STORY TIME | Finding happiness doing what you love with Rachel Hurry

hey there designer friends today we have a really inspiring conversation with designer rachel hurry she has built a fantastic and phenomenal six-figure freelancing career while raising her daughter in south africa against all odds when people told her she couldn't do it so it's a really fantastic story and i hope you take a lot from it rachel has recently joined us in flux academy as a freelancing and web design coach and she is just doing amazing work i hope you'll see her a lot more on the channel soon in the meanwhile enjoy this conversation [Music] hey rachel what's up thank you for so much for coming on the channel it's such a pleasure to be here i'm excited you know it's going good um very exciting to be here it's currently freezing where i am yesterday was 30 degrees so it's very confusing but feeling good good good good good um i really wanted to share your story here on the channel because when you first told me your story i was kind of like blown away and i think this can be really either inspirational or instructional for a lot of people the way that you've built your career so far so let's let's actually start at the beginning what was your first kind of like design experience how did you get into design um i think that probably starts from the minute i was born but to be more helpful um i was always creative i grew up with a pencil in my hand and any surface that could have some sort of color on it it had color on it including my mother's passage walls so i was always very expressive but it soon dawned on me in high schools that i wanted to do more with creativity i kind of realized i definitely wasn't a fine artist even though i did fine art i enjoyed the strategic part of it i enjoyed being able to translate a brief the contextualization of the story and that was kind of at least i think that's where it started and that's where my love of solving what was your first experience then what was your first experience like with a brief or something like that oh so that most people just start off by doing logos for friends and that kind of stuff so it was funny i i never okay so here's the the irony of the story is is that i didn't even know design was a thing and i didn't even know that you you know you see logos but you don't if you're not in the industry or you're not exposed to something like that you don't make the connection you just see a picture and that's just what it is but i graduated high school and i knew that i needed to go and study and i got accepted to college for brand strategy because i wanted to do more of the think thinking part of it but my gut panicked and i actually rejected the the acceptance and i said no i want to work for a year i want a waitress i want to get some life underneath me and just take a break so i waitressed for a year and that was where it all started i there was a regular client who used to come in all the time and he was always doing stuff on his computer and i happened to stroll past one day and i made a comment on what he was working on and he said oh you seem to have an eye for this and spiraled out and he actually hired me to do my first logo i had no idea what i was doing i didn't even know what a logo was i was frantically searching through youtube and google trying to figure it out but i did it i think i got paid the equivalent of about fifty dollars for it um and that was where it all began i kind of did little bits and pieces i didn't do any more logos i ended up doing menus um i did so i worked at a couple of restaurants managed a restaurant for a while did all their logos help them with their social media did all of that stuff but it was very organic i wasn't really thinking about it and then i applied for a different college which was a creative business school where they teach you essentially how to get into the industry and that was where i started answering real briefs i got a part-time job so i was working at the same time and that was kind of it all just blew up from there so let's dive into the restaurant experience i think that is really really interesting because you weren't being hired to be a designer but you kind of like try to provide more value or be helpful at your job by just saying hey i think we can do this better but how did you how did you know how to do this how did you learn how to use the software how did you learn to do menus like printing stuff that's even more complex i i'm really very self-taught i am i've always been a bit of a techie so my dad actually he brought in some of the first computers into south africa and he opened up one of the first educational computer centers at a school in south africa and so i had a computer in my house from the early days back when people didn't really know it was a thing that you could do other stuff with it besides send an email or you know do or do whatever but i always was tinkering around working out how to do stuff ms paint the og and i think where it came from is i i figured it out i it was one of those things where i went okay this needs to happen so i need to work out how to do it and i don't remember whether i did i didn't have design software so i think i used microsoft word um don't kill me i did it in microsoft word i think i may have used a bit of powerpoint um but microsoft word it was and that was kind of where i went there was a print shop down the road from the restaurant and i just walked in and i said hi i know nothing about paper can you tell me what this should be done on and built a long-term relationship with them as well ended up doing all of my college printing with them as well it was just i've always just had that kind of mindset if something needs to be done figure it out and i think i knew how to talk a good talk i don't want to sound like a i bullshitted but i did i knew how to sell something and i knew how to say to them this is why you need to do something like this and they would say to me well can you do it i'd say yes and then i'd run home and go and work out how to do it i think i was just brave and were you getting paid for all of this extra work no at the restaurant or was this just like you want to do this go do it but yes so um i actually so how i got the menus specifically it was a upmarket cafe and um they they were printing their menus on like just plain printer paper and they were just cutting them out and it just looked awful and i just instinctively