Recap of The Future is Here — London
If something is certain is that when you give value to others, they will flock and follow you.
That’s what happened to The Futur, a YouTube information company led by Chris Do, originated from The Skool of work, which was started by Jose Caballer back in the day. After some time they had their differences and started their own companies but ultimately reuniting for a common goal in London on the 3rd of March 2018.
This is only a recap and contains some personal opinions other than notes taken from the amazing talks that happened that day.
Quick intro for who I am:
I’m a Web Developer at a Creative Agency in Wandsworth Town, London, Naked Ideas.
I love Design, Videomaking and photography, probably as much as I love dogs.
Please enjoy and if you have any question, feel free to DM me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. You can check my videos on YouTube (like and subscribe ;) )
You can find some links by clicking on the underlined text :)
Here we go…
Emma Sexton
Emma Sexton launched MYWW™ in January 2013, has a MA in Design Management from the London College of Communication and over 20 years of design experience working with brands such as Barclays, Boots, Coca-Cola, L’Oréal and Unilever. In 2017 Emma was appointed ‘Creative in Residence’ on the King’s 20 Accelerator Program at King’s College, London.
If you have an idea, go for it.
Nurture and be confident about your idea.
Find your kindling/niche and engage with it.
100% focus on building your biz
Sara Hyndman
Graphic designer and Type Tasting founder.
Type can convey feelings and emotions and tell a story.
This can vary depending on individuals and niches, so it’s important to do some research and carefully target the audience you think is the demographic for the clients.
When talking to clients about Branding/Type:
How does it make you feel?
What does it elicit in your memories?
What do you associate it with?
Categorise by mood/personality
It’s about typeface + context + positioning
People will notice if you try to improve something cheap with type, don’t “Polish a Turd”.
Aaron Pierson
Communication is his passion; Providing creative consultation is my vocation.
Aaron is a Digital Brand Strategist, Killer Content Creator, Film Maker, Best Selling Author and Award Winning Designer; focused on business solutions that encourage the promotional growth of digital entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies.
He had experience building several companies and realised that time spent on smaller projects is time wasted not expanding and growing the business (not necessarily number of employees but rather clients quality).
As outlined he had a 400 + client company, but most of them were crappy clients and one-offs.
He realised he had to say no more, built a company around his Industry niche (Real Estate for him, as he had already portfolio on those and had more experience).
Takeaways:
Get to know why they want what they want.
Too many things to sell and not enough time to focus.
“Be an Inch Wide but a Mile Deep”
3 ways to niche:
- By Industry
- By Capabilities (See photo below)
- By Price
By Industry:
Be the less risky option, you’re competing with others that might more or less experience with their industry. Be that advantage.
Deliver customer specific proposals.
We discussed with you about how to send different “filtered” landing pages or case studies to customers depending on their industry.
Market to a specific space and gain a better understanding of their needs and client types / personas.
How do their customers operate and what do they look for?
By Capabilities:
Do what you do best, and what you love doing.
ELF (effective, lucrative and fun) method of choosing capabilities.
Easier to scale, because you’re more consistent.
Create a more predictable business model.
By having a list of capabilities, you know how long it takes for each, what the cost for your biz is and how to price your solution. Create a more predictable business model.
By Price:
Passive income with affiliate links or networks.
Retainer model:
6–12 months contracts with a 2 months notice (first 2 months or full price).
Usually no one drops off at this point.
If they do, offer to give an after-care off-boarding solution (like handing over files, suggesting what to do next and so on, pricing this as well). This allows to leave in good terms.
Niche with a combination of these above.
Make a list of your industries, capabilities, pricing models and pick the most effective. Try things out.
Can the client afford you?
A barber might not have £50k upfront, a retainer might look more enticing.
Framework of growth:
Sphere of influence:
- friends, family, 1st immediate networks (conferences, meetups)
- Go through your phone, your leads are already there
- Give cards and emails to everyone, they might know someone. Help them and ask about them.
Buyer/Supplier relationships:
- Printers, shirt printers, other services we need one-off and once in a while
Joint Ventures:
- Send them revenue, they will send you clients.
Someone you really would want to work with and that can bring possibly clients.
Example of real estate, talk to ledgers, workers and other contacts that might need a website or brand.
Strategic Partnerships:
- Hire an agency that has key skills you don’t have for a one-off or frequently.
Think SEO, Copywriting, Motion, Video, Sales (?)
Strategic Alliances:
- Non competitors with whom you’d like to work with.
- Joint alliance and team to bring a better quality bigger product with much higher value.
This above is the top tier, go from first to last in order of growth.
Get people to talk about themselves, ask smart questions.
Look for opportunities to build relationships.
Jose Caballer
The design shaman, he is all about UX and bringing forth the reality of Business Strategy.
