Presentation Design and Freelancing

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season where we're talking to a wide range of people. This time we're going to start a new discussion with Adrienne Johnston. And this is actually going to be another one of these a little bit off the beaten path, a little bit more on an entrepreneurial side. However, I think there's a lot that we're going to see as a consultant that you can bring to the table. What she does is focuses on presentations like PowerPoint presentations and things like that. And we're going to talk about how she got started. Some of the things she does today and how she has grown her business. So I think you're going to find this very useful. Yet another one of those where you're going to take some notes and maybe make some adjustments in the way that either you're approaching things or the way that you are saving and storing and reusing, for example, code maybe or similar things that you've built so that you can make your future work easier to do, a little more value to your customers and a little more free time for yourself. That being said, let's get started with our discussion with Adrienne. OK, today we're going to be speaking with Adrienne Johnston and she is a designer and started as such a freelance graphic designer, but niche down. And that is part of where she really made some improvements in her business, actually improved by focus, which is something we've talked about a lot is you can't get too broad because then you're essentially fighting a war on multiple fronts and you end up having too much to do. You get spread too thin. And she has been very successful in scaling without wearing herself out. And so we're going to have, I think, a really good conversation with her, as always, grab a paper and pencil or your favorite way to take notes, because I bet you're going to get some good nuggets out of this one. That being said, I guess I'll toss it to you, Adrienne, is what's the how do you introduce yourself? Why don't you give us a little bit of your background and some of the things you've been through and what brings you here? Thank you, Rob. I'm super excited to be here. You know, my background is generally I'm a freelance presentation designer, so I specifically help clients, Microsoft, Samsung. You'd be shocked than a number of pitch decks, sales decks that these even big and small organizations alike have. Everybody uses a PowerPoint for everything, I'd say. And instinctively, we all know that that's the truth because we see a PowerPoint and we roll our eyes. So there's lots of work that needs to be done there to end that death by PowerPoint stigma, to make better presentations, but to help speakers be more confident so they're not just reading off their slides. We've all lived through those those presentations, unfortunately. And so that's really what I do now. I currently reside in Seattle, Washington with my husband, our daughter and our two cats. We are from the East Coast, but we're really loving the West Coast climate. It's much more temperate and less sun for our very, very pale skin. We're inclined to burn very easily. And so from a background perspective, I have been in sales and marketing roles for my entire career. I'm sorry, operations and marketing roles in startups. So super, super experienced with your area of the world and the software development piece, even though I was on a different side of the business. And it's you know, it was a real challenge in those environments because you're. Needing to fill so many gaps, you know, you don't have a lot of money. You're certainly on a fixed income in many ways and trying to do a lot of things. And so you have to prioritize. And I learned very early in my career, like you've got to be doing the right thing. So there's got to be both, you know, the right strategy in place, but you've got to have really solid execution as well. And so over the course of several jobs in that environment, I learned about myself that I really liked having a little bit more freedom and flexibility, especially after my daughter was born, to be able to run around and do the things that I wanted to do. You know, leave work in the middle of the day and go to the school lunch and be the parent chaperone on field trips. And it was just difficult to do that in a corporate job. There was always a little bit of guilt. And in my last job, I, you know, for years, I don't know, Rob, if you've ever had this experience, but for years, I just kept thinking if I just work harder at this job, I can make myself fit, right? Like I can do it. I can excel here. And it was the first job I'd ever had where just brute force effort, I was never going to fit in in that environment. It just wasn't the right role for me. It was in the financial services industry, which is really conservative. It just really didn't fit my personality at all. So from there, I decided I really wanted to start my own business. I really kind of fell into it. I just started out. I was gave my notice and said, I'm going to look for another full time job. And as the weeks were passing and I didn't have anything lined up, I said, you know, I got to make some money. So I got on Upwork and I said, you know, I have all these skills. Let's just see who will pay for them. And it's funny because I, my background, I'm actually, I majored in chemistry and then in bed and in marketing roles. And so I had done design work as a function of being in those roles in a small company, but I was never classically trained as a designer. But that was, those were the jobs that I was applying to on Upwork and getting in clients were happy and I saw there was huge opportunity within just a couple of months of starting there. I was, I was making like $5,000 a month. That being said, I was working like 80 hours a week, so it was not enough money and far too many hours. But what was really cool about it was to see like even as an introvert and I'm a talk, I'm a talker, but I'm an introvert by nature, so I don't need to go out and kind of be with people. If it happens, I'm fine with it, but I never