April 17, 2024
Don: Do you feel pushed for time in your graphic design business? Well, in today’s episode, we have five time saving systems you need to implement in your business to get some of your precious time back. You’re listening to Design and Prosper, episode 132.
[Intro music]
Kris: Hey everybody.
Don: Hey! How are we all?
Kris: Yes. Are you pushed for time?
Don: Yes. Today always.
Kris: Well, you’re listening to this, which is a good sign. So maybe, maybe you’re multitasking and you’re, you know, when I’m listening to podcasts, I’m always doing something else. I’m washing up. I’m folding, washing.
I’m doing something. Maybe you’re going for a walk. There’s always something going on at the same time. So maybe you’re the same.
Don: Yes, maybe. And I just want to preface this whole podcast by saying I am. You know, drum roll confession coming. I am time delusional. I am self confessed time delusional human. We both are. We’ve had this conversation before.
Kris: Absolutely delusional. We, we’re time positive, aren’t we?
Don: That’s nice, Kris.
Kris: We think that we can get so much done and we truly, innocently believe that it’s going to happen. We do.
Don: I love that you’ve said that. That’s a lovely spin on it, especially for me. I always feel, I feel really stressed when I am seriously time delusional. It really worries me about impacting on others.
Kris: Well, it’s embarrassing as well, often embarrassing.Because the consequences are embarrassing and then it, then it’s the stress and it’s like, Oh my God, I bit off more than I can chew. I’m so embarrassed. And I don’t have time for all this. And what am I going to do? And then panic sets in.
Don: Panic sets in. And also once many moons ago, somebody said to me that being late is a form of arrogance. Oh. And so I’m like. No. I, uh, I really, truly, I’m not meaning to be arrogant when I’m not managing my time well, I am seriously time delusional or time optimistic as Kris just said.
Kris: And that could be a product of its time, that statement, because now we know so much about ADHD and we know so much about menopause symptoms and all the rest of it, you know. It can be hard to coordinate the brain cells into a logical, uh, relationship. Time structure, you know, to make it all work.
Don: And again, thank you, Kris, make me feel really good about my time deficiencies that I have over here, but we do have some strategies and they do work. And we, so good news. So there is good news on this horizon. Yes. So if you are feeling at all, like Kris and I have felt over the years, we have got some systems that if you put them in place and adhere to them, these will help you so much.
Kris: Yep. We’ve got 10 for you, 10 time saving systems. And like everything. We always say everything in your business can be systemized, including time. And so these are going to save you so much time and that’s what’s so important. It’s so precious.
Don: Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. It’s so precious and you never get it back. So we want to, we want to make the most of it and we want to make sure that we’re using our time to the best that we can. So number one. Should we dive in? Yeah, let’s dive in. So the first one is. Batching your time. So planning your week ahead. This is a non negotiable in any business and we teach batching time in the Academy.
It’s all about capsules of time where you dedicate those important tasks and you really understand when you’re sitting at your desk the things that you should be focusing on. So you need to take a little bit of time out at the beginning of the week or the end of the week To batch that time and get that sorted.
But once you have that time batched, you have to honor it. Don’t let it bleed off into, you know, other areas and really honor the, the week that you’ve set up for yourself.
Kris: Yeah, because I think that what a lot of people do when they are batching time or when they are setting up a schedule for the week is that they try to put too much into it, for starters.
Yes. They have very unrealistic expectations and time is finite, right? And you just can’t take your whole to do list and smash it. Into a week and squish it and push it and pull it. And so I think where people go wrong with their planning out their calendar and their batching of their time is that they don’t have enough gaps of nothingness in there.
And that’s really important. That’s a really important factor. That’s a strategy, right? It is a strategy. It is a strategy. So it was sort of like a bonus strategy. We’ve just woven into the batching your time thing, but make sure that when you do batch your time and you’re prioritizing what you’re going to put into your week that you have room for movement.
Don: Wriggle room. Yeah. You need wriggle room for just stopping and pausing and reassessing. And you need wriggle room for when things, curveballs come that need instant attention, that kind of thing. So it’s a real strategy for you to reclaim time by having those buffers in your week. So yeah, we’ve, we’ve woven an extra one in there.
Kris: We have. And that’s a real strategy from the 12 week course. Yeah. If you haven’t read that one, it’s a really good one to get started with time management and that sort of thing. And that buffer time is essential.
Don: Yeah.
Kris: So if you’re like us and you have way too many things on your to do list and you need to plan out a weekend, you’ve got to actually pare it back.
You’ve got to prioritize, eliminate or delegate or push off for another day. What’s the word Don?
Don: Postpone.
Kris: Postpone. Yeah. And there’s a few different techniques for this.
Don: Yeah. We’ll talk you through those. Yeah. The first strategy is a simple three step approach. So what we do is we look at our list and we break it into three parts.
So the first part would be must dos. So what are those things that cannot be put off? Then the nice to dos. I really would like to sink my teeth into that, but it can wait. And then there’s the eliminate must do. So what are the things that I don’t really need to do at all? We’ve all got those on our list.
