Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast! This podcast is aimed at helping you find ways to create new revenue streams or make money online without dealing with an underpaid or underappreciated job. Our host is best-selling author, Jonathan Green.
Today's guest is Adrienne Johnston, whose career trajectory took an insightful turn when she faced the challenge of balancing a multitude of client services without a clear focus. By honing in on her expertise in presentation design, Adrienne transformed her business model. She shifted from being a jack-of-all-trades to a master of one, significantly increasing her efficiency and revenue. She brings a wealth of knowledge from her background in marketing and operations, which helped her pinpoint the lucrative niche of presentation design amidst a competitive market.
In this episode, Adrienne Johnston reveals how narrowing her focus and harnessing the power of SEO to attract clients became the cornerstones of her success. She discusses the pitfalls of mission creep in client services and the importance of specialization. From navigating the complexities of pricing strategies to building a referral network that amplifies her reach, Adrienne shares actionable insights on standing out and commanding premium rates. Join us as we delve into the strategic moves that can set you apart in a crowded marketplace and turn your specific skills into a thriving business.
Notable Quotes:
Connect with Adrienne Johnston:
Website: adrianjohnston.com
Resource Hub: designingandthriving.com
Connect with Jonathan Green
Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast! This podcast is aimed at helping you find ways to create new revenue streams or make money online without dealing with an underpaid or underappreciated job. Our host is best-selling author, Jonathan Green.
Today's guest is Adrienne Johnston, whose career trajectory took an insightful turn when she faced the challenge of balancing a multitude of client services without a clear focus. By honing in on her expertise in presentation design, Adrienne transformed her business model. She shifted from being a jack-of-all-trades to a master of one, significantly increasing her efficiency and revenue. She brings a wealth of knowledge from her background in marketing and operations, which helped her pinpoint the lucrative niche of presentation design amidst a competitive market.
In this episode, Adrienne Johnston reveals how narrowing her focus and harnessing the power of SEO to attract clients became the cornerstones of her success. She discusses the pitfalls of mission creep in client services and the importance of specialization. From navigating the complexities of pricing strategies to building a referral network that amplifies her reach, Adrienne shares actionable insights on standing out and commanding premium rates. Join us as we delve into the strategic moves that can set you apart in a crowded marketplace and turn your specific skills into a thriving business.
Notable Quotes:
Connect with Adrienne Johnston:
Website: adrianjohnston.com
Resource Hub: designingandthriving.com
Connect with Jonathan Green
Narrow your focus to maximize your revenue with today's special guest, Adrienne Johnston, on today's episode. Now, what you've done is something I've always found interesting, because a lot of people fall into this trap with client work of mission creep, which is where they go, what do you do? Oh, I do website building. Well, we also do SEO. I do that too. What about pay-per-click campaigns? Of course I can do that. What about Craigslist? I can do that. And... You start to broaden your services because you think, I want to capture maximum revenue from this client. And you become the agent that's kind of, or the agency, right, a one person agency can kind of jack of all trades. And at first it seems like a good idea, and then suddenly you're overwhelmed because you're further and further outside your air of excellence. So how did you avoid that trap, or did that ever happen to you, as you were narrowing down into focusing on presentation creation, how did you kind of find that as your sub-niche of graphic design? How did you find your path? Yeah, so I actually was kind of the opposite. So when I got started, I was doing everything and really quickly realized. So my background is marketing and operations. And I mean, just looking at it, I knew it wasn't gonna work because I was spending so much time Googling and doing all the projects. Nothing was efficient, nothing was scalable. I couldn't charge a premium for anything. I wasn't standing out in the market for any one thing. And so when I looked at it across the board, I realized it was broken. And I said, okay, if I look at everything, what really works and was making me the most money? What do I do the fastest? What seems to have the lowest competition because other people don't seem to wanna do it? Or I didn't know that's what it was at the time, honestly. I was just like, what am I winning more than other people? And then later on I could figure out why. And it was the presentation design piece. Um, and so that was when I started to focus in on, okay, then how do I get those clients and that was through SEO and other components. Um, and I'll tell you that for me, it's, I have so many leads coming in from the SEO piece, it would be stupid for me to get distracted by website creation and other pieces. I just refer out everything else that doesn't make sense