smoothly and then she she hangs up like a hot mess and like sweating like no we're going to protect his time we're going to wall us off so she sounds like a keeper and no she is she is and she knows that and it's you know i wish that that there was a formula for that like how do you find people like that i don't know you just have to have patience and fire fast hire slow because it's worth waiting around for the right person it's coincidental her name is joanna as well but it's one of those things that you're looking for a person who shares your your your work ethic your drive and your intelligence and your values and then everything else you train up like when we look at hiring people that's what we look for the things that are difficult or impossible to train the skills the the technical the how-to's the here's how i think here's here's what i want to teach you if they have an open curious mind and they have like a good uh state that they're in a positive state an optimistic state and they want to learn and they're hungry kind of like you in the early days when you flew to new york just to work if you find that kind of person chances are they might work out for you long term yeah definitely higher for the cultural fit or the values joanna didn't know she didn't even know there were different development languages probably we had to teach her everything but she had the right attitude and divert personality to be a good fit so throughout this period in which i haven't talked to you in a couple of years you've had a baby you got another one the way you got one in the oven as they say yeah how has business been for you how are you tracking financially year to year in the last couple of years in which i haven't really talked to you we've increased our profits drastically and we one of the things that brought me huge peace of mind was that we got our savings to a point where if we stopped getting clients today chris i could pay my team for a whole other year wow i know i have thoughts on that but that's impressive i remember very impressive because i remember back in 2017 i was spending so much on like you know maybe the year i met you in person i was like flying myself everywhere to meet all these people and and i was spending a lot and and just like living almost like month to month and then there was a month where a couple of things went wrong at the same time and suddenly i didn't have money for for salaries and unfortunately and this was something that took a couple years for us to like get over i had to fire three people in the same day it's rough and that was really tough yeah i know and if they're watching you know they know i love them and i help them get other jobs and i sent referrals but it was yeah and i was so embarrassed i was like i made the wrong decision i need to never be in this place again and so we really prioritized profit but in terms of how we've been tracking ever since i've had the baby to me what success looks like is for my team to be in a good place mentally they also had it we also had a really rough year last year with a lot of very big personal things happening for each team member it was like what what is happening like it's a disaster in everyone's personal life and so we haven't really grown revenue we've just grown profit and stayed steady but it feels really good at this place in my life i love that so that's going to be shocking for a lot of people to to kind of get their head wrapped around which is revenue has been even how does profitability go up i'm gonna suspect because you started to remove a lot of the variables out of this you got your spending under control and now you could just maintain and sustain a happy healthy work culture where people don't have to grind and it's not about the rat race and you found a really nice stasis right where everything is kind of in balance yeah like we have friday afternoons off we're trying to get the business to a place where no one's really feeling stressed because there were times where it was like probably not great to work at gift design studios because there are moments where everyone's like wait we have so many projects going on at the same time so now we're charging a lot more for or more than we used to per project but taking on less and so hopefully just like creating a nicer environment for everyone to be in maybe also selfishly because i want to be home at five to be with my son you know he's not gonna be two he's already two like he's not gonna be this young forever and he's gonna get to a stage you know chris i don't know what it's like to have teenagers but maybe they get to a point where they don't really care about hanging out with you you know it happens it happens be prepared well so maybe that's when i'll focus on growing the business like when they're teenagers i'll focus on like taking gifts to the next level but right now it's like no we're good we're cruising yeah you're in the season in your life where it's about connection and bonding and lessons and together time and all that kind of stuff but i have the philosophy that when you're in that season when it's time for your children to do their own thing to become their own person as much as you want to it's actually unhealthy for you to hold on because it'll be this relationship where they won't know who they are like the way you set up your business you want to set up the people that are responsible that you're responsible for in a way that they can go out and be their own thing the next time we'll see you will be in 14 years when your child is 16 years old and you have chris i have the three pillars of parenting it's permission it's performance and it's you know who knows what the perseverance you know it would be like that and we'll go through that and