There’s things that we can absolutely delegate and a little pro tip, sidebar tip is if you are tracking your time. And really paying attention to the tasks that you don’t need to be doing and that someone else can be doing. You’ll get some intel on things you can delegate. And you’ll know, okay, that thing’s on repeat.
I’ll systemize it and I’ll get someone else to do it. So just think about the things that you can delegate. So they’re the three lists. Must do, nice to do. Get rid of.
Kris: Yeah. And often when we’re looking at our list, everything feels important. So think about the 80 20 rule as well with this. So if you have 10 items that have to be done, chances are two are going to be more important than the other eight.
Don: Absolutely. Every time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s great. Great advice. So. Those two become the must do’s.
Kris: They’re the must do’s. And you really shouldn’t have more than two things on your must do’s. Exactly.
Don: Even one is okay. Like we encourage one, you know, it’s, it’s okay.
Kris: All right. Another strategy is the ABCDE strategy, which we gleaned from the Eat That Frog book.
So that’s a really cute little book to read, the Eat That Frog book. So it’s a quick read. So A, you split it up into ABCDE, right? So A. Anything on the A list will have major consequences if you don’t get that thing done.
Don: Get that stuff done.
Kris: Major, major problems. B will be mild consequences if you don’t do it.
The C list is there’s no major consequences. The D list is delegate and E is eliminate. So that sort of covers kind of what we did in the one in the first example with that one, two, three step approach, but this is encompassing all of them. And it’s a really good little technique. And then what you can do is break it down further if you need to.
So if you’ve got two things on your A list, there’s an A1 and there’s an A2. And if you want more information on just time management stuff, we actually did go quite detailed into time management in a very old episode, episode 14, how to be a graphic design.
Don: Oh, baby episode.
Kris: I know! How to be a graphic design time management boss.
Yeah. It’s really important that you get a, get around this and don’t overcrowd your calendar.
Don: you need that wriggle room. You need time to think and, and you need a little bit of a buffer zone. And sometimes. For mental health, more than anything on the list, you need time just to be able to get up and walk away from it all.
And 10 minutes sometimes is all you need. You might just need to go and have a bit of a jig, go walk around the block or whatever. Sometimes those little buffers are actually life saving to mental health.
Kris: You need more space than you think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that is one of the biggest mistakes that people make when they’re trying to schedule.
Don: Yeah.
Kris: And also another mistake is that they don’t schedule at all because they think that takes too much time, but it will save you time.
Don: And we’ve done that, haven’t we, Kris? We have done that together in business, in our business. We’ve gone, you know what, I’m just going to get in and get the work done.
And then it all comes unraveled. It literally does. But when we’ve actually dedicated time to setting up our week, we are so much more productive. Like it’s. The proof is in the pudding. You’ve gotta do it.
Kris: Yeah. It’s like night and day. It really is.
Don: yeah, yeah.
Kris: All right, so another system to save time in your graphic design business is automations and integrations.
So these are things like Zapier, I dunno if you’ve heard of Zapier. It zaps one task from an app to another task in an app. So we use ZA to automate all the time. We love it. Yes. Dub sodo. We love using Dubsado. That’s a client management program and it just automates appointments and lots of different workflows can be automated through there.
It saves so much time. Again, brilliant. Like, yeah. Yeah. So you just want to get into the habit of connecting one app with another and think like that. Yeah. Okay. I’m having to manually take this information from one app and put it into another app. Surely there is an automation that would do this for me and chances are there will be and it will be in Zapier or something like Zapier.
There are other apps like Zapier, but we really like Zapier.
Don: Yeah. And literally nine out of 10 times you will find there’ll be a zap for something. Yeah. And automations are the quickest way to buy time in your business. Yeah. Quickest, like boom. Yep. You’ll buy time instantly by, by looking into this.
Kris: Yeah. So some of our favorites are calendar bookings, already touched on that, but whenever we have to make an appointment with someone else. Like a solicitor or an accountant or whoever it is, and you can’t do it via a calendar booking link. It is so frustrating. It is so annoying. You just want them to have the system.
Sometimes we’ve sent our system to them, so we’ll book using ours because it syncs to our calendar and you can find a time that suits you, but it feels like we’ve gone back in the dark ages when somebody doesn’t have a calendar booking and it’s all automated and all the reminders come through and yeah, it’s so frustrating. You don’t have to think about it.
Don: It’s just so seamless and beautiful. It is. It does feel like that, doesn’t it? It feels like that transition time where a lot of designers refused to let go of Quark Express and they didn’t want to go into Adobe and they resisted and they resisted and they resisted.
It’s a bit like that with the booking system. Designers get a booking system. That’s a blast from the past. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many of you heard of QuarkXPress?
Kris: It was the gold standard and every designer was resistant at first…
Don: so resistant
Kris: to changing over to InDesign.
Don: It took a little bit.
