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

If you are a freelancer or run an agency, I would love for you to think about where you get most of your

clients

from when I ask this to my friends who run agencies, freelancers, colleagues or students, Chris, guess what they say. If you want consistent and predictable positive results, you really need to sit down and start documenting and creating processes and systems for everything you do to me. What success means is that my team is in a good place mentally, so the big question is how do we tell ourselves maybe I'm a big shot maybe I'm not but people volunteer to help me all the time guess I'm not going to hire you, there's no point in attracting potential

clients

if you can't convert them.

This is not the right time to move on. The next time we see you will be in 14 years, when your son is 16 and you have Chris for three. pillars of fatherhood: leave, performance and you know who knows. what is perseverance, you know it would be like that, but spend money on Chris, you know you like to spend money in the future and buy his courses, it will help you, but don't spend your money on everything else like you know it is. Where do you draw the line Joanna? Welcome to the program. Thanks for inviting me again.

I am very happy to be here two years later. I know. It is well updated. Yes, so I know you have prepared certain things. Why don't I turn around? I'll leave it to you and let you drive and I'll intervene when necessary. I'm excited to be here guys and tell you all about the Solid Designer book, how to be complete with your dream clients without burning out, and even if you want to take a four-month maternity leave without checking email or a holiday, which is what I did. The future family asked me to talk a little about that, so that's what you'll get in this presentation.

I'm the co-founder of Gift Design Studios, it's a design agency based in Porto, Portugal, we specialize in brand identities and web design, but a couple of things I'm really proud of quickly is that this year we turned seven. I still have moments that pinch me, like how can I still have a business running seven years later? And we've also had a really fun career, we've had some really amazing projects come our way and I've really loved working on what I'm most proud of is not only that we've been able to work with clients that I really get along with and that's always It helps make the job a little easier and I like to enjoy the ups and downs of running an agency, but I was able to take a four-month maternity leave without even checking email for four months, which probably just gives some anxiety. some entrepreneurs just hearing that, like not even looking at your email for four months and you did it and you can still maintain and run a successful business which is really impressive and not only that but during a pandemic we were able to have the most profitable months of our history.

Wow, so the big question is how to tell us. It took me exactly two years to figure it out. How can I make this viable for the future family? And I realized that there are three central pillars and each one has three components that they have to have in place, so also if they want to follow it and they are the type of person. For those who like to write everything, you can take the workbook and complete it together with us at ambitiouscreatives.com. Go ahead and we'll include it in the description below, so if you need to pause the video, download the resource.

Join us, okay, so the first thing we need to do is make sure it's in place and working well. We need to make sure we are marketing in the right way. We need to make sure we are bringing in the right

lead

s. I walked in and realized there were three key things we had done to get this thing running on autopilot while I was gone. The first thing is that we must choose what I mean by that, we must be very clear about who our ideal client is. is our ideal project is what I notice happens when you work with ideal clients and ideal projects is that you are enlightened you are excited you are doing your best work your clients feel it they are feeling the energy that you are bringing to the project, which in turn

lead

s them to spread good words among their friends and since they are your ideal clients, they are likely to attract

more

like-minded people to you, so you are in a happy cycle of Hopefully, ideal clients, but the opposite can have the effect contrary.

If you work with clients that you don't really identify with, don't align on values, don't treat you with respect, you will start to resent them. You're going to start to resent your job you're going to start to resent your inbox you're not going to want to get out of bed to go to work and that can have a negative effect so I think this is a really great place to start , even if you're in a place where, well, great Jonah, but I don't have many clients right now, I can't afford to say no to work, just keep in mind that that can have a spiral effect.

Either way, what we did was really define who our ideal client is and just let them walk through the door or really try, and that leads me to the next step is connecting with those people. I've found that this has been one of the key pieces in how we do our marketing is that we connect with the right people, so if you're a freelancer and you run an agency, I'd love for you to think about where you get most of your clients from. . When I ask this to my friends who run agencies, freelancers, peers or students, Chris, guess what they say through word of mouth, but it's funny because marketers will have us think that's a dangerous way to run your business well because so you depend on other people to spread the word and teach you all these marketing strategies and they tell you no, you need to be on Instagram and maybe run some ads on Facebook and you go ahead and maybe read a book that you know like secrets of experts. that I read and I started implementing all the stuff and your head is spinning with ideas and you put on your creator hat and you start creating all this content and posting it but sometimes what happens is you don't hear anything or maybe you have a couple of colleagues commenting like "oh that's really great work", I really love that post, but clients don't walk through the door so you get really frustrated and wonder what's next, what did I do? evil?