those would be the lessons that you learned well i have one more question for you before we get out of here which is this you said in in 2017 you made a lot of different decisions that ultimately led you to like this financially tough wedge in that you had to let go of three people people you care about people that you like i just want you to now look back how many years is enough five years later look back and tell your younger self do don't do this do this instead just look right at the camera think about this i want you to advise your younger self so that you don't hit that kind of roadblock prioritize profit and build a cushion and you will sleep better at night and make sure that your team is safe but also don't beat yourself up too much if things don't go your way because you know that's what entrepreneurship is we fall we get back up you are smart enough to figure it out and overcome it and come on the other side better and stronger how about don't do this give me another like a really strong don't spend all your money on is that where we're going yes this is where we're going i need you to say it and you need you to say very clearly this will be the beginning of the cut don't spend all your money on like coaches and consultants and that shiny next strategy that you think is going to get you to that next level just have a little more trust that you can get there on your own merit as well see you knew what i wanted you to say [Laughter] because that's not what i remember you doing you're like caught into these funnels of funnels and building more funnels for more people affiliate marketing and doing packages and giveaways and all that kind of stuff right it's kind of a mess yeah it can be it's hard right because there are them because then there are really great people you know like what you're doing with the future and it's like well but do spend money on chris you know like to spend money on the future and do buy their courses it will help you but don't spend your money on all the other like you know it's like where do you draw the line because they do i do think that i wouldn't be where i am without having hired so many coaches and invested in courses but you know you need to like there has to be a line and this is where we started to put budgets in place like if we make this much i'm allowed to spend this much on courses we're not saying education is bad we're not saying coaches are bad or consultants are bad it's a question of what is it you need right now and are you immersing yourself into more courses and coaches to delay and avoid the thing that you need to do and a lot of them do do a really good job of hyping up this kind of amazing lifestyle and selling you on a dream i hope that in in the years in which i'm doing this up to this point and into the future that i don't become one of those people to hype you in easy no skill required no money down solution to achieving your dreams because i believe in the opposite it's going to be a lot of work sleepless nights a couple of tears you have to say goodbye to a few people that you really care about not in a life death situation but you can no longer afford to keep them it's going to be a grind and you're going to want to quit and life is going to suck for a while but stick to it because as my friend said the easy way is the hard way and the hard way is the easy way it takes hard work to get things that you don't have to do things other people have not done joanna thank you so much for doing this and i have to also let people know that your instagram post that you shared with me as a guest post is still one of the highest performing posts on my feed it's because you put a ton of work and thought into it i'm not usually one to talk about quality over quantity because i'm a quantity person because i want to i want to learn i want to explore but yours was a really high quality post and has resulted in thousands of followers for me that's why i never sent another one i'm like there's no way i can ever beat that post you can't i'm doomed i know you can you're capable i believe in you you're like i i tasted the the the joys of victory i have the heavyweight belt around my thing and i just retired yeah after one bout well you know i got 10 000 followers overnight and people don't still today they don't believe that that was possible it is possible but yeah it's so good it's just a really good post it is a freaking really good post i talk about that post i share it with people i'm like this is what it takes look at how much work like you put more work in one frame of a ten slide character one image one image than what people would do in the entire like ten posts that they make it's thoughtful it's intentional it's strategic and it's well put together it makes a great argument i don't know how else to end it but that let's end it right there joanna thank you for doing this let's not wait a couple more years before we talk thank you for having me i think you were super generous very clear and i just want to prompt people one more time if you want the workbook we'll include it in the show notes in the description below if there's a description below check that out and it will also include all the socials in case we need to where do people find out more about you joanna well i would love it if people reach out to me on instagram i still hang out there daily and reply to every dm and that's joanna galvan design i think that's the best place because all our websites are under construction at the moment so and grab the workbook because there are some other ways we can connect on there as well yes spoken like a true designer creative everything is under construction thank you so much thank you for having me chris i am joanna galvao and you are listening to the future