Transcribed by Descript
Erin Marcus: All right, welcome, welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast where my guest Adrienne Johnston and I have been talking about Consistency and aligning the things you're doing to grow your business with the stage of business you're at so that you can actually get to where you want to get instead of being frustrated, out of money, annoyed, pissed off, and all the other adjectives, right, that that produces.
Erin Marcus: So before we get into that conversation, why don't you tell everybody a little officially about who you are and what you do.
Adrienne Johnston: Yes, my name is Adrienne Johnston. I am a niche graphic designer. I specialize in presentation design. I am based just outside of Seattle, Washington with my family. I have scaled my business to 45, 000 months.
Adrienne Johnston: I have a team member of One other team member and I've also added in a course component that's in addition to that revenue. And that makes eight to 10, 000 a month. And I, I, you know, I laugh. I, Aaron and I laugh. I am really on this kind of pendulum where. I would say every six months or so, you know, I'm like, okay, I'm going to be really intentional and focused.
Adrienne Johnston: And then I get caught up right in chasing the revenue and in client needs and demands. And then suddenly I'm tired and I'm burnout. And that affects my personal life and everything else. And I'm suddenly going, okay, pause, hit the brakes. Who are the clients that aren't the right fit anymore? You know, that where the projects aren't making sense anymore.
Adrienne Johnston: And what's the revenue number I really need to hit. And so I've Really in the last few weeks, just kind of in that pause said, okay, like what's the revenue number I actually want to hit. Right. Cause I feel like I just kind of kept thinking there, you know, it had to be some big number or I would hit a big number and then think, well, that's the new baseline.
Adrienne Johnston: Like I got to hit that every month. It doesn't need to be that high. Oh
Erin Marcus: my God. Like you've said 85 things that I love. So number one, number one, Congratulations. Way to go. You on using what I would consider scale. In the way that I, by the definition of the word, like I think there's so many people marketing tactics that scale your business.
Erin Marcus: That that's not really what they do. Like scale is multiplication of whatever it is you're doing. Like you have growth and you have leverage leverage where we're getting two results for the one thing we're doing. Then we have scale, which is a multiplication of effort. So number one, Like seriously great on that.
Erin Marcus: And also I love that. It's you and one other person. This doesn't have to be this complex, complex, complex machine, which is probably also why you were able to get there because it wasn't, you know, I was just sharing with you. I'm like, things got way too hard, way too complex for me. Let's stop this. And also this realization, like, What do I actually want?
Erin Marcus: What do I want? Not, what am I supposed to want? What is my su and, because there's a big difference between achieving amazing things because you're excited and driven to achieving, achieve amazing things, and achieving amazing things because of some negative external pressure that tells you you're supposed to and have to.
Adrienne Johnston: Right. 100%. Yeah, and it was, I hit this new high number at the end of last year, and I just thought, Anything less than that is now a failure. Who said that?
Erin Marcus: Maybe I don't want to do it this way anymore. Right?
Adrienne Johnston: And, and so it really, I realized I started the beginning of the year with this kind of like new benchmark for the revenue number that I had to hit and the things that I was doing to do that meant I was working weekends and nights and for a number that I don't need to hit in order to reach my financial and retirement goals and lifestyle goals and, and okay and let's say that I do all that and I'm spinning my wheels.
Adrienne Johnston: And I'm making all this money, I don't have any time to spend it. Wait, where are you going to go? What am
Erin Marcus: I
Adrienne Johnston: doing? Where are you going to go? You
Erin Marcus: can't. Well, so, and that's one of the places where, one of the things that I teach, and this is a great opportunity to dive into it a little bit, because one of the things that I teach all the time and show people is that your business is a system.
Erin Marcus: All these moving parts. So, what you figured out. You've got marketing dialed in, you've got sales dialed in, you've got product offerings dialed in, right? You're making the revenue numbers, but is there something on the system side or the team member side that has now become the anchor in the business?
Erin Marcus: It's holding the business back. The reason you're still moving forward is because you're making up for it. Interesting. You're making up for it, right? And this is what happens when one part of our business But it's not a sustainable business model. So I challenge you right here in public to what if there's a way to maintain the revenue without the allocation of your personal time and effort?
Erin Marcus: And the right, that allocation of assets. And I think this is where a lot of people get stuck because how do you keep top line revenue and if not top line revenue profit margin while doing what you need to do to change the business model, just enough to not put you in an early grade.
Adrienne Johnston: Yeah, no, I definitely think that there are some, some limiting things, right?
