Transcription
So looking professional isn't just about the look of your Instagram or how fancy your logo is. It's actually about five systems that you need in place behind the scenes of your business. And so today I'm breaking down the five that actually matter for you so that you can start being a legit business on the forefront and in the back end as well. And obviously I will be talking about design because that's important. But that's only one part of the five things I'm going to share about today. So, make sure you hang around because number two is one that most people seem to avoid, but it's usually the one that's keeping their business growing slow and kind of stuck in hobby mode. And number five is honestly probably one of the best ones at getting repeat clients for your business, which is in reality one of the most sustainable ways to grow your business. So, let's dive on in.
So, hello. Welcome to a brand new video. Thank you for being here. I am Jackie. I am a graphic designer and pretty much my whole dream and purpose of my business is to help fellow business owners create their own professional branding and graphics. Today is obviously a little bit different and we're more focusing on the business as a whole because I can't go always talking about branding without sharing with you about the business as a whole because there's so much to running a successful business. And now that I've been doing it for 12 years, I have a few things that I have racked up in knowledge that I would like to pass on to you, my fellow business owner. And so I want to let you know that you don't have to be a big business to act like one. So you might think that earning $100 in your business makes you a big business or that earning $10 million in your business makes you big. Depends on what your definition of big is. But what we do want to focus on is having the systems in our business. So no matter what size we are, we're running our business in a far less stressful manner. Because having systems in place will help you to feel more confident. It's going to help you to scale more easily. Scaling means to grow your business and it's going to help you to stop reinventing the wheel. And when you're doing these things, you're going to be starting to work far more efficiently, which means you're going to be able to grow a lot faster and stop getting in your own way in reality.
All right, so let's get into those five systems now that you need to be a legit business that grows and that lasts and stands the test of time. So number one is having a clear offer and message. If you don't know what I mean, stick around. I will explain it to you. But pretty much the this is two parts. Having a clear offer pretty much means knowing what you are selling. And having a clear message means knowing how you're going to communicate that to people. Cuz I can have the best graphic design course in the world, and I do, but if I don't know how to communicate that with you, you're going to say, "I don't have the money for that right now, or I don't have the time for that right now." I need to know how to communicate that message to you in a way that you as my audience feel like you need it. So for your business, it's really important to have a clear offer and a clear message. So thinking through what is my main offer and how am I going to sell that is pretty much what you're answering here. And now lots of businesses, especially new ones, get caught up in doing way too many offers that it kind of starts to dilute our message and confuse our audience. If someone can't come to you or you can't explain to someone in one minute what you do and who you're for, then you're missing some clarity. There's there's something that's not right. And if you don't have clarity on your business, how do you expect your audience to have clarity? So when someone comes to your Instagram or goes to your website or asks you at a networking event, hey, what do you do? How can you help me? You should be able to answer that very quickly and very concisely. And that stuff does come over time, but it also comes with sitting down and actually working out what is my system for this. And it will evolve. Like my offers have evolved over time. I'm literally in the last week refining my messaging. That will evolve. But having somewhere to start is really important because you need somewhere before you can begin to grow and improve it. And so I want you to be able to answer these four questions. Now, these are very broad. There's not the be all and end all, but these four is a really great place to start. So number one is, what do you sell? You need to be able to explain what you sell, aka what's your offer. Secondly, you should be able to explain who is it for. Who is your offer for? Who's your target audience? No, the answer isn't everyone. We need to get specific around the kind of person they are and why they need you. Question number three is what is the outcome? What are they going to get as a result of taking part in your offer? Like I'm not just selling a graphic design course. I out of that offer you will get a really beautiful brand. Out of that offer, you will get social media posts that perform. Out of that offer, you'll get a quick design system. out of that offer, you're going to learn how to use Canva. What are the outcomes for your audience from working with you on your offer? And then number four is why you? What makes you so special? And you are special. Own that. But be able to communicate that, too. What makes you different to everyone else? Is it because you actually believe that business owners can DIY their graphics and you intend to help them with that? Is it because you've had all this experience in the past? Is it because you've been them in the past and you've found out the ways that you can help them? Is it because you really like dogs and they really like dogs? why you? How can you connect with them through that?
