Sales Funnel Tips for Brand & Web Design Businesses

Episode Transcript:

[Designing Growth introduction plays]

 [00:00:00] Lauren Gonzalez: that’s something that I had to go through understanding too, because sales is just about helping that person get closer to their goal.

[00:00:06] And that’s the simplicity of what sales is. It’s not about being pushy or slimy or whatever it is. And once I get somebody on a phone, I’m just there to listen. I’m there to ask the questions, where do they wanna be in their business? How do they want to get there? What’s working, what’s not working? And I’m just listening to them and then I’m presenting how what I do helps them get closer to that goal.

[00:00:27]

[00:00:38] Sam Chlebowski: Happy Thursday everyone, and welcome back to Designing Growth. Joining us on the podcast, I have Lauren Gonzalez. Lauren is one of two co-founders at Principium Studios which is a brand and design agency that was opened in 2016. Lauren is also a Content creator on YouTube, where she has nearly 70,000 followers.

[00:01:01] I had stumbled across Lauren’s content, and I was really excited to connect bring her on to talk not only about her design business and her experience there, but what she’s doing to support other creatives.

[00:01:14] Lauren, how are you doing today? So happy to have you with.

[00:01:17] Lauren Gonzalez: Yeah. Thank you so much, Sam, for having me here. I’m really excited that you came across. Content and invited me.

[00:01:22] Sam Chlebowski: Yeah, and I was really excited to connect. So maybe let’s just kind of start off and provide like the 10,000 foot view of how you got into design and how you ultimately also became a business owner.

[00:01:36] Lauren Gonzalez: Yeah, absolutely. So I have always been that person, that kid that was drawing all the time. I always loved being an artist. I was at, always at art classes since I was three or four, as soon as they could get me in. And um, that’s something that I just. Knew this was going to be what I was gonna do the rest of my life.

[00:01:55]  I used to enter into contests at like LA Times. I was living in Los Angeles and I got some of my like, little cards that I designed, published, and, and I remember just loving the whole field of creativity. Um, and I was obsessed with Disney. Still am. But um, at that time I was, um, really interested in being an.

[00:02:14] And, um, I didn’t fully understand all that that entailed. Um, but I started to pursue that. I got into an art program for the summer at Cal Arts, and then I eventually went there for character animation. And it’s kind of like the feeder school to Pixar I realized that well, I loved creativity and I loved, animation.

[00:02:32] I didn’t wanna actually be the animator. I wanted to be more bigger picture design. I actually was gonna be working on an internship at Pixar. But some things kind of got derailed due to personal things with my mom and, and I wanted to stay close to her. So I started to pursue graphic design and I started to realize what all graphic design entailed, and it got me really excited. I did some more training in that at Art Center and I then, landed at Job and after some apprenticeships and internships and such, I landed a job at a Hollywood publishing company. I worked there for a while as a creative director and a designer, Doing all sorts of things from event design to banners and publications and uh, articles and book covers.

[00:03:13] And got really great experience working under a creative director there as well before I took over for her. And that was about a six year span. Then I got pregnant and um, I know you’re expecting your first, so, um, and that was, , uh, kind of like, wow, I, you know, I was a bit burnt out with the whole nine to five thing and I just decided, let’s take this as a chance.

[00:03:33] Let’s just roll with it. So that’s when I started my freelance business, which has been almost seven years ago, six, six and a half years ago now. And, um, it. Was just kind of like, I was experimenting with Etsy and other things, and then I just started to do service, um, services and, um, it, it just kind of started to take off a bit after, which I can get into later in the podcast about how exactly.

[00:03:57] But things started to align after a lot of struggle. I thought it was gonna go a lot better. It didn’t at first. I thought I could put up a website and clients would come, but that didn’t happen. So after a lot of struggle, kind of hit this gold mine and, my husband was working at a job he didn’t really like, as a consultant.

[00:04:13] And so he’s always comes from like a business consultant background. So he saw the potential in this and he kind of jumped ship on his job and we put all of our beans into actually creating. Princip Studio, which has now been just growing year after year. and it’s now what it is today. So in addition to that, I started for the creatives two and a half years ago where, um, I just have always loved to educate and give back to communities.

