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How To Scale To A Million-Dollar Business?

Million-Dollar Business

Last updated on December 14th, 2020

Thousands of new and established companies are competing hard in any given market. So, while it is easy to start a venture including a graphic design business, to take it to the next level and then to turn it into a million-dollar business, you must come up with a precise strategy. You should take every step carefully for the steady growth of your brand.

Are you the proud owner of a graphic design business, which is doing just fine? But you still may be facing some serious challenges when it comes to giving a big steady boost to your business. Many businesses fail to grow beyond a certain limit. Starting a small venture to serve clients with a design solution is not a hard task. But after some time, you are stuck with your low paying clients. As a result, your business does not grow as much as you had expected.

At this stage, most designers fail to get high paying clients. Such clients are the key to scale to a million-dollar business. If you go on applying the same old strategies, it is not going to yield the desired results. When you first started your design business or any other venture, your first and foremost concern was to make sure that clients can identify you, in your case, as a potential designer. Then, once you had some clientele, the next stage was to establish yourself as a brand in the design market.

Webinar On How To Scale To A Million-Dollar Business

It is only after you have established a brand that you can think of transforming your company into a million-dollar business. But at this stage, you need to apply a different strategy. To help business owners give their brand a boost further, Designhill, a leading creative marketplace organized a webinar on this issue on Oct 30, 2019.

The guest speaker was Henry Kaminski, the founder of Unique Designz. He is also a brand consultant, author & host of the popular “BrandDoctor’s Podcast” where he talks about strategies that help entrepreneurs design reputable and profitable personal brands. Henry gave valuable tips to the designers on how to achieve their business targets by professionally dealing with the clients.

Here Is The Video Of The Webinar With Henry Kaminski

Pay Heed To These Tips That Henry Kaminski Gave Responding To These Crucial Questions

Q1. How Do You Decide Who Is The Right Customer?

The first thing we need to focus on is who exactly we want to serve. For example, one of my Instagram followers asked me how to find the right client to work with. Her problem was that sometimes she did not like the client and other times the client was upset with her. This shows that such relationships soon sour and never end in a happy way. The fact is that as designers and clients, we both deserve great clients.

So, I asked her about her passion. She said that she loved luxury, fashion, and anything related to beauty. Then, I asked if she ever considered working for a beauty industry? She replied that she did a one-off job for some clients in the beauty industry. I advised her to get more clients from that industry. This way, I helped her identify that particular niche. I suggested that she create designs that evoke the emotions of hairstylists and people in the luxury and fashion market and create designs that resonate with them.

Secondly, consider the client’s attitude. If the client respects your expertise and says that you know how to do the job, then that client is the right fit. Such a client will say that he or she is here to learn it from you. But if the client forces you to do a job with a wrong attitude, then avoid that client.

If such a client says that he wants a nice business logo and asks you whether you can do it for him, then he is not the right person to work with. I advise such clients to go to Fiverr and put some money to get their work done. So, that is how I make sure that I work with the right people.

Q2. What Questions Should We Ask Clients To Develop A Good Value Proposition For Them?

Start with the ‘why’ conversation. Ask why you want this brand identity, logo, etc. They are going to probably say, for instance, that they want a website to generate more sales. If so then ask ‘what is your sales process’? They might say that they do not have one. In that case, tell them to first have a sales process and then a website. Now here you can say that you just refused the job of designing a website.

But the fact is that if you do build a website here, they will come back after a few months with the complaint that it is not generating sales. But if the same clients get your advise and put in place a sales process first and then ask you to build a website, then you have successfully built some trust between the two of you.

The next question I ask is “why do you want it now?”. Take notes from their answers. This is going to bring in the urgency of the project. You now know why exactly they want to do this project. Ask them questions like why it is important to you, what are you going to achieve with this project next year and so on.

Then, ask “why did you reach out to me?”. “Why do you want me to do this project when thousands of other people can do it?” They may come up with the answers as they follow you on Instagram, you know how to do the job, etc. These answers will give you the clue to take your brand to the next level and help it become a million-dollar business.

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Q3. How To Find Clients Through Instagram?

I think 90% of my business comes from my presence on Instagram. I hire the influencers that have big accounts on social media and pay them. I also post content that talk about the challenges and pain points of clients. This way, people get a well-rounded understanding of who you are, what you stand for, and the quality of work you do.