go seek that out. And so I'm not a networker. I'm not a salesperson. And so going out in that environment and, you know, trying to sell and find clients, I never thought I could have my own business because that's just not who I am. And Upwork was a platform that gave me the ability to go get in front of people who needed help. And so I could approach it from that kind of servant spirit perspective and the ability to realize that, you know, I did have skills that people were willing to pay for and I just had to figure out how to make it work, you know, from a strategic perspective, but from an execution perspective. And so I was about three months in and I was like, this is so close to what I want. It's just too many hours and not enough money. So I just sat down and I said, OK, like what's working and what's not working and really started to assess, you know, what are the projects that I'm working on that are easiest for me to do that I seem to be winning a higher percentage of them than other designers that are have the highest budgets that I enjoy doing. And all of it came down to presentation design, which was, you know, it's one of those things you take for granted, the thing that you're uniquely good at because you're good at it and you just assume everybody else is. But most designers hate PowerPoint because it's not a real design tool. But I've been in corporate America for so long, done lab reports in college and we were learning PowerPoint in high school when I was growing up. And so it was a very comfortable tool for me. And I knew the Adobe suite, which I'd learned as a hobby on my own time and kind of figure that out. But PowerPoint was so accessible, right? I could haul it around the office and use it for presentations and things in the office that just made my life so much easier. And so I really relied on it. So I kind of said, OK, this is the thing I'm going to do. But now is Upwork the place I'm going to do it. And what I realized and don't get me wrong, OK, I know presentation designers who are making multi six figures a year on Upwork, like there is a business for it. I found for me that the the rates were a little bit lower than what I thought I could really do outside of the platform. But again, being an introvert, I had to find a way to make that work for me. And I went to Google as an introvert would instead of talking to other people. And I typed in presentation designers and I was going to figure out how other people were getting business this way. And I got to the search page, the first search page results in Google. I said, these must be like cream of the crop for presentation designers. These are clearly the people. And then I started clicking into the results and I was like, I mean, this works OK, but it's not the greatest thing I've ever seen. And then there was a page. This is like 1996 SEO where it was like they put some words on a page, but the page was not actually about presentation design at all. I was like, oh, there's some opportunity here, right? Like I can break into this. And so, yeah, I took a course on SEO because my idea at the time was, you know, as an introvert, I need people to come to me and I need to be able to operate from that place if I can help you or I can't. But I knew that I wanted people to perceive me as an authority in the way that I was perceiving those search results to be an authority. And I did some research to understand, you know, you can't go after big volume keywords like I now rank for terms like presentation designer. But I wouldn't have five years ago when I started just because of the competitiveness of those keywords and even the search volume while high for those keywords, there's not necessarily as much buyer intent as the term like freelance presentation designer, which gets 100, 150 searches a month, but it's highly targeted to people who are trying to hire people. And so I optimized my site for that keyword. I started getting some backlinks. And within three months, I started getting leads with big quality leads. I think in that first six months altogether, I met PwC, Samsung. I met the person who ultimately introduced me to Marriott, like really big name brands that, you know, just their executives, their team members are even if they have in-house resources are, you know, we don't have time to compete with those in-house resources. If, you know, I'm a CEO and I've got a board meeting in two weeks, like I need somebody who's available to help me. And so they just pull out their corporate cards and they pay you one off to help them with these things. And so you can find like really amazing companies and get in. And then, you know, they go to the board meeting and they say, oh, your slides look great. Who did them? And then you start making introductions and you just like get even more into their network, which is a really cool thing. But within that first three months, I started getting leads. And then at six months from the time I optimized my site, you know, those were converting and closing. And there was a steady enough stream of them that I had my first ten thousand dollar month. I was still working good hours. I'd probably say about that point, I was working about 60 hours a week, but hugely impactful for an introvert, right? So like not have to be uncomfortable and just to answer emails of people who are coming to you. And then by that next January, so it was 12 months since I'd left my full time job, I hit fifteen thousand dollars a month. So it was, you know, coming up on over two hundred thousand dollars a year. And have been there and kind of keep edging that number up every year. But the number of hours I work is also dwindling. So I work 25 to 30 hours a week now, most of the time. Like I said, typically an introduction gives a lot to talk about. And wow, there's a whole lot there. I think I'm let's see where there's so many places to start here. I guess so the first one, I guess we'll roll back a little bit and we'll start out with starting out on up work. You went into that not really. Having like a I mean, you had to focus, but not really. It