Kris: It did. All right. Then another automation is having automatic backups. So you can Zapier for this. And I don’t know if Zapier is Zapier or Zapier. I think it, I don’t know. You let me know. We say Zapier. Zapier. Yeah. It’s something. It makes sense that it’s Zapier because you zap. Anyway, so what you can do with Zapier is, for example, if you’re using Dropbox for your archiving on your saving, you can do a automation to backup.
To Google drive, maybe once a month or whatever you like. So this doesn’t have to be something you have to touch. It can be to set up on autopilot.
Don: Yeah, love it. Another one is Gmail integration. So for example, a zap to send a task that comes by email to your project management system or a built in integration like Trello, which is what we use.
Like we couldn’t do without that one. That’s a, that’s one of our favorites.
Kris: I find this one in particular was such a game changer because I don’t trust myself to remember anything. So what happened previously was all the emails will come through and I would feel like I have to act on things immediately.
Otherwise it would be gone. It would be just lost into Gmail forever and ever and, and I would lose it. But because of the integration, because you can set a task straight away, it’s on the board. I won’t lose it. I will never lose it because it’s been zapped over or it’s been, you know, you’ve got an automation.
You might be using something else like Notion or ClickUp or whatever, but you will have generally a Gmail integration with that application. It’s just a game changer. You’ve got to get it is a game changer.
Don: So, so cool.
Kris: So another one is setting up automatic social media messaging. So you can use a couple of different software options for this.
There’s ManyChat. There is a free version of ManyChat that you can use, and you can also use Meta Business Suite with this. What it means is if you get a DM and they’ve used a particular keyword and you can put in multiple keywords for a prompt, you’ll have an automatic response follow up, and you can do it within your social media posts as well.
You can use ManyChat to have an automated response and even have A couple of variations of the response, which is really cool. That’s cool. Yeah. So it’s not like total robotic, especially if this is when people go message me the word, Bravo, and I’ll send you the link to this thing. Or comment the word dog and I’ll send you this doggy daycare guide or whatever.
That’s the software that they’re using. And you’ll see that the response is, I sent you a DM, lovely, or I did this lovely, or I did that, and there’s sometimes different, but that’s the That’s the power of many chat. I love that.
Don: And so this is new to me. So thank you, Kris, for bringing this to my attention.
Kris: We haven’t actually used it, but I see people using it all the time.
Don: Yeah, right. So you mentioned that it could be automated from within the DMs and also in the comments. Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s phenomenal. Both. Yeah. That’s so great. Okay. We need to be using this. So we will take it for a test run.
Kris: We’ve got to put it on our to do list. So which category will that fall under for us, Donna Pinter? Maybe delegate.
Don: Definitely de delegate. Love it. But that’s cool, right? Yeah. I love it. And what that’s highlighted for me is there are automations that are popping up. All the time, because we aren’t the only ones in the universe saying there has got to be an easy way for that thing.
You know, people are thinking like this all the time. So keep checking in, check in with all of the platforms that you are on. What’s new? Don’t skip that. You know, when annoyingly they go, there’s been an update. Do you want me to tell you what’s new? Yes. Ask what’s new. You want to know what’s happening.
And especially when it comes to the automation space, we want to know how can this be easier? How can you take some of my workload for me?
Kris: You just wait. In a couple of podcast episodes, we’re going to say, DM us the word 134 or the podcast number 134, and we’ll send you the episode link or we’ll send you something.
We’ll send you like a freebie or we’ll send you, we’ll do something. Yeah, we’ll send you something. And, um, we’ll see if there’s like a lovely little automation. You can really personalize it and make it not seem so, um, robotic, but it’s just so handy so that people don’t have to wait as well. Yeah. Yeah.
Because we sometimes don’t. Pop into, we don’t work every day. So we sometimes don’t pop into our social media DMS for a while. And then it’s like, Oh no, we missed this thing. So it’s just nice to be able to, to respond and point people in the direction that of the information that they need, but they don’t have to wait a long time.
Don: Oh ,I love it. I love that.
Kris: Okay. So another thing that you can do is batching, batching all your logo exports, things like that. So all of these are just like. What can I automate? What can I do really quickly? So if you’re providing logos to a client and you’ve got all the variations, you can use Logo Package Express for that.
You can also use Illustrator’s batch export, which isn’t as sophisticated, but it’s definitely worth checking it out. It will become more sophisticated, I think, over time. Yeah. I haven’t actually used it for a little while, so it might be more sophisticated now. Yeah. And also, you know, if you need to do a batch edit of a whole bunch of different Photographs, but you need to do the same thing to all the photographs.
Use Photoshop’s batch editing feature. And you can also automate certain features in InDesign as well. So always be thinking and being curious. This is a pain in the bum, this thing that I’m doing right now. I’m sure there’s a way to do this in a more automated way.
Don: Yeah. Anything that is on repeat usually has an automation of some sort attached.
Yeah. I don’t think I could have survived as a designer without Photoshop’s batch edit function. Yeah. Too many things going on in Photoshop to sit there and, and change each photograph every single time. So, or each image every single time.
Kris: Yeah. So just like, it’s just a mindset shift and then you’ll naturally start thinking of more integrations.