[00:04:38] When I learned something like I used to teach in Compton in Los Angeles area, on Saturday mornings, I would just teach. in public schools. I would teach about art and illustration just as a volunteering, cuz I loved it so much. So after I figured out how to build my own business, I got this like inkling, like I feel like I have to give back to the creative community because I know there’s tons of designers struggling to build theirs.

[00:05:00] So that’s when I started for the Creatives, which is two and a half years ago, and now it’s grown into what it is today, which I’m super excited about and continuing to give back.

[00:05:08] Sam Chlebowski: So much interesting stuff there that I want to kind of dig in. So the animation thing, I thought that that was super fascinating, how that was kind of your gateway into design. And I love that example specifically because it’s like, You know, people will tell you all the time, Hey, you know, go chase your dreams, do this, do that.

[00:05:29] And then there’s other people, who are saying, Hey, we gotta bring you back down to earth. You need to do something that can make money. what I like about this example is that you fully went after that dream, but you still learned so much that was able to act as. new opportunities into being a business owner and new opportunities to do all of these other things that you’re doing that might not have come if you didn’t go after that dream of being like an animator at Pixar.

[00:05:56] So I love that example. And I have, you know, countless things like that in my own life. I had originally wanted to work at like a big advertising firm, and that was my number one goal. Like I wanted to be, One of the Mad Men, I was watching that show in college. I was in advertising school at the time after I got out of college, and I had a, I had a couple of internships within the advertising space. applied then to like 20 different large advertising firms. Didn’t hear back from any of them, and honestly, that ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me because I quickly found out that I love being in the startup entrepreneurial space more so than I ever enjoyed working at a bigger corporation.

[00:06:41] I, I really like being my own boss, having that. Agency to make my decisions and control sort of my own destiny. But none of that would’ve happened if I hadn’t originally said, Hey, I want to go, you know, create the next Nike campaign.

[00:06:58] Lauren Gonzalez: Yeah, that’s, that’s really cool that you had that background too. , it’s something that I don’t think I would’ve ever found. Like you said, I never wanted to start my own business when I was little. That wasn’t what I dreamed that I would ever do. So I love that we had that similarity.

[00:07:11] Sam Chlebowski: You had talked a little bit about some of the struggles sort of getting your business up and running in those early days. What did those challenges look like for you and how did you overcome them?

[00:07:21] Lauren Gonzalez: Well, the thing is that I was a cocky designer that I thought I knew at all that I had been working, you know, internally and been the go-to person for. a whole huge, company at that time. So then I come out and I’m like, yeah, I can just get clients like that. The whole thing is a business is a totally different skill. You have the design skill is one thing. The business skill is an entirely different thing. I feel until you own your own business and you have to go through the struggles of what it takes to find clients, to get yourself known, to put out a website that actually connects with the right people to, put out the right messaging and content to attract them until you go through everything that that takes.

[00:08:03] I felt like myself personally, I didn’t know how to market even though I had this certificate and yeah, I said I could market. I didn’t really get it until I had to do it for myself and my own. .

[00:08:14] Sam Chlebowski: And what were your strategies for getting clients in those early days?

[00:08:18] Lauren Gonzalez: Well, the first thing was, you know, the word of mouth. I mean, that’s, I know I’ve heard you talk about that and some people disagree with that, some people don’t. I just kind of put my beams out to people I knew to family members and friends, which I hated working for. Later on and, learned the hard way that that is not the best, type of client.

[00:08:37] But at the beginning it’s good because sometimes they’ll know people. And I did land a client who was actually in the niche that I ended up going full blast in, which is the Amazon seller e-commerce space. So, um, I worked with with her for a while. She referred me to another company.

[00:08:54] They just kind of started to referring, but it wasn’t in volume enough to actually sustain me. It was like a few hundred dollars and a few thousand dollars, and it just wasn’t going in the direction. So what I found was, okay, so. Just kind of started to think with marketing.

[00:09:08] So I need to be where these people are. I need to know where they are looking for the solutions. So I tried the typical Facebook group thing just for all small businesses. You know, your nine one of a hundred people saying Pick me, pick me. it did get a few people who ended up actually being long-term clients, but I think at that point, that was like six years ago.

[00:09:27] It wasn’t as known of a strategy as it is now. those were the two biggest ways at that point. I can get into the ways that really made an impact, as we keep going.