Jose provides his 20 years of experience as a UX Designer and his passion for building cross disciplinary teams to bring Design Culture to ConsenSys.
Be a facilitator for the client, help them realise who they are, what they do and what their problems are by identifying:
- Company Demographic (name, age, location, target clientele)
- Their story and challenges (where they come from, which companies they worked for, and so on)
- Their needs (pick 3 of these for the next step)
- Solutions for the 3 above
This allows you to then go on and create a structured Strategy for their brand, users and end goals.
(Each column is separate)
How does the brand make you feel?
Who are your users/clients?
What will the brand development create?
Know your users, start the process
Middle process of understanding the flow, roadmap
Sustainability of the brand and love for the brand in the end
Goals of awareness in your niche / networking
Clear plan or roadmap
Promotion, sharing of the brand.
Read those columns and find a proper sentence for each.
Examples:
Empower creatives to grow, Start a cash flow and sustain it, Find a niche, follow a roadmap and spread your brand.
Chris Do
He is a multi award winner CEO of Blind, and recently started an information company on YouTube (and Facebook) called The Futur (of Work).
For over 2 decades, Blind has created award-winning videos that combine design, animation, live action and visual effects for clients including Ad Agencies, TV Networks and Brands of all sizes.
He has over 250k subscribers bringing around $2k per day passive income to his company.
All he does is consistently providing value to others, for free.
The idea is bringing value increases awareness of your brand and brand loyalty. Ultimately bringing more fanbase to your brand, followers, word of mouth and advertisement other than the passive income from youtube ads and similar.
Be like no one else, sail your way to success.
He started very poor and emarginated, and he strived to fit in as much as possible. He became very skilled in business from an early age.
He then tried several types of approach failing often but never giving up, and this allowed him to find his niche, and the best methodology of work, surrounding himself with like-minded people and employees.
Diagnose the problem before finding a solution.
Offer to plan the strategy, do that first before going further as that will allow you and your client to realise what the real issue(s) is and how to break from the spell.
He is a firm believer in “Value based pricing” of your work.
Price is based on who is the client rather than an estimate of hours worked or type of project.
By doing so, he asks the right questions to understand what the current company revenue is, what value would a rebrand or the required deliverable give the company and then ask them how much would they pay to achieve that.
This is an honest way to make them reflect on the fact that with minor effort, you can’t obtain a major result.
Push for innovation, what they would lose by doing something rather than the other, why did they call you in particular.
Convince (worst) vs. Converse (better)
Help them win, take yourself out of the equation and find the right solution for them (which might not even be you). This will change your language towards the clients and help connect deeply with them.
Be willing to say no more often and spot the bad clients from the first call.
Give brackets of pricing, example:
They say 10k budget, you say our prices start from 50 to 60k for strategy and deliverables.
By doing so you ignore their anchor (the 10k limit).
If they still don’t increase, then it’s time to refer to someone that might be able to do that job for that price. In this occasion you need to have what we mentioned before, an immediate network or joint venture, that will take the lead on the project and you trust. This will give them clients, while they might share revenue or refer others.
If you have time, that doesn’t mind you should do it yourself.
Delegate to someone else, do what matters most:
Learn more and work on growing the business.
Learn to speak the language of business to clients, they don’t know or care what kerning means.
Love yourself first, this will allow you to appreciate and have more self-confidence in yourself and the company, thus giving a stronger opinion of yourself to clients.
Some clients will be able to love you, and this could come in terms of small gifts, shares or extra budget at the end of a project.
Self-actualization,
Help them know who they are, what they want first. This is paid work.
Fear:
What would you do if you couldn’t fail?
How to fire clients?
Tell them you’re growing, you have a new business model and can’t afford to keep them at the current rate.
You then can offer a discounted rate off the new rate you mention.
Most will leave, but some of them will stay, thus increasing your revenue close or more than what you had to begin with, but with less clients and more time to focus on growing the business and learn.
What’s the worst that can happen? Make a list.
What’s the best that can happen? Make another list.
Use your other hand (left if you are right handed) to make the list, it activates the subconscious and is more honest.
Compare these two and figure out how to proceed.
It’s better to fail than to never try.
Embrace who you are.
Wide questions:
How and Why.
Demonstrate value.
Tap into the emotions of why they hired you and what are they afraid of.
I hope you liked the long summary.
If you have any question, want to contact me or talk in depth about these topics, feel free to DM me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
If you’d like to talk Brand Strategy, please visit our Website
The books mentioned in this conference can be found at the amazing blog article by @letstalkbranding
Link here or click the underlined above:
https://www.letstalkbranding.be/home/2018/3/4/booktips-from-aaron-pierson-chris-do-emma-sexton