And then you’ll do a little Google search and you’ll go, Oh my gosh, I can actually shortcut that whole thing that I’ve been doing that has been so annoying for so long. Yeah, absolutely. I’ll give you an example of this because we’re all doing repetitive tasks, um, in our business and it often involves moving data from one app to the other.
And you just want to avoid manually doing that wherever possible. And this actually happened to me the other day. I was setting up a form using Airtable because Airtable has really nice forms and they’re free. And I thought, how can I get this info to populate directly into Trello, which is the project management system we use, which unfortunately, one of the only downsides of Trello, I would say, is they don’t have nice forms.
They don’t have forms at all, really. So please work on that. Trello, they do need to work on that.
Don: yeah.
Kris: So I thought, gosh, there’s got to be a way. So I found out. You know, it took me two minutes to find this integration, but the quickest of searches, I found that I can integrate Airtable with Trello. Beautiful.
Don: And it wouldn’t be just Trello. It would be Asana, it would be all the things. Yeah.
Kris: All of them. It was just like, okay, I can do this. So it’s just about getting into that mindset.
Don: Yeah. And I think that’s the thing. As soon as you think like Kris said, this is a pain in the bum and I’ve got to do it over and over and over and over and over again.
Surely there’s a quicker way. That’s enough. That’s enough for you to get curious about an automation possibly being out there. You won’t be the only one that wanted that to happen a lot faster than it, than it’s happening.
Kris: And often there’ll be native integrations. In that instance, Airtable actually had an integration with Trello.
I thought it was going to have to be a ZAP. I’d have to use an extra thing to connect the two. Right. But it didn’t. They had an integration. So it’s interesting that a lot of the platforms are getting more sophisticated and they’re integrating with a lot more other apps. Yeah, right. So it’s very handy.
Don: Yeah, that is great. All right, so a third system would be a project management system and client portal. We preach this. We talk about it a lot. We talk about it a lot, a lot. But it will save you so much time with streamlined correspondence, minimizing all the miscommunication that goes on out there and the missed emails and the DMs and the late night calls. And it will also beautifully managed client expectations.
Kris: A lot of time goes into managing that, managing misconceptions.
Don: Yes. Yeah. And expectations. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Kris: And if you’re new around here, we do have a free client portal that you can get this red hot minute and just head to designandprosper.co/free. It’s a Trello template. We love Trello. Go and grab it and. You know, use it, use it. This is such a good system to use.
Don: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Essentially it holds everything in the one place. Having that central location for all project files and communication. That’s what saves time.
It’s all there. There’s no guesswork in thinking, where was that thing and where was that filed and where did I put that? Or who said the last thing? There’s none of that anymore. It’s all right there for you.
Kris: Yeah. You and your clients will be able to locate all the files really easily now and into the future because that’s a key as well.
That’s very time wasting finding files or searching for files if they’re not well organized. Yeah. Six months later. Six months later. Yeah. Yeah. So essential for finding details of like repeat projects and you know, things that need to be going to print again and doing all your print management and that sort of thing.
And also no more sending large files back and forth via email.
Don: Yeah.
Kris: No more of that.
Don: None of that. Thank you very much. Yeah. Both you and the client can easily access the latest versions, making sure everyone is on the same page. So there’s no, no more misconception again, it’s a lot of it boils down to miscommunication.
I should say that miscommunication where I didn’t see that, Oh, I was working from this version. Oh, you missed that version. That’s out the window now because it’s in the one spot. It’s just. A game changer, if you’re not doing this. And there’s loads of different apps that you can use for this, but we absolutely love Trello, like we’ve been saying, but you can use Asana, Norton, ClickUp, all of the ones.
The principle is have this as a system. This is important. It’s an important system.
Kris: Yeah. And what you can put in there is your project brief and your style guide and your frequently asked questions and your welcome guides and all the concept variations and proof variations and so much more. And it actually empowers the client to find things on their time. In their own time, not on your time.
Don: That’s right.
Kris: And you’re going to minimize all those backwards and forwards emails when clients ask for files and they can also book their meetings there too.
Don: They can do it all, that’s the point. It all happens inside the portal. Everything happens in there.
And pro tip, when they go rogue, as clients sometimes do. Especially clients that you’ve been working with for a little while, and you might introduce this as a new system, and they’re getting used to it, and they’re used to being able to get in touch with you via DMs or emails. What you need to do is always lead them back to the portal.
Respond from the portal, respond in your working hours from the portal, all the time. So it’s up to you to maintain that boundary. So that’s a little pro tip on the side. Always funnel back to the portal, funnel back to the portal until they get used to it. And then they will. They’ll get used to it eventually.
Kris: Yeah. All right, number four. Gosh, we’re only up to number four. We’ve got 10 of these.
Don: Let’s go.
Kris: Okay. So number four is having a system for your inspiration and your templates, like having a library for it, including your past concepts. So, one thing you could do straight away as part of your system is do an audit of Pinterest.