was sort of a hey, what I need to do some jobs, what kind of jobs are out there? Hey, here's some stuff that I think I can do. And then it grew into that. What are maybe some either tips and tricks or maybe some lessons that you learned while you were going through that? And and is it was it just that site or were there a couple of other places that you were looking around? So you had sort of a general, I guess, improvement or education about how to work in that that freelance kind of environment? Yeah, so I started with up work just because I'd heard of it before. And I would say my advice for that, and I know it's in the last four or five months, up works made some changes to their business model. And I know a lot of people who are on it, who you pretty much now have to subscribe as a freelancer to get their like premium connects. I forget what the program's called. But effectively, you kind of have to have a membership in order to get the visibility you need on that platform now, which I'm not opposed to. For the record, I know a lot of people get frustrated by the commissions that up work in the freelance platforms take, but there it's 20 percent. And frankly, you and I both from a business perspective, 20 percent is what every company expects to invest in sales and marketing. So the fact that you've got somebody else managing that for you is, in my mind, a no brainer. Are there better ways to do it? Yes. But I mean, it's really quick, it's ineffective, and there is no risk for you as the freelancer going to that platform. They're the ones making the investment, not you. So if there's a nominal fee for a monthly membership, I would do it now. But it is different from when I started out. And I would say, you know, the thing I always tell people is when you go on Upwork, you're making an investment in that platform, an investment of your time. As a freelancer, so the way Upwork works, in case anyone doesn't know, is clients go into Upwork and they say, hey, we have this project, here's a description. And then it goes into a feed that freelancers can see and they can place bids or some proposals to work on those jobs. And then the client gets, you know, sometimes 50, 100 people saying, hey, I'd love to help you with this project. They're not going to go through 50 or 100 proposals, Upwork segments and stratifies that list to give them the people they think are most likely to actually convert and do that job. Those are going to be the people who have the highest reviews on the platform and the people who charge the most, because Upwork's commission is based on who charges the most, right, if it's a percentage. So they're going to obviously put those people first. And so when you're just breaking in, you can't compete on that. And so you have to then look at how do I compete in a unique way and the way that I recommend doing it and the way I did it was to say, let's stop and focus on people who need something really fast. Right. I got nothing but time. I have work to do. I need to make money. And so I would sit there and I would just watch. I would be refreshing that page. And when someone needed something quickly and for a low dollar volume, I would reply. So you're in their inbox first before anybody else is there. It's low risk for them. They need it quickly. Right. It's a low budget, so it's not high financial risk for them either. And you do the job and then you get a review and that starts to build your credibility on that network. The challenge, I think, that most people have on Upwork and where it gets a bad reputation is kind of it's a race to the bottom. And because what I just said was do work quickly and cheaply, but that's not sustainable. Right. You can't build a solid business like that. And so my recommendation is you go in and you're thinking of it as an investment and in getting business on this platform. And so your first project, like my first one was twenty dollars. It was incidentally a presentation deck. Not that I still didn't see it for some college kids. And they gave me a five dollar tip. We all know in college money, that's a big deal. Somebody wasn't going out to the bar that night. And so the next one after that was like two slides for fifty dollars. And the one after that was like a 20 or 30 slide deck for one hundred and twenty five. Like you can't stay doing five dollar projects on up. You could, but you're not going to build the business you want by continuing to stay at those five dollar jobs. And so each one you have to be really strategic about. I've got to move up because I need when new clients see my proposals, I need them to see this work history. Right. Like if I have a thousand dollar project, I'm not going to hire someone who has one job that was successfully completed for five dollars. Right. My expectations at a thousand dollars are completely different than whoever was paying five. And so you've got to bump it up and they're willing to take that risk on you. Right. Like if you did a five dollar job for. And got five stars on it, then a 25, 50 dollar job, that's not totally out of the realm of possibility that you could do. And so people are willing to take that risk if they're in a hurry. And it's a relatively close dollar amount. And so that's what I recommend on Upwork. You just have to be really, really, really diligent about raising those rates and knowing you can't go backwards. But when I did that, yeah, I was getting good reviews and. They're like there's a top rated status on Upwork, which I think I still have, even though I'm not very active on the platform anymore, I have one lingering client that's still there that I build through there. But otherwise, I don't take on new clients from there. But I've even had people find me on Upwork. I would find out after the fact they would find me and then go look me up and then come through my website. So I wouldn't necessarily know that's where they come from at first. And I even on Upwork once had my rates, two hundred dollars an hour there. I had someone just send me a contract. And she's still a client now. Just. And you're like, never talk to