for me. Um, and so yeah, I have a great network of other designers that I can say, Hey, here's who you need to talk to for this piece and here's who you need to talk to for that piece. And it keeps me from feeling guilty about turning down that work. Um, I know that I'm helping other people build their businesses where it makes sense and it keeps me from spinning my wheels. I regret it every single time I take on one of those projects where it's just, oh, it's going to be something simple. You know, it'll be an easy couple of grand. It's never an easy couple of grand. It's the hardest couple of grand ever. Yeah, sometimes with some of those projects, I felt like that moment in Napoleon Diamond at the end of the day where he's like, that's 13 cents an hour. And you feel like you're making like depression era or civil war wages, where you're making fractions of a penny an hour. And that's happened to me where you just, it always explodes because when you're outside your area of expertise, that's where you're most likely to step on a trick that you don't realize is there in the projects way bigger than you think. Something very important to understand is that people often think, especially we have a lot of coaches and consultants, in addition to all of our AI followers, and they always think like, I have a traffic problem. And I always say, you don't have a traffic problem, you have a pricing problem, because at a certain number, you only need one client per year. And that's really the difference. For certain parts of my business, I get maybe 20 leads a year. It's full, that business is making six figures because I only need three. In fact, my wife and I often discuss maybe we should take six. I'm like, eh, it's like too big for the consulting side of the business. Three is perfect. But it's very important to be a specialist. Specialists are always paid more, right? It's why the pediatrician makes more than the general practitioner. The pediatric surgeon makes more than the regular surgeon. Regular surgeon makes more than the general practitioner. The more you're a specialist, that only does one thing, then you can be the best at it. It's very easy to be a good article writer because there's millions of them. There's millions of people who write articles, but the more you narrow it down, the more you become more valuable because less and less people can do what you do. And I think that's a very good first lesson. And the second thing is that we're so worried about leads that we jump on bad leads. And my experience has been that when you take a bad lead, it ends up costing you time that you could have used for capturing a good lead. One of the first lessons I ever learned was when I had a client who was like, he was so rich. He said, every time I talk to you on the phone, I'm losing money. Send an email once a month on your work and I'll never talk to you again. I got to get off the phone. My time is so much more valuable than yours. I'll never talk to you again. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's my dream client. That's with... Everyone's like, oh, that's so insulting. I'm like, no, that's literally the best thing anyone's ever done. That's the dream client because when you charge low, you attract low. And when you charge high, you attract high. At every single price I've ever charged, I've had someone say, that's too expensive. And someone else say, wow, you're so cheap. You must be trash. Because there's no number that someone doesn't think is normal. Just like, I think it was at NASA. They pay $25,000 for a space hammer, and it's just a hammer. but they don't know. And I remember when I was first starting out, I met someone who was really, really wealthy. And I said, what would you pay someone to design a landing page? And he said, $25,000. I said, oh my gosh, I wouldn't be your landing page designer because that's unbelievable. I can hire the best designers in the world and I still wouldn't spend more than three grand. I have $22,000 profit every single time because this guy, everyone has a sense of what things should cost and they don't trust when it's below that, no matter what that number is. So that's a really good lesson. Now, I think it's not as much about what your specialty is as that you have a specialty and that you chose one that's narrow, that's low competition, and that you could become the go-to person at. We often think of graphic designers as all the same thing, and that they're all like sharks competing with each other, but once you carve out, this is the one thing I do, this is the thing I don't do, all that competition can become referrals, they can send you clients, they go, oh, I don't do that. I know if anytime they come for presentation design, they send them to you. So that becomes your narrow focus. And that's the other critical element that I want to make sure people focus on that when you're a specialist, the more you narrow down your specialty, the more your competition stops being your competition. And that's really the second value. So you become more valuable. You don't need as many leads and more people will send you leads. One of the big kind of revelations I had for a long time, I was like, every other author is my enemy. Every time someone reads their book, they're not reading my book. And only when I realized, wait, most people read more than one book in their lives that I could really grow my business and stop seeing people as competition. So I think