How are you organizing your inspiration? Yes. I’m guessing a lot of you are using Pinterest. Some of you might be even using Instagram folders and it’s like, ah, it’s a big mess in there. Yeah, yeah. Like maybe. Yeah. Yeah. That’s part of it. It needs to be really well organized so you can find everything.
Don: Yeah. And another little pro tip there, when you are organizing within Pinterest in your folders, you can have the one image in multiple folders for different reasons. You just have to articulate what it’s for because don’t get confused and go, Oh, I like it for that. And I like it for that. Don’t waste time. On that just pop it in multiple, double up, triple up, triple up, pop it into whatever folders and just keep it going. Keep it nice and fast.
Kris: And another thing with organizing all this is, are you archiving all past sketches and unused concepts? Where are you storing them? Are they easy to locate? Because that is key as well in terms of having this as a time saving system. Yeah. And a little hint is the way that you name your files is so, so important.
Like consider future you or a team member who is searching for this thing and how are they going to find it? What are they typing in?
Don: And systemize that stuff, systemize how you name your files.
Kris: Have naming protocols.
Don: Have naming protocols. Yeah. Absolutely. It’s essential for time saving. Yeah. I think we’ve probably got that.
Yeah, we’ve got that next on the list. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Our folder and file saving system. Oh, yeah. That’s so, so important. Yes, baby. What a beautiful segue.
Kris: I know. So, we love Google Drive. So, this is number five, your folder and file saving system. We actually teach this in the academy. And when we first started coaching, we took this for granted and thought everybody knows how to do this.
And we weren’t even going to teach it. Like it was, it was something that we taught our students at uni. Getting this right is so essential and we just couldn’t believe how many one to one clients because we solely worked with one to ones at first when we first started Design and Prosper and we were like, they’re not doing this. What’s happened? There’s been a big gap in education.
Don: Yeah. We just thought all of the lecturers all around the world would teach this fundamental exercise of how to file. We could not believe it. And so it is, it is one of those things where we get lots of feedback from our beautiful academy members and our one to ones where they say, Oh my goodness.
It’s game changer. That’s been incredible. Just having that system is incredible because it’s teachable as well. So when you scale, you teach this system to your new people straight away, everyone knows where everything is.
Kris: It’s so, so incredibly important. Yeah, you will waste so much time if you don’t archive properly.
So we love using Google Drive for desktop and we use Macs and it works seamlessly on there. It’s just like using a Finder on Mac. It’s total personal preference. You might prefer something else. You can use Dropbox and use it in a similar way in the Finder, but everything is saved to the drive.
Everything is updated in real time. It’s just so easy, so easy, so easy to share a specific folder to somebody else. It’s so easy to share a specific file with somebody else, and it’s just so easy to also integrate into any project management system. So for example, Trello or Notion or whatever you’re using.
All the things. Yeah. Yeah. We actually did try Dropbox and iCloud, but we just didn’t like them as much.
Don: No. And I think it’s really important to loop back to how Kris said it goes into the Finder. The interface is exactly the same as what you are used to. It’s just incredibly easy. User friendly for designers.
We’d like to see things a certain way and we’re, we’re used to it and it’s seamless. Yeah. That’s the key word for that. Yeah. All right. Number six, a quoting system. Imagine you meet with a client and you can get a bespoke quote at the very next day. How many of you are out there going, it shuts me down. It takes me days to get a quote together.
Well, what we’re saying is imagine doing that with ease and it only takes you maybe an hour, max. And it’s simply because you have a really awesome calculator you can use and save your own pricing templates ready to go. And you use something like Dubsado, which we love, love, love where you’ve saved templates and prices ready to go.
And even though you might have to come up with something bespoke, the foundation is already there. The base template is already there. So it’s just a matter of matching the quote to the requirements of that particular client.
Kris: Yeah. The idea with a lot of these things is to do the setup work once and then leverage that and then everything’s really quick after that.
I think that’s where a lot of designers fall down because they’re like, I don’t have the time to actually do the setup part, but it’s just got to happen. Otherwise, you’re, you’re stuck. Yeah. You’re constantly going to be chasing your tail. You’re never going to get out ahead of time. Yeah. You know, it’s impossible.
Yeah. Unless you put in place some of these strategies that we’re talking about today.
Don: Absolutely. A quoting system is essential, especially because there’s lots of layers with the quoting system. Doing that. That’s the function of a quoting system, right? There’s some mindset stuff as well. So if you have a quoting system supporting you, your mindset stuff can be released with ease as well.
Yeah. Because you’re not overthinking it. You’re not thinking, can they afford me? Am I too expensive? Will they pay that? Da da da. None of that comes into play when you lean in and on your system. And it’s really, really powerful. So number six is a really beautiful system to put into place straight away.
Kris: Yep. All right. Number seven is communication templates and email templates. You need a system for organizing your templates. So simple first. Thing that you can do is use Gmail’s email template feature or whatever you’re using. We like Gmail. Make sure you title them so that they make sense to you. Once again, logical titles is key.