So, that's system number one is your clear offer and messaging system. Now, system number two. Now, I'm going to be honest with you, this one's probably the least sexiest of them all. It's the least exciting, but it is the one that's going to help you to feel like you've really entered your CEO era. You're stepping out of the hobby zone, you know? And so, system number two is a back-end organization system for your tasks and for your finance. Because a legit business isn't just about what people are seeing online. It's it's not just the logo and the colors and the cute Instagram feed. It's about what's happening behind the scenes like how you invoice, how you get paid, very important. How you keep things organized, how you manage your tasks, how you make sure that nothing is getting missed in your business, how you're actually making your money, and how you avoid the classic small business chaos of my receipts are over there in that handbag and over in that random paper bag on my desk and over in that drawer in the kitchen and all of a sudden you don't know where your money is coming and going. And so, I really believe this system can kind of be broken down into two parts. Your tasks and your finance. And both of these are wildly important. For your tasks, I recommend a project management system. I personally use the free version of Asana. I can manage all of my different tasks to make sure I don't miss anything. I can manage my team tasks. I manage our soaps, so our standard operating procedures on how we actually do things in the business. And then random data like my bio or where my headshots are stored or where is the link to my freebie. Those kinds of things are all managed in my project management system. And again, I use something like Asana.
Now, that's the tasks. That's kind of the easy part. The tricky part for me is the finance part, and that is why this video is thankfully in partnership with Zero. Now, if you haven't heard of Zero, hopefully you have. It's a cloud-based accounting platform. Pretty much that means that you can do all your accounting and your money stuff all on your computer, on the internet, or on your phone. There's a mobile app as well, and it helps you manage all of the finance parts of your business, like your invoicing and your bills and your payment and your bookkeeping, all in one place. And so, before you zone out and think, Jackie, I'm not here for accounting stuff. I'm just here for Canva. I want you to stay with me for 2 seconds because this part of building a brand because a brand isn't just your visuals. A brand is your whole business's identity. And this part of building a brand can so often get missed. And when it gets missed, almost impossible for your business to actually grow and to stand the test of time. Because a lot of business owners, what we end up doing is focusing on the fun bits first, the front end, what people are seeing. And obviously, I agree with that so much. You should focus on your great logo. You should focus on a great Instagram feed. But you can't just have your back end held together by random spreadsheets and crossing your fingers because that really only works for 5 minutes in those really early days of business where you can spend the time making that fancy random invoice on Canva and then duplicating it to make the next invoice and then duplicating it to make the next invoice or trying to follow up if an invoice has ever actually got paid and checking cross-checking whether you when you sent an email to a client and what date you actually wrote on the invoice and when they were meant to pay and if that has actually come through or if you missed the payment or you didn't miss the payment and trying to work out when is a good time to follow them up and how to actually follow them up and refinding all those things. It takes so so much time and it's so easy for things to get missed. Even things like subscription payments. If you don't know how much money you're paying in subscriptions because you kind of just signed up for that random thing, signed up for that other random thing and then next minute you're paying $2,000 a month in subscriptions, your business isn't going to last. If you're missing invoices, if things are taking you ages to log and you're not sure of what you're actually spending, then your business can't be sustainable for the long term. And that's not even referring to tax. Like, don't get me started on tax. My mom is an accountant and tax scares the pants off me because I don't understand it all. But using programs like Zero, I'm able to give everything over to an accountant or a bookkeeper and have that all get managed for me and know that things aren't getting missed and I'm not going to get followed up by the tax man cuz I missed something important. And so what Zero is going to help you do is to keep everything in one place so it feels organized and it feels