What is good y'all! John D Saunders here you know the Vibes! In today's video I'm going through five things you should never ever do as an agency founder or freelancer. Let's dive into it!
The first thing I'm going to say and this is from experience is over promising and under delivering. In so many instances I see these agency owners go in and they go above and beyond in the onset of talking to a client telling them what they can deliver, what they can do, all the things that they can do in record time and it's important to set boundaries and establish transparency including deliverability, timeline, outcome and cost. The best way to do this is a few ways one in your proposal, provide a definitive timeline.
Provide this in a graph form a visual form where people can see, when your brand Discovery is happening, when they're conducting research, when they're in the UI UX phase, when they're moving from design to development. You want to be as transparent as possible and provide estimates on these specific dates. With the caveat being this is all contingent on us getting feedback in time. Making sure that you're responding back to client inquiries and by providing that structure and those boundaries you're making it realistic for clients.
It's better to set realistic expectations and then exceed them instead of over promising and failing to meet those commitments. So to wrap that part up make sure you under promise and over-deliver. Right? You want to be able to establish this is what's going to happen and then if you need more time be very transparent with that client. The best example I can give is for example unusual engagement might take us 60 to 75 days. We add a two to four week buffer on top of that project because we want to be able to deliver that faster for the client.
But if something does happen along the way we can fix that by making sure we hit that deadline. So always give yourself extra time. If a client needs something in a week tell them it'll take 2 and 1/2 Weeks weeks only because it's going to give you extra time. Now if you deliver that ahead of time even better for you the client will see it as a win and you'll see it as a win as well.
Second and I see this all the time with design and development companies is financial mismanagement and planning. So many agencies don't try to forecast what kind of money they're going to make and they don't even put money aside. So here are some quick tips within that framework that can help you get this done. One for every single dollar that you make take 25 cents and put it in a separate account, that's going to be your tax account.
Now myself, I pay my taxes weekly and I estimate it based on last year. I always say consult with a CPA or a certified public accountant that can help run your books but when you're smaller you might not need that. What I suggest though is take every single dollar that you have and take 25 cents and put that in a separate account, for your taxes.
It'll give you a buffer just in case you have to pay even more if your company does well that's even better for you right? You're paying more taxes but you're making making more money. It's a win-win in that situation. It's also good to plan for slower periods. Now a lot of agencies have moved to the subscription model. Which is great because it can help create a buffer for your MRR or your monthly recurring revenue. So you can almost predict how much you're going to make that following month.
But for those that are doing more project based work, you have to be able to navigate those slower months. The best way to do this is to track your finances so you can see the ebbs and flows of your business. I love fresh books but there are tons of tools out there like QuickBooks, Honeybook and tons of others to track your finances. I try to say make it as simple as possible and easy as possible.
In my business everything goes on one credit card and that one credit card is paid off every single month. We only use that for expenses within the business. Main reason being is we can track all those expenses. You can actually, in most cases attach that card to uh Fresh books or Honeybook and all of those transactions are organized automatically and you're able to see everything at a birds eye view in that accounting software. It's going to help you in the long run track your finances and be able to navigate those ebbs and flows of business in the slower months
The next one is, make sure you don't overgeneralize and find your unique selling proposition. I've been in business about 10 years now, in year four is when I really started to pivot and focus on design and development as our main service offers. Main reason being is we were trying to do everything and it was just too much. We did SEO, SEM, Facebook ads, web design, web development, U,I UX, it was just overwhelming. And I had to hire so many different people to fill all these positions.
Now we only do branding, web design web, development that's it! Those are our main services. We do take a little bit of things that we've learned along the way, like on-site SEO and doing specific things for clients. But ultimately our main value proposition right now is, ”We craft profitable web designs for startups''. That's it! In six to seven words, we can tell you exactly what we do exactly what we provide and exactly who our customer Avatar is this works out really well for us and we're able to partner with amazing VCS companies startups and individuals that know where our Niche lies.