But first, know why someone should follow you on Instagram? I will say that there are three reasons for people should be following you on this social platform. If you go to my Instagram account, it says exactly what I do. I help influential people, design purpose driven brands. I’m very clear with what it is that I do.

I have a couple line items or bullet points that I let my audience know where I can help them could help them monetize their influence, I can help them grow their fan base. And those are the two top things that my clients want.

They want a larger fan base so that they can become more of an impact and have more impact on more people. And they want to be able to monetize their influence. They want to be able to make money with their authority, their credibility, their experience in that. So my content should be based around those two things.

If I’m putting out content of cute dogs, what does that have to do with growing your fan base, or monetizing your influence? Nothing? If I’m taking pictures of cheeseburgers that I’m eating, then how does that provide value to my audience? So what you need to do is you need to figure out the top three things on how you serve your clients and the value behind that.

People Buy Benefits And Value

Know that people do not buy designs such as a logo design or a fancy website. They buy benefits and value. The benefit is about what is in it for them. In other words, for example, what is a beautifully designed website going to do for them. Then, the value is about why they should care about having a well designed, highly optimized website or logo. That is the thing you should really focus on. That is the content.

If you see my content, you will find a personal piece of content such as pictures of my family on a vacation. This type of content is important for people to know me as a person. I need to show my personality. Otherwise, they may ask who this person is. But I use that content sparingly.

Then, you can see photos of clickfunnels, a website building software to create highly optimized sales funnels for people. I post photos of this site and tell people how to use it. I do it so that people from the Clickfunnel community visit me in order to hire me.

I also post content about how to keep a great mindset as an entrepreneur. Besides that, I post content that gives you practical tips on how to sell and how to convert visitors into paying customers.

Q4. What Is The Best Mindset As An Entrepreneur And How To Achieve That?

It’s all about getting back up after we get knocked down. I do a tremendous amount of work on myself when it comes to mindset. Because the mind is going to dictate the outcome of your life in your business. So we have to make sure that we have a great mindset if we want to achieve our target of attaining a million-dollar business.

Here is how I sell myself. It is just listening more and talking less and being able to understand the customers and where they’re struggling right now, I’ll give you a quick example.

I had a client who wanted sales to funnel, built and designed by the right person. The client said that he had $2,000 and asked me what I can do for him? I said, I’m sorry, but nothing. Our minimum level of engagement here is $10,000. If that’s not within your budget, I highly recommend you do two things. One, you could go to the Click Funnels community, and I’m sure someone will take your two grand and build something. Or, you could do it yourself.

He said you were the first person out of six people I’ve talked to who listened to me. Everyone else said, yeah, we could do it. Let me send you a contract, send us the money and we’ll get started tomorrow. Later, I got a text message saying -I have an angel investor that’s willing to put up $15,000 would you be able to help me? I said I can help you with that price point.

Here, understand that when you position yourself as your trusted advisor, instead of a commodity designer, you’re going to see a huge difference in the way people love one thing. So, provide value to your customers.

Q5. How To Find Collaborators And Partners For A Business?

You must give without expecting anything in return. I’ll give you another example. I am breaking into a new market and working with professional athletes now, specifically, football, American football players. Many professional footballers who are playing in the NFL are not branding themselves properly. Eventually, they will not be in the NFL any longer. Also, they’re going to blow off all of the money that they made by playing football.

Here, it’s my responsibility to help them build a brand outside of the field. They’re off the field so that they can make money and not be so reliant on their NFL paycheck. The problem is, I’ve never worked with a professional athlete before and have no experience.

The next step I took was to tell the world that I want to work with pro athletes. I started telling my friends, mentors, and Instagram followers. Finally, I get a footballer who used to play for the Green Bay Packers. I took him as my opportunity. I showed him what I was good at based on my previous work. I also needed to build my portfolio, credibility, and authority again. When you show your desire to work with them, most of them give their permission.

Then, another question that this footballer is going to ask is how he can possibly find an investor and set him to support his business. It’s about attracting investors. Any advice on that? I’m not an expert in venture capital whatsoever, but I have watched a ton of angel investors speak at conferences.

What I gather is that the investor wants to invest and they want to be able to recoup their money as quickly as possible. So share proof of a viable business model for their return on investment to help them tremendously.

Q6. What Is Personal Branding And How To Ace It?