Why didn't I like it? I followed these strategies I learned, like why I'm not getting clients. And you know, I actually think I shared this with you the last time I was in Los Angeles. 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 and got zero, oh no I don't mean this will happen to everyone if we look the data, we saw that as most of our clients did. just by word of mouth, you know, and if you remember when you need it, like when we renovated our house, I didn't Google architects or builders, I just asked like my closest network or people I know.

I knew you had just renovated your house, who did you hire? Did you have a good experience? into a strategy and if we think about it as if a referral is the key to the door to resistance, like I love this quote from Bo Bennett, that's what we started doubling down on when we saw where our customers are. they come from oh they always come from our other clients well how can we turn this into a real marketing strategy so that we continue to have leads even when I'm away for four four months and one of the things that I say a lot and I stay out of it and I think what has contributed to the success of our agency is that the

more

people know who you are, what you do and for whom, the more likely they are to know. word of mouth and bringing word of mouth referrals, so my philosophy is always to plant seeds and water them, but if you're wondering, well, how do we do that?

So if we turn to our workbook, one of the things I did. My operations manager and I sat down and made three lists and you can do this on your own time. The first is potential customers who asked questions in the past but never became customers and we, you know, started writing them down. It helped us that we had a sales funnel in place because then we could just pull all those leads and we had a list of 900 people like I was surprised it was like 900. but for about six years we had like 900 leads from people saying "hey" . how much for a brand identity or I would love to work with you and then you know at some point the conversation ended so that was the first list we made the second list was we listed our dream clients as the best of the best and the The third was other potential referral partners, other people sending us work 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 these people, so for this first column we sent out this magical email that was coined, I think, by Dean Jackson, it's the nine-word email and it's basically, hey, customer name, are you still interested?

You know the brand identity and that's it. Joanna, my operations manager, in my absence was sending out like 50 of those a day to our 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. You know that many of them had asked two years ago, but now they had moved on to another project and also maybe with the time of the pandemic everyone was like reinventing themselves or starting new businesses and maybe that helped, I don't know, but I.

I'm still fascinated by how that simple email that all you have to do is copy, paste and send to all previous leads can still generate work. The second email that we start sending is the dream client email which is kind of like thinking of you or I loved working with you that's what I would include in the topic and hello client, I was recently updating my portfolio and I found the work we did together. I wanted to thank you once again 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.

I've been reflecting on my business plans for the future and honestly I would love to have more clients that are like that and then you insert the description of you know what would make sense there like you and it made me wonder if you wouldn't know just one person that someone like you would benefit and then you could say something like triple your website conversions like We made this sentence for you that I learned from Phil Jones and he breaks it down and that's why it works so well is that in the first part of the sentence you're challenging them. , you're saying well, you wouldn't know which one I am.

Think about what it does in our brain, well test me, let me see if I can figure this out, then you're saying just one person so you make the question feel reasonable and when you say someone like you we're flattering them because it's like We would like to work with someone like you, if only all our clients were like you and then you reminded them of the benefit that you gave them, then we started sending that to all our dream clients and Slowly, this shot, this took a little more time to received a few sales calls, but little by little we began to receive more presentations and people sending us work.

The other interesting thing that happened to us as well was that customers were saying things like Oh, we thought. We were very busy, so we didn't send people your way. It's amazing what people assume correctly and that reminds me that you know the relationship doesn't end when the project ends, it's actually just beginning and that's how it is. It's a really good practice to keep in touch with those really dreamy clients you've had, even if you're not working for them right now, so some ideas for staying in touch are like I can introduce them to someone I love.

That's because you can, you know you could say, "Oh, I know when I saw that you were looking for a copywriter, I actually know someone really cool, can I give you an introduction?" or I even saw that you were going on vacation to France. I have a very good friend there. I can make an introduction, maybe you can send some recommendations because then what's going to happen is every time those people connect, they're going to have you in common and that's going to help you stay top of mind as much as it does. you just potentially added 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 networks. That's another way, just an

easy

way, to be at the top of your game.mind. You can even share an idea that could help them improve their marketing or improve their business, maybe spend some time on this and see if anything comes up and then just email the customer you know, tell them what you think or schedule a virtual coffee date. or if you can now that things are opening up again, maybe look for opportunities to meet them live and that's what we always try to do with our past clients, the third is to connect with potential referral partners.

I realized that I did this very early by accident, I call this the big shot strategy with which I did this like with Selena Sue, I don't know if you have heard of her, she is an advertising expert and at that time she had many clients who were like, oh, if only I knew those people because you seem like you know a lot, you could be a dream client or you would just like to meet a really good person because you're not at the level where you're unattainable, but you're at a level where he knows a lot of people and so I joined his newsletter and you know in his welcome email he invites you to respond so I took it to start a conversation.

I always like to try to connect with people without an 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 can see how we can add value to each other's lives. . I try and I don't, you know, no, I don't pitch or anything, so you know. She started asking about training, she was doing things like that, which led to a deeper conversation. She asked what her business model is, how much she charges. I told him the rates were in 2014.