[00:09:36] Sam Chlebowski: It’s a really good thing to hear, and I think it’s always helpful. Because in those early days, it is so hard you had said that, you know, word of mouth worked for you, but you were also doing, it sounds like, that proactive outreach to people to tell them about your business so that, you know, you could have that sort of word of mouth.

[00:09:56] So it wasn’t something that just happened, like you had to put in a lot of work to tell, friends, family members, former colleagues about it. It’s a way to get clients that. Fully consider until now where you’re almost doing like outreach to your existing network and doing that to kind of cast the net a little bit wider.

[00:10:15] Lauren Gonzalez: Yeah, exactly. and the thing is that these specific, clients at that point, I mean I was really, really not into like grandizing myself. I was, you know, very much kind of an introvert, not interested in saying how amazing I was and how I should get. , you know, please hire me. and I know that that’s a struggle sometimes for students that I deal with is they don’t wanna talk about themselves.

[00:10:37] They don’t want people to, to hear about them. They don’t wanna go to personal connections, which I totally understand. And it was really hard for me to do that too.

[00:10:45] Sam Chlebowski: hard to put yourself out there. It’s, I think, a big struggle that many business owners faced. I mean, it was like when I first. walked into sales, , my now co-founder was my boss there, I mentioned it a couple times in the podcast, but walking into sales the first time I was so uncomfortable, like picking up the phone and trying to sell people.

[00:11:05] I was like, I have to be like a car salesman. Turns out that’s not at all what you have to do, but that’s. Thought about it, and it took me probably a solid two months, two to three months of consistent like repetition, taking sales calls with potential clients for our agency, that I was able to get more comfortable with that, but it, it takes time.

[00:11:25] Lauren Gonzalez: Yeah, completely. I know you have this awesome story where you went from this 500 clients to the 5,000, right? You got this business to being. huge. and the strateg. That you were talking about, I can completely vouch for those being very, very valid because those are things that we have used in, in Princip to get it to where it is the point where I was like, you know, doing this, just this small network of people I know and then this Facebook group thing, it’s just not gonna cut it. I need to actually really dig in to understand my overall marketing strategy for this business. Otherwise, it’s just gonna go nowhere and I’m gonna be hobby, hinging of like, you know, sometimes doing this and trying to do Etsy sales, trying to get, you know, these, these cards sold.

[00:12:07] it was just really a lot of. uncertainty and testing and really not knowing where I was going. And that was the scary thing about it. It was like, where am I going with this whole thing? I had a new baby coming and then a new baby wrapped around me during this whole time. So it’s on top of that I had the responsibility of having to actually make an income that really weighs on business owners at the beginning of their business.

[00:12:31] Sam Chlebowski: diamonds are made under pressure in some ways though, so

[00:12:34] Lauren Gonzalez: Yes, totally.

[00:12:36] Sam Chlebowski: Something else I wanted to circle back on was your niche, because it’s very interesting to me. I was actually on your website yesterday, kinda looking around at your portfolio and the work that, you’ve been doing at Prince Studios and it’s beautiful. Could you tell me a little bit about how you. Found this niche?

[00:12:55] Was it something that happened all at once or did it take time? Because I know that that’s always a big question that other designers have. They’re like, how do I find a niche? Like it feels like everybody has one, what was your experience like and how did you decide to narrow that?

[00:13:10] Lauren Gonzalez: so I had that first client who happened to be selling on Amazon, and she. was in some other networks within the Amazon selling community because it’s a pretty tight-knit community. Even though it seems like there’s billions of people selling on Amazon, it’s a very specific community, especially at that time, it was really close-knit.

[00:13:29] So she started to refer me to other people within that same community. and then I got some other referral from it who is still a client and has actually been an incredible, client. He’s referred probably 20 people. He got me in touch with some big agencies, in the Amazon space. It was just very kind of like, oh, well, I see I’m getting a lot of clients from this specific area.

[00:13:51] What would happen if I. Said that this is the area I am designing for. What would happen if I then started to really tailor everything towards this, put out content there, go to these conventions. Then it was like this was something that my husband and I decided to do is just go all in on this and.

[00:14:09] Still, we got real estate clients still. We got a bunch of other type of clients and he, his big strength was more business consulting and photography. So photography was a really big player, player in actually servicing Amazon sellers too, because I would do their branding, their packaging, and then he could do the photography.

[00:14:27] So it was really a nice thing that fit within what we could offer as well.