Let’s first define personal branding. Personal branding is the intersection between how people perceive you and how you perceive yourself. And so there’s a gap. When the gap is wide, you have tremendous difficulty connecting with people. This is because they see you through one way while you see yourself through another, and there’s a disconnect.

But when that gap is very narrow, meaning that you see yourself the way other people see you, then you connect with the audience well. This is an essential tip to follow in order to become the owner of a million-dollar business.

So ask your five best friends these questions. When I step into a room, what is the feeling that you get? When I step out of the room, or if I’m not there, what is the feeling that persists in the room? The insight I got from the answer to those questions proved to be invaluable to me.

Similarly, when people reach out to me on Instagram and tell me that they loved my content, I ask them some questions. I ask them why they liked it so much? Then, I typically get common denominator answers like – you’re real, you’re no bullshit, and you’re good at what you do. So, you must ask these questions as a professional who provides graphic design services and get the right answers to know how they perceive you as a brand.

Q7. Why Is Personal Branding So Significant?

Whether you’re a small entrepreneur or million-dollar business owner, the personal branding plays a bigger role in your business success. Why? The answer is that people buy people first, and then they buy the service or the product. This is the reason that in America the CEOs are coming out of their dark holes, and becoming more present in media, marketing, and advertising.

I was watching a commercial for Macy’s, and the CEO of Macy’s was in the commercial. This is the power of personal branding. People are going to go to Macy’s over JC Penney. Why? Because the CEO of Macy’s stuck his neck out and presented himself while the CEO of JC Penney is still sitting in his corner office.

Steve Jobs’s approach was 100% right. He presented himself in front of the public and the media. People first bought Steve, and then they bought the Apple products. Therefore, I am following that suit. And that’s why I drive my wife crazy because I’m constantly in the media. But that’s what’s going to help me sell myself and my ability to be a role model for my son that I absolutely want to be. And, this will definitely help me to build my million-dollar business empire. Right!

Q8. What Are The Various Ways To Create And Ace Personal Branding?

Here is another example. On my Instagram, I teamed up with an expert in a video. She and I are going to do a Facebook and Instagram Live on how to build the confidence needed to get in front of the camera and to build that connection with your audience. I am doing this because, at the end of next year, 80% of the content you pursue and consume is going to be video.

So it’s probably a good idea to start getting comfortable in front of the camera. That’s why personal branding is so important. I tell this to the pro athlete clients with whom I am working now. I can say that my strategy has proven successful because now I have quite a few pro athlete clients that are working with us. One of the key things that I tell them is that they should treat their fans like family.

I tell them that they have tremendous amounts of influence as pro athletes. You have to respond to their messages. This way, you will not only become a more valuable athlete, but a more marketable athlete because now bigger brands will see your following. The teams that you play for will see your social media presence. They will think of raising your salary because you are going to bring them more money for the organization because you are an absolute role model.

Q9. What Must Be The Mindset To Reach The Seven-Plus Figure Revenue?

What should be the mindset of the entrepreneurs who dream of having a seven-plus figure revenue or making a million-dollar business? Well, when I started making good money with my design freelancing business about 13 years ago, I cared only about me and not my clients. I never thought of what I could do for them as I was interested in how much money they could give me. I almost lost my business twice because of that mindset and attitude.

Now, my mindset is about “how can I help you first”? “Whether you pay me or I’m able to fix this problem for you or not, but how can I serve you first?”

This mindset of being useful to my clients has helped me break through the seven-figure mark. Because of the changed positive mindset, I was able to get that award from the Click Funnels company as I generated over a million dollars. Therefore, the focus should be on giving rather than taking away.

Q10. Which Are The Key Things To Focus On For A Successful Business Journey?

I will advise you to ask some questions and the right ones. Who are you? Who are you that you got to answer these questions? Who are you and what do you do? Who do you do it for? How do you do it differently? And why should they care about what it is that you do? If you can answer these questions, you will start to get the clarity and focus you need to build a very solid business.

So, these are the significant tips that Henry provided for those graphic designers who want to transform their skills into a million-dollar business. Follow the advice by focusing hard and create effective strategies accordingly.

Wrapping Up

Starting a new graphic design business, or any other business, is easy. But to achieve its targeted growth steadily and ultimately turn it into a million-dollar business is a hard task. The expert Henry Kaminski advises entrepreneurs to work with the right clients and give them the value and benefits, have an effective content strategy, create personal branding, find the right partners, and have the right mindset to achieve the seven-figure revenue.

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