Adrienne Johnston: My new teammate, she's less than a year in. So, I mean, she'll continue to grow into that role and be able to do more and more. But yeah, at this point, right, I am making up that difference. She's not a full second me and that will take probably years to get to. Right. Oh. I have to imagine it will. I didn't get here overnight.
Adrienne Johnston: It
Erin Marcus: doesn't
Adrienne Johnston: have to. It doesn't have to.
Adrienne Johnston: Yeah,
Erin Marcus: it'll
Adrienne Johnston: take, you know, that's
Erin Marcus: a very good point, right? It'll take as long as you decide it'll take.
Adrienne Johnston: Well, that's a good point, is that I had to learn slowly, or I had to figure things out, but now we know. That's because you, right, now,
Erin Marcus: exactly, this, oh my god, right?
Erin Marcus: It's a great point. For people, for people, that's such a good point, because for people who are, hit a bump, for whatever reason, whether it's a self induced, Step back. I don't want to work that way anymore. Or whether it's a bump in that I did this marketing effort and it didn't work. Like whatever the reason.
Erin Marcus: Humans really think in this all or nothing situation, right? So you're not starting at square one. You're starting with the brilliance of years of experience and achievements.
Adrienne Johnston: You're 100 percent correct. And having made all the mistakes and figured it out. So yeah. You don't
Erin Marcus: have to make those. You can make new ones, but you don't have to do those again.
Erin Marcus: You already, you've already got that. Yeah, that's how magically you're teaching someone like you've already got one of the magical pieces figured out niche Yeah, I mean how long did that take? Right, you've got like one of the key dominoes is already fallen
Adrienne Johnston: Yeah, and then I would say, you know, the next piece is is clients, right?
Adrienne Johnston: There are the The diamond clients and then there are, you know, the gold and then there's the copper, I don't know, some kind of tiering system, right? But there's definitely some tiering. There's the PVC, the PVC right there. Right? And that's part of where I'm in like focus too right now, which is, what are the ones that take up a lot of time but don't add to the revenue?
Adrienne Johnston: Right? Like, cut it. Like, they don't, I know plenty of people who would just love to have that. Love to
Erin Marcus: have them, right. We don't have to, right. It doesn't make them bad humans, it just makes a bad fit for what you're doing right now.
Adrienne Johnston: What I'm doing right now. But they were an amazing fit for me three to five years ago, right?
Erin Marcus: Oh, right. And so you iterate, right? You iterate is how you move forward. And, and this is also a It's so important to do, you know, you've said you've done this like every six months, and yeah, it's like you feeling that the pendulum is swinging and you have to do this, but truthfully, give yourself more credit, you, you, you know to do this.
Erin Marcus: You know to do this. You can say it's out of reaction mode, and maybe it is, but I will tell you, most people will feel that and then not do anything about it. Most people won't actually listen to that inner voice to say, wait a minute, someone's going to do different. So the fact that you're doing this, like, if you're just in your business, doing what your business has always done, the, you're actually doing more poorly for lack of better, my journalism degree is failing me right now, but like for, for lack of a better phrase, because the world around you has changed.
Erin Marcus: The market has changed. The clients have changed. You have changed. And so if your business doesn't iterate with you, you're actually declining. Yeah. And so you've been doing that. That's a really good
Adrienne Johnston: point. And you're right. I mean, I guess I do need to take credit for the fact, too. Oh, you've been on that swing a lot
Erin Marcus: longer.
Erin Marcus: Oh, I've seen it. Done it myself sometimes, too.
Adrienne Johnston: But yeah, part of that swing, right, was a new milestone in the business. And yeah, to stop and appreciate that, that that was, you know, a new big client and part of that strategy working and, and everything and absorbing it and then figuring out, okay, now how do you, how do you deal with this and sustain it?
Adrienne Johnston: And, and yeah, it's a really
Erin Marcus: good point. And it, you know, one of the things that I tell people, if you're going to do this for yourself is you got to fall in love with the work. You got to fall in love with
Adrienne Johnston: the work. You do.
Erin Marcus: You got to fall in love with the puzzle that is business. With the fact that this will never be fixed because as soon as you figure it out, the algorithm of life will change on you.
Erin Marcus: Right? Mercury, retrograde, whatever you believe in will throw a wrench. That's just the ebb and flow of the world. Yeah. And it's recognizing the need to take a step in, take a step back. What have I got here? What do I want to keep? What do I want to release? What is the next iteration look like? So I have to ask, how do you, I'm just going to flip topics on you a little bit.
