Designer Boss
Designer Boss
Liz Illg on Delegating, SOPs & How To Scale Your Business - Summit Speaker Series
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0:04
Welcome to the designer boss podcast, listen, learn, love and level up with the ultimate success guide for web and graphic designers.
0:17
My name is Anna Dower. I'm a cake lover and success-slaying graphic design mentor.
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And I'm Emma Kate, your personal sensei for mastering the wonderful world of the Web.
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Together, we'll show you how to harness our tried and tested experiences and hard-earned lessons while you soak up everything we know about building a successful design business.
0:47
Hi, everyone, I'm excited to be joined today by a very special guest who also happens to be one of the incredible experts speaking at our February designer boss Summit. Liz Illg is a multi-industry entrepreneur with both brick-and-mortar businesses as well as several online businesses including her own consulting business and boutique marketing agency. When Liz first started having success in her businesses, she had other business owners continually ask her for help in their own business. And then she started Lizzie consulting, which offers strategy, implementation, and project management services to brands who want to launch a new idea and scale. Liz empowers business owners to be visionaries in their business. But most importantly, in my opinion, she is a furbaby mama like me with two adorable little chihuahuahours. So Liz, hi. And thank you so much for being here.
1:48
Thanks for having me. I'm really excited.
1:50
I'm excited to have you here. Thank you. Well, I thought it would be a great place to start with you sort of just telling everyone a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and how you got to where you are in your businesses today.
2:00
It's been definitely a crazy ride, but very, very enjoyable. I am originally from ILM and born and raised there and I had decided to literally move across the country to Phoenix, Arizona to go to Arizona State University. And from there, I started working corporate jobs, you know that that was the thing that like my household taught us is you know, find a job, and it should be corporate, and that'll be your track. And so I started working corporate jobs, putting myself through college and through my master's degree. And what I really had a passion for was pets. And so I had a little hobby, and I would pet sit people in my local community and I started getting so busy. I thought about this, and I'm like, Hmm, if I could have other pet sitters work for me, and pay them and have the client pay me, then that's another way that I can actually grow and scale a business. That was like a huge thing that I would like I never had ever thought about. And this was at the age of like 18 years old. And so this first realization, I'm like, I'm going to try it out. So I tried it out. And I was successful at it. But it was really still a hobby. So after I had gotten my master's degree, I was working a corporate job. And every day, I was like dying a slow death.
3:28
I did, I just it wasn't in me, there was something that inside of me that was just so passionate about being a visionary of a business and doing something on my own that I could I could steer the way and I could actually create and develop. And I tell people, I had no business actually buying a business. I was $60,000 in debt from student loans. I had no money. But at that point, I thought, I love pets so much. I would love to find another business I can buy that's already established related in the pet industry. And so I landed on a mom and pop, small small business 450 square feet. And it was a pet grooming shop. And to this day, I have never groomed a pet in my life, but I own the business. And I literally went and got a line of credit with an 18% interest rate for a sum of money.
4:37
So I went to seven banks during my lunch hour from my corporate job. And one bank said yes, we will give you a line of credit. Mind you I was 24 years old. I did not really understand the financial system of what line of credit meant and all of those kind of things. So I'm like, alright, well, how soon can I get the money? So I started, I looked at the shop, I said, Yes. And that was $4,000, short of the asking price. And I called up my dad, and he's a farmer. So he, he doesn't know much about business. And I asked him for the $4,000. And he didn't agree. And he's like, I need to think about it. So the next few days, I walk out to the mailbox, and I find an envelope in the mail from my dad, and he gave me my $4,000 remaining that I needed to make this happen. And here's part of my story of how I was actually able to do this. So I had my line of credit, I had my $4,000 in hand, I paid for a business I knew nothing about and this was an established business. So it had employees are ready. And things like that. So the person that I bought it from, she stayed two months, and she kind of showed me, the industry.
6:04
Welcome me to the clients. So the clients knew me. So the clients would stay. So I had two employees, and it was me. And so I was like this beautiful concept of me owning this brick and mortar, pet boutique. And just visually and how it sounds, I was just like, thrilled that it was mine at such a young age. And wha’s started happening is I started doing my own marketing, my own advertising, connecting with the community, having events, doing all of the things that I just learned along the way, and was able to grow the storefront and it was open five days a week originally been six days, then seven days, the neighbor next door closed down. So I tore down the walls. Now it's about 1000 square feet that I have at that location. And so I was just at max capacity at that point. And that was three years in. This was from 2013 to 2016. So I'm running seven days a week operation, I worked five days. And then I had my another team member come in for the two days. And we're down the street that I was running a pretty successful grooming shop. So other grooming shops that were looking to sell their businesses started contacting me. So during this three year period, I was able to pay off my loansand save up some money.