knew um the service industry has always been a passion of mine i loved my job as a manager and a waitress i really did some people say it's the worst job in the world it's hard but i loved it i loved creating a good experience and i knew that the menus were just rubbish they were they would fold and they would get stained and it was just not great it like killed the experience and so i actually designed them without the boss knowing went and had them printed cut i sourced little boards for them with clips you paid for the printing and i paid for it all myself and then i just put them in the restaurant i just put them there and then she came in and i handed her a menu and said what can i get you to drink and she didn't notice at first which was super i was like oh oof but then five minutes later she called me over and she said what are these and i said well and she said oh cool carry on there was no thank you there was no a good job there was just cool carry on and i was like okay so i very quickly learned that don't look for praise do something because you care about it and don't do it because you want something in return do it because you care about it that was that and also i i want to say something which seems obvious to me but i think a lot of people miss it which is you were working there so you were familiar with their problems you were familiar with their customers you knew how to help them do do better business um using design and again you just did it instead of asking for permission which i think is just wonderful so we apologize later yeah so i i have been racking my brain for the longest time to try and remember where the transition happened in terms of going not art design i think i stumbled across the college it was called red and yellow it's still called red and yellow and back then it was red and yellow school of magic and logic and it's not that anymore they've they've changed the way they do things now but when i saw it i saw this terrible website terrible website red and yellow and it looked like a preschool website and i said this this looks ridiculous i this doesn't look like a school that i want to go to but i visited the campus and i met the head lecturer and he was a eccentric genius and he showed me the work of a third year student in branding and i went i'm sold i want to do that i want to do that that's where i want to be and i took the application forms home it was like a three week application we had to answer a brief way to write a radio ad we had to illustrate we had to solve a creative brief for a brand project i had no idea how to do any of that i literally spent days trying to figure it out and then went in person to hand in my application to him and said there you go i'll see you on the other side very confident very cocky goodness me but uh it worked and they accepted me and the rest is history it was the best one somehow was it like a four-year design school kind of thing or it was three years and i was one of these people who see i think i don't know if it's the same in other countries but in south africa to do a degree is very prestigious to do a diploma is somewhat not so so so a degree is almost like a bachelor degree so they call it a bachelor degree and it's kind of like you know you go to bachelor's and then i think you go to like honors and then you go to masters and then you do all of that stuff but you you can get pretty much you can get pretty far with just a degree but it's a complete misconception because actually i know so many people who've got a degree and don't have work or still figuring it out or don't understand you know they can't go anywhere with that degree and so i made a decision early on i said i'm not interested in a degree i don't need the piece of paper i just want a good education that's going to allow me to think properly so that i can do what i want to do which is my own thing didn't know what that looked like so it was a diploma which essentially was not considered a good thing at all and was sort of frowned upon but i was so excited about it because it was a practical course so it worked in three week cycles and every from second year onward so first year was pure like groundwork they taught you all the basics and you did like basic activities and you went through a whole bunch of stuff but second year you started answering briefs and every three weeks you got a new brief and you had to conceptualize execute and present in three weeks on and on and on and it was gruesome but it was fantastic because you learned quickly you got fit you learned how to answer a brief you learnt how to do everything from the strategy to the concept to the execution printing um development all of it we did code we did full-blown digital skills they taught us their full adobe suite from scratch they taught us marketing they taught us everything and we had to combine it into a practical brief and that was i mean barring becoming a mother that was i got so little sleep it's actually a joke i don't know how you became a mother while studying as well no so that happened after i had a friend who became a mom in second year and we all like piled together her son became this the class mascot and that we were all so proud of her and his name was he had a cool name and he was just the coolest kid and she was the coolest person and so that was fun mine came after thankfully got it and you mentioned you were working while studying you were also working part-time yes so i waitressed part-time i carried on waitressing and then i also worked for a bunch of different companies here and there just doing graphic design um and then i made it like agencies or studios or something like that i think so it was mostly it was mostly through relationship i'd meet someone mostly through my waitressing actually i met the most amazing people and told them what i did and i had a little portfolio it wasn't i think it was it was just a pdf where i'd like put some stuff in and the college was great they were very adamant on building a portfolio so they had us doing that from the beginning on behance so i had that which i could send them but i was very terrible at keeping it updated so don't tell my lecturers but it's very common um yeah so i got all that work and i think in third year i met a guy who ran a company who's which is now a very popular company i don't know if you've heard of them but they're called over and they are an app like canva that do graphics and