Erin Marcus: How did you pick, or how did you come upon presentation design as your niche? Because number one, I think it is so monumentally needed. I, you know, we joked when we met that I, I was kind of a really good PowerPoint person back in the day. Mike. Before PowerPoint quickly outgrew my skill set. Yeah. And now it is so clear that I am not in any way, shape, or form a good designer.
Erin Marcus: I could pull it off when, you know, I could use fonts was the, we were all impressed by fonts, right? But how, it really is such a niche and it's so important. Like how did you, so many people are so scared to do that. And it's the, it's the secret sauce.
Adrienne Johnston: So yeah, the way I stumbled upon it I would say, you know, my background, so very random.
Adrienne Johnston: I majored in chemistry. We did all of our lab reports. That makes
Erin Marcus: completely sense.
Adrienne Johnston: Doesn't it? It actually does when you stop and think about it. When you put it all together, suddenly you're like, this does make sense once you get to the end, but the story starts out real crazy. So that's all Excel and PowerPoint was how we did our lab reports.
Adrienne Johnston: And so like, I, you know, You ended up liking the
Erin Marcus: reports better than the work.
Adrienne Johnston: Yeah, exactly. Oh, I so cared about how pretty they were. It still took 15 years to finish. And then you get into corporate and you're using PowerPoint. Right. And so I was always doing that. And anytime I could use that over Photoshop or any of the design tools, I would use it cause it was just easier to use.
Adrienne Johnston: Right. It was for
Erin Marcus: me as well. Yes.
Adrienne Johnston: And so that was really how I got, I was familiar with those tools. And then when I left my job in corporate, I got on Upwork and I started doing graphic design work. I mean, I was doing everything under the sun. You quickly realize, right, because I'm got a background in chemistry.
Adrienne Johnston: You're like, this isn't efficient. This isn't going to scale. I can't make a business figuring out how to do everything. So I very quickly said, okay, what's working. And the thing that was really fascinating was. There were all of these like projects out there for presentation design. There weren't a ton of people bidding on them.
Adrienne Johnston: Like other graphic designers. Because other graphic designers are like, PowerPoint is not a real design tool. They're very anti PowerPoint. But clients love PowerPoint because I can go edit my own text. I can do my own thing. And there's this really interesting element. Like even you think about pitch decks, right?
Adrienne Johnston: If someone's going to go start a new company, a startup. Before they ever build a website, they need a pitch deck. So the first investment they make is in that presentation.
Erin Marcus: And I got it. And so I want to stop you right there. Cause that's brilliant. One of the things I tell people all the time, I watch business owners not move forward because of their website.
Erin Marcus: Whether they're just starting out and they're hiding working on their website or they're ready to change something like they're iterating, they're newer in their business and they finally found their world. And I tell people the best hack in the universe is to get your URL, put a very pretty sign that says under construction find me on LinkedIn, and then just create a LinkedIn, really good LinkedIn profile.
Erin Marcus: You're adding a brilliant component because if you can then have a really nice pitch deck that you screencast a recording to, you can put that on your LinkedIn profile as a piece of media, and you won't need your website until you can pay a brilliant person to make you a wonderful website.
Adrienne Johnston: Exactly. And by the way, I mean, and I'm all about PowerPoint and custom bespoke design.
Adrienne Johnston: But you don't have to start that way. Go to Canva.
Erin Marcus: They've
Adrienne Johnston: got amazing No, you go to Canva. I
Erin Marcus: can't even freaking fix something in Canva right now. I'm going, I'm having an Yesterday was my Canva meltdown. I should have just called somebody. Why does this work for everybody else? I can't find any My team laughs.
Erin Marcus: Like, my team, like, I don't know how to function in this world anymore.
Adrienne Johnston: We've all got our strengths. You don't need to function in Canva anymore. Yeah, I don't do the things that I said. And it's probably, you know what I was saying, Karen? You shouldn't be in Canva. Somebody else should be doing that for you.
Adrienne Johnston: I don't do it.
Erin Marcus: Nothing
Adrienne Johnston: good can come of it. Exactly.
Erin Marcus: Yeah, yes.
Adrienne Johnston: But yeah, you don't have to, right? You don't have to make big investments. Like, just get started. And to your point, right? I got started on Upwork. There was no website. There was no portfolio. You can't spin your wheels. Because you're building a website.
Adrienne Johnston: What are you putting on it? Who are you serving? What are you doing?
Erin Marcus: Right, you don't know enough yet.