I charge 950 for the full branded regimen. book 2500 for website im looking to work with women entrepreneurs and she starts giving feedback you know what she thinks she starts talking about how she helped marie forleo and daniela port for free now i know this could spark a whole debate like You shouldn't do free work with Wic or you know, but this was his experience. She did some work for them for free and it greatly boosted her brand and was responsible for a hundred thousand businesses, so I thought she was fine. That's a good idea, let me suggest the same thing, so I said, "Well, you know, if you ever need something, I would never charge you." She finished by saying, "Oh, well, there's a chance she could take it." I have someone working on the sales page. for me, but I don't have very high expectations for the first draft, so I ended up making a free sales page for it.

I was up all night. This is my first year as a freelancer and that helped me deepen our relationship. She started spreading it. the work, the word about um me and what I did, but then what I think really helped and then took this to another level was she posted on Facebook that she needed an assistant to help her organize an event that she was doing two. . business anniversary party year and a brain, so I put my hand up and thought I would love to volunteer and at the time I was living in London this was in Los Angeles an unpaid internship for a week no, no, ellie, sorry new york and her like you're crazy you'd fly here and stay in a hotel and I said yes because I think I could learn a lot just being around you and you know I'll do what you tell me and there's no homework Under me, I ended up doing things like picking up dry cleaning or going to the grocery store, things like that, but I was okay with that because then what ended up happening is we spent a lot of time at his apartment that he was dating. a lot behind the scenes and then in the downtime we would go to lunch and she took me to the spa once for a massage as a thank you for doing all the work and at the end of the trip it was really me.

I think the change in my career was that she invited me to her two year anniversary party as a guest instead of her assistant, so she's introducing me and you may or may not recognize some people in this photo that you know like Jim Quick, he's richard branson and will smith's brain trainer and there's louis' house in the back and they became clients after I met them at this party and I think that's what I realized It was a strategy, it's like connecting with a big fish and suddenly you could raise your entire network to know if you work for free or at a reduced rate, that's up to you.

When I think about it, I wonder if I wouldn't have liked to volunteer and work for her for free, you know? I don't know, I don't know if I would have gone to that party, met those people that you know, been introduced to all those great people like, oh, this is Joanna, a really cool graphic designer, instead of saying that This is my assistant, can I break? I mention that experience a little bit, so here's the thing and I've also recognized this about myself, maybe I'm a big shot, maybe I'm not, but people volunteer to help me all the time and even with the amount of free work.

What are they willing to do, most of the time I say no, your situation is really unique in that you solve the person of interest, the key person of influence, and you say you know what I want to help this person, I will make it very difficult. for them to say no, I'll fly myself and stay in a hotel, so you're taking on a lot of risk and expense by flying and doing this, but I think you recognize the opportunity of what it was, what I came to. Learn as an apprentice and this is how things were done long before jobs and job training were created in schools.

You sit next to a teacher. You see them work. You help them. I love your attitude and you literally told them that there is no homework below. You and I did all those things with alacrity, a lot of people would complain about why I'm picking up at the dry cleaners and your attitude is really what gave you these opportunities that happen later because if you don't go into this with an open heart and willingness to do everything that the party probably wouldn't have happened for you because people like us recognize that, oh my God, this person is giving me a lot and you know I wasn't going to share the secret, but I will because there's a lot of reciprocity.

I feel so grateful for your help that I'm going to reciprocate, so I imagine that for you that week-long unpaid internship was valuable in itself and then the icing on the cake was like I paid for it. Yeah, well, you literally did it fair and square with your flight at your hotel, but the lesson you learned is apparently worth more than that, but you also got the invitation to the party, which I thought was kind of cool for her. I don't introduce you as the assistant but as a guest because you're in the room with some pretty big influencers and that led to all other kinds of opportunities.

I'm 100 aligned with this now that some people are going. To hear this and say, Hey, are you defending free labor? Yes and no, when it's a big shot, when it's part of your strategic and personal development, and if you couldn't get that opportunity anyway, that's the way to do it. You are in a thriving business and you are no longer in that place when someone comes to you and asks you to do work for free without you thinking that this is really valuable to me. So I would say don't turn down that job. I think you have to do it too.

Check your gut and see, is this person taking advantage of me? Is she asking Me to work for free in exchange for exposure? Know? This makes sense and to me it just made a lot of sense? I was also in a place where I could afford that without it hurting me too much, but I was thinking, well, how can people replicate this? How can people find their own big fish and you know, start getting a bunch of referrals coming their way? Through one person, this specific example I gave was that maybe I was in the right place at the right time or connected to them at the right time.