that's a really critical lesson. Now, as you were starting to grow your business, one of the challenges a lot of people face is the fear of pricing. Oh, what should I charge? What am I worth? Should I charge for hour? I don't wanna charge too much and lose the client. How did you approach your initial pricing and scaling to what you charge now? What was your approach and how did you face that amount? Absolutely. So yeah, when I got started, I started charging just what the average kind of graphic freelance designer is charging is something like 30, $40 an hour. And I just started from there. I was on Upwork to get started before I had optimized Fresio when I'm still doing everything. And I had a client tell me you're half the price of other people and you're twice as fast. So you need to figure this out. And whenever you've got a client telling you, you know, you need to take it seriously. I said, okay, I need to start increasing this. And so that's what I started doing. I just started chipping away at it. And that's what I recommend for other people as well. Like if you don't know, you know, and cause there is a lot of fear in am I, especially if I need to pay my bills, right? There's a lot of fear in if this client says no, what's going to happen? What are the ramifications of that? So you don't have to do it all at one time is what I tell people. You can say, okay, I've got my existing clients. I'm gonna leave them where they're at. For this new client though, I'm gonna try out this new slightly higher rate, and it could be $10 an hour higher, it could be 10% higher, whatever it is. See what happens. Another thing I like to do is when your schedule's full, or there's a project you're not particularly interested in, throw out a number. If you don't wanna do the work anyway, throw out a number that's gonna make it worth it to you, and then it's a win-win for you. Either you're gonna get paid really well to do something you don't really wanna do to begin with, or you are going to not... get that work, but you didn't really want to do it anyway. At least you tried something, you know? And I have, I've doubled my rates that way on a project I didn't want to do. So I went from $100 an hour to $200 an hour on the project I didn't want to do. And I was like, wow, I guess people will pay this. And then... I also had a situation recently where I was just so booked. And so I've gone over time, just continue to increase my rates. And I'm up to now to $75 a slide. And two or three months ago, I had a client who came in and said, you know, we need some help. I was so busy. And I said, it's $100 a slide, just flat fee. I increased my minimum like the whole thing. And they said, okay. I was like, oh, I guess that's my new rate. You know, um, and they've been an amazing client and they don't expect more for that rate, but I mean, that's, you know, twice what I was charging three years ago. Um, I will also say, you know, part of that, I, sometimes I say those things to other people and then they're like, okay, I'm going to go charge a hundred dollars a slide. I mean, that's, you know, six years worth of experience. I get on phone calls with clients now and they're not going to ask me anything that I can't answer. I don't know the answer to. I can't, there's experience that comes with that. And I think that's. enables you to command those types of rates. It helps them feel secure in paying those types of rates. And you have to have the portfolio, right? Like my website has the logos that back that up, the testimonials from those big name clients that back all of that up. So I think that you have to build up to it, I believe. If you have a background that enables you to just go try it, try it, but I think some people, you can also... price yourself if you don't have the right experience and confidence, you can price yourself out of the market too. And so I have seen that happen to people as well. Their fears almost become realized in many ways. Yeah, that's really interesting because every time I raise my prices, there's always someone who goes, okay, that's fine. And what I always do is I raise it beyond what I want. So I raise it 10 or 20% of what I want so they can talk me down to the number that I want and I'm happy. And if they don't talk me down, I'm also happy. But it's interesting you talked about coming from the world of Upwork. So I've never. Whenever someone tells me they're talking to multiple people, I never get picked. Whenever there's any of that competition stuff, 100% of the time. And I've had clients, many clients pay me multiple five figures for small projects. So it's always, whenever they go, oh, we're talking to other ghost writers, I go, oh, I don't do that. I don't even waste my time. I can never get picked on Upwork. Whenever it's that game, because I'm not interested, I go, listen, right? If you bring in a specialist, right? You're bringing in a mercenary. You don't bring in 10 snipers. You don't interview 10. You don't do that, right? You would never do that. Because the last thing you want to do is make nine of them mad because they didn't get picked. So I have just found that there are some people that are good at that. Like they're so good at the Upwork thing. Whereas my thing is nobody ever reads my portfolio. That's the only thing I was going to ask you. Nobody ever actually does it. They'll ask me to send over stuff. And I know they never read it. Because I put stuff in there that I know