things like that and you can build different graphics when they started they were based in cape town south africa and they had their headquarters there and i met one of the main guys we hit it off we had a great creative conversation and they hired me to do some of their graphics for them and that was ongoing i did that through the whole of third year and then eventually i had to stop because i just it was showcase time and i got too busy so i left that job but yeah i was pretty much working two or three jobs at any given moment along with my college career so what happened after college um so how it works is at the end of third year we do a thing called showcase which is essentially like artists putting on a display of all their best work and they create a portfolio a proper portfolio by hand and i created mine and actually hand stitched it and it was like this big beautiful white book of all my work um and we put on a showcase and all the industry people come and they essentially come and shop so it's a it's a bit like being on display but you know and everybody gets all dressed up and there's music and speeches and it's it's a great time but it's very stressful because essentially you've got to go back over all three years of your work and fix it so that it's ready for showcase anyway we did showcase and that was fantastic i met a couple of really amazing industry people but i was always uncomfortable not because they were horrible people but because i didn't want to go into the industry we'd done internships i'd worked with a couple of the agencies just as a volunteer and i just didn't want to be there i just i can't put my finger on it i think i just didn't it didn't feel right i didn't feel like i could add the best value i didn't i didn't feel like i was going to be taken seriously which was unfortunately the truth in many cases but they tell you you're crazy if you want to go and do your own thing you have no idea what you're doing you have no experience blah blah blah nobody's gonna hide who is who is they by the way who is there everybody so fellow students parents not my parents my parents are entrepreneurs so they were like go go go but so i was lucky in that sense lecturers i don't think they meant it in a malicious way i think it was more a case of going look you're young you know nothing don't fall on your face go and work at an agency get some experience and then start which to be fair probably would have been a good plan i don't think there's anything wrong with going into the industry so anyway i decided cool fine i will do that so i accepted a job with a small studio that's focused on branding only and i thought okay cool this way i don't have to do advertising i could just focus on branding which is what i was passionate about at the time and she the owner of that studio had a web development studio that she worked closely with and i liked them and wanted to kind of peep over their shoulders and see what they were doing because i was interested in web so that went well i accepted the job and a month in found out i was pregnant so that threw me just when you were started i'd just gotten started i was happy we were doing some really cool work with some really great clients i'd moved out i'd moved into a flat with a roommate everything was kind of perfect and then i was like oh well ding dong as they say so um everything changed after that my mindset shifted and i think up until that point i mean i don't i always have to actually forget about this but i i worked very hard in college and i actually came first every single year in college and then i i won some award for being like a creative strategic thinker blah blah blah and everybody told me i'd really do very well in the industry and that you know blah blah and i got all these interview requests and i felt i don't like telling this part of the story because i always feel a bit like a moo because i didn't i didn't want any of it and i felt uncomfortable with it and it i felt like i was letting everybody down by not going for it and not wanting to climb that ladder and be like a prestigious art director and do all of that stuff i just didn't want it and i felt like i'd let people down and i'd taken the spot and not used it and then when i fell pregnant i was like oh my word i've now gone even further to just completely stuff it up and it was quite hard for me because i went well oh dear what now and the the irony is that it was exactly what should have happened because up until that point i'd been hiding and i'd been pretending like i just wanted to be a graphic designer i just wanted to sit quietly in a corner and do my thing and go home at the end of every day and it was okay and i was happy with this much money and i was happy i wasn't but i didn't give my self permission to want it and falling pregnant with my daughter woke me up and i went okay it's time so i think i handed in my resignation the next week and said to her i'm happy to stay for the next four to five months but then i'm going and unfortunately because of the situation i think she was quite disappointed because she just hired me and here i am sitting and saying well i'm gonna leave now and i think it was quite stressful for her um and so she she took it well but also not well it was like a bit of an awkward situation i think she thought i was lying that i didn't know about it when i was applying for the job but i didn't it's fine so she was quite she i think she thought i was lying but anyway so that put a bit of a rift in our relationship so working there was hard um and that was that was a hard time i learned a lot of valuable lessons i worked long hours and i didn't know what to do i knew that it wasn't going to be this and what was your plan what were you thinking i didn't have one i didn't have one and i went why did you so why did you quit like why because i went if i'm gonna be it it was literally i remember sitting outside and i was looking up at the wonderful cape town table mountain because i could see it from my flat and it was quite it was quite an iconic moment like from the movies kind of thing and i literally was sitting there looking at the mountain i suddenly went if i'm going to be a good mom my daughter needs to see me making brave decisions about my happiness and i'm not happy in this job so i'm gonna quit and then i'll figure it out and like i always have i will figure this out too and i did i think i came home one evening from work