There is another story I would love to share, which is about Delia Monk. I don't know her from anywhere and she sends me this email Hi Joanna, I loved all the training tips you've been giving on Instagram recently. She likes to boost my ego for a few paragraphs like I love what you're creating at Gift Design Studios. I was recently writing a website for a web designer. I analyzed her website and her comments as part of my research process. Let's say I loved the first click, etc. and then she goes on to ask, but she was curious to know if she collaborates with editors or editors.

Sometimes you may need a few extra hands to write and then she makes a speech. I'm a qualified conversion copywriter who writes personality copy with detailed attention to tone of voice. It's my bag. I would love to offer you and your clients the same thoughtful process. that I deliver to my private clients. I am prepared and professional enough to work directly with your clients, but I am also a team player who is happy to be behind the scenes to make you look brilliant. You know, she's just giving me valuable information. She is telling me okay if I work. you, I'm happy to be customer facing or you know she can white label my work.

This is all relevant information for me to see if this even aligns with what we need for the agency. I've worked with many web developers and designers who have said some lovely things about me. Spoiler alert: they love my wireframes, so I thought, oh, if you provide them with copy and wireframes, that's another plus, then she gives a testimonial from someone who speaks highly of her and asks, what do you think Joanna needs? she delivers whatever project you have ahead of you. PS: If you fancy a no-pressure 20-minute virtual coffee to chat about how I could help you, you can book a space here or want to check me out first, you can get an insight into my writing style and process by reading my three-step plan to write websites here.

We've gotten a lot of pitch emails recently and I'm curious because I read them all and think this is so bad. clearly you copy and pasted it and sent it to everyone, but this one I remember like even Joanna and I thought this is a really good email, she wrote it really well, it's like she gave us all the stuff and then the next one step is a really

easy

yes, it's like well, we meet on Zoom for a 20-minute chat and we move forward seven months. We have worked with Delia on three of our own internal website projects.

We have hired her as a retainer for our newsletter and have recommended her. So that I like each and every client since we worked with her. I was talking to Delia before this presentation and she said, "Joanna, like knowing you've gone up to 50,000 in business for me, so I guess that's another way to create a relationship." By a big fish I don't want to say I'm a big fish, but she knew that I was someone who could be a potential referral partner because I work with a lot of people who need copy and she could see that our clients line up.

I've loved working with her and, yeah, for anyone who's like, "Oh, I want to try that." Then you can go to the workbook. We take your Delia email and turn it into a template you can send. I can use this, it reminds me of the quote that you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking back, like you don't 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 make like fifty thousand dollars from business, so in this case, Delia, you were the potential go-to partner for her because she showed the proof in the pudding that she is like I'm a really good copywriter who I can write copy that converts and I love the little expressions and the change of phrases like it's love at first click instead of love at first sight, so you know she has a knack for writing words and craft words and ideas and make you smile. and then you can see the structure quite clearly, what she's doing and it's a perfect way to set up the tone and the question and make the butt very, very small and she also understands all the possible objections that you might have and the incorporates it 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 meet someone. that I would need this exact service and so on. when people email me about email writing for us, if I don't read your email, guess what, I'm not hiring you, then people make all kinds of interesting strategies and I pay attention to them, the forgettable ones, I read two lines.

I hit delete, but there are a couple that I'll actually save and it's an incredibly good email, so if it works for me maybe it will work for other people, so that's fantastic, so you're saying to look for people outside your network who have common interests, alignment and sets ofcomplementary skills, this is the important part because if she were another designer, this probably wouldn't be as effective, but she provided some that designers need copywriting and guess what copywriters need, designers, designers need web developers and everyone. We probably need videographers and social media marketers, so look for those complementary relationships and it's a beautifully structured email.

Thank you for sharing that, Joanna, thank you Delia for allowing us to share too because I liked it when I read this. a case study email, I loved it, but let's get back to the framework, so the last thing in marketing is to communicate your credibility and this is just to make sure that you know how to say the right things the way she communicated to you in her email . credibility by providing client testimonials and showing you examples of your work, you can do this on your website on your social media, so it's part of one of the main things you need in marketing, so if we move on to the second pillar to sell because there is no point in attracting potential customers if you can't convert them into customers.

The first thing we noticed that made a big difference in us being able to scale the agency and be able to eliminate me is packaging our services now. I don't know if you've read this book that Chris built to sell, so in this book it's a fable that follows a design agency owner who is really frustrated with the management of the agency because, like every day is different, he just I would get stuck writing proposals and all that, and they're all pains that I think most freelancers and agency owners experience and you hire a consultant who tells you to package your services and therefore you go through the journey of how you implement every step of the way and this is a great book to read even if you never intend to sell because it is about how to systematize your business and optimize it for growth.