clear and it's not slowing down you or your business's growth. You can send invoices. you can keep track of bills and what's going in and what's coming out. And just generally, you can feel like you're running your business, not just winging it and hoping for the best, which I have done in the past. For example, even like one of my favorite things is just really simple. I connect my bank account to my Zero and it brings in all of my different transactions and I can just click in like one or two clicks select this was a Canva payment or this was an income from my DIY course or this was a payment to my coach. All of those things get categorized so so quickly because the alternative is doing that manually. And at the start of business, we're like, "Oh, that's fine. I can just manually um write in on a spreadsheet. I can go to my bank account, open that up, and copy across my things and keep track of it all. If you're not keeping track of it at all, that'd be really bad." But we're assuming you're keeping track of something. But doing that manually gets so so timeconuming. And sure, at the start, it might take you 10 minutes, but as your business grows and you're making more transactions, hopefully it's going to take you 30 minutes. And soon it's going to take you an hour. And soon it's going to take you so long you're going to put it off. And then you're not going to do it at all. And then you're going to be going back over four months worth of stuff and realizing that you're now totally behind. you've forgotten everything because it all got too hard. Friends, we don't want to get to that point. And we have to remember too that our time is worth money. If something like just as a random business tip for you, if I can work out like the rate, obviously there's a thousand subscriptions we can use as a business. The way that I work out what's helpful for me is is this subscription going to save me time. And so I usually work that out off my hourly rate. So say for example, my hourly rate was $100 an hour. All a subscription needs to do is save me up to one hour. If a subscription is going to cost me $50, obviously that's half of 100. So it needs to it needs to save me at least 30 minutes of my time if my hourly rate was 100. So if a subscription is going to take save me 30 minutes of my time, but it cost me $50. I know that is a worthwhile thing for me to do. Subscriptions like Zero is going to save me multiple hours every single month. So I know that whatever it costs is always going to pay me back. And just so we know, I'm about to share with you a wild deal to make this so easy for you to join and to test and to use for a while because it's not super expensive to start out with zero. And another point on the money too, um, if you cuz I love justifying why things and the cost they are in a business. For example, if you are wanting to pay a bookkeeper or an accountant in your business, a lot of accountants will kind of charge like on how much work they have to do in your bookkeeping. And so you can imagine if you have to give them like a random spreadsheet that only makes sense to you because you didn't really label it or do any of the formulas properly in the spreadsheet and then you're giving them like a random pile of invoices and kind of trying to forward them some random emails to prove that you actually purchased what you pro what you purchased and then they're trying to look at that and work it all out. That's going to take them absolute hours to work through and they're going to charge you more because of that. Whereas if you give them your zero file which they can log in as an accountant and do all the backend work, it's going to take them such a quick amount of time. They're not going to have to charge you barely anything. not barely anything, but it's going to be a lot cheaper than if they have to do all this work trying to fix your systems. And so even there, it's such a big money saver, let alone a timesaver in your business. And so I wanted to let you know if getting the back end of your business and getting it more legit seems like something that you think is time you invested in. I want to let you know of an incredible deal I have on with Zero right now at the time of recording this video. Make sure you check it out quickly so that you don't miss out. At the time of making this, you can get 90 90% off zero for six months. Not just for one month, for six months using the link I'll add in the description. This will work if you're on YouTube or on the podcast. Click that link, grab your account, 90% off for 6 months. That is enough time for you to be able to try it, to implement it with barely any expense, and you can see if this is the right system for your business. Learn how to use it. see how it's going to save you absolute hours and make your business be something that can grow with you rather than the finances something that holds you back.