and it was like seven o'clock at night i'd worked overtime i was exhausted i'd had to go grocery shopping i dropped the groceries it was just one of those days when everything had gone wrong and i sat down at the table in tears feeling very sorry for myself and i suddenly went that's enough that's enough build a business build it do it shut up and do it so it's like okay all right i mean building a business and going out on your own is overwhelming as it is and i i can imagine being pregnant you're tired you're stressed you know after you're going to give birth you're going to have way more work on your hand like i was very naive i didn't i didn't i didn't know how much work was coming um i had no idea but so what happened is i went okay how am i gonna do this and i sat down at my computer and i remember jumping onto instagram and looking for graphic designers and i just started following all of them following following following following following anybody who is doing anything creative that looked like they were doing it by themselves and i particularly looked overseas because i knew that south africa wasn't the best place to look it was very taboo being a freelancer you definitely don't get taken seriously as one so i knew i couldn't be a freelancer or i didn't want to be at least i stumbled across a girl who ran a studio and i saw the name and i went but it's just one person how is it a studio if it's just one person and anyway i started following her and i watched her journey and she actually did i think she did a blog post or she did an instagram post where she explained why she had called herself a studio and how she was very proud to be a one-woman studio and she was doing everything from branding to websites and i went i can do that i can do that why not and so i basically it snowballed from there i then literally jumped online and looked for every single piece of content course tutorial whatever to have that had anything to do with business naming branding graphic design web design i specifically focused on web design because i was learning quite a lot on branding already in the studio environment so i didn't want to focus too much on that i mostly focused on how the hell do i build a business what does that look like how do i do finances how does that work how do i do an invoice how do i make a proposal what is this world that exists and i spent five months every single night and in all my lunch breaks studying essentially and testing i had a little black book which i still have and i was actually looking for it just now because i wanted to show you but i couldn't find it um where i wrote everything down i wrote all my ideas i wrote back then i was actually doing positioning and niching i just didn't know that that was what i was doing just working out what to call myself what services i could offer based on what i already knew i knew i couldn't do branding on my own because i didn't know enough about the process so i thought okay well i'll start with what i do know and i'll just try and sell graphic design i'd had that experience with the over app so i thought okay well i can use that that's a nice client you know i'd been working with some other clients so that was cool and i just nothing clicked and nothing clicked and nothing clicked i think it was in april which was two months before when you say nothing clint when you say nothing clicked just didn't feel right nothing clicked in your head or you tried things and you got feedback that this doesn't work no so it nothing felt right to me so i was i was trying to work out how to sell myself but nothing was making sense so i was like i'll call myself a digital designer and i'm like what's a digital designer who needs that like why not just go and get a job like this doesn't make sense so i also think i had pregnancy brain to be fair so i don't think i was thinking that logically but nothing made sense and then i suddenly went stop talking rubbish i think it was about in april where my roommate connected me with her aunt who had had a bad branding experience with another designer and was looking for some help to get it back on its feet and i said i'll do it and i looked at it and i went i know how to fix that i know how to fix it i do i know how to make it look better and so i worked out how to do a proposal i made it up i didn't know what the hell i was doing i did three packages because that's what they say you should do put ridiculous pricing on there i mean it was now i look back and i'm like oh cute but it was you know that was it made sense for the time and it made sense for where i was and she approved the middle package and i was like this is the best thing that's ever happened to me oh my god so and it was a great experience i learned a lot it was the first time i used a project management tool i think i used trello and i made it up as i went and it went great she loved it that piece is still up on my beer hans portfolio if anybody is interested in going to have a look and unfortunately she ended up going a different way with her business but she loved the process and we ended up becoming great friends and she gave me a bunch of other work her sister came to me and i did that project and then a family friend came but i charged everyone i never did any work for free not really at least um i did add-ons for free so it was like they did the branding with me and then i would throw in business cards or i would throw in a pdf or something like that because i wasn't sure i just didn't know and it i just carried on and every time i got a client i improved my process changed my documents updated my questionnaires and pitched for every opportunity i could and did a little bit of everything and carried on eventually pitched for every opportunity wait wait wait i want to dive into it when you say pitched into every opportunity it it sound like it was spreading word to mouth but from my experience these things usually take a lot of times it's not like they all happen word to mouth within like a month or so so what was how were things rolling like you're pregnant were you already giving birth at the middle of this happened before you gave birth so the timeline goes i i got that client just before i quit my job so i actually was working with her while i was still at my other job um and i finished up her project just before i finished my actual job and then went to go and have my baby so i left my job in the first two weeks of june