So what we did we tried as a fun experiment and I'll show you the website we launched. We launched the website we designed brand identities.com and duplicated the package that we knew could work very well without me. could be really profitable so the whole website really just sells this package and says everything it includes and what you would get, tells you a little bit about us like optional add-ons, the process and all the steps, it even says the prices We went back and forth and asked whether or not we should include the price for my maternity leave specifically.

I wanted to make sure my team didn't get calls where people hadn't seen the price because they didn't have sales experience. I needed this to only attract customers who were ready to buy and then when they clicked to view their packages, our packages 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 just mean that whoever was going through this funnel already knew exactly what they were buying, how long all the deliverables took and how much it was, and that's what we set up to make it really easy for my team.

Being able to sell the other key piece we needed was a process, a process for the sale to happen and for potential customers not to be left behind, so we needed to implement a sales funnel and I would recommend everyone to have one in place. because we're like, we're like, oh, but I'm not going to forget this potential client that walked in the door today and asked me about my job, I'll remember to follow up with them, but when they start to look a lot like you, I'll probably forget one or two. and if you had followed up more diligently, you might have gotten on a call with them and closed the sale, so you'd like to get a quick overview and you can also fill this out on a sales funnel worksheet.

It's basically just mapping out the stages of the sale so you have the potential customer, the potential customer can enter through a form on your website or an introduction, then the contact is made, you communicate with them and basically in a process of sales. channeling, just move that name around like Bob is introducing me to Sophie. I contacted Sophie. Now Sophie is in this column. Then there's the booked call and I suggest everyone do calls with people because I think you're much more likely to close a client. if you talk to them on the phone, the proposal was submitted and then you won or lost, this was one of the things that really excited me and my operations manager, we automated a lot of these things and created templates so she had templates for all of them. the emails for the first contact a template for if a client introduces this person send this email if this person enters through the website send this email customize this line with which we use pipedrive to then sync with calendly so that each time a call is booked it would move columns automatically, so we tried to automate as much as we could to save her as much time as possible because she was going to end up doing my job and hers, but some tools you can use to build a sales pipeline.

Like you could literally have names on post-its and have the columns on your wall and keep moving the post-its. You could do it in Notion or Trello if you prefer or then if you want something more robust there is Pipe Drive. The last thing when it came to sales was making the sales call and I'm not saying that you should adopt a persona that you're not and that you know how to play, but just like an actor, an actor would follow a script and run with it. 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 and know what information you need at the end of the call so you can know to direct the call in a way that's not I'm going to take a long time.

I feel like that's a mistake that people make in the beginning: they don't really know how to lead the sales call and lead the prospect, so the call can be two hours long and you just had a strategy to give away, so it really bothers me. loved what I learned from you, Chris, so you know why now and why me or why we and essentially because leads were coming through that funnel, that's really all she had to say, you know? so why is the new brand identity okay, great, why now, oh, and why do you think it would be a perfect fit and they would say oh, because I saw your pdf and I loved it and then she actually said that sales calls from Jonah, do they last 15 minutes? long, I'm great, this is awesome, this is exactly what we want, so yeah, that's what we ended up doing for sales.

It automated the process and helped bet and filter out poor fits and so when they book the call with For You, it can be 15 minutes, yes or no, and that's it, we get it right, and if you can't articulate reasonable answers to those questions, then you think that this is probably not the right time to move forward. Customers talk. they go out or get into whatever they want to do, but it's interesting because it works very well for that specific package. I like taking calls again, especially if they are friends of our clients. I want to funnel them into something like, well, you need this package because I also want to be able to get bigger projects, so I'll have more, maybe I won't follow this slow exactly, but for my maternity leave this is what I did and it worked very well and even today we have another track of this funnel and I just told my operations manager because I'm going on vacation next week.

I'm fine, well, take the call. okay, I trust you, she read the pdf to find out how much it is, she says she's ready, so you do it, and it's been really great to be able to get a lot of this off my plate, so the final pillar is fine. We need to deliver We need to do great work, but in addition to doing great work, it's also about having a well-oiled

machine

behind you that helps the delivery go smoothly, as well as creating a great customer experience and, therefore, So the three key things we need to deliver is to first delight our customers with a great experience think about going beyond just aligning them with a great design because unfortunately that's not the only thing our customers care about, they They care about great communication, that we can meet deadlines, but also the little ones.

Things like we send them a postcard in the mail when they sign up to work with us or maybe like you write down their birthdays and send them a birthday gift or you send a gift at Christmas. You know, think of ways you can delight them throughout the process. experience or even just doing what Delia does and thinking a lot about email communication because that's something I told Delia, is that every time I open one of your emails it's like I can't wait to read it and that they will take me on a journey because it's not just like oh, here's the deliverable and here's one, I need feedback, yeah, they're nice to read, so the second thing is to document now, we spent a lot of time doing this and setting this up in notion before.