All right, now back to systems. Let's move on to system three because this is where everything starts to become easier. So, system number three is your brand identity system. Obviously, this is the stuff I love to share about and if you can listen to almost any other podcast I've done, I will be talking about this. But I want to give you a brief summary now because this is really important. We have this in here. People are like, "Oh, Jackie, I need to learn how to use Canva." I mean, you do, but what you really need is a brand system. And thankfully, that brand system, once you work it out, is going to last you years in your business. This is so, so worth your time and energy. Cuz when you have a brand system, designing becomes faster, you look more professional, you make more sales, and people recognize you, right? They begin to recognize you and your brand, and it becomes this beautiful customer journey, which we're going to talk more about soon. So, what I want you to have for your branding system is locked in colors. A color palette of two, six, 20 colors. I don't care how many colors you have. I just want you to use them consistently. I want you to have one to three fonts maximum, not 17 of them. And again, I want you to use those same fonts everywhere in your business. I don't want you just to pick a cute font for an Instagram post one day and then change two weeks later. I need you to have the same three fonts over and over again, or even just one font. I don't mind. Next, you also need to have a consistent logo. A logo that you use everywhere. And not just a random static logo, but a logo in different variations. a long one, a short one, a tall one, a square one, one that you can use as just an icon, one that's just text. All these things you need as your logo that creates a full system where you can use your logo wherever it's needed in the life of your business. Plus templates to reuse. I was designing some templates with with some people this morning and I was like, don't forget the work you do on making this template yours now will last you over and over. You can literally reuse this template today, next week, two weeks time, 3 weeks time, four weeks time, over and over and over again. create systems for yourself. It's the systems that are going to save you as a business owner, not just learning how to use Canva and finding that really hard and frustrating. And obviously, everyone wants support with that. You know where to find me.
And system number four, before we get to number five, which is the one that's going to be really great at keeping clients long term. System number four is a content creation system. Now, most of us when we hear content, we kind of do like I don't want to post social media. It's not for me. Well, friends, social media is a free form of marketing that you can either choose to do or choose not to do. But you can have a system around it to make it a heck of a lot easier and far more successful and sustainable. Having a social media system means that you're not just winging your content. You're not just having a brain wave today and posting and then forgetting about it for 4 months and then not posting again. You've got a system. Some things you might want to have in your system is things like a content pillar. So content pillars are pretty much ideas of what you're going to post. Like some content pillars I often share with my students are ones like conversion. So doing posts that are literally sales posts. Like here is my offer, you should grab it. Here is my freebie, you should grab it. And you've got other other another another pillar like authority. So building out authority and why people should trust you, how you know your stuff, how you're different to other people. And that connects a little bit with your messaging as well. We mentioned earlier. Then there's proof. Can you share testimonials or examples of people using your courses, your methods, your offers and having results from them? Share that. Then there's engagement. So asking people to interact with you. Can you get someone to comment on your post? Can you start a conversation? Creating engagement with your audience. And then pillar number five you might like to use is perspective shifting. What is your audience thinking now that is wrong? And how can you show them what's the right way of thinking or doing something in particular? That perspective shifting content is really great for building trust in you and also building authority as well. And so if you think through those five content pillars, you could do one of those sorts of posts per week and you've got five posts per week and you're beginning to show up regularly. So having that system of knowing your messaging can be really helpful. Then choosing what's my rough rhythm of posting? Am I going to commit to posting twice a week, 20 times a week? Either is fine, but if you do that consistently, you're going to get into a rhythm, which not only the algorithm likes, not only your audience likes, but also helps you to not make it so hard. Like currently, I'm posting three times to YouTube a week. And that's a lot, but it's not so hard because I've got a system. It's just the same every single week. I don't have to think about it. Just what it is. So create a regular rhythm for yourself. Then next, I want you to create some templates. If you're in my courses, make sure you go to the different content banks and you'll be able to find social media templates. And I teach you also how to find your own templates and make your own templates. And so doing that will help you to have templates where you can just reuse over and over again. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. If you look at my Instagram closely, you'll see that we pretty much use the same seven templates over and over and over and over and over again. And that's a good thing. It's being efficient and strategic and recognizable. And lastly, having a way to batch or plan ahead. So thinking through, am I going to sit down on a Monday and create my content for the week? Am I going to sit down at the start of a month and create my content for a month? Am I going to allow time on Monday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday to create my content? There's no right answer. It's about what works well for you and your rhythm. So for me, for example, I create all my content, all my major content on a Tuesday, every week, and then I pass that to my team to repurpose into all different sorts of things. And that's how we do our content system. No one right answer. Find out what works for you and do that regularly. And it will become far less burnouty and far more sustainable for your business. And because you're showing up regularly, your audience will begin to actually form a connection with you rather than forgetting about you.