7:32
So I had a little extra money and an offer on the table to buy another business. Then what did I do? I get location. And really that's that's where I tell people when there was supposed to be so much beauty in doing that. It's actually when my nightmare occurred. And I say that because I was not prepared. I was fine running a brick-and-mortar opening and closing and treating my customers the way I wanted. But I can't be in two places at the same time. And so I had to physically empower other people to step into my role to some capacity and run my store frets. But how do you do that? That's the real challenging question.
8:24
And I didn't have the answer. So one day, I was driving from one storefront to the other storefront, and two managers from each location called me. And they both had the exact same question. And that very moment, I realized that I was letting those people down those people, I valued so much there on my storefronts, because I didn't empower them with information. I didn't empower them with tools to do their job. I ultimately failed them at that point, when it was supposed to be such an amazing time in my career of building businesses. But when I look back at that moment, I wasn't a good leader.
9:13
And so I had to take matters into my own hands to understand how I could lead and how I could be able to have my two businesses run to some capacity without me.So I thought to myself, all right, I'm getting these questions, are calling me I'm still at my storefronts. I'm getting these questions. So from 2016 to 2017, I wrote down every question that I was asked,
and I answered it on paper. So I had this large Word document with information, the most valuable information about my business. And I love writing. So I decided to make a manual. I didn't know that it was going to eventually be called standard operating procedure, I didn't know those things about the business, I literally created my own standard operating procedure when I thought I was just creating an FAQ page or a bank of questions and answers so that people could serve my clients, and that the operation could run without me. So after I started doing that, I put it on an online platform. So it became like this little living, breathing document. And I could had to at any point, and it was like, that was the most magical moment because I had literally a manual that was like Google My Business. Right? Like you could Google and you can search anything in there like you do Google? And the answer would populate on how Liz would do something based on what I created at the very beginning. And at that point, things started to get easier. And the questions were coming in, because I like her, provided the information, and I empowered people to look for information, because it was all there.
11:03
So as this as as all this is happening, we're growing these two businesses, and I get another call, and other businesses for sale. Mike, alright, this is easy. This is easy now, right? Look, I know all of the things to do, how to review financial, see if it's a good opportunity, understand how to open and rebrand a business, what to buy for the business, you know, I had my, you know, all my contractors, and you know, all the things I had this all I mapped all of this out of what do you buy when you purchase a storefront and you know, for branding and things like that.
11:41
So that's really where I have been able to excel. I currently have six actual brick and mortar locations in the Phoenix area, and I'm removed from them. And just every single time, there's a good opportunity, I look and see if I want to go ahead and do it. And so this past in 2020, I bought my six locations. So the question is always like, how big are you gonna get? And really, the answer is, I don't know. But if good opportunities come, I will re-evaluate them and see, but what the moral of that whole journey is that I figured out how to delegate increased systems, in a business to be successful and to be hands off.
12:34
And that's really where all of my magic has happened in my life in the last eight years of owning these businesses. And, you know, people would ask me, you know, when I first had my storefront, like, Are you always going to work your storefront? And I'm like, Yes, I'm always going to be here like, this is this is what I was meant to do. And then I started publicly speaking probably around like 2017. And people would come up after me and be like, Hey, how can I work with you? I'm like, work with me what like, I don't offer anything like, you come in and like, visit me at my storefront. Like, that's, that was the work with me, right, or the use my pet grooming services. So it came. So after a few speaking events, I'd come home, I'd come home and I tell my husband, like, hey, people keep on asking me how they can work with me. Like, I don't think I like have a skill set to give people. And he looked at me. And he goes, you know how to delegate increased systems.
13:36
And that was like an amazing aha moment of my journey. And all of the milestones that I've had of saying, I do have something I can offer people. So in 2018, I created my consulting business. And from there, we started creating systems for people and teaching them how to delegate and setting all of that up. But the longer we were in that, and the more we started understanding people's operations from online businesses to brick and mortars, any type of business, people wanted us to help them with content, and design and implementation and all these things. So over the last two years, we've been able to triple within the agency that I have, because we have just been able to fill the need of what people need.
