Speaker 1You may think you can figure all the business stuff out by yourself. I used to think that too, like, oh, I will Google or follow other people or read an extra book or, but even when I learned what to put in my portfolio, I didn't have anyone to validate that and tells me if it's good enough. When I wanted to get more clients, I didn't know how to promote my services on social media and didn't have anyone to ask like, hey, what has been working for you? Can you help me? Or when I wanted to increase my pricing, I didn't have anyone to brainstorm with like, how do I package my services? How much should I charge? Where do I find people who will pay me more than what I'm currently making? And then I learned more about masterminds. And then I learned more about the business side of things and how I can be more profitable. Welcome to the Profitable Graphic Designer Podcast. My name is Katie Sandel, and this episode was brought to you by Aventive Academy, an online business education platform that helps brand, graphic, and web designers get more clients, increase their pricing, and build a profitable design business. We have online programs, courses, and templates that you can use, and you can find out more about starting and growing your freelance design business at AventiveAcademy.com. A few years ago, when I was still just a solo freelancer before I built my branding agency, something was off with my business. And even though I was kind of fine, it was always this feeling of like, I'm not making enough. Not just a feeling, but I wasn't making enough. And then, like, I can't find clients. I don't know how to sell my services. Maybe my portfolio is not good enough. What if I'm charging too much? What if I'm not charging enough? Like, I just didn't know how to get to the next level in my business. And I was just like stuck. And not to mention that I also didn't have anyone who is a graphic designer or brand designer, web designer, who can help me get to the next level. Like, I didn't have friends in the design industry. I did have some, but they mostly had like a nine to five or freelancing wasn't their like a full time focus where I really wanted to build my own business and, you know, like have everything that I wanted to have, which is freedom, flexibility, different lifestyle, better lifestyle, and so on. So long story short, I was complaining to my friend how something's off in my business. And I don't know. And then I just can't figure out what that is. So that's when she told me that she's a part of this mastermind group where they meet. I don't know if it was like once a week or two times a week or something like that. And it's kind of like a group of people, a group of business owners. And then they focus on one person each time or each person gets like 10 to 15 minutes every single time they meet where the rest of the group focuses on their specific problems to help that one person solve the problems. And I just thought like, oh, yeah, this is like a brilliant idea. Where is this mastermind? Like, how can I learn more about it? So she connected me with the founder of that mastermind. And as soon as I had a call with her, with the founder, I knew that that's it. Like, I knew that I need other people to look at my business and tell me what I'm doing good and what I'm doing wrong. Like, what is that? That. Maybe I'm putting too much effort into like maybe I'm posting constantly on Instagram. But what if my clients are on LinkedIn? Or what if I'm charging $1,000 for a logo when everybody else is charging $5,000 or $500? Like, it doesn't matter. Like, I just didn't know what is that that I'm doing that like something was off. Something was not working. And I had to figure that out. And I knew that I cannot do it by myself anymore. I used to Google every single thing I used to ask. Other people in Facebook groups. I used to connect with other creatives on different platforms. But just I wasn't getting the exact feedback that I needed. All the advice that I would find online was kind of like general advice. Like, oh, you have to say to everyone that you're a freelance designer and then you'll get referrals. Well, yeah, right. It doesn't work like that. You can say to everyone in the world, I'm a graphic designer. I do logos for restaurants. Or I do labels for vitamins or whatever it is. Yeah, that will increase chances of people getting to know you and recommend you and all that. But that doesn't really help you grow your business if your proposals are maybe off. Maybe something's missing in your contracts. Maybe during your sales call, like you don't know what to say and what clients expect to hear from you and things like that. So I kind of like was ready. OK. I need people to look at my business and tell me what I need to focus on and what I should like maybe even completely remove from my business. So a few weeks later, I joined this mastermind group and I was a part of a smaller group within that big mastermind group. And it was six of us. It was all in person here in Austin, Texas. It was obviously before COVID and all that. And yeah, it was six of us. And the mastermind was for all business owners. CEOs, founders, like it doesn't matter the industry. So I was a part of the group where we had a CPA. We had a bookkeeper. We had a business coach. We had a coach for creatives. We had me as a graphic designer and we had I can't remember at the moment, but it was it was kind of broad, but not too broad. However, sometimes it would like mix and match and I would get like totally random people who have nothing to do. Um, like with, with my industry, which, you know, me being a creative or graphic designer, brand designer, web designer, like David, like for example, like CPA, they don't know anything about industry. And sometimes that is great. So you get a feedback that's totally out of, you know, our perspective, like totally different perspective, but sometimes it's just, they don't get it. They don't understand. They see you as like, oh, okay. So you open a Photoshop. And you do what? Like you design flyers, PowerPoint, like, you know, they just don't get it. They don't know. And that's totally fine. I'm just saying that it was a little bit too broad. So after that mastermind, well, actually, let me tell you what happened during that mastermind. I wanted to get more clients. So I told them, so my main question was like, how do I get more clients? Because I thought