they would ask about if they read it. and they never do. I almost thought about putting a trigger on a zip file so I'd get notified if it even gets unzipped because I don't think they even unzip it. How often do people actually look at your password? I assume I only really have things on my website. And then if they're asking for templates, I have like a proposal template that has a link to a video in it that has probably only been clicked on twice. So yeah, I probably have the same situation. How deep are they really going into some of the specifics, the options that you're giving them? For context, I really haven't built my business on Upwork. It was kind of an early stage. Can I do this? There's lots of opportunity kind of thing. Um, I, I was able to win a lot of those early bids on the PowerPoint thing. I just, and there are plenty of people who have built presentation design businesses. Um, there's a woman named Courtney Allen, who's built, she's making something like a million dollars a year now or something on Upwork alone with her presentation design agency. It's really impressive. Um, I didn't see the market there for that. Um, and so that's where I went with SEO to kind of build my own website and presence. And I just felt like, um, Having people find me, having that expertise, kind of building all of that out on my own was gonna serve me better. I don't know if it would have, but I'm really happy with the way it's turned out for me. It's interesting that even with a visual, with a visual resume, which is easier than reading books and short stories, they can quickly see what you're finding. What I often find is people ask questions, like they'll be like, hey, have you ever written a book and they want it to be similar to their book as possible, which is actually the last thing you'd want, because it means that I'm gonna mingle the two projects and be a little bit bored. So it's a really terrible question. But they always ask like, Oh, have you written a weight loss book by a person that this is the method I'm like, Hmm. You really want a competing book? I'm not sure. But as soon as, as long as you can say, yes, I've done something similar or I feel confident that's really kind of what they're pushing against, especially when you're more premium price. I find that, um, a certain amount of aloofness where it's like, why would you question me? I'm already know I'm the best. Like the way really expensive painters talk. I sometimes throw that in there because I don't really need to have a long conversation because sometimes it's like, oh, how do you know to be a bestseller? I haven't written a non-bestseller in 300 books, so I don't know how to do that. And that usually shuts it down, but you don't have the confidence when you're starting out to go, oh, I've written 13 books or 12 books. So I find that mostly what they're doing when they're asking for their resume or they're asking past experience or asking similar projects is really kind of testing your confidence and When you were starting out, did you kind of get your confidence by getting a few upwork jobs and going, okay, I've done some jobs, gotten a positive review, and that gives me my foundation of confidence? 100%. And for me, it was just, I didn't, I got on Upwork because I was between jobs and I was thought, oh, I'll make some money while I'm trying to look for another full-time job. I didn't expect that I would end up going freelance. And once I got on there and realized, oh, even without sales skills, as an introvert, I can make this work. There's a way to make this work for me. Um, I realized I could do it. And so. It was a matter of how do I make it work for me then? And I didn't think Upwork was gonna be it. I think of myself as a helper in the world. And so I figured if I could get that SEO piece, then people could come to me and I could put myself in a position to help them. So it would keep me from having to do cold outreach and all of that. Which was the other thing that I liked about Upwork was that it enabled me to just be the helper of people who already needed help. as opposed to having to go out and do that salesy thing. And so that was really how I ended up kind of facilitating that piece. I think you brought up something really, no, that's something really important that I want to dive into, which is that when you pursue the client and you go, Hey, I'm a specialist at this. It's so much more work than you have to convince them. Oh, you need help. And I'm good at solve. You have a problem and I can solve the problem and you should hire me and I'm worth the price. But when someone comes to you and SEO is a great strategy because it's a positioning strategy means they're already looking and they find. It's so much easier when they call you than when you call them. I've always said that like, I don't chase leads. I don't go up to people and say, Hey, you're looking for a writer. You're looking for a writer, looking for writer. That's always a nightmare. That's why I don't like to jump in the upward thing because that's not my skill set. I'm not good when someone's like, Hey, why are you the best of 10 writers? Like, it was usually they like to start doing competitions on price. I'm like, I don't do that. like the last person I was in negotiations with, I know they were talking to another writer. I went through like three rounds and like, oh, what do you do about discounts? What do you do about if we don't like the work? I was