14:28
So people are coming to you for
14:33
and yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so that was just a really unique opportunity to say yes, I didn't think I had anything to offer. But sometimes we have to look to others to really see what they see in us because sometimes we just don't see it in ourselves.
14:51
Absolutely. I think it's fantastic when it's a you know, a partner or a friend or someone who points out. No, this is your hidden talent because a lot of the time we just take that stuff for granted. We kind of think everyone can do it, like, I haven't done anything special, but he's 100% on the money because I know, I get so excited listening to you, because I delegating and documenting my systems, I'm pretty good at some of that stuff, but delegating and giving the reins to someone else, and not being such a perfectionist about, oh, they're not going to do it as well as me, that's a something I go quite struggle with. And I'm sure a lot of people, a lot of the people that you work with a lot of business owners probably have that same fear of how am I going to empower someone to be able to do it the same way I do it or as well as I do it? Or do they just have to let go of that, like, what do you advise people when they come to?
15:47
Yeah, so I always tell people like you can't delegate unless you have something documented. And documented can mean a lot of things that can be a little video that can be of any kind of video, it can be documentation of you typing out your procedures. But a lot of the times, you know that this is that was the trap that I was getting myself into is, I'll just do it, because it'll take me more time to show somebody else. But my life story now is I'm able to do so much more, because I've really documented so I could delegate. And once you can do those two things, you then can empower people to step into their zone of genius, really, and do it. And I feel that that is just one thing that we as humans have to be able to overcome is the perfection. I'm a perfectionist too. But if I continue to stay in that little trap of I'll just do it, I wouldn't be able to have literally 10 businesses run right now. And I wouldn't have the income and revenue and the success that I've had, if I didn't, you know, let go to some degree. And that's the thing, if you have really good documentation, you should be able to delegate it out that that's part of the problem is that when we are in sometimes our own businesses, and we say for an example are kind of how do you onboard a new client, right? Like there's a step by step things that each of us do, whether you're in brick and mortar or online, in the digital space, you probably have a process. But sometimes we're so close to our own brands. And what we do, because it's second nature, we just onboard somebody, and it happens that we forget to even add in some steps.
17:48
And that's why a lot of people come to us is because we really look at a full picture and say, does this actually make sense? Like we need to go from A to Z? Do you have all those steps documented so that somebody can actually do it without you? And most of the time? The answer is no. Because we didn't spend the time with following through a whole entire process.
18:10
yeah, yeah. Oh, that's great. Yeah, cuz it's definitely it's something I struggle with. But it's I know, it's like one of those next things that I need to work on in my business, if I want to grow more, because there's only I think a lot of entrepreneurs obviously get to this point where there's only so much you can do, there's only so many hours in a day, you still need to sleep, you still need to cook dinner, you still need to do all these things. So time runs out. So being able to delegate some of those tasks that, you know, like the dailies that you talked about, like the daily kind of operations, or potentially the tasks that you don't enjoy doing in your business, being able to delegate them.
18:50
But the first step is obviously documenting those tasks, like you said, and I love what you said earlier about. You just wrote down every question you got asked for like a year or two years. And I think that's probably such a great place to start. Just start writing down those questions. Or I guess, like savy, if you're writing an email, that's like the same kind of email that you probably going to have to write next week as well. Just saving that email, turning it into a bit of a template, is that sort of how you tend to get started?
19:25
Yes, yes. I mean, that's literally what I started doing. So you know, think about it, if you have a freelancer working for you, and you send them a loom video of how to do something,
you now have given direction, right? That is that can be a tool that you can link so that when you need to give it to somebody else. It's now there already. So a lot of times we're already doing or giving the instructions, but we're not banking that information into the same location of where it should actually behouse & updated, and the thing is with creatives, you know, once again, we only have so much time. But as creatives, we also need to be able to be a little bit free in our in our headspace of like, not always having to do all the dailies and do all of the operations like, as creatives I know, for me, I need to be able to kind of have just a free flowing atmosphere in order for myself to create and make really magic happen. So I think that's something too, that sometimes we have so many things coming in, or we're checking our emails and doing all these like daily things that drown us to reach our full potential.