Adrienne Johnston: Yeah, you don't know anything! You
Erin Marcus: don't know enough
Adrienne Johnston: yet. I mean, I could have built a website and not had any information, made a whole graphic design, and I would have had to pivot it all to be presentation design.
Adrienne Johnston: I mean, I just can't imagine having done that, right? Get out there, learn, figure out who your clients are, just get the data. Talk to other
Erin Marcus: human beings.
Adrienne Johnston: You can hear the science in there though, can't you? It's sneaking through. It's
Erin Marcus: sneaking through. It's sneaking through. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, and the other thing that you've done that is, I tell people, like, where is the intersection between the thing that you are fantastic at doing and the need in the marketplace?
Erin Marcus: And so many people create their business in a bubble. They go about creating the thing that they want to do. I'm not telling you to build a business on things you don't want to do. But you can't create all this stuff in a bubble, and without vetting your offer before you put money behind it. And I mean, this is one of the reasons you were able to scale is because you went through the growth stage and through the leverage stage while you were appropriately there to get to a scaling stage.
Adrienne Johnston: Absolutely. And again, without the data, I wouldn't have known that the niche existed and the need existed, right? And that my skills happened to align with that. I just had to get in there and figure it out.
Erin Marcus: It, it, it comes down, unfortunately, to like, just do something. Just do something. Action. Action, action, action.
Erin Marcus: Get the data. Make a better decision. More and more. I always like
Adrienne Johnston: to think of it as, you know what, at least I'm taking a step in a direction. And maybe the wrong direction. But I'm going to find that out pretty quickly. That's great information. And you can, you can pivot, right? You can, but you're moving.
Adrienne Johnston: And I think a lot of people, to your point, they'll sit there in that same spot, working on the website, working with the dreams. Of what I could do. It's safe there.
Erin Marcus: Right.
Adrienne Johnston: It's so safe.
Erin Marcus: This is the analogy, I don't know how I came up with this last night. This is the analogy that I've come up with. You ever watch American Ninja Warrior?
Erin Marcus: Yes. Right? Love, love that. Or like, the videos from the Tough Mudder relays and stuff. Those, you know, crazy obstacle courses. One, I'm massively, massively jealous about the fact that those didn't exist when I was in my prime physicals. Because I would have been all over that. I'm not very tall, so I don't know how good I'd be at it.
Erin Marcus: But I would have been all over through the going over obstacles and flinging myself through the air. But, if you notice, If you watch them get better at it year over year, they do the obstacle, they fall, they do what they fall, they do what they fall, they get a little bit further, they get a little bit further, they get a little bit further, and once they master an obstacle, unless something weird happens, they don't fall off that obstacle anymore.
Erin Marcus: You know, things happen, but for the most part, once they figured out that, okay, I jump here, I hold this, I run here, they can do it instantaneously. Nobody gets better at the obstacle course by sitting at the front line. That's not how you get better at it. By just sitting there thinking about how could I run the perfect race.
Erin Marcus: They do visualize, but then they go. And the faster they go, the faster they fail, the further they go, and the more quickly, the further they go. And it's the same thing. I think I miss Ninja Warrior. I haven't seen it in a long time. I was thinking about it yesterday. Yeah. So let's I mean we can tell what you're proud of and you absolutely should be.
Erin Marcus: So let's lessen some people's learning curves. What have you tried that just did not work in this process?
Adrienne Johnston: I'm doing it all. I love your face when you said that.
Erin Marcus: Clearly.
Adrienne Johnston: That does not work.
Erin Marcus: So true.
Adrienne Johnston: I would say, you know, one of the big things that I, and this is kind of a personal struggle that I'm really working on.
Adrienne Johnston: I'm a people pleaser. And so I have this Really, I mean, bred into me since I was a small child need to say, yes, I will do that. And it does not end well, it does not,
Erin Marcus: it doesn't, it
Adrienne Johnston: doesn't involve for the client. And I'm start starting to really try and own that up front when. Those little instincts kind of are just like, this isn't the right fit.
Adrienne Johnston: You know, it's, it usually for me comes down to respect or just kind of a sense of someone isn't going to really appreciate me and the work that I do. Calling it early. Right. But I, and I found I've gotten better at it over the years, but the problem I had last year was still referral clients. clients who were referred to me from another client where I felt some sense of responsibility to the referrer.
Adrienne Johnston: Right. Even though that referrer was just making a connection, right? If it, they're, I have no responsibility to them, but it was, I was feeling that and now I'm, I'm recognizing I don't need to do that. You, you don't, it doesn't feel right to you to appease some other person who probably doesn't even care or remember.