I went on maternity leave and was just documenting every step of that brand identity process. We create templates for the proposal. We create documents for what happens after you submit the proposal. Well, this file, this folder is created on the drive and then this. it's done and then the questionnaire is sent to the client and then this happens and this happens and we had um sops for the designers we had sops for my operations manager in case something happened then they needed extra hands or someone to fill in we had everyone that it's documented and ready for someone to take over and they can just follow it and the final thing and this is where if you master all these things and you have them in place and you can use like the traffic light system, like how What do I feel?

Do you know how I am packaging my service? Maybe you're feeling yellow and that's why you want to focus on that first before thinking about getting out of the business, but luckily we were feeling pretty green about it and that's the end of it. The thing is just delegating by delegating one, a great resource that I really highly recommend is the book "It Runs Like Clockwork", design your business to run on its own. It is written by Mike Mikalowitz and Adrian Dorrison. She does not appear on this cover, but she co-wrote the book. and Mike McCullough, he's the author of Like Profit First and other really great business books, so the whole book is also about how to make your business work without you, so we read the book and learned a lot from them.

We like it too. I ended up working with them, which was really fun because when they asked, Adrian had had the child at the same time as me, we were both going to have our second child together, so we were like, oh yeah, like me. I'm excited to work with your brand because you know we implemented your philosophy and this is what allowed me to take maternity leave so a key frame that I'm going to get into is you talk about it on your podcast and I. I have your permission to share and it's ipo, so this is what I went through with my operations manager.

This is her on the screen and the idea is that when you delegate you need to have these three things. I represent information, so am I giving you all the information? information that you need to be able to execute what I need you to execute now if this was something simple like, can you go to the store and buy me some pens? The information could be: I want to make sure they are black. I like this type of pen or I like this brand specifically, but if this brand doesn't exist then I like this other brand and you can only spend this amount of 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 was a lot more information than that, but this gives you an idea. The p means permission. Are you giving this person the necessary permissions to fully delegate tasks? Things like, for example, pens, could be like if they don't have these two brands I give you permission to choose whatever because the important thing is that I have pens that work and I don't want to be bothered with that or the permission could be like here is the company card I have permission to spend up to this amount in the case of my operations manager.

I gave him permission to make any decision for the company as if it were his own. At this point we had been working together for five years and I really trust her and I. I also gave her permission to call me if she wasn't sure about the decision she was making, so essentially that was the permission I gave her and the outcome. I told him you'd done your job well if we survived, that's all we have to do. I don't care about profits, I just want us to survive in my absence, so that's the outcome, that's the desired outcome, but fortunately not only did it survive, it thrived, that's the big picture of all the things we put in place to be able to have.

MyMaternity leave survival for you is just to cover expenses, just cover overheads and salaries, don't anger any clients, don't alienate, don't destroy and torture our reputation just to make sure that when you come back we're still in the black alive, that is all we need to do, you know, breakeven is the mantra and because you're so good at defining basically all the key functions of your job and you try to eliminate as much variable or variability in the way you do what you do, believe. Blair Ends says that something like this low variability in process equals low variability and results, so if you want consistent and predictable positive results, you really need to sit down and start documenting and creating processes and systems for everything you do and automate as much. as possible. possible because you also recognize that what used to be done by two people will now be done by one person and you want to simplify everything, so you may not like the budget, you don't need to set prices based on value, it's a fee If you want us to do something, the cost will be this low variability, it is not necessary for someone to be very expert in sales and pricing for the client and not in the work, you just systematize everything, produce the entire design of your service. business essentially in Greg Hickman kind of language and you made it pretty easy, so now from this you have your own clock formula in case everyone isn't paying attention.

I know there is a lot of really useful information to absorb. There are three components and you. use alliteration on all three, it's the marketing part, which is how you can maximize word-of-mouth referrals even for clients you don't have today and gave us very detailed tactical steps on the types of emails and templates you should follow to do that and you give several examples, then you talk about when you have a potential client, well, now you need to learn how to sell a way to do it. You could argue that this was also on the marketing side, but packaging what you do.

It is very easy to understand developing the process and then doing it, that is, learning how to actually behave on the sales call. He also removed all the variabilities there by saying how the person taking the call simply asks three questions. Listen quietly and reflect, that's all you need to do and the customer will select themselves, which means I want to work with you or you are right, this is not the right time for you to move forward. Without launching, without convincing, without defending the beautiful thing he has done. done and the last part is like once sold the company just starts and for many people we start revising because we want the customer to have the exciting part and then we start letting it fall apart and this will ultimately hurt their business long-term. marketing and your ability to sell or turn to an existing client for referrals or new business, so you said delight the document and then delegate, which is a very difficult thing for many people, now for you you have a very natural barrier to your ability to do so. the job that you're busy being a mother, yeah, you know, I'm grateful that I was forced to do that because it really forced me to have to do this because it's still uncomfortable to delegate has always been that you have another human being that depends on you for your survival and that will take precedence over I need to check an email I need to make a post on social media or something you said one thing that I wanted to follow up with you about but I didn't want to interrupt what you do is maintain the relationships that you have and follow up to people, it's all the low-cost, high-touch things you do talking about things paying attention to your clients' needs if they have a new baby or are going on a trip.