and she was born on the 25th so there was a very narrow gap i spent a bit of time at home i moved out of that flat and back in with my parents which was really lucky but we were they were in a tiny studio apartment because obviously it was just the two of them so having me move back home was awkward but hey i lived in the little loft room up at the top and that was what it was and after that i didn't do any work right after she was born it was i had a really hard time i had a really rough birth and then i had a really really hard time with her for the first three months so i didn't do anything except exist from day to day it was really a horrible time and when she was about three months old things eventually started getting a bit better and i actually approached my college and i said i can't do much but can i help with anything because i knew i needed to i'd run out of money and i was like okay i'm not gonna ask my parents for money i just didn't i've never been i didn't i don't like asking for money so i was like i need to work out how to make some money so let me go and speak to my college because so i spoke to them and my design lecturer actually said you can help us with our marketing so i did work for them for about six months and it was just enough to get me through and when riley was four months old we moved out here to the bush and everything got better after that that's when i got the my clients her sister came to me and when i moved out here i started meeting more people different people people from the safari industry people photographers all sorts of interesting people and that's where it started and i would pitch but it wasn't like how did you mean you should hide it family connections so i would say i'm trying to remember it was a bit of a blur i'll be honest i don't really remember much of the first couple of months when we moved out here because i mean i was a mess i was sleeping maybe two hours a night i think at most so it was yeah i was in mom mode fully but there's a whole long story but the short story is that we met this couple who run a lodge out here a beautiful four-star luxury lodge and they are the most amazing couple and we met them through family friends so we had dinner but it was a it was a family dinner it wasn't like a formal dinner or anything like that and i'm always listening and i'm always paying attention to what people are saying and and they happen to be talking about their business and how they wanted to transform it and change it and blah blah blah and i just snuck in that i do branding and websites i just snuck it into the conversation i happen to be working with another client that i knew from back then on a bit of stuff so they were like oh that's very interesting can you show us some of your work so i showed them a little bit of it and they were like that's great that's fantastic congrats well done and then we never spoke of it again two months later i get an email from an agency in cape town saying they've got this client who wants to redo their website we got your name from so and so would you like to pitch for the job and i went but i know these people i had dinner with them i know their business this is weird why i didn't i thought this must be some coincidence or they've asked to like talk to me but they've gone the professional route so i thought okay well i won't say anything i got on a call with them asked them some questions about the website i'd never done a website ever i was like okay let's just do it why not did a proposal i did a whole bunch of research i did a quick proposal course and then i revamped my whole proposals put like a whole thing together pitched for it and i got the job only two days later did she phone me the client now she phoned me she's like rachel i didn't know it was you so it was it was a complete coincidence that i'd gotten the job and she was like ecstatic and she was like this is so exciting she commended me on my professionalism of not name dropping so she said she's very proud of the fact that i didn't go oh well yes i know them and have this relationship i just i was just trying to be professional but she really valued that because i think they get a lot of that so they get a lot of people sort of using relationship to get places and i just didn't want to be that person so i didn't i kept it to myself pitched for the job like i would any other job and got it and then went oh what now [Music] yeah can we talk about this for a second because you said i've never done a website in my life and i just i'll figure it out but i talk with so many designers especially early on they are so afraid of taking on a commitment where they have not done this before and they just feel they lack the confidence so like what was your thinking process about it how did you know you can figure it out and not let them down and you know take money and won't be able to deliver i think so the first thing i was very transparent i i said to the guys this is one of the first projects of this size i never said to them i've never done a website because i'd obviously done web work i'd done it in college i dabbled with it a little bit i'd been studying for six months on all sorts of other content i knew theoretically but i never put it into practice so i said to them this is probably one of the first projects of this size which is why i'm only charging you x so i'd like to use this opportunity to learn and to give you what i know but please understand that i'm not coming in as a complete professional so you know you need to tell me if you're comfortable with that and i think they were both attracted to the lower price but i think they were attracted to the thinking so i had organically even just i think i've built this way as a person i've always been a problem solver naturally and so i think maybe i have an advantage in that sense that already i'm i'm about problem solving i'd had to i mean this goes right back to early family days where my family has moved around we've had to deal with ridiculous situations but we've always problem solved we've always thought out of the box we've always been carry on what's next next step carry on moving don't sit and wallow carry on do it figure it out later um you learn best on the go the best way to learn to swim is to be chucked into the deep end i mean not literally because you're drunk but theoretically speaking and i said to them i know enough and here's how i would like to shift things i i