Adrienne Johnston: Well,
Erin Marcus: and The solution I find to a lot of those types of situations is to just be prepared for it. Because instinct is to want to help. So if my instinct is to really want to help somebody, and I know I'm not the right person, then the real way to help them is to give them the right person. Exactly. So it's kind of like win, win, win.
Erin Marcus: So you're, you're making yourself feel better and not doing something you shouldn't do, you're referring that client to a better fit. So the person you gave the client to is happy. The client is happy. The refer, but yes, I think you have to be prepared for it ahead of time.
Adrienne Johnston: Right. And yeah, and I wasn't recognizing last year, but that was.
Adrienne Johnston: a blind spot for me, right? That I was feeling that sense of obligation to those people. And when I looked at the list of like, who were the troublemakers, the clients that didn't fit the mold last year, I was like, all of them referrals.
Erin Marcus: And so that's also interesting, like clarity in your messaging to your referral sources.
Adrienne Johnston: That's a very good point.
Erin Marcus: Who's my perfect fit. Who's my perfect fit. Nice. It's very true. The saying yes to everybody because, you know, you want to say to be nice, to be helpful. It usually comes from a difficult place, but being prepared to handle those situations ahead
Adrienne Johnston: of time. 100%. And I totally agree with you.
Adrienne Johnston: Like I have a whole network of of other presentation designers that I refer business to, gosh, it makes it so much easier to say no. When you don't like, especially when there's one you don't like,
Erin Marcus: and
Adrienne Johnston: you can see all the people that, you know, like, you know, I mean, the thing I love about this is, I mean, it's been really good for me.
Adrienne Johnston: I'm multiple multiple multiples. So first of all, Every person has a different personality. So the things I'm sensitive about other people are not necessarily
Erin Marcus: a hundred percent,
Adrienne Johnston: but two, sometimes I've gotten like justification, like had a really big name client who I put up with. I was putting up with a lot of stuff from, they were always late to pay their invoices.
Adrienne Johnston: And I said to, they were the, they're one of those where, you know, they wouldn't quite be specific about what they wanted. And then you get on a call and they would act like. You had done something wrong. And you're just like, just own it. Just, I don't need to feel like I did something wrong here. Because I know I didn't.
Adrienne Johnston: But I just didn't like that, like, stuff flows downhill stuff. So anyway, I referred them to someone else who, in my network, who's like, he's just, I mean, he's a guy and he is just more like, Not gonna bother him. Thick skin. You know? He fired him in six weeks. He was like, Adrian, I don't know how you tolerated these people for so long.
Adrienne Johnston: They're jerks. Wow. He was like, I knew it wasn't me. I knew it. And I was like, if anybody could like put up with them, right. It was him. And he was like, no, they're, this is not tolerable. Like this is not culture. So in some ways it's validating too. Right. Cause you're like, Okay. So, yeah, I think it it feels good to be able to, like, solve a problem for somebody else, know that you're solving a problem for you, potentially give somebody else who needs it business.
Erin Marcus: Yeah. It's the thing I also love the most about the small business world, like, corporate is inherently competitive. And I had a great corporate career, but like, there's a hundred people on the team, five get promoted, two get promoted, one get promoted. Like, it, there's just so much room, and that's just, is what it is.
Erin Marcus: And in the small business world, you don't have that. Yeah. There's so many people that can help so many people and there's so many people that need help and it's just how when the waters rise all boats go with it and it's just so much more collaborative in nature.
Adrienne Johnston: I love that and I think you're totally right.
Erin Marcus: And it makes it, it makes it more fun.
Adrienne Johnston: It does.
Erin Marcus: So if people want to learn how you can help them, what you do, how you can, you know, go out of your way to do more for them than you're supposed to, no, we won't do, we won't send you those people. What is the best way for
Adrienne Johnston: them to
Erin Marcus: find
Adrienne Johnston: you? Yes my website and all my links are at designingandthriving.
Adrienne Johnston: com.
Erin Marcus: Oh, nice. Designingandthriving. com. We'll make sure to have that one click away from people in the show notes. But thank you for joining me and also like your vulnerability and honesty and openness in these conversations. I think, you know, there's gurus out there that we can follow and they're highly, highly, highly motivating.
Erin Marcus: And that's great. But the world they created their business in doesn't exist anymore. And I think there is an important Place for down to earth real talk about people who are succeeding and doing well, but what they're going through in the process so that we can show people really step by step right now in this world today.
Erin Marcus: How do we get through this and out the other side? So thank you for spending time with me today.
Adrienne Johnston: Well, thank you for having me.