Growing An Online Service Business

LifeOperations

May 21

Meg here 👋! The last several months have been a substantial period of growth for our business and it felt like a good time to reflect on what got us here and how we plan on shifting into the next phase ahead. If you’re an aspiring designer or online service based business, my hope is that some of this will be helpful for your own journey. There is so much advice (and noise!) online about building a business and I wanted to reflect on what has actually worked and helped to move the needle for us since we’ve launched.

How We Got Here

I’m definitely not a huge risk taker and worked full-time for 15 years in various corporate, small business, and nonprofit organizations. From the very start of my career I found ways to include design work in my role, and friends and co-workers began reaching out with freelance projects that I fit in on nights and weekends. In 2016 my husband and I made the move to Colorado and I had no job figured out but a significant amount of freelance work lined up. It seemed like a relatively safe time to see if I could make a full-time job out of contract design projects. Luckily, after getting the word out to my network that I was open for business, more opportunities came in and by the end of the year I was pretty close to matching my previous full-time salary.

I want to preface everything by acknowledging the huge amount of privilege that I had going into this. I am white, cis, straight, and not living with a disability. My husband has a full-time job that covers my health insurance and provides a safety net financially if I have a bad month or huge tax bill due. I have a master’s degree and large network of people I’ve worked with or gone to school with over the last few decades. All things I wish people in the online space would acknowledge more often.

Reflecting on those early days as a full-time freelancer, the things that most helped me get a business going full-time were:

Building and maintaining my network (mostly IRL) of other professionals from graduate school and full-time jobs (a solid referral source)
Telling people what I did for a living—many of my clients that first year or so were people I met at the gym or through other non-work connections
Focusing on doing really good work (one of my first employers had a motto to “under promise and overdeliver” and I tried my best to do that)
Asking current clients for referrals and sending thank you notes for larger projects
Continuing to hone my design skills and dive deeper into my software/app knowledge (Adobe Creative Suite, Squarespace, WordPress, and Canva)
Beginning to identify repeatable steps for each project that I could turn into a process (so I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel each time, particularly with on-boarding and off-boarding my clients)
Documenting those processes in Google Docs, learning how to use more of my CRM system to automate some tasks, and saving canned email responses in Gmail as templates (I found Kerstin Martin’s Biz Box course to be really helpful in thinking through these areas)
Sharing my work more publicly on my web site and social media (and using Instagram as a place to participate in design challenges and define my style a bit more)

The Debut of Due West Design

In 2020 I felt like a lot of you probably did, tired of the pandemic and the monotony that came with being stuck at home most of the time. I wanted to do something exciting and taking my business from a freelance model to an actual company seemed like the perfect challenge. I filed for the LLC, set up a business bank account, and began mapping out the company values and potential service offerings. I researched pricing and reviewed all of my past projects to determine the best packages and deliverables to offer. I secured the domain, social handles, and began working on a brand. It all came together and launched on December 21, 2020. Some of the best investments I’ve made since then are:

Setting up a Google My Business listing and inviting clients to leave a review at the end of our project
Continuously improving the quality of my work as a result of doing it full-time and offering packages where I did the same kinds of projects more regularly (this really pushed me creatively and helped me grow as a designer) — and then continuing to share that work in our portfolio and on social media
Joining several online directories, like the Freelancing Females, Creative Lady Directory, and Day Rate Creatives (I’d also been in more traditional directories like AIGA and AAF with no results)
Making connections with other designers (this has been great for camaraderie as well as being able to help with inquiries when they were fully booked out or as a subcontractor for their larger projects)
Optimizing this web site for SEO and updating it regularly
Listing our package prices on our web site for transparency and so that potential clients can know up front if we’re a good fit
Setting up Squarespace Scheduling so that potential clients can easily book a free discovery call with us to discuss their project (I also use it to schedule current client meetings and coffee chats)
Joining the virtual Being Boss community, where I could ask questions and workshop ideas with other small business owners each week
Starting the Profit First system and hiring financial management support (first a bookkeeper and now an accounting firm that handles our books and taxes)
Hiring part-time design assistants to help with the increased number of projects we had coming in
Learning more about my human design type and working with Anna Lee, who kindly and helpfully coached me through several growing pains and mindset hurdles this year. Sarah Moon was also an excellent pro to hold a strategy session with—highly recommend them both!

It’s been a lot of distilling down all of the things we are told to do as business owners and figuring out what made the most sense for my business. I tried many other things not listed here that didn’t show a return that we’ve since cut out. I got bad business advice that I knew was not a good fit for Due West (i.e. “just outsource everything overseas for $4/hour and no one will know the difference” 🙄). It’s really important to me to have a business built on integrity, quality, and professionalism so I’ve only incorporated things that align with that.

What’s Next

Making all of those changes helped us ride the first big wave of projects that came our way last year. Everyone has been on-boarded, processes are getting more seamless, and I’m so proud of the work we are producing (and the types of nonprofits and small businesses we’ve had the opportunity to work with). We had a nice rhythm going for a while but now that the pace is picking up again it’s time to consider how we’re going to level up the business this time around. Here are some areas I plan to focus on next:

Time blocking and tracking — I’m definitely guilty of multi-tasking and know that these are two ways to stay focused and aware of how I’m allocating my time each day
Booking projects out further in advance — This involves putting on my project manager hat and being a bit more intentional with how we schedule out our project start dates and milestones
Leveraging our Design VIP Day offer — This service has become a really great vehicle for so many different kinds of smaller graphic and web design projects, and I’d really like to keep it top of mind when quoting projects and helping people find the best solutions for their design challenges. We’ve had several clients now who were ghosted by their previous designer and we love being able to help them see their project through!
Checking out local co-working spaces — Now that it’s feeling safer to venture back out into the world, I want to drop into some of the cool co-working spaces in our area to meet other small business owners/freelancers and enjoy a change of workplace scenery
Signing up for an art class — There is something about being creative outside of my computer that sounds really appealing right now. I want to use my hands and try some pottery making or acrylic painting over at the Cottonwood Center for the Arts soon!

How about you? What phase is your business in right now? How are you riding the waves of entrepreneurship and preparing yourself for what’s next? I find it so helpful to take time out periodically to reflect and plan, and hope this is helpful for you too!