in order to grow my business, I need to get more clients. You know, it's logical. At that time, I would have a few clients here and there. And, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't all flowing nicely. I couldn't like predict my income for a month. It's not like I had five clients every month. Like some months I would have two clients. Some months I would have zero clients. Some months I would have 10. And, you know, it was just like all this like roller coaster to hear other freelancers have. And that's totally normal. Like we still have that. Like in every, in every month. Every creative kind of industry, every single creative has that even as a branding agency. I mean, if we get a client, they pay 50% like down payment right now. So that goes up tomorrow, nothing happens. So that goes down. I mean, that's totally, totally normal. So don't be just like afraid of roller coaster. But what I wanted to say is, so yeah, I told them I'm looking for more clients because I thought, you know, I need more clients in order to grow my business. In order to grow my design business, because I will make more money and then I will be able to start hiring and all that. However, when we put my pricing down, like on paper, which wasn't terrible, it wasn't like cheap, but it wasn't expensive. And they were like, okay, so right now you're making, I don't know, let's say I was making $5,000 a month. So right now you're making $5,000 a month. If you want to get 10K, you would need to double in terms of not just pricing, but you would need to double. How many clients you get? Is that even possible? Would you be able to provide quality services for that many clients a month? And I was like, well, maybe if I kind of work after 5 or 6 PM, if I work over weekends, like, yeah, I can get there. And then I realized I don't want that. Like, I would not want to work nonstop. I do want to have flexible schedule. And even now I still sometimes would work on Sunday, but then I, on a Sunday, but then I wouldn't work on a Wednesday because that's how I feel. And that's how I want. However, if I was to get more clients at that time, I would have to work every single day and probably more than nine to five. Then kind of like, what's the point? Then I would rather just have nine to five and work less and maybe even make more because as a freelancer, especially when you're just starting out, you're not making enough money. And even when you're growing, you're still not making enough. I mean, it's never enough. Um, but what I wanted to say is. is that, you know, so I complain I'm not getting enough clients and then we figured out that I wouldn't even be able to have more clients because my pricing was too low so they helped me restructure my offers and raise my pricing so that I could have the same number of clients that I had but make more money and so that mastermind just changed everything around my business and I was so focused on one type of marketing but then I figured out but that's not working something else is working so they helped me figure out what the social media platform is that I need to use for my branding agency in order to get not more clients but better clients because it really wasn't about more it was about better and now I know and you know so that was really really helpful that I learned from that mastermind because I was surrounded by other business owners by other ambitious people who who really wanted to help me however at the end of the day I I thought that the mastermind was too broad I did have like you know different type of questions and I didn't know if my website was good I didn't know if my logos were good I didn't know if my contact form was okay you know like so many things that they just didn't have an answer for and then when I got home a few weeks later I wanted to find a or for creatives only or something that's like more relevant than just here's a mastermind for every single business owner in the world you know it's it's just not it and then I couldn't find it I couldn't find a mastermind like a true mastermind there are some like programs that they say oh it's a mastermind we meet once a week and then they ended up like being kind of like coached calls where a person would have a presentation on random topics and they were just not relevant for example one week they would focus on pricing and I'm like well I have that figured out that's not my problem okay next week they're focused on building a personal brand and I'm like but I don't want to build a personal brand because I have my business brand and then next week they would focus on you know third topic and I'm like that's just it's just not working it's not a true mastermind where people would focus on my specific problem so ta-da I created a mastermind that's for graphic designers and other creatives only so it's not for all the random CEOs and business owners and freelancers so it's not broad but also it's not too niched where we wouldn't be able to help each other grow because if three people are in the group and they're all stuck at pricing they just can't help each other so that's why my focus is on brand graphic and web designers and other creatives because a photographer or videographer can actually help you way more than another brand designer if you're a brand designer too and what I mean by that is like if you're charging five hundred dollars for a logo design the other designer who's maybe at the same range like they you you two would just be stuck at the same problem and wouldn't be able to grow and to get to the next level and so that's why I'm focusing on brand graphic and web designers well a photographer or a videographer or someone who maybe does website design or something else but still in the creative industry would be able to tell you but I paid for my photography business for my logo five thousand dollars and this is what I got and then you start thinking differently so that's why it's really important that you are surrounded by people who are in different but similar industries and so yeah I just couldn't find anything like that so I decided to create a business mastermind for designers and other creatives and here is how our mastermind works Aventive Academy's mastermind is an exclusive high touch experience for freelance graphic brand and web designers who are looking to scale their business and make money while working in their creative industry and what I mean by that