And because they know our Niche we can charge a premium. The main reason we can charge a premium is because we know this space really well and we can provide services and assets that another agency might not be able to right and so because we work with startups we're able to provide them with pitch decks provide them with competitive an analysis and research. We can also provide them with historical data as well as experience that we have in this space. And so by setting up that unique selling proposition we're putting ourselves ahead of the competition.
Next one is, never ever ever ignore your branding and online presence. I can't tell you how many agency owners are like well I need to get more business, I'm not getting enough business, I'm not getting enough people coming through my door, you have to put yourself out there. Doesn't matter if you're an introvert, doesn't matter if you don't like talking to people. You have to find a way to provide value to the community, so people can start to see who you are and want to collaborate and work with you.
Your agency's brand and websites serve as a portfolio and testament to your expertise, creativity and attention to detail. So it's crucial to be able to provide this content to folks out there in this space. I'm going to show you how I do it. One, about three or four times a week I do a show your work panel. This is me literally taking my phone opening up Instagram stories and just live recording myself walking through our projects.
I talk about the site maps that we're working on, why we're doing a specific design a certain way, what kind of clients we're collaborating with. And so in our contract we actually let clients know like, “Hey! is it okay if we share our in process work?” Some clients are like great, some are like no. And based on that we share that content to our community. This does a few things, one, this creates brand advocacy with people that see our content.
Because we have people following us and we're showing work consistently, they're able to see at a bird's eye view who we are and what we do and we stay top of mind for when they're ready to work with us. So they might not be able to work January but if they've been seeing our content January, February, March, April and October they might be like I know web designer, I know a guy, 5Four I want to work with them, I want to collaborate with them.
They've been showing their work for months and I love their process. And so it creates you and and puts you as a thought leader in the space. So I tell everybody, one show your work in that piece right another reason and another way to share that design and work is just show your portfolio. Show screenshots of the work that you've done, even if it's pet projects I don't care. If it's a project that you worked on because you thought a brand needed a refresh, you never work with them, you can add that to your portfolio.
You can leverage that as content to be able to get people in the door talking about your brand and wanting to collaborate. So again it's super important to make sure that you are in this space and you are yelling from the rooftops what you do and what you provide. We all suffer from impostor syndrome right. We all feel like we're not good enough or we feel like we might not be able to compare with others but by being transparent and providing that content to your community, you're putting yourself in a thought leader position to get this money y'all trust me.
Lastly and this is the last one y'all, undervaluing your services. So story time y'all! Pkay so rewind 3 4 years ago this RFP or request for a proposal came from this agency that was looking to collaborate and work with other agencies to build their website. This was an amazing project it was a huge project right, a big undertaking that we could do and we were ready to prepare and work with. So we jump on the call with this prospect, we crush it! They love our work, they love our process, they love our systems, great!
We send them a proposal right a week goes by nothing. Two weeks go by we sent an email, “Hey! just checking in to see how everything's doing”, they said that they actually went with another agency. Now at that point I'm crushed y'all. I'm like, I thought we had this in the bag! I thought this client wanted us! What happened was because in that follow-up email I asked well what could we have done better to improve the next time. They said you guys did everything right. Your work, your process, all of that was amazing but your quote came in so much lower than the others that we thought that you couldn't handle the workload.
When I got that email y'all I was like man, it crushed me right here y'all. It crushed and so at that point, I started to realize I need to make sure that up front I know what clients want to spend, I know their budget and I can allocate that time, the team and everything that's needed accordingly. Because I don't want to lose a piece of business because I didn't charge enough. We can do the work, we have the experience, we have the portfolio, there's no reason why we shouldn't have gotten that project.
I suggest everyone read the win without pitching Manifesto by Blair ends. It'll change your whole entire mindset regarding charging your pricing and how to go out and get business. Ultimately, this whole situation taught me that I need to charge according to our stature, our agency and based on what the client's budget is charge accordingly. Because if it's higher that means I can bring in the best team members, I can bring in the best illustrators, we can go over the top with deliverables and what we can provide that client. So make sure you do not undervalue your services.
If y'all like this I hope you enjoyed this piece of content. I want to make more content like this where it's just me talking to you in real time from my experience. If you enjoyed it, drop a comment below make sure you like And subscribe and I will see y'all next week peace!