And that brings us to system number five, which is all about your customer or client experience system. Now, this one is so underrated, but so so fun to craft. And as I mentioned, a really great way to get clients to stick around because I don't know the exact stat for it, but pretty much if you can get a client to purchase from you first and then purchase from you again and purchase from you again, it's a lot easier to get them to repurchase from you than it is to get a whole new client to trust you. So, it's far better for you to create a really great experience for that one client who's already paid you cuz they're much more likely to pay you again. So, really spend time working this out. So, this is all about thinking about what's my customer journey? What's it like to actually purchase from me and work with me? And how can I make that seamless and beautiful and make sure they know that I really care about them? Cuz if you're part of my world, you're likely someone who actually cares about your audience. You're not just about making money. You're about really serving them. And having a really great customer experience helps you to make more money. Also serve your clients in a really beautiful way. So think through what happens when someone purchases from me. Do they go to my website, they fill out this form, and then they get this confirmation email? they press purchase on the checkout and then do they get an immediate confirmation or are you personally following up with them? Are they booking a call or do you just ghost them? Work out what it is and then let people know what it is. Always let them know what the next step is so they can feel really clear in that process. Whether you have it automated or whether it's manual, say, "Thanks for purchasing or follow up with you in the next 24 hours to send you a call link or send that through automatically or have it on the thank you page." Whatever it is, it needs to be clear for your audience. We don't want them to purchase and then freak out that you've ghosted them. And then once you're working with them, do you have clear forms? Do you have clear booking systems? Do you have clear calls and clear expectations? Make all of that really clear. And you can bring design into this, too. Make sure the design on your sales page is similar to the design inside your programs. It's similar to the design of the handouts you might give or the forms you might give or the thank you postcards you might send. Like I even I send like an actual gift box to people who join my co-creation design club. And that's part of our customer experience process that they they love getting their little gift in the mail. even if they're in America and I'm in Australia, we still send those out. So, thinking through how can I just elevate my client experience because that's going to make someone feel so so nurtured when they work with you and so much more likely to one work with you again and two recommend you to their friends as well, which all of those are such win-win things.
So, looking legit, having a legit business, having a business that's ready to grow isn't just about one thing. It's about all of those five systems. From system one of your clear offer and messaging system, from system two to your back-end organization system, like knowing your tasks and knowing and being all over your finances and not being afraid to invest in systems like Zero so that you can have finances that are feeling easy and less time consuming for your business and ready to scale with you. Don't forget to take advantage of my Zero offer. The link is in the description if you need it. All the way to your brand identity system, making sure that is really clear and cohesive and consistent. Then to your content creation system. How are you creating content and what are the pillars of that looking like? And finally, what's your customer experience like and have you created that really intentionally? And doing those five things is going to change your business for the better. And it's all things you're going to have for the life of your business. No matter if you are just a oneperson show starting out or whether you have 50 people on your team, these five things are going to be in play all of the time. And you don't have to stick with just one of them or exactly the way that you created them. Now, you're going to grow and evolve them as your business grows, but it needs to start somewhere. So start somewhere. Sit down, nut out these things, get your finances in check now so it doesn't hold you back as you try to grow later. So thank you for joining me for this episode. I hope you found it useful. And maybe even just pick one thing to work on today and maybe in your task management system, give yourself a to-do for two weeks time to start implementing and changing your customer journey. Then put a task for upgrading your content management system. I personally recommend starting with your finance system cuz that will kind of ripple into everything that you're doing and help you feel inspired and in control of your money. All of these things are so important to a business that stands the test of time. So enjoy implementing those. Thanks for being here and I will see you next week for another episode.