[00:14:31] Sam Chlebowski: What I, really take away from that is like, look to the things that you do well, the businesses that you personally like working with, but also that you have this.

[00:14:43] Network around you that you can leverage to be able to support them better. At Brighter Vision, where we went from, you know, general web design for any small business to hyper-focused in therapists, is we started to get these connections around us where we had worked with a couple of those clients and we said, Hey, we have some of these people that we can ask questions to, that we can chat about this industry with, like it’s time to go headfirst.

[00:15:10] And we did the same thing. We went to conferences to start putting the word out there and it, you know, was one of the best things that we can do. I think that in-person conferences, Are oftentimes underrated if you are like at the early days of your business. It’s just about finding the right one. What, what do you think about that?

[00:15:30] Do you still go to any sort of live events or conferences?

[00:15:33] Lauren Gonzalez: Oh yeah, absolutely. So, obviously with Covid, things changed a bit, but, we went to a convention in Las Vegas. When I was about year two or three in the business, we went to a convention in Las Vegas for Amazon Sellers specifically. I’ve recently been the host on several summits.

[00:15:48] these were virtual that were for Amazon sellers. There’s so many things you said that I, I definitely wanna unpack. What you said is so true about finding where your passions are, what you are good at. and I actually have on Inconsistent Clients Blueprint, which is my coaching program for designers, , is I have them run through a very specific Excel grid that is literally, it goes through what are their interests, what are their skills, what are their passions, what do they know about?

[00:16:15] What do they not know about? are they actually. These niches, how to figure out if they’re profitable, you know, checking on Google trends, checking the market size for the future. What’s the prediction like? There’s a lot of factors that you wanna think with, and I know that that sounds a little bit, complicated, but I made this grid really simple so that they literally just plug in numbers and at the end it kind of gives like, a score so you can see.

[00:16:37] Okay, so this one actually fits me best. And there’s a student of mine that I just was speaking to her, a few days ago in a coaching call and she was saying that, she chose herbalist and kind of the herbal beauty space, but the herbal, space overall. And she actually was always so shy and wouldn’t go to places, but she was in Los Angeles and there was a convention for it in San Diego.

[00:16:58] So she drove down there, she got super ambitious and she actually went and met with a whole bunch of these exact ideal clients and she’s in the market research stage of her business. So she got to actually ask questions and make interviews for the next week and follow up. She said it was the most mind-blowing experience to be able to actually go and connect in person with these people.

[00:17:19] So it’s super underrated, I think.

[00:17:22] Sam Chlebowski: and I love that example too because it shows how if you were doing something. You find either personally fulfilling or interesting at some level, it makes it a lot easier to talk to other businesses who do those things.

[00:17:38] Lauren Gonzalez: Exactly, I mean, you don’t have to have an existing network of that. If you like love, love, love real estate, but you don’t know anybody who’s in real estate, you can go start approaching them because as a business owner you have to. Be willing to go talk to people. It’s going to have to happen.

[00:17:54] I used to think I could hide behind my computer screen, but it doesn’t happen. And I’ve built up that confidence over time. I never thought I would be on podcasts. I went and actually was on a podcast, a massive one in the Amazon space, which still is Guineas clients two years later. Yeah.

[00:18:10] The potential when you choose something and just go all in on it, instead of just trying to be on small businesses or everything everywhere. I mean, you know the impact and that’s why I love that you have that understanding too, because it’s something, until you experience it and see the beauty of the marketing of it, it’s just, sometimes people are too scared and don’t trust it.

[00:18:31] Sam Chlebowski: it’s really nice to be able to break down this like journey of marketing because Not all the times. You see like the struggle behind it and the buildup that it takes because you know there are some guides out there, some videos out there you can watch that are like, Hey, you need to do X, Y, and Z.

[00:18:48] What they don’t tell you about though is that there’s gonna be things that fail along the way that don’t work as well as you want them to. And it’s really cool to, dive into that side of the story. And I like to be very open about that what’s worked and what has totally flopped as far as marketing goes, one thing I wanted to chat. Is your YouTube channel. had, you’d mentioned it very briefly at the beginning of the call, but you have seen tremendous growth there. can you walk me through the process of how you decided to start that channel? Was it something initially to market your business, or was it always intended to lead to sort of coaching and being able to kind of support the community?