spoke to the stuff i did know which was about communication and just being clear their their old website was very cluttered and all of that and i already knew that that wasn't the best approach so i said to them you know this is how i want to approach it this is what i think we should do and do you agree and they said yes they then booked a that i think it was one of those situations where they were like yoshua like you're sure you don't know what you're doing because i think i pitched myself quite well for not knowing what i was doing um again we'd been in the whole of college we'd learned how to present we'd learned how to communicate we'd learned how to articulate ideas clearly and so i was able to do that really effectively and i almost didn't even need a portfolio to back me up because i could speak to the problems that i could see and you know i just spent a lot of time listening and we did we did a three day workshop in cape town it was the first time i'd left my daughter and it was terrifying but it was great and we did a three-day workshop and we had a copywriter we had the marketing team so i wasn't alone i i didn't manage they brought in they brought in the rest they brought in all of those people so i was just the designer just the designer there was a development team as well and i spent a lot of time asking questions and listening and then it came time for me to present wireframes and i went what are wireframes in the meeting they told you we're looking to see wireframes and you're like so rachel have you next week and i went yeah i was like we were sitting there and they were like so rachel do you want to talk about the wireframes and i went let me google that let me check that on google i have never been so embarrassed but that was i actually have subsequently told my client about this and we had a little laugh about it but i literally i bullshitted my way out of that meeting i cannot tell you i i went well guys we're not going to do wireframes just yet because we haven't talked about the content structure and the site i didn't know what i was saying i didn't know what i was saying but i went i don't have wireframes i'm not ready i don't know what these are oh my god what am i gonna do and so i went no no we're not ready for those yet and then they were like oh good point and then the copywriter came in with her content structure and i was like furiously writing these this went home that night studied wireframes whipped out wireframes only went to bed at like three o'clock that morning i came to the next workshop and said right guys now we can talk about wireframes it was a mess it was a mess but it was great classic very quickly yeah i learned very quickly and the wireframes were awful and didn't make any sense but i adjusted them made edits we worked on it in the workshop and the website turned out beautifully so it was a good it was a good experience and then it snowballed from there because then word of mouth and then i got this client got that client got this client and then it just i've been very lucky and since then have basically been booked solid for three years so very lucky amazing amazing so do you mentioned lucky and i don't i think luck plays a part in everybody's uh journeys but yeah but it does seem like you've done a lot of things right and you took a lot of courageous decisions along the way also made plenty of money can we can we talk about the process of raising prices because you've mentioned we've heard in detail like the about the early days and you've mentioned you you've lured them in with low prices and i'm just trying to learn here what was the process of raising your prices i raised my prices with every new client what were you thinking about um i wasn't i'm being honest i didn't know what i was doing i couldn't find any information out there that spoke about how to price projects what these things cost all i know is is that i had the reference from my agency job and what she charged and i went there's no way i'm ever going to get there there's just no way i don't know how to charge that much money there's how why what what do you need to have in order to validate that pricing i knew that you needed a good process i knew that you needed a solid client experience and that was instinctive i think i i i likened it to the service industry so this is where my waitressing came in and i went okay what's the difference between a quick pavement coffee shop and a five star restaurant and i instinctively created the parallels between the experience you get here or should get and the experience you get here and also likened it instinctively to the people and went okay the person who's gonna want to dash into a sidewalk coffee shop for a cappuccino is not necessarily the same person who goes to the five star restaurant they could be however but their needs are different and so i worked out first where i wanted to be did i want to be a five-star restaurant or was i quite happy being the cappuccino shop on the corner and for the first little while i was very happy being the cappuccino shop on the corner because i knew that i didn't then need to lose my mind over this high value experience i could just do the basics really well and i was happy there i was making enough money i mean i wasn't making enough money i was i was just getting by my parents thankfully didn't make me pay rent or anything like that so i my expenses were fairly low comparatively speaking so i was making enough money to sort of live and have everything i needed for my daughter and i i didn't i wasn't interested in raising my prices until i realized the clients that were coming to me were higher value clients and they wanted solutions that required bigger thinking so bigger website jobs or branding that wasn't just not that they're less important but it wasn't just a photographer who was part-time this was a business now this was a safari camp that needed to book more clients and needed to redo their entire their entire camp they were renovating they needed this brand to represent them and they needed to be out there and i went my little coffee shop on the corner is not really cutting it and i kind of tried to equate it to hours so i i kind of did okay so i spent about six hours on this i spend about five hours on that that takes me about 12 hours there's about two hours of meetings and feedback so according to my hourly rate which you can get from just knowing the industry there's standards