like, yeah, if you don't like the work, I don't care. You're paying me for my time. I said, the price is the price. Like it is what it is, right? And you know, people will often at that point either go, this is the best or they'll go for someone cheaper. And then in two years later, I get the call, oh, actually we do want to work with you. I've gotten that quite a few times. People don't realize that they're... when you're confident about your price, it's there for a reason. And I like when you talk about the inconvenience number, which is very important. What's built into my pricing, and there's different names for it, is it inconvenience taxed or a bad client tax? And there's certain things that are built into my pricing that have been added over time based on experiences. There's one of my editors one time was like, how can you don't get upset when they don't publish the book that you wrote for them? I was like, yeah, that's built into the price. That's one of the factors that goes into the numbers that. they're never going to publish it because they never read it. The number of people who have had me write a book for them and they never read it, it's a shockingly high percentage. But I wonder, does that happen to you with presentation design and you design a presentation and they never actually deliver the presentation? I don't know. I don't think so. An interesting thing about presentation design, we tend to think of it as like the big Steve Jobs style keynotes and that's what people always reference when they talk about, I want my presentation to look like that. But the reality is, is most of them aren't on big stages. There are a lot of sales, small, five, 10 people presentations and so they're... actually being used over and over in that way. And so I would, yeah, I would guess most of them are actually probably being used. Another interesting thing about it is there is a very, there's a sense of urgency to it. So many people think, oh, I'm gonna get a template and I can make my own slides. And the problem is even with a template, if you don't have a design background, those templates are actually still hard to use, right? There's a limited number of circumstances built into them. There's a hundred different situations. And people have real content is the thing I always say. They have a process they wanna show with eight steps, but it's got two things coming into it. But the infographics that are in those templates have just a simple eight step process, right? They can't account for every scenario. Um, and so, yeah, I think most of the time they get used and there's always that sense of urgency to it. Um, so I probably don't have as much of that as you would. Yeah, see that's interesting because they always come to me they say, Oh, I really need by this time. It's urgent. I need in two months. I need in three, they always want to rush it and then it's always a rush until I've delivered something and then I'm waiting for them to give feedback. Which is There can be some of that. And I find that's more common on with the startups who are looking for pitch deck support. I don't tend to work with as many of them. It's a really kind of a specialty in itself. They tend to want research support. They tend to want copy support and I'm just not good at that stuff and I hate doing it. But they're also because they're early stages. They tend to be really shifting that content on, you know, they'll go to a meeting with investors, get some feedback, and then they want to come back and make changes again. But they're also always on a low budget. Like they're not my ideal clients. They're somebody's ideal client, but they're not mine. So I don't tend to work with them, but yes, they'll be like, we have this investor meeting in two days. So we have to hurry up and then you deliver the thing. And then suddenly it's the project that won't die. And you're like, how did this happen? It sounds like you've figured out your, not only are you a presentation expert, there's also certain types of clients you like and certain types of clients you don't like. And the more you narrow it down, the faster you can grow your business, raise your prices and get the right type of clients because more important than the clients you bring in are the clients you keep out that leave room for those right clients to find. So I think that's really important. I think it's been a really good lesson. Most of our audience is of course, trying to figure out being AI consultants or factual AIOs or consultants in some of those spaces, but It's an important lesson to narrow it down. You don't have to be an expert at everything. Everyone thinks, oh, I have to go every AI tool, I have to go every software, every automation. You don't. Just want to be one solution, narrow focus on the best at what I do, which is this one thing. So this has been really awesome, Adrienne. I know people are going to really enjoy this. Where can they check out more about what you're doing and see more about your presentation skills and get a sense of how you've narrowed down your business? Absolutely. You can go to my website at adrianjohnston.com. And then I have free resources for other presentation designers or graphic designers at designingandthriving.com. Perfect, so I'll put all of that in the show notes, it'll be below this video on YouTube as well. Thank you so much for being here. This was another amazing episode. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.