[00:19:24] Like what did the evolution of that look?

[00:19:26] Lauren Gonzalez: Yeah, so I loved my design business like I had said at the beginning, I have this passion for giving back. When I learned something really cool that that works, I wanna tell someone about it. And obviously telling other, business owners that are not related to design, they don’t care because they’re not in design business.

[00:19:44] so I was talking with my husband and, I just said I really want to create a course that actually explains how to start a business and actually show how we’ve been able to grow percipient to what it is. and he was like really into YouTube. I’m not a YouTube person personally.

[00:20:01] Like I didn’t used to watch YouTube videos. I wasn’t into

[00:20:03] Sam Chlebowski: I would have never guessed

[00:20:05] Lauren Gonzalez: Really, cause I, I know I was not into it, I was into listening to music on YouTube, but that’s about it. So, it took a lot for him to get my agreement because I’m not a video person either. I wanted to be the creator behind things. then I realized, okay, the people who I wanna help the designers, these people, it’s more important for me to get the message out than it is for me to worry about I sound and what I look like and all this stuff.

[00:20:27] So I said, okay, we’ll do it. So I put out my first video. It’s still up there. It’s so bad. I have it there so that people, if they wanna see what an early stage is, My presence was really bad. I was barely softly talking. and then I just started to put out what I knew and I started to just share more and more of, of what my story in little snippets.

[00:20:49] And, I learned some techniques along the way about s e o, which you have to understand keywords in order to get found. And I put out this video that was learned graphic designed by yourself, Because I knew that that was something a lot of people knew designers were looking at. And I did this video, I had two different earrings on at the time, didn’t look in the mirror.

[00:21:09] and I put out this video and it just, blew up. That’s the one that’s gone the most viral, it’s now at 700,000 views. And I realized that, okay. there’s also a demand for the business, the freelance side, there’s a huge amount of people looking how to be designers on YouTube.

[00:21:25] So that actually led to me creating a whole course recently that I finally put together because people kept asking for it and DMing me and all this stuff. How do I learn design? So I finally put together a one about how to learn graphic design. So things evolved is what I’m trying to say is things kind of evolved And started to listen to the audience and really kind of cater to all designers. though my main strength is freelance. I also wanted to help with the actual design side too.

[00:21:52] Sam Chlebowski: 700,000 views. Wow. That’s crazy. That must have been a wild, experience for you when that happened that day.

[00:21:59] Lauren Gonzalez: Yeah, it was, I mean, it wasn’t in one day. This has been overtime that it’s gotten that many views, but it did just take off and to answer your other question, it’s separate. Just the rules of marketing.

[00:22:10] I can’t try and cater to designers at the same time trying to cater to e-commerce businesses. It just, they’re completely different target audiences. So I started a new business with the intention to help designers and the cool thing is I’m every day working on design projects with clients. I didn’t wanna give that up.

[00:22:28] I wanted to. Both it was definitely a struggle at first to kind of juggle them, but because of everything that I have put together with preci and laying the seeds of the content, marketing has been the biggest way we’ve gotten clients and It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t chosen the niche, whereas like, I don’t use Instagram for preci.

[00:22:48] I don’t use really Facebook. Uh, I used to, but I don’t anymore. It’s really about our blogs and, being on podcasts and, and doing guests, in different summits and such. That’s where we’ve gotten the most clients from now, and the word of mouth within that community. Whereas for the creatives, the designers are searching on YouTube and they’re searching on Instagram, and so those are the two places.

[00:23:11] I have found to be the best, to reach that audience.

[00:23:15] Sam Chlebowski: I really like that breakdown of your approach because it’s a good example of like how you can segment things by the audience in this case you have two separate businesses, but. There are other folks out there who might have two sort of slightly different niches, and those niches could exist on different channels and they might be accessing your information, through different mediums.

[00:23:40] You had mentioned briefly about keyword. Research, and this is something we haven’t talked about on this show yet. but something I have been doing consistently throughout my career, like behind the scenes, have always been, in some way, shape or form responsible for keyword research and producing content.

[00:23:56] What tools do you use for keyword research

[00:24:00] Lauren Gonzalez: that’s cool that you’re into seo. I feel like I’ve even only like, scratched the surface of the depth of this and Neil Patel is like a god on this subject so I love some of his software, but the thing that has been really the best for YouTube specifically is keywords everywhere.