If it's an anniversary to really wish them well, were you doing any of that in the times when you were dealing with a baby or had a minute to yourself or did you just completely withdraw for four months? No, I was doing that. A lot in the lead up to this and I was telling everyone, yeah, I think it really hit home, you know, like it was the transition to motherhood, it was like getting hit by a bus, physically and mentally, I remember thinking what It happened to my brain, will I be able to work again?

Because with the lack of sleep and all the things a woman's body goes through, I really started to wonder, "Oh my God, the business is going to have to run without me forever because I don't feel like going back." I came into the office and when I started doing it slowly after four months, it was very difficult, like I wasn't even half as smart as I can be today. Did you have any guilt in the four months you were away? As if I had to go back. Why am I doing this? I'm not being a good steward of my own business or you're saying you know what they got.

No, I don't think I felt guilty. I just felt very grateful. I was also making sure that I was talking to Joanna, our operations manager, and just being like you hanging on, everything's fine and you know she could have burned down the house and she would have been like, yeah, yeah, don't worry, everything's fine. and then hangs up. like a hot mess and like sweating like no, we're going to protect her time, we're going to isolate ourselves, so she sounds like a keeper and no, she is, she is and she knows it and you know, I wish that existed.

It was a formula for that, like how do you find people like that? I don't know, you just have to be patient and fire fast, hire slow because it's worth waiting for the right person. It's a coincidence that her name is also joanna, but it's one of those things where you're looking for a person who shares your work ethic, your drive, your intelligence and your values ​​and then everything else that you train, like when we're looking to hire people, that's what we look for, the things that are difficult or impossible to train the skills, the techniques, the procedures, that's how I think, this is what I want to teach you if you have an open mind, curious and have a good state that you are in a positive and optimistic state. been and they want to learn and they are hungry, like you in the early days when you flew to New York just to work, if you find that type of person, chances are they will work for you in the long run, yes definitely, higher for cultural fit or the values ​​that Joanna didn't know, she didn't even know there were different development languages, we probably had to teach her everything, but she had the right attitude and she diverted the personality to fit in well, so during this whole period in which I haven't talked to you in a couple of years.

You had a baby. You had another one. The same way you have one in the oven. As they say: Yes. How has business been? How are you tracking your finances year over year over the last two years? Over the years that I haven't really talked to you, we have increased our profits dramatically and one of the things that brought me great peace of mind was that we got our savings to a point where if we stopped having clients today, Chris I could pay my team for another year. Wow, I know I have thoughts about that, but that's awesome.

I remember it being very impressive because I remember in 2017 I was spending a lot on, you know? Maybe the year I met you in person I thought. I was flying everywhere to meet all these people and I was spending a lot and I was just living almost month to month and then there was a month where a couple of things went wrong at the same time and suddenly I had no money. for salaries and unfortunately and this was something that took us a couple of years to overcome. I had to fire three people on the same day.

It's hard and it was very difficult. Yes, I know, and if they're watching, you know they know. I love them and I help them get other jobs and I sent them referrals but it was yes and I was so embarrassed I thought I made the wrong decision. I don't need to be in this place anymore, so we really prioritize profits, but in terms of how we've been tracking since I had the baby for me, what success looks like is my team being in a good place mentally, they are too. They had it, we also had a very difficult year last year with many very big things.

Personal things happened for each team member, it was like what was happening was a disaster in everyone's personal life, so we haven't really increased revenue, we've just increased profits and stayed stable, but it feels very good in this place in my I love life, so it will be shocking for a lot of people to understand what income is and how it increases profitability. I'm going to suspect that you started eliminating many of the variables. From this, you have your expenses under control and now you can simply maintain and sustain a happy and healthy work culture where people don't have to struggle and it's not a rat race and you found a really nice stasis right where everything is in a way. on balance, yeah, like we have Friday afternoons off, we're trying to get the business to a place where no one feels really stressed because there were times when it probably wasn't great to work in gift design studios because there are times in which everyone likes.

Wait, we have so many projects going on at the same time, so now we are charging a lot more or more than we used to charge per project, but we take on less and hopefully we like to create 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 two years old, he's already two, like he's not going to be this young forever and he's going to hit a stage, you know Chris, I don't know what it's like . 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, prepare well, so maybe that's when I'll focus on growing the business like when they were teenagers.