And every time you write an email or send a DM, ask yourself, Will I be likely to get this question again? Have I been asked this before? Is this a repeat question? Yeah. Add it to your templates. So you’ve already like spent all this time writing it, you might as well add it to your templates.
Don: Yeah, we’ve got a Trello board dedicated to templates.
Yeah. Email templates that we actually have ready to go. When we get questions that are on repeat, might take a tiny little tweak because there’s a nuance that that particular person has shared with us. And we can, uh, we can address that in the opening line or the farewell line, but the rest of the information.
Isn’t changing. It’s it’s on repeat. And so, yeah, it’s a no brainer to have some gorgeous scripts ready to go, which we have actually got a phenomenal set of scripts for client communication for those tricky client communication instances where you’re like, Oh, how do I deal with that particular thing? We have in our shop ready to purchase right now and nicely said scripts kit.
And it has 41. Scripts ready to go that we have used with our clients on repeat and they’re respectful and they’re clear and they’re boundaried and they will get you the results that you are requiring because they’re just straight to the point and beautifully clear, but also beautifully respectful.
Kris: Yeah. Oh, you got to get your hands on those. They, we put a lot, a lot of thought into that so that you don’t have to think about it. You can just plug and play, definitely adjust to your brand voice, but it’s a really beautiful, respectful way of communication. And we try to be as broad as possible so that you could just, you know, If you needed to, in a pinch, just grab it and run with it.
Don: Yeah, because often when we have those little curveballs come our way, they do throw us emotionally, give us the wobbles, and then what happens is we’re reactive. Instead of being grounded and centered, we might react a different way if we actually have time to think about an issue.
That’s what the scripts kit does. It actually gives you that space to go, okay, this is crazy what this client is doing. Okay. How would a scented grounded me respond to this? Not the irate, annoyed me right now, but how would, how do I need to respond to this?
Kris: The Scripts Kit is the voice of reason.
Yeah. I love that. Yeah, it is. And I did mention about your brand voice and adjusting it to your brand voice, but That’s another thing that needs to be part of this system. This communication template system is having your brand voice guidelines. You’ve got to know your voice and document it. This is absolutely key to, if you want to outsource, if you want to get a VA to help you with correspondence or even social posts or anything like that, if you’re going to outsource your advertising, you’ve got to know your voice.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s something we cover in detail in the Academy and with our one to ones. And also automate the DMs. We touched on this before. You can set up an automation for that.
Don: Yep. Absolutely. Okay. Number eight on our list. This is a great one that a lot of people don’t do this. A lot of people don’t realize that you can systemize creativity.
Right? Yep. You can. Truth bomb. You can. A concept development system is what we use and we teach inside the Academy as well. So I bet you didn’t think it was possible to systemize creativity. If you’re out there thinking that, well, we really, truly want you to really think again because this type of system can ensure that you have high end premium design and conceptual thought on repeat.
Kris: Yeah. And have, can you actually describe your concept development system? You probably have a system and you don’t even realize it, or you have certain approaches on repeat, but the clarity that you will get with actually writing it down and articulating it, because once you can allocate the steps, then you can allocate timings to it as well, which is really important for profitability.
And we have specific repeatable steps. Duplicatable processes for creativity and concept development that we teach to our one to ones and in the academy. But what is your process if you have a creative block? Jot it down. Jot it down as a challenge.
Don: That’s a lovely little challenge to everybody listening.
Take some time out. And jot it down and create a list of what your process is. And it might not be instantly, just the next time you go through your creative process, have a little sidebar and take note of the process and jot it down. And, and I love how Kris mentioned, understanding what our process is allows us to allocate time to the areas within that process, which allows us to really be sure that we are profitable with our projects.
So profitability is really important. And it plays a big part in understanding where our time goes. So yeah, give it a go.
Kris: The amount of time designers waste with the conceptual part of the process, the design process part of projects is incredible. So really think about it. Think about some shortcuts.
Like think about the assets that you love to use. Like you’ve probably got specific go to fonts. Well, are you favoriting them? What, Are you building a specific list within your concept development system? Don’t be endlessly scrolling through, hoping it will land, hoping, where’s that point? I’ll know it when I see it.
But it’s really handy also when you’re going to outsource any parts of your design process to other people as well, to have the go to things that your studio likes to use. And we’re not saying to become bland or homogenous or samey samey every time you do a project. You know, we’re not saying that. But having these things in your toolkit will just help fast track. And it’s like that formula based design.
Don: I was about to say, yeah, we talk about formula based design a lot, and this particular system will help specifically with that, because when you know, you’ve got a client with specific needs, you can go straight to it. It really does shortcut that time.
Kris: Yeah.
Don: So yeah, build your own in house template library. Look at the work that you’ve done for past concepts, rework them. Yeah. You know, have a look at what wasn’t accepted or what was one of the concepts that you rejected and didn’t show a client and they weren’t suitable for whatever reason, but. They might be really suitable for this next project. Yeah, why not?
And it’s ready. It’s there. It’s ready to go.
Kris: It might be absolutely perfect for another project.
Don: Absolutely. Yeah.
