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Mar 16, 2021

Podcast 22: ProductizeKit 1.0 – Starting A Community

Podcast 01 on what you can learn from the design startup show

Episode Transcript:

Hey design starters. Today, just want to quickly run through what we have been doing at productize kit version 1.0, that is the one that we launched in 20, 20, beginning of December. That’s when our first few members join us and we have had. So much going on. Then we had weekly coaching at the time and a lot of questions going on in the, in the Facebook group that we created.

And after that, we changed our format where we have a fortnight, once fortnightly live coaching as a group, and then we have expert interviews. On every other week. So every week though, there will always be a training, right? Then every fortnightly will be the live training where you can come in, ask the questions.

All you want, the floor is yours. And you can ask anything that you are getting started with your business or already running it. And you fix problems with your sales, your systems, and you need to find out more. And what’s the next step for you. You come in for that. And, um, And that was what we have gone through since December to now in March.

So that has been, that has been a great ride for us. And I just want to say it’s it’s, um, it’s a lot of learning lessons for me as I’m running my own design business right now, as well as I help others to get their business off the ground and get their systems running. A lot of things, it’s just things in progress, right?

Because you don’t just get it done overnight. And it also takes commitment from the co from the members themselves to put into work and take action. And productizing is tough because you’re going to say no to a lot of things that even if you can’t do them and I’ve been through that, I know web design and the logo.

I know, I know what press, I know what else I know. I know. Magazine design poster design, but I got to say no to many of them that I shouldn’t be working on because you know, time is required for, for things to, to grow my business, like sales, marketing, like, um, systemizing, better streamlining the processes.

So in product guys, kit, this is what we cover. Things may not be. I should say, things can be more structured between December and now we are ramping up on that for now to prepare for prototype version 2.0, which will be coming up in April. So I want to give you some heads up now that we are going to ramp that up soon and the.

The group will be open again for you to enroll. And right now we are going to put it on a witness. And, uh, what you will expect is things like marketing and marketing is a big part of how you are going to be successful in your business. Because even if you have a great service product and you don’t get your word out there, nobody knows you are doing it.

I’ve also been through the downside of, of, uh, being too quiet and not promoting what I do best and many competitors to go over to, to the place. And, and that’s fine because so long customers are being served the way I think they should be. They should be safe. They should be served. That’s fine. And. With more competitors.

I think you can find more gaps, but the idea is the faster you market, the more you learn about whether your service product works and whether the customers you’re serving are the right customers. So in marketing, You know, we have trainings in our group where we talk about why marketing is not just about social media.

It’s not like when you talk about marketing, it’s not okay. That social media, you could have social media and just picky posting, or keep spamming others in the, in, uh, in the DMS or PMs, private messaging or direct messaging. It’s a lot more than that. It’s a lot about relationships between you and your prospects and it’s about people.

So it’s not about your service or features or benefits, maybe benefits, but not features, but morsel of the person you are talking to. Yeah. And it comes with quite a bit of empathy to understand where they’re coming, where your clients are coming from rather than what you are selling. So we talk about all of these.

What do you need to prioritize when you’re starting out? Let’s say, let’s say you can have a business running for a while already, but you haven’t been really actively marketing because in design and the design industry, I understand a lot of you may be getting work from referrals, right? And the reason why is because many people who need designers prefer to work with re foot contacts.

It’s natural, right? Because there’s some trust admin there that’s it. You also can’t just rely on referrals. And I’ve also been there and, and really got burned deadly without, you know, any clients at one point in time when, when people started not referring. Right. And you can’t control that. So you need a way a system where lead generation is it’s there to help you.

So. That these are some mistakes that you will learn from us and learn from experts whom we interview and improve in that to bring in more business for yourself so that you don’t have to figure out all the, I have no business coming in tomorrow. What am I going to do? Things like that will not help you.

Right? You want to have a time when you don’t have to worry about that. And. You still need to do the work, but you know that when knowing that the work brings in the customers, that’s what you want. Right? You want to have that bit of control first. And then we also talk a lot about systemizing a business, because productizing is all about systemizing.

Every part of your. Uh, every part of the package. Yeah. And you know, you want to know how to systemize when to systemize you don’t just systemize right at the beginning, because at the beginning it saves time, right? You want to get the business done. You need to get in clients. You need to get an income for the runway to survive for a few months, as you, as you put in the work on different parts of your business.

So when to systemize is key. What tools can you use to build your business? There are many tools out there now that absent tech, but what do you use? Right. And you don’t use anything. You don’t just pay for every tool and use, use them, or they’re just tools. You need to understand how to leverage certain things, to bring more returns to your business.

And of course, what books to read to systemize your business. We also talk a lot more about niching. Niching is something that you meet to have an ongoing review, just like branding, just like positioning because customers come and go, customers evolve, customers change. They don’t just come in. They know what they want.

They don’t just know that and tell you what they want. And it lasts forever. No, over the years. They may change their branding. They may change the needs. They changed what they want. They may change their desires and your competitors may also change along the way. So how are you evolving to meet these wants and needs?

So niching is a big topic that we can cover throughout the years throughout your business, lifetime and other business models that can skill, you know, you can talk about. Whether your business model should be a monthly package, should be, uh, should be a project based or should be a yearly or should. How should, how should your model be like, or should it be by credits?

Is it like a SAS? Is it more like a done with you? Things like that. And then you talk about hiring, like, do you hire straight away and get your business going with somebody you hire? Which could be a good idea. Like for myself, I took a while to hire because I couldn’t let go of how I, you know, design artwork and creative, the creative process that I have.

And I just don’t trust it. Others can do as well as myself, which is totally the wrong thinking. Right. And we can talk a lot more about this in another episode. So, so I believe you have your own way of, uh, creating designs and you would want to use that more rather than. Passing it off to someone and not knowing whether they are doing something that you think will be right.

Although they may be doing something right, and good, right. Things like that, things like that will affect your business. I guarantee you because it takes time. It takes time too. Figure out when you want that person to come in the training that you have to give this, this new member and this new member will also need to take time to trust you, right?

It’s a two way street. So training your staff will also be covered. So we have all these in, um, recorded format already from, from the, from day one. So what do you have? What you will get if you come in and join us. When we are on productized CA 2.0 is you will also have all these in your library. And it is also something that I’m currently building together with Lynn Cardetti from outsourcing angel.

So what I’m coming up with is this platform and library of all the videos and recordings and resources that we’ve came up with in one place. And. We can discuss more in our community, in the Facebook group. So that’s, that’s all for prototypes kit. 1.0, it has been an amazing adventure for us, myself and Lynn and the members.

We have people from Nigeria, United States, I’m from Singapore, and then it’s from Australia. We have, um, Quite a good, tight and close knit cozy group here today. So great for you to join us if you want. And yeah, just look up on us at productizekit.com. We will reopen in April. See you there.