[00:24:16] Are you familiar with that one?

[00:24:17] Sam Chlebowski: I am not familiar with that. No. I will have to check that out. I’m taking a note here right now.

[00:24:23] Lauren Gonzalez: oh this one is golden. It’s really cheap. Like you pay $10 and you get a hundred thousand credits and basically you just have to remember cuz it’s a plugin that you do. So if you’re just randomly searching on Google for a personal or something other related, and you have it turned on, then it’s going.

[00:24:40] Deduct your points. So you always have to remember to turn it off when you’re not doing it. But how it works is when you go to a Google search bar or YouTube search bar, and let’s say you type in the subject of, graphic design, normally Google then puts all the most commonly searched. Right, like you do graphic design and it’ll say graphic learn, graphic designer, freelance, graphic designer, whatever the things it’ll say. So next to those little, key words or the key phrases will be the search volume per month. and that has been something that really gives you a great understanding of how many people are searching for this in a month?

[00:25:15] Is it worth my. or is it not? and if it’s too high, if it’s like above 10,000 or even a hundred thousand, you know that it, you’re gonna be very lost in it. Whereas if it’s, between like 1,010 thousand, that’s a great amount because you’re, you have a higher chance of being seen enough, people are looking for it, but you’re not gonna be lost in this huge sea.

[00:25:35] So that’s, that’s my favorite tool. Keywords everywhere.

[00:25:38] Sam Chlebowski: and I will put a link for that in the comments as well as I have to check that out. I’ve used other keyword research tools like H Refs before. Um, but I like that this is a plugin and I like that it’s almost like a little constant reminder of like, , when you are working and when you’re like looking around the internet to a certain extent, you should always be doing some keyword research.

[00:25:57] If that’s part of your strategy. with your content strategy, you do the keyword research and your site is appearing everywhere. People are reading your blogs. How do you get those people to convert and what are your strategies for turning that traffic into conversions and eventually clients?

[00:26:15] Lauren Gonzalez: So the best thing that that we’ve seen is getting them scheduled to a call. I mean, there’s also a downloadable, that we have, particularly for podcasts, that we go on, we give a downloadable, and then they will go on the downloadable and they go in an email sequence. And I know you’ve talked about email marketing as well. and it’s really goes through an email sequence of nurturing them this is why ads don’t work for design business, in my opinion, whenever we’ve tried it because people are at a certain stage and. It’s only gonna be a very, very, very few percentage that actually are gonna be ready to hire you.

[00:26:50] Whereas maybe they’re searching for things, they’re starting to get interested in maybe a topic of how to get more conversions on their Amazon listing. that’s a, an example of a downloadable that we used to run. We used to have, offered on a specific podcast, then they get into your space.

[00:27:06] They start to understand who you are, they start to trust you. And then on the final email, like, which is about a month and a half after they’ve gone through, say that you are offering a free listing review or brand review or website review or whatever, specifically your ideal client you’re offering as a service.

[00:27:21] that’s something that we found to be really cool, to get people into our space. but really the biggest thing has been, getting people actually on a call or to do a free brand analysis. That’s something we’ve been trying a lot more recently, which has been working for the direction we wanna go now because, I’m just gonna say one thing more on this is that we actually pivoted our niche to be not just Amazon sellers, but those that are looking to leave Amazon and become these household names and build an actual brand presence on e-commerce.

[00:27:51] So it’s like kind of a niche within a niche, and we found that that. More aligned with where we were at at this point. And what I wanted to be providing is more of this in-depth brand services as opposed to just doing their listings and, and doing their packaging. So that’s kind of how we’ve evolved over time into what works best Now.

[00:28:10] Sam Chlebowski: I hadn’t known about that specific part, but it makes a lot of sense now looking at your site It’s almost like you are saying to people, Hey, you should leave Amazon to open your own business and take more on each sale. Are you producing content that kind of like addresses

[00:28:28] Lauren Gonzalez: yes, we’ve been putting out blog posts on that. there’s different things like Amazon aggregators who will actually buy your Amazon business and things like that, that we’ve been, we’ve actually been collaborating with. A big thing that has been super helpful, and I think you did mention this as a way to get clients, is collaborating with similar, complimentary businesses, is what I like to call it.