me. Nothing like it's interesting to me, like at that hourly rate, it's just like it's a no brainer. Right. Like for people who want that quality. And it was just like, we'll hire you. You must be good. It's fascinating kind of the psychology behind pricing. But that's a whole different topic. Well, and it's interesting on a platform like that, that you you have a there's definitely a a center, I guess, that most of people sort of fall into this certain tier. And if you price yourself underneath and there's a different there's going to be a view of you, if you price yourself higher, there's a there's a view to that. Yes, I was going to say just as the. A little more information, just because I haven't actually talked too much about Upwork, but just some more for the audience is that it does. They do have a 20% cut that they get. And there's a I think you can still do a freebie thing, but then there's also like I think it's like a 15, 20 dollar a month. And I think there's like a 50 dollar a month membership tier that you get. And you get different stuff based on that. And I think they change the rates a little bit, but they are. They have adjusted it more to like you're saying. What they're they have that 20% is the first 500 dollars billed to a client. And then after that, it goes to I think it goes to 10% until you get to like ten thousand dollars and then drops down to five percent after that or something like that. So they it does now even they want you to have. And it benefits you to use that, but then keep a a customer on on a longer period, which also leads me to a question for you. So since you're doing a lot of presentations and they are, it seems like in a lot of cases, especially when you're talking like CEOs and stuff like that, you'll have a big, you know, like board presentation and stuff like that. And there's like, hey, we got to get this going. And then I find that they usually will then just basically reuse that the next presentation and make some tweaks or something like that. So is is your business one where you do have a lot of recurring business? And is it because you're you sort of get like spread out within an organization? Or is it more often where you come in and you just you come in, you do it. You know, they write you a check and you write off into the sunset. Yeah, so I was just looking at I was doing some kind of data analytics on my numbers from last year, and it's really fascinating. So my top four clients are 50% of my revenue. And it is from recurring business. So it's it's things like we have, you know, a leadership meeting every year. So those can just be really big projects, but it can be like we have a staff meeting every month. And if the certain executive is particular about the way those slides look, they invest that money to make sure that those decks are going to look good. And that's we've certainly all been to staff meetings where that was not the case. But there are executives who have the budget and are just like we are a serious organization. And everything we do is going to convey that. But yeah, it can be board decks. So, I mean, they're having board meetings, you know, on a quarterly basis. And so leadership teams will have slides for that. But you've got like a lot of product and marketing decks, too, like we're selling this product or service into a company. And so as they're rolling those out, you think about like the mobile devices and things every time a new one comes out. So Samsung, for instance, they're rolling out new devices. And we don't think about it, but they don't just sell to consumers. They sell into businesses. And so they've got a series of devices like, you know, FedEx when they come and they deliver those packages, they have those phones that scan and do all that stuff. I mean, Samsung sells those. And so they go and they pitch. So as they've got these new versions of devices, they're going in and pitching it all again and all the software and services that come with that. So, yeah, it's really interesting how ongoing it can be. But I have clients, too, where it's, you know, I hear from them once every couple of years, because to your point, it's, well, I've been kind of limping along, making my own changes to this thing. So it really spans the gamut. But I would say, you know, the consistent portion of my business, half of it is coming just from four clients and then two thirds of it from eight. So. And I still take on new clients now, you know, just looking at when I was looking at the data, I was like this, I never realized. Instinctively, like you kind of you know who your big clients are, but it's very different to actually look at the numbers on paper like that. And I said to myself, I got to be better about continuing to take on new clients because it's a big hit if you lose one of those. And I've never really thought of my business as being dependent on any one client. And I did. I actually fired my biggest client last year because it wasn't the right fit. And so you just kind of have to, you know, constantly be sourcing new leads and making sure because there are there are times right where I'll have a client who leaves and goes to another company and they were my main point of contact. So they effectively take me with them to the new place. Is the new person that gets hired at the former company going to have their own person already that they bring with them? Or are you getting both now? And so you just kind of there are so many things that are outside of our control as freelancers, so kind of keeping that ongoing kind of business development and and eye open, I think is really important for consistent income. It's so easy to get really comfortable. Do you have this just sort of a curiosity on that? Do you have any sort of do you have like branding or credit or something like that that you have as part of your slides? Like, as an example, a lot of people know that if you see a website that was designed by Acme Web Design, then you'll see like, you know, down in the footer, this was designed by Acme Web Design and, you know, to have a link out to it. Are the