is that if you're trying to get to a hundred k next year we can help you get there if you're trying to get to a hundred k next year if you're trying to get to ten k months we can help you get there if you're trying to get 15k clients we can do that as well because we focus on you and we don't focus on like the whole group it's not like a presentation that you join and then you listen to it and then you you know take some pieces and notes no we are specifically focused on you we are during each call you ask a question and then four or five of us will completely focus on you and help you get to the so if you're charging five hundred dollars for a logo and you want to charge five thousand we're going to help you make an action plan and steps on how you can get there if you're making ten thousand dollars per month but if you want to make twenty five thousand dollars a month we're going to focus on your business and figure out what is that that would help you get there like how can you get even bigger clients so this mastermind is all about helping you find dream high paying clients scale your business and finally make money as a designer and creative entrepreneur basically we teach you the things you can't learn in a design school the business of design if you're not making enough money don't know how to grow your team or don't even have the clients you want to work with that's okay for now we've all been there i know the feeling of being stuck i know how it is to have your own website up post on social media network and do all the work that you can and then you're going to be able to get there all the things you're supposed to be doing but for some reason they're not working and you know after working with 250 plus design clients i crack the code and i'm willing to like to share it with you and to walk you through the proven path to help you get high ticket clients and grow your design business to become profitable and enjoyable you know it's possible to love your business again and i know how it feels when you when you're not enjoying your business and when you're constantly stressed out and burnt out and simply stuck and you're all stuck in our businesses but in at different levels and in different like different stages in our business like maybe two years ago you were stuck in how to improve your portfolio maybe today you're stuck in how to get 15k clients and that's totally fine because every freelance designer goes through you know phases but we are here to help you so the high ticket clients mastermind is basically like incubator where ambitious graphic brand and web designers meet to help each other grow their creative agencies like we help you overcome your specific freelance challenges and grow to your next level of business and i think i said this like five times so far but basically throughout the mastermind you will be under the guidance of katie sandell so that's me the founder of eventive academy and you know i personally scaled my solo freelance graphic design business into a successful branding agency booking 12k 15k 18k even 20k clients and i know it's possible for you too i am not a better designer than you are i'm just really good in business and that's you know what i want to teach you and you will have a safe environment to ask me and other designers any questions get feedback and share your specific business obstacles and so like me and your mastermind peers will offer solutions ideas different results will help you make action plans for your business and most of all you will move past any mental blocks and strategic missteps that have been holding you back and finally start getting high ticket clients design clients so you can have the freedom and flexibility you've always wanted like it's really time to scale your business so let me just tell you what exactly is included in a mastermind and how it's structured our masterminds are usually in rounds so round can be over nine weeks or 10 weeks it really depends on the month and how many times we are going to meet per week but usually it's around nine weeks and then we have weekly one hour calls during those calls is when i split you into different groups so it's like five or six people per group designers or creatives and then we all focus let's say two to three hours on a one-hour call and then we have a weekly one-hour call and ten minutes on one person ten minutes on the next person ten minutes on the next person and even when the focus is not on you you're still hearing feedback because someone else maybe have the same problem that you are having so basically you get to solve like a few different problems you get so much from one of the sessions so that's over nine weeks you also get access to the profitable designer program which is thousand dollars then you also get access to exclusive designer community so this is our private platform of freelance brand graphic and web designers like who will help you get unstuck and move forward even faster so when we are not on calls this is where you can jump in and you know ask any questions you may have you also get a one-to-one call with me to ask me any any questions like i will go over your progress over the past like nine or ten weeks and suggest the next steps to up level your business and start consistently booking the high ticket clients you want and then you also get a one-to-one call with me to ask me any any questions like i will go over your progress also got like bonuses and workbooks, you know, We include a lot of different things that you can download and kind of like do it like self-paced so that if you're not available to attend every single call, then you can do it on your own as well. So yeah, that's what's included in our business mastermind. And I also want to mention, and I think I said that, but basically we only have space for three to five designers in the mastermind group at a time. And that's because once mastermind groups get larger than that, they lose their magic. Like your personal challenges don't receive the space and solutions they need. So by purposefully keeping our group small, we ensure that you get the one-to-one, like one-on-one attention you deserve. This is very important when growing a business. But at the same time, the group is still big enough to get proper feedback. And, you know, in addition to solving your own problems, you get to give back and be an active part of like helping other designers, high side ticket