[00:28:49] So that’s like people who are around you. So in that way, they can actually put out content about whatever they do, and your blog in, in whatever specific point. You can have guest blogs on their own, because they service the same type of people that you want to work with, but they are not your competition, like a consultant for an Amazon, seller.

[00:29:10] Or, an Amazon aggregator is somebody who buys these Amazon businesses and then needs to brand them. Better to become these bigger brands outside of Amazon or like a specific photography company. We have a photographer that we’re great, um, have a good connection with, cuz we don’t do the photography anymore, so they refer us.

[00:29:30] We refer them. So there’s all these complimentary businesses that when you’re in a niche, Like, if I had just gone to these people and I was just a person for everybody, they wouldn’t have worked with me. When I have a niche, I come to them, I have more of like ground to stand on. I have experience in this niche, and it becomes easier for them to say, yes, let’s work together.

[00:29:48] Sam Chlebowski: That credibility factor can be so tremendously powerful for growth, and it seems like, yeah, you’ve experienced that firsthand. It’s really kind of interesting to me how much of the exact same like marketing philosophy we subscribe to, it sounds like we are just like exactly on the same page of like what works and what doesn’t work there.

[00:30:08] You had mentioned with paid advertising, you basically had said that, there are people who.

[00:30:14] Once you build up any, if content are looking at your services or exploring your services anyways, that paid ad is not going to really drive the needle. know, they’ve already decided that they are looking into you. Now they need to search for things that are going to support their buying decision.

[00:30:31] It’s almost like how you. Buy something on Amazon. I don’t know if you do this. I do this all the time. I buy something and then I double check the reviews to make sure I made the right decision purchase and affirm that purchase.

[00:30:45] I think people do the same thing Schedule a demo with you or schedule an initial consultation.

[00:30:49] What they’re gonna look for after they schedule that consultation is they’re gonna look and they’re gonna see what they can find, and if they like what they find and they find that you have credibility in your space, your vertical, your niche, whatever it is, they are going to come into that call many times, willing to buy that day without a sort of long, drawn out sales process.

[00:31:13] What do you think about that? Do you agree? Are we, are we still on the same page

[00:31:16] Lauren Gonzalez: hundred percent. And I think a big part of that is, you know, you had mentioned earlier about you thought sales was a specific way, but then you realize it’s totally not that. And that’s something that I had to go through understanding too, because sales is just about helping that person get closer to their goal.

[00:31:32] And that’s the simplicity of what sales is. It’s not about being pushy or slimy or whatever it is. And once I get somebody on a phone, I’m just there to listen. I’m there to ask the questions, where do they wanna be in their business? How do they want to get there? What’s working, what’s not working? And I’m just listening to them and then I’m presenting how what I do helps them get closer to that goal.

[00:31:54] So, By that point, they’re like, oh, okay. So they’ve reframed what design, what branding means to the actual future of their business. I then send a proposal that reaffirms that even further. So it’s kind of like what you’re saying. It has testimonials in there. It shows examples of past work we’ve done.

[00:32:11] It just goes further to. Give them the confidence and the trust that this is the right decision. I mean, when I sent proposals, it’s been a very high percentage that actually do agree, once we’ve gotten to that point.

[00:32:23] Sam Chlebowski: Lauren, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. This has been like a masterclass in business growth, in marketing, marketing strategies and I love that we were able to circle back around and like really dig into things.

[00:32:38] If people wanna find you, where should they go?

[00:32:41] Lauren Gonzalez: Yeah, so thank you, by the way, and yes, you can go to YouTube for the creatives, Instagram for the creatives, just at for the creatives. Those are the two platforms for designers. And then, Princip Studios, my website. But yeah, YouTube and Instagram are the best places to connect in terms of direct messaging.

[00:32:59] Definitely Instagram.

[00:33:00] Sam Chlebowski: Cool. And we will put links to all of those things within our show notes. um, as a final reminder, if you are interested in trying out motion.io. That’s our software tool that we have been developing now for four months, and it is just about to launch. If you’d like to learn more about using that and seeing a demo of that, head to our [email protected], click the button, sign up for our launch list, and we’ll send you an email and connect with Other than that, Lauren, thank you again for joining me. This has been a great chat and I hope everybody has a great rest of their day. Take care everyone.

[00:33:36] Lauren Gonzalez: Thank you, Sam.

[00:33:37] Sam Chlebowski: Bye.