How a Design Agency REALLY Works (Free Template)

imagine you could see how a real design agency works see all their insight their accounting proposals everything that's really going on well in this video you're actually going to see that hi everybody what's up and welcome to another segment of business time usually on the segment i share some of my experiences as a freelance designer for over 15 years today i want to share somebody else's experience but i think it's going to be super valuable for you so here's the story a few weeks ago i was in the warsaw poland for elements talks i was given a talk there but i also got to see a talk from carly iris i think that's her name i hope i'm pronouncing it correctly she's an amazing person and gave an amazing talk she was a founder in a design agency called howraph and that was a really cool design agency and they've recently shut down their agency so basically this is their studio um this is their studio website as you can see it was pretty um radical design but it's pretty cool anyway they shut down their their design agency as you can see here 2016-2019 but they did something amazing they've actually shared their entire google drive of their own agencies they've opened this up for the public to see this is really incredible and i'm so grateful that other people do that i thought i was transparent about how i run my business and i share my financial situation with you but actually sharing the profit loss and all the documents and we're gonna go through this right now i think this is so valuable so i'm gonna go cover this um on this video but you should definitely check the link in the description and go mess out with these documents yourself and see them and explore and try to learn as much as you can because this is so valuable that a real design agency shows really how they work how they think what their processes are like and that will really help you build systems and and uh processes for your own whether you're a freelancer or building a design agency or thinking about opening a design agency or opening up or you have a design agency maybe it's not that profitable because they did have a profitable design business so that's really really interesting so let's kind of like start digging into this folder here so oh dang let's start with administrative so they have accounting business plan legal stuff studio space accounting i'm a geek for you know spreadsheets so let's see that balance sheet let's open it up okay so this one i see is a pdf it's not exactly alright it's not a spreadsheet but it's a pdf and let's see what we see here so they've made for what date is this this is all date so i guess it's a total for well it doesn't say the date but uh assets 107 000 in liabilities let's see yeah so as you can see the liabilities are really small and after even after they took on their own owner's pay and personal expenses they were still profitable okay right so the income was 600 000 and they still had left 107 so that's interesting but uh let's keep going what do their expenses look like right expense transactions all right and so they were renting a studio in new york city so they paid 600 for that paid for google storage um again rent right so basically besides rent and google they weren't paying much stuff which is uh pretty good pretty lean business i would say let's see what else they have here pricing so small okay so i guess all right so here's how they used to price their projects so brand identity kickoff discovery they used to charge five thousand dollars for that to do branding ident this is really interesting i know so many designers are looking to understand how much other people um charge so check this out for deck of concept concept sprints two rounds they would charge forty thousand or maybe three around sixty thousand dollars for brand identity 25 to 50. for websites website design only thirty five thousand dollars e-commerce website seventy to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that's nice that's pretty awesome all right so this is pricing always interesting profit and loss let's check out profit and lost all right so and this is for okay 2016. they've generated 37 000 and this is not a lot and operating income 28 but doesn't say their um yeah it doesn't give their ex like salaries here okay so 2016 was uh so check this out on 2016 they've made 36 000 but on 2018 they've made half almost close to half a million dollar and at that point they already had expenses such as marketing ask my accountant charity coffee legal so their expenses were 72 000 still very profitable and there were i think three partners so if you divide that by three it's still pretty good salary um all right so profit sharing let's see what else is here business plan financial paid okay so this i'm not going to go over this right now but i remember i've read this um so i think um [Music] carly went to some some business course and they had to kind of pitch their agency and this is really interesting because here they're explaining why their agency as a is a good business has a good business model and if they're looking maybe to raise cash or a loan so this is really interesting for you to read to understand how they were thinking about their business let's see what else is here by administrative so new business lost business all right so capabilities deck let's see that's probably what they would pitch new clients so this is design around designing some knowledge heart who we are so this is really really incredible this is the uh presentation that they would show new clients and how they would pitch themselves that's amazing that they did this in google doc and it actually doesn't look very bad so this is pretty cool what else do they have here so this is case studies this is for clients competition this is interesting okay so this one right now it looks it looks pretty empty but this is how they would maybe think about competitors but i was hoping to see who their competitors are oh but they did create an air table with all design studios in new york city oh wow so this is yeah wow all right so if you you're in new york city you do have a lot of competition obviously um [Music] but i don't know if this is kind of like is if this is something that they did or this is kind of like a public thing i don't know if this is helpful right now but i remember here they had kind of like they showed all their clients and how they found their clients but this is interesting they have a document with target clients so those are clients that they wanted to work with right so spotify alphabet hbo [Music] and they've kind of tried to make a kind of a score as to maybe who they have a chance a good chance to work with how much revenue would they made i think so many designers are actually not doing this this is so smart it takes time it is research but it's very focused on who do you want to work with incredible discovery call all right so here's the structure of how a discovery call would look like this is really really incredible really great so who's using your website what are they using it for that's really great what i love about them is they literally systemized everything here right so they really have a dock for everything culture metrics let's see what their critical metrics looks like all right so this is their sales this is that looks pretty much like a cash flow statement or something like this yeah how many months of owner's pay do they have left this is incredible um one last thing let's try to see what else is here potential active studio stuff what is that about branding marketing talks values what is this let's zoom this in oh i can't zoom this in all right okay so they've actually created rules for themselves like always be able to explain a decision don't ever do something because that's the way it's been done before that's really awesome that's really awesome that they've actually documented everything they did in a google google doc or spreadsheet and that they're willing to share this with everybody today so we didn't go over everything obviously but i think this is so valuable a lot of how you learn is see how other people are doing things successfully and they did shut down their their studio but basically not because it wasn't profitable just because they each wanted to go in a different direction it wasn't working anymore but still seeing how they work and as i said i think that that carly went to some business class or something because obviously you can see how they know how to manage a business they know what docs they need they know how to build processes and and how to put targets and goals and and obviously do a good design work and be successful as a design agency so be sure to check this out i think this is invaluable i don't know how long this will stay up and available for everybody but while it is make sure you make good use of this because this information is gold and i'll see you on the next video you

Channel: Flux

Views: 50,051

Keywords: design, freelance, tel aviv, ran segall, ran segal, רן סגל, work, life, vlog, startups, how a design agency really works, free template, free, tutorial, documents, agency, design studio, hawraf, behind the scenes, real, accounting, proposals, company, secrets, tips, tricks, how to, resources, web design, ux, ui

Id: LiuKFffwN4E

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2019