I'm going to focus on taking gifting to the next level, but right now it's like no, we're good, we're cruising. Yes, you are in the season of your life when it is about connection, bonds, lessons, time together and all that kind. of things, but I have a philosophy that when you're in that season where it's time for your kids to do their thing to

become

their own people no matter how much you want to, it's actually not healthy for you to hold on because it's going to be this relationship in the that they won't know who they are, as well as the way you set up your business, you want to set up the responsible people that you are responsible for so that they can go out and be yours in the next time we see, it will be in 14 years, when your son is 16 and you have Chris, I have the three pillars of parenting, permission, performance and you know who knows what perseverance is, you know it would be like that and We'll go over that and those would be the lessons that you learned well.

I have one more question for you before we leave here, which is the one you said in 2017, you made a lot of different decisions that ultimately led you to liking it. this financially difficult gap where you had to let go of three people people you care about people you like I just want you to look back now how many years is enough five years later look back and tell your younger self, don't do it Instead, do this, just look directly at the camera, think about this. I want you to advise your younger self so that you don't encounter those types of obstacles.

Prioritize profits and build a cushion. You'll sleep better at night and make sure 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 entrepreneurship, we fall, we get up, you're smart enough to Discover it, overcome it and move on. better and stronger side how about you don't do this give me another one like a really strong don't spend all your money on this is where we're going yeah this is where we're going I need you to say it and you need to You need to say very clearly that this will be the beginning of the cut, don't spend all your money on coaches and consultants and that shiny next strategy that you think will take you to the next level, just have a little more confidence.

You can also get there on your own merits. I see you knew what I wanted you to say because that's not what I remember you doing. You're stuck in these funnels of funnels and you build more funnels for more people. affiliate marketing and doing bundles and giveaways. and all that kind of stuff, right, it's kind of a mess, yeah, it can be hard, right, because there are really cool people that you know like what you're doing with the future and it's like, well, but spend money on Chris, you know you like to spend money in the future and buy their courses, it will help you, but don't spend your money on everything else, you know, is where you draw the line because they do, I think they would.

I won't be where I am without having hired so many trainers and invested in courses, but you know you have to like it, there has to be a line and this is where we start implementing budgets, like if we earn that much, I'm allowed. spending so much on courses we are not saying that education is bad, we are not saying that trainers are bad or consultants are bad, it is a question of what do you need at the moment and if you immerse yourself in more courses and trainers to delay andavoid what you need to do and a lot of them do a really good job of promoting this kind of amazing lifestyle and selling you a dream, hopefully in the years that I'm doing this up to this point. period and into the future I don't

become

one of those people who hype you up easily, no skills required, no down payment solution to achieve your dreams because I believe otherwise, it will be a lot of work, sleepless nights a couple of tears, you have to say goodbye to some people that you really care about, not in a life or death situation, but you can't afford to keep them anymore, it's going to be a routine and you're going to want to quit and life is going to change.

It sucks for a while, but keep it up because like my friend said, the easy way is the hard way and the hard way is the easy way. It takes hard work to achieve things you don't have to do, things other people haven't done, Joanna. Thank you so much for doing this and I should also let people know that your Instagram post that you shared with me as a guest post is still one of the top performing posts on my feed, it's because you put a lot of work and thought into it. Normally I'm not one to talk about quality over quantity because I'm a quantity person because I want to learn I want to explore, but yours was a very high quality post and it has generated thousands of followers for me. why i never sent another one i'm like there's no way i can top that post you can't i'm doomed i know you can you're capable i believe in you you're like me i tasted the joys of victory i've got the heavyweight belt around me and i'm done to retire, yeah, after a fight, well, you know, I got 10,000 followers overnight and people still today don't believe that was possible, it's possible, but yeah, it's so good. it's just a really good post, it's an incredibly good post, I talk about that post, I share it with people, I'm like that, this is what it takes, look how much work, like you put more work into a painting of a character from ten slides. an image an image that what people would do in total like ten posts they make is thoughtful it's intentional it's strategic and well-crafted it's a great argument I don't know how else to end it but let's end it well there joanna, thanks for doing this, no let's 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 ask people one more time if you want the workbook, we'll include it. in the show notes in the description below, if there is a description below, check it out and it will also include all the social media in case we need it.

Where do people find out more about you, Joanna? Well, I'd love for people to reach out to me on Instagram. I still hang out there every day and respond to all the direct messages and that's Joanna Galvan Design. I think it's the best place because all of our websites are under construction right now, so grab the workbook because there are other ways we can connect there too. Yes, I speak like a true creative designer. Everything is under construction. Thank you very much, thank you for inviting me. Chris, I'm Joanna Galvao and you. they are listening to the future