20:46
And, and that's really the next step is people come and say, hey, I want to delegate. But how do I even get started. And I tell people, think about, give yourself an hour session just to be by yourself, turn music on whatever you need to do. And start writing down what you love to do in your business, and what you really don't enjoy, or what is a time sucker and start identifying those on a list, then you can see which areas, you should start documenting to eventually delegate and identify those things. Maybe in the morning, you're in your email inbox for an hour or two, maybe you create a system or a method where somebody else can actually do that, and keep in the remaining items so that you can review it right. But then create a process if you don't want to be checking your email first thing in the morning, but you know, that your client needs to, you know, be addressed if there's, you know, some kind of issue that comes up. So there's, there's a lot of things that you can actually do internally in your business to say like, what areas do you really want to do in & which areas do you not, and I came to this point within my consulting business, because I had one other team member literally a year ago, and now I have 20 team members. But the only way we're able to grow is we started identifying where So Liz spend her time, where should you know, all these other people within my company spend their time. So for me, I spend my time on sales calls, kickoff calls, and really just making sure everybody on my team is happy. That's all I want to do now. So I identified those three areas of where I want to lead and where I excel, and where I can be creative with my clients, I need to fill in all these missing gaps that I do. And yes, it's frightening, it's scary, it's it can be overwhelming. But maybe you just take one thing every single month and start handing it over to somebody else that skilled, you know, maybe that person is going to be on your team. Or maybe that's an outside agency that you work with, just to get a little bit off your plate.
23:11
Yeah, I think that's a great idea, identifying those tasks that you don't particularly enjoy doing, like some easy ones tend to be like bookkeeping, if you just hate being in your bookkeeping, like that's, and that's an easy one where you don't have to employ someone, you just get, you know, just outsource it to another freelancer or something like that. And they just charge you a little bit every month. And they do your bookkeeping, things like that. So even in design businesses, I've had friends and colleagues who are very good at just like going okay, I love doing websites, but I hate doing branding. So just finding another designer who can do all their branding work for them. So there's a lot of different things that you can outsource in your business that potentially are even those creative tasks as well initially. And then if you're wanting to go the extra step, like Liz, and actually build this business and scale it and have employees and stuff then like what you're doing, you're just focusing on those few things that you love to do. And that's your zone of genius and being able to, like you said, step away from all the dailies. So you can really look at your business from above, like have this broader overview. And you talk about being like a visionary in your business and being able to but you can't sort of get there unless you can get away from those dailies have actually have that brain space to think about that. Can you just sort of like talk a little bit more about, you know, how you become a visionary in your business and what that really means.
24:46
Yeah, and I only stay to I've actually found a lot of amazing freelancers, that can do a lot of things better than I can.That's actually an amazing feeling is that you know, there are other people out there that are so skilled in their lane. So come on into my orbit, because you're going to help me right. And once again, it doesn't have to be an employee, you can literally outsource so much work within, you know, a monthly basis just to help you. And you'll find that when you start taking some of these things that you don't enjoy doing, you now have a viewpoint where you can look inside of your business, to decide what you're going, what areas you're gonna grow, how you want to scale it, because you're not in this daily operation. And that's what I originally found out with my brick and mortar locations is the moment I was able to step out, I was able to grow and scale because I could have time to go look at other opportunities and to, you know, do different marketing efforts and focus my time on the things that were not time suckers. And once I started seeing that, now every business that I own is is identically like that, is how can I get in there? How can I be the operations because I do think that there's value in us starting the business, being the operations, understanding who our client is, how we can serve them, how we can meet their needs, really perfecting that, but then moving into this visionary status. And for me, what that looks like is looking into my business and looking at new opportunities, new partnerships, new connections, more exposure. But if I'm sitting and writing a standard operating procedure for 40 hours a week, that is not assisting my business for business growth.
26:53
And that's just been a really fun thing that I have learned that I love to do. I love to grow a business, I love, I love to have it, I love to grow it, I love to be the operations. And then I like to like slide on out. But see it from such a different viewpoint. And it's, it's really a beautiful, beautiful viewpoint. Because it it takes you to a place where you can self reflect and see that you can build. And to me building anything. It's just really, really fun. I'm a builder, right? I'm a creative, you know, aspect of like, I love to create, and I'd love to see something grow and build.
27:50
Absolutely, I understand that feeling. And I think as, as a lot of the designers listening and just a lot of designers and freelancers in general, our businesses can be our babies, and we'd love to see them grow and evolve and all of that. And so you obviously kind of have it on steroids, because you have so many businesses that you're doing it too. But yeah, it is such a fun and creative process, being able to grow and evolve our businesses.