with that so i used that and went okay there's the number right i need to make at least this much in order for this to make sense and then i did a stupid thing and charged under i don't know why but i went that looks like too much money so i charged under i don't know why but i did that for a short while but actually i don't regret it because what i did was i've built a reputation for delivering a high quality service for affordable rates not cheap rates affordable so i i had a i then started gaining a reputation for the type of experience i delivered so people are saying well she's very clear she's well articulated she's she helped me understand my business and that happened organically i then realized i needed to charge for that it sort of dawned on me when i started watching youtube channel youtube channels and i then sort of discovered you i discovered the future and a couple of other guys on youtube and i started watching these videos going okay okay i need to take myself and what i'm doing more seriously and i started charging for my brand strategy i started charging for my workshops um i doubled my pricing for branding and booked three clients in one go at that high rate and i nearly lost my mind i came home and i was like what is happening but i did three things i did three things i changed the way i did my proposals i insisted on a call or a meeting before any proposals got sent so that i could understand what they needed where they were in their business and how i could help and then translated that into a 32-page proposal believe it or not yeah which had case studies it had goals and objectives it had how we're going to solve this problem the tools that i use what my process looks like what the timeline looks like [Music] sometimes it had a little bit of information on like legal bits if i was dealing with a client that was particularly finicky put everything in that proposal and most of the time i only pitched one package so and then you could add on so it was not package a b or c because i went this is what you need this is what you need i i can't offering you less doesn't make sense so i'll give you the gold and then you can turn that into platinum if you really want to um and that worked really really well and so i booked those three clients and then what i made like how long did it take you to create one of these proposals two days two days per proposal yeah so it's like a week to send three proposals yeah i took that expense on and i decided that that was the way i wanted to do business that and up until recently just because i think they weren't the right fit for me up until recently every proposal i sent signed the client quite literally every proposal i sent i signed the client there was only one did you ever get it on your own no never i have never had anybody question me on my pricing i have had one client say to me this is out of my budget what can we do and i said no problem we'll reduce the scope so this is what i can do for that price are you happy and then she said yes let's go so we just cut it down we did a full branding thing and then we only did i think three pages for her website instead of like the full thing but that she ended up coming back to me six months later to add on those extra pages when she had a bit more budget because she was able to raise her prices and book more clients and so she ended up with more capital and she came back and we expanded on her website and i've subsequently done a bunch of stuff for her we've done service guides we've done pricing pamphlets we've done all sorts so i i worked very hard to not up my pricing without feeling like i was delivering the luxury experience that came with that pricing but at the same time i did get a client come in who i really wanted to help but i knew she couldn't afford me it was just not going to happen and so i sat down with her and i said this is what this cut costs usually however i really believe in your work i want to help so where is your budget and what can we do and then she said this is how much money i have i said okay fine well how about we do this and we do a barter agreement so you give me x and i will give you y and we'll put it in a contract and then you know there you go so i've always been it really genuinely i can say this honestly was never about the money for me it was always about empowering that business to do better because that's what what made me happy and the money thing i think that's maybe why i was as successful because i think my clients could tell that it was about solving the problem and it wasn't about how much money i could get out of them and yes i had processes in place and contracts and all of that stuff that you're supposed to have but i never needed to use them i've never had i've only had one client who took too long to pay me um but there was a problem there so on her side and it was solved and she eventually did pay me but i've been very careful to nurture relationship first so that when it came to payment there weren't any issues and i i don't know whether it was the relationship that i built with clients or whether they were just nice people i think they were just nice people as well but even with bigger clients that i've had less of a relationship with i've never had problems with payments because i was always careful to not make it about the money and so every time i've increased my pricing i've made sure that i've increased the experience that they get with that so they either give examples process um quality of experience so i would say for example it's it's just the quality of the experience it's tough to explain i was trying to actually explain this to a friend of mine the other day but it's the way i communicate with them it's like when you go to an airbnb and you just have a host that takes care of you they check in whatever you need physically in a cafe or in your office or are these are these remote clients sometimes so while i was working here in this area most of my clients were here so i could meet them in person so that was always what we did either at their office i don't have an office so we were at coffee shops or whatever while that was still allowed and then when that stopped happening it was just on a call whether it was a whatsapp call a zoom call it was always just talking face to face to connect first um and i think that really helped i think that really made them feel safe because i think i had a natural understanding that