Kris: And also have a go to list of, in your favorite project management system, we would use Trello for this, whatever yours is, have a list of the favorite places that you like to find fonts or images or other elements.
Assets don’t rely on your memory. It just uses too many brain calories and you need to reserve your brain calories for concept development, not searching for stuff.
Don: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because it might be just five or 10 minutes, right? You’re searching, but you multiply that by multiple times during the day.
And then the week that you do that, you’ve lost literally hours. Just trying to remember things, just trying to relocate things, you know. Yeah. All of this is precious, precious time that you are never getting back. And we want to make sure that we’re really efficient with our time, and we use it really purposefully and really beautifully.
And be empowered by the time that we have, you know. Not waste it. We don’t waste it. Throw it away.
Kris: Okay. Number nine system that you need to save time is having a presentation system. Yes please. Yes. So this is like a selling system, right? But you need to have templates ready to go to support you in this process because by the time you get to this stage in the process, you can be starting to feel pretty fatigued and pretty tired.
Don: And this is the most important bit. It is. Well, well, it could be argued. One of the most important. One of the most important bits. Oh it is. It’s so important.
Kris: So as part of our system, we have a slide deck plus a written rationale system, right? So it is a system. The way that we present is a system.
So if somebody else had to take over in your studio to present a project, would they know what to do? Would they know how to put together? Uh, Yeah. The PDF, would they know how to write the written rationale? Would they have a template ready to go? When you build templates like this, you can use them on repeat and it saves so much time.
And this part of the process is so important in getting that full body yes on that single concept. You know, we love our single concepts and this is key to it.
Don: Absolutely essential. Yeah, you’ve got to get it right. And the language that you build, we use design poetry scripts that we customize for each one.
And each presentation is bespoke and unique, but we’ve got all of these juicy, beautiful words that qualify, and, Establish a really true understanding of the aesthetic you’ve created and bring it into words. Words that are going to resonate with the client and really hit home. So it’s, it’s so essential.
And if you have to, use a little bit of AI to help you embellish and to get extra flourish if you need to. But yeah, have them as scripts. Ready to go.
Kris: Do it once and then repeat. Yeah, for sure. And we have a system that we share with our one to ones and our academy students as well, where you get our slide deck and our written rationale system and our design poetry scripts, which includes all sorts of different facets of a design project, including color theory and yeah, all ready to go, ready to customize. AI is fun to use with it as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. With this system. Yes,
Don: because you can actually introduce the client language into your system with that AI, you can have a bit of fun with it.
Kris: You can put the client’s brief in.
Don: Yeah, yeah. We’ve talked about that. Well, we have talked about that on a couple of different podcast episodes.
Kris: So have a little search through our archives for, we’ve done three main episodes on AI and our favorite to use at the moment. It might change, but our favorite is Gemini. It’s the Google AI and poor little chat GPT hasn’t had a look in for a little while, but Gemini is really fun. Gemini. We’re loving it. Check it out.
All right. Our final system to save time is a time tracking system. So of course you need to be tracking your project time. I’m sure you’d be all doing that. Please, please. You’re all doing that, aren’t you? You’re tracking your project time.
Don: Yes, Kris.
Kris: Okay. But are you tracking in a way that actually helps you analyze your time?
So this is the key thing here. So we have two systems that we recommend and it’s the project time tracker. So project by project. So you’ve got your client project. You need to track their individual time. And then we have an everything time tracker. And with the Everything Time Tracker, you don’t need to do that every week.
You need to do it for a set period of time. Maybe 14 days is a really good gauge to see where you’re at. But this is the most golden intel, which will end up saving you so much time, short term and long term. Actually, I was going to say just in the long term, but then I changed my mind. I thought, no, short term as well is so, so important.
You will get time back. You’ll be able to actually see what is happening. You’ll be able to see the time sucks and the areas that can just be like, bye bye outsourced.
Don: Yep. So you won’t get time physically back.
Kris: No.
Don: You’ll get it in that next week. So if you’re used to. Yep. A particular way of doing things after you do this system, you will not ever do that again.
You will get time back for the next week, you’ll get time in advance that you can spend doing whatever you want to do because this is really powerful, really powerful intel.
Kris: Another important thing is to clearly see what your overall hourly rate is. So how much are you being paid for the freedom in inverted commas?
For having your design business because we go into business for freedom and if you’re drawing 750 per week. I’m just plucking. Yeah. Yeah arbitrary. Yeah, and you’re working 35 hours a week That’s total in your business not client work. Just Total time spent in your business, that’s an hourly rate of like a bit over 20, right?
Nice. I know, the math ain’t mathing, you know, when it comes to that, it’s just not happening. So this is what you need to work out with your everything time tracker. How much time you’re actually putting into your business, how much return you are getting on your business. Is it giving you what you need, and if not, what can you do?
Because there’s always something you can do. It’s not like we’re saying, throw in the towel, and oh, I can’t run a business because I’m only earning $20 per week. That’s not Well, that would be even worse. We’re earning
Don: $20 a week, we are telling you, get out of there. It’s not worth it.