28:02
It's so exciting listening to you. But at the same time, it's a little bit overwhelming thinking, how am I going to like, Where do I even sort of start? And I'm thinking like, where I would start where most people would start would just be like writing down those questions, saving those email templates starting to gather that information. Potentially like anything that I realize, I don't like, do start documenting it like using loom I find loom so handy and easy to use if people don't know what loom is what we're talking about. It's like a free video recording app tool that you go on online and do it or you can have it on your computer. I have the paid version. Now just because I use it so much. I wanted to give them money. Like I feel like they needed some of my money. Because I use it like nearly every day. It's just so handy to use.
28:58
And I know there's a lot of apps on your computer that you can just do it with QuickTime or something. But loom just makes it that much easier. Trust me go give it a go. But there's I guess there's probably a lot of tools out there that have made you document your systems and processes. Easier. And you mentioned that you. I'm such like a tech geek. And I really want to know what the like a website thing is that you use it. You said it turned into like a Google thing. And you just documented all your processes there. What app was that? what tool was that?
29:32
if you have a business G Suite, you there actually is an app that's called Google Sites, not drive Google Sites. And it's basically an internal website. And you can categorize each site to be broken down in any type of section. And so there's also another great platform is trainual. trainual is that actually helps you when you hire somebody when they go through training, you can see their progress, which is really cool to see. And I think too, when you're looking to bring somebody onto your team, truly important to ask them, how do they like to learn?
Think about that as a question that you're gonna ask somebody. And the reason I saved that is some people need visual elements and some people actually need content. So it is really important that when you're building out, your processes is to look at. How are you going to get this information to them? Is it through video? is it through step-by-step processes? So it's just one thing to add into your interview Toolboxes. how do you learn? Because there is so many different ways. People learn. Some people need to listen. So people need to see somebody actually needs to use their eyeballs to read, right? There's just there's so many different different ways. So I would use Google sites to sorting information or trainual is another one that I really really like and with the the summit that you're hosting is I actually am giving away for free. My standard operating template. So if somebody is going to the summit that's in there and that will actually give you categories of how you should break your business down because I guarantee if you open a word document on your screen, you're staring at a white screen. What are you gonna document?
31:35
I got about.
31:37
You are staring at a white screen and so that's why I had that template on my site because some people can do this on their own, they just need and you know, a work document is going to break it out in sections so that they can look at it and really just fill in the areas that you need in your business.
31:50
Yeah, it's in the boss bundle, if anyone's interested. So with that, when you come to the summit, the tickets free. but there's Boss bundle, you can buy and it's got over $2,000 worth of goodies in there, including this standard operating procedures Manual, that Liz is generously contributed. Thank you. And yeah, I went down loaded at the other day because of like, I so need this and oh there's so much gold in there. Yes. You're right. Because if I just had to sit down and go, okay, let's just dump my 10 years of experience and how I run my business into a document. Where do you even start? Like, that's just not gonna happen. So yeah, this is a great temp and I was gonna say little template, but it's definitely not little. There's a lot in there and it's, it's great knowing that it's coming from someone, like you that no stones gonna be left unturned, you know, like you've sorted everything. All these things that I wouldn't have thought of.
32:46
So yeah, and we really built this so that you, you can really feel in a lot of elements. So these like you're using certain platforms. It's easy for you to plug and play to add in and to help, you know, we they, we basically take this template that we have created over the years and doing this and put it out there because some people just need a starting point. They need just a little direction. Once they had the direction , They're solid.
33:17
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, it's great. And yeah, like what Liz said, she's going to their speaker, at this upcoming Designer Boss Summit. So at the Designer Boss Summit Liz's, going to be doing a presentation. So, if you want to hear more from Liz and sort of learn more from her, then definitely come and, get your free ticket to the summit. So Liz if people look like interested in working with you and finding out more about you where they find you online.
33:47
Yeah. So I live on Instagram and my handle is Liz dot my llast name ILLG and then also my website lizillg.com.
33:57
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all your wisdom and it was so awesome to hear about your journey and so they're weird it started and I got I can't believe how young you were. It's awesome to see your journey and where you've got to today. So, thank you so much for sharing.
34:15
Thanks so much for having me.
34:18
You’re welcome . Well, thank you. And thanks everyone for joining. We’ll see you in the summit. Hopefully, bye!
34:30
You've been listening to the Designer Boss Podcast with Anna Dower and Emma Kate. If you'd like to learn more about us and our upcoming digital summit for graphic and web designers, head to our website designerboss.co