are the presentations such where you can sort of sneak your name in and do a little marketing that way, or they tend to be, you know, completely free and clear of your fingerprints when you actually send those out? Yeah, they're usually free and clear of my fingerprints. But that being said, people are always happy to refer other people. And presentations are because they are so public and people say your slides look great. It ends up being a dialogue where you can get lots of introductions. I found. Oh, cool. So how much of. Because your your niche is rather actually a really interesting one when it when you relate it back to the whole idea of marketing. So how much of your we'll say like your skills and your experience from presentations, particularly when you talk about pitch decks and things like that, how much of that is, I guess, transitions back and forth between either from what you have built for your own business or what you may be used to say, oh, you know, I've learned some stuff here. And then you feed that back into your your website and your your own essentially pitch decks. I'm afraid I'm not following your question. Are you asking about like, am I learning from client content? Well, that and then how much I guess is, is, yeah, because it because to go out and find clients, one of the things you do is you'll you have a website, but then you probably have some maybe some presentations, some flyers and things like that. So are there is that where there's a sort of a blurring a little bit where you say, hey, I did this for this customer. Hey, maybe I'll take that and I'll use that for my own, because that would actually benefit me, because I know that you same thing in the development world. You know, you go in, you solve a problem, and then you realize that, hey, that problem can be solved over here as well. And particularly in this case, when it's a when you are dealing in such a marketing, advertising, getting a message out kind of industry and your your niche is very much that. It's find a way to get that, you know, get those points across. I was wondering how much of that sort of has gone back and forth between like, you know, you you do some stuff for your business, you say, hey, I need to make sure that I'm incorporating this into the slides I build for other people or hey, I'm doing all this stuff in these slides. I'm building for other people. I should probably do that for myself, you know, sort of drink your own medicine in a sense. Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective. I would say there is for me a lot of kind of cross knowledge sharing between client projects of, hey, this is a good way to solve this problem or. Even, you know, like. Look, I have several clients that are in kind of climate management spaces and things like that. And so, you know. The visuals and things that we're going to use to represent that that aren't cheesy and and things like that, I would say I always struggle. So I do have like a course side of my business where I help other presentation designers. And it's so important if you're a presentation designer, that your slides look good, you know, like how are you going to help other people if your slides look like garbage? And it's so hard to spend the time on your own stuff. It is so difficult. And so I'll say for all of my my presentations, I'm always like, if this if I were getting paid to do this, it would be on a different level. But you just have to realize that you've got to like, how do you balance the time right? Like and the investment of time, especially when you start thinking about like your billable rates on your own work. Oh, it's brutal. So, yeah, I would say it's mostly in between clients and projects and even like I think infographics and things like that, where you're like, oh, I could I re-leverage this, right? Like if it's not proprietary or something or this reminds me of this other thing I did three years ago. And yeah, can I re-leverage some of that as a base to start a new project? Yeah. And that's that's sort of where I was going with that, because it's it's something that I've done countless presentations. And I'm not I don't think anybody's going to hire me to do presentation design anytime soon. But, you know, I do they are effective enough for what I need. You know, it's sort of like it gets me there. And a lot of what I find is particularly because I've gone across a wide range of topics as well in different, you know, different focus and things where I'll be in the same case situation where I'll look at something and say, oh, I need to do a presentation for this and then say, you know, that sounds vaguely like something I did in the past. And I'll start poking through some things. And it's not uncommon for me to start with, you know, for me to start with, literally start with some presentation that I did in the past and then start, you know, redoing slides and redoing. And sometimes it, you know, it helps because it's the the same corporate colors and standards and things like that. So some of that stuff sort of built into the template and the rest of it stuff. It's like, oh, yeah, I sort of went this way. So let's let's do this. Let's update this picture. Let's change this thing around. But it's it's starting with like I've got sort of a foundation because I've done a bunch of this. And we will pause right there. We'll come back next episode. We will continue and wrap up our discussion with Adrian. We continue to talk about how she does this, how she works this today. Some of her conversations and some of the experience she's had with some of her customers. And we're going to talk a little bit, a little bit more on the business side of things as we get into that. Hopefully, again, like I said, this is something that you can see where it applies to your side hustle or maybe even your primary job. Your day job, as it were. But we're going to go ahead and let you get back to side hustle, day job, or whatever else it is that you're doing. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. 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