clients. And hit whatever months they want. You know, you can fill in the blank with whatever number you want to make because it is possible. And everything that I'm talking about now, you can find on aventumacademy.com slash mastermind. And that's where you will see when our applications open and close. It's application based only. So not everyone can join. I am really, really selective in who's going to make it to the round or not, because I don't want to. I don't want to put people like designers together who are making $2,000 and $200,000. It's totally different, you know, like the mindset, the business pricing, like everything is totally different. So I try to make groups that are on a similar level as you are and maybe a little bit above you so that you can learn from them. And so, yeah, in those nine weeks, what we cover on the calls, we are going to talk about mindset. And I'm not asking you to be a woo-woo. I just know that if you think that you cannot sign high paying ticket, like high ticket clients, your actions will match that and you will not be able to get them. So I will convince you and prove that you can build a profitable design business. Then we are going to talk about business. And, you know, there's so many designers out there and it's hard to stand out. So we'll guide you through positioning, messaging, figuring out who your clients are, where they hang out and whatnot. Actions you need to take to get them will also help you improve your proposals so clients never ghost you again. Then we'll talk about pricing. And I know that, you know, you should be charging more. I am not a better designer than you are, yet I charge more than you just to prove that you can do it too. I'm not bragging or anything like that. I'm all about business. So let's raise your rates and finally fully understand the value of your work. We also talk about your own brand. We'll go through your visuals and set up your websites to convert new traffic into paying clients. Like we'll go page by page through your entire site. Plus it will completely remap your portfolio. So you stop questioning yourself if it's good enough. Let's make it good. If it's not good already, then we'll talk about clients. Like you will learn the details of how to get visible on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Both organic. Clean paid. And I'll share my top strategy for letting clients find you so you don't have to chase them. I mean, who wants to chase clients, right? And we'll also cover how to get referrals. The next is marketing. Like a lot of designers are stuck if they should blog or go for networking events or post on Instagram, connect with people on LinkedIn or, you know, something else. So let's nail down your marketing strategy so you can stop wasting your time and focus on things that are bringing. In high ticket clients. Then we'll talk about team. Like how can you hire someone if you're not making enough money even for yourself? Like I know the feeling like what are you know, like what are you talking about, Katie? Well, it's possible to boost the sales using my proven strategy. I say proven because I've done it and it works and then outsource the work while keeping the profit. I'll talk more about that inside our masterminds and then sales. I know. I know you hate sales calls, but I have a sales call formula for you. I still open this document and read it out loud every time when I'm about to get a new client. So I will show you how to conduct sales calls like a pro from structuring the call to handling objections to closing the deal and all that. Plus, you get to connect with other designers once a week during our mastermind calls and ask them any questions you may have. Because there are designers who have. Done things that don't work. For example, we had a designer who was constantly posting on Instagram, but things were not working. And then the other designer basically told him, yeah, because you're doing this wrong. This is how you should do it. And then he just copied what she's been doing and he started getting clients, you know, so that's the power of community of designers who are going to help you get to the next level. And then as mentioned, you get bonuses and some VIP bonuses and all that. Again, you can go to eventiveacademy.com slash mastermind to learn more. And I don't know what else I would tell you about the mastermind. You know, this mastermind is for brand graphic web designers and other creatives who are really trying to grow their business, level up, get to the next level, learn more, learn from experienced designers, learn from people who grew their businesses, got to the next level already. So you can. And basically stop questioning yourself, like, what should I do next? Just get kind of like a blueprint and learn from others, like stop Googling. You will not be able to grow as fast as you will if you join our mastermind. So again, go to eventiveacademy.com slash mastermind to see when the next round starts. And if you think that this is the right fit for you, you can apply. And then me or someone from my team will get back to you. If you're accepted. And again, we accept only a few people per round. So if you would like to grow your business, get high paying clients, get high ticket clients like 10K, 15K, 20K, or even more, depending on where you are at the moment, then I highly encourage you to to apply. And I hope to see you there. And actually, one more thing, I'm not offering you a miracle cure to work two hours a week and build a business. I'm not offering you a miracle cure to work two hours a week and build a seven figure design business in a month. I mean, that's not realistic. It takes time to build a sustainable business. It's not an overnight thing, but I'm giving you the real proven strategies that you can use to sign high paying clients and build a profitable design business just like I did. However, there will be some work ahead of you. So if you are ready, then I'll see you inside our mastermind group. And I can't wait to see you there. I can't wait to see you scale your business and get to the levels you want. Thank you so much for joining us today on the profitable graphic designer podcast. Be sure to connect with us on Instagram at at event of Academy, where we share tips, stories and resources on how to grow a successful freelance brand graphic or web design business.
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