this was a lot of money and it's scary to invest that much money in your business and i knew that and i didn't want them to feel like i was coming in just to take their money i actually wanted to help and i think for every single client i've over delivered i have but i also think that that's just who i am as a person but i don't regret it because what i gave them in connection and in relationship and in trust has repaid itself over and over again because they have referred me referred me referred me referred me my business is 85 referral i've only just started getting like direct inquiries from around the world based on instagram and stuff like that but up until this point it's been full-blown referral i haven't even had to pitch for work genuinely i haven't had to i have never sent a cold email i've never done any of that because i think what i've been really really really focused on is building those relationships and and the experience when somebody's working with me it's laying out the the boundaries very clear up front helping them understand what the process looks like when what is going to happen making sure that i do the best i can to deliver when i say i'm going to um to make sure that they feel heard that i give them guidelines on what feedback to give so that it's not just here you go um i've used my presentation skills from college to present the work every time not just the first time every revision i now use loom because we can't always find times to talk so i now use loom to present the work i do a full walkthrough i explain the concept i explain the reasoning beside behind my decisions so it's it's really a luxury experience and it requires a lot of time for me but that's why they pay me what they do and that's why they get what they get and why they're happy at the end of it um and they go wow that was transformative that was very cool um and they speak a lot about clarity so i think a lot of that is that comes into my work as well and then it's just the handing off i feel like a lot of designers don't get this part right um it's a recent thing for me but i now do a goodbye package and it's like a little bit of a pdf about what we did together and what we achieved and how you can get hold of me and here's your special loyalty pricing so i give them loyalty pricing if you've been my client before then you get i think it's like 15 off any other service going forward and you also get a referral thing so if you refer me to somebody else and they book me you get x off of further work so i've tried to like i go okay well that's clearly working so let me leverage that yeah let me leverage that so that's worked a couple of times um not not every client gets it and i can't really tell you why so look my process has got holes it still could use some work i still miss deadlines i still have to say to clients look we can have to move this to next week i'm still a mother first and that takes priority always and so a lot of the time i have to flip everything on its head because she needs me she's sick she can't go to school it's whatever it is but i try and build that in but at the end of the day for me it's about communication and if a client wants to whatsapp me they can whatsapp me that's just that's just what i've decided to do because i would rather my client feel like i'm literally their pocket cheerleader there for them through everything i mean i have hours so if they message me at 9pm at night i'm not not gonna reply they know that they'll only i'll only hear from them and most of the time they're very apologetic and they're like sorry for messaging you i just had a thought and i'm like no problem no problem it's my job as the designer to decide what i'm comfortable with there's no point getting offended with somebody messaging me at 9pm just don't answer them message them back tomorrow morning it's fine you know and i think that's a big part of it as well is never getting offended by anything that a client does or says if they ask a stupid question it's not a stupid question they just don't understand so educate them i've spent the equivalent of three days walking a client through the branding process because they just didn't understand it and they eventually didn't even book with me they decided to go a different route because they realized their business idea was nowhere near what it needed to be but i consider that a success because it would have been impossible to go through an identity journey with them with a faulty business idea so i consider that a success that time that i invested was worth it and yeah and you and you did provide them value because you've consulted with yeah i mean i didn't charge them for it but yeah i didn't charge them for it but hey they did they did get me another client though they referred me to somebody else who did book so that was completely a success in my mind yeah i mean there's a lot to it but i think i've just really tried to get the the basics right in terms of just client experience through amazing rachel thank you so much for for sharing your story it was i think you did so many things right and i think you've shared a lot of valuable tips and insights for a lot of people to pick up along their journey any final kind of like tips for people starting out that you'd like to share say yes to as much as possible i think where there is value in um knowing what you want to do there is also value in learning and right in the beginning especially right in the beginning the more experience you have just working with clients is gonna get you in the door you don't have to do it forever you can do it for three months you can do it for six months but just say yes and i mean within reason people let's be logical but my biggest advice is saying yes because that's what i did and it worked for me it got me connections it got me experience i made mistakes i got things wrong i got things right and it was basically very messy but it all works out in the end fantastic and i hope we'll see you a lot more here on the channel thank you so we'll see we'll see i'm excited

Channel: Flux

Views: 3,853

Rating: 4.9581151 out of 5

Keywords: become a graphic designer 2020, freelance web designer, graphic designer job, ran segall, web design, web design business 2020, web design freelance, web design freelancer, web designer career, web design 2020, flux academy

Id: 1BJysFzVhVE

Length: 61min 45sec (3705 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021