Kris: I know, I know, we laugh. But you know, there might be some people out there who are, you know, it’s really, it’s sad, you know, what’s happening with some businesses.
Don: I’m sure we’ve had, I’m sure we’ve had weeks and months in our businesses where we’ve not earned anything. We’ve been in the negative even.
Kris: Oh gosh. But like, especially when you’re starting out.
Don: Bbut like Kris said, there is always something that you can do and the way that we discover what the thing is to do is by looking at the intel we gather from our everything time tracker. That will tell us, it will tell us straight away, okay, we’re wasting way too much time in that area. Get rid of it, boot it out. We don’t need to be doing that or delegate in that way. It’s incredible. As soon as you actually look at it and you can see, okay, I’m spending, you know, Triple the amount of time in conceptual development.
One of the things that you could do, systemize your conceptual approach, make sure you’re really taking care of the amount of time that you need to spend on that. Minimize it, making sure that you’re honoring whatever that, whatever the freedom amount is so that you’re not doing that. You’re not working for free.
Kris: Yeah. And it could be like, I’m spending five hours. Yeah. Or whatever intel comes from it. Yeah. That might be a silly example. It might not be for some of you, but it’s about seeing those glaringly obvious problems.
Don: Yeah. Yeah. You know, that five hours on email could be a legitimate problem for a lot of people because not all of us are natural born writers.
And so that could be intel you need to outsource. You need to get someone in to write the emails for you so you can spend five hours on Creative Concept, which has a higher return for you, which will in fact give you more money and more profit in your, in that project. Yeah. So it’s really gold.
Kris: So I mentioned just a little bit before that if you’re starting out and you’re actively building your business, well, your hourly rate might look low at first. And that’s okay. That’s okay. You know, that’s, that can happen. But if you’re five years in and that’s still happening. Something is critically wrong.
Don: I think even one year in, really there should be some profitability being present at one year in, really. Like, Kris and I both believe that it takes a good 12 months to build a business from the ground up. That’s really look at, take a laser sharp look at all of the systems and to do an audit across an entire business.
So for 12 months, we’re okay with it being sort of like foundational, you know, we’re just starting out. But beyond that, there should be enough in place for you to be getting the right business in the door because you’re attracting the right clients. Your language is attracting premium clients. You are being paid appropriately, to the value of the work that you’re doing. So really, you know, you should be thinking, you should be looking at your business after a year or so in going, okay, there needs to be a profit margin here. Absolutely. There should be. And if not, why not? What do I need to change to make that happen?
Kris: That’s right. All right. So that’s the 10, but we have a little bonus point for you. Memorize your keyboard shortcuts. If you’re a designer, memorize your little quick keys, make it your mission to know these. If you’re not using them. You really need to be using it. You really do need to.
Don: And that was the reason that I didn’t want to give up QuarkXPress, Kris. I was a master of the quick keys and I had to learn a whole new set of quick keys with Adobe. But, you know, you’ve, you’ve got to make it a priority. It is, it’s your craft. You need to know.
Kris: Yep. That’s right. So once you implement these systems and sometimes like you might start implementing these systems, but you might need a bit of extra support as well.
And that’s where we can come in because things still might look a bit. And you’re thinking, why isn’t this working? So there might be something that you need to ask us about and you can do that via one to one coaching, or you can do that in our weekly Q& A sessions. If you’re part of the Academy as well, if you’re interested in that, reach out to us, book a free consultation with us.
We’ve got it on our website. You can easily do that and you can find out all about that as well. All right. So implement the systems people, streamline your workflow, automate, automate, automate. All right. Save valuable time and start focusing on the actual income generating things. Yes. Because that last point where we’re talking about working for practically nothing, a lot of these are going to mitigate that, you know, that because you’re going to have more time to actually spend on income generation, business building, and also creative aspects of your work, which we know you love as well. You’re getting your clients in the door. Time spent on that, you know, that’s so essential.
Don: Yeah, that’s right. Here’s to lots of time, beautiful people. Okay, so before we go, just one little favor to ask.
If you are loving our podcast, and we hope you do, it would mean so much to us if you could subscribe and leave us a little positive review. We’ve got something lovely to say. We welcome that as well. It’s really important for the growth of our podcast and the future of our podcast. So it helps people to find us
Kris: and we want to get in as many ears as possible in the, this beautiful design community. We just love designers. We want to elevate designers. It’s our mission to elevate the design industry. As a whole.
Don: Yeah, absolutely.
Don: Thank you in advance. We love you all so much.
Kris: I think some of you like, and we know we, we talked to a lot of you and you might not have the funds and the budget right now to work one to one or to join the academy or whatever.
But if you want to, to say a little thank you to us, that’s all you need to do really. Leave us a beautiful review. That would mean the world to us. Yeah, absolutely.
Don: Thank you so much. In advance. Yes, yes. Alright everybody. Be brave. Be brave. Put those systems in place. Talk to you soon. Okay, bye!
Kris: Bye!
© Copyright 2024 Design & Prosper Pty Ltd