How I Launched A Profitable Startup In 7 Days From The 7-Day Startup Facebook Group

My name is Scotty Truong. And this is the story of how I launched my little startup Design Possum in 7 days from the 7-day startup FB Group

It all started when I was hiring a few new designers for a local company that I co-founded. And it just hit me that I really have some amazing designers. Maybe I could offer the service to other businesses as well.

I’ve been a member of the 7-Day Startup FB group for a while. So I posted a thread there offering to do 3 graphics for other members free, just to gauge demand for my idea and get feedback on our designers’ work.

And sure enough, requests from the group’s members started flooding in. So our designers went to work and delivered the free graphics. Got incredible feedback from the group members. Looked like I might be onto something. So I decided to give it a go. And launch our subscription-based design service.

The Offer:

I decided on the name of this new business: Design Possum. And I decided on what our main offer would be:

So here’s the offer: For a flat monthly fee, you get our whole team of high-end designers on retainer, ready to work for you anytime, 5 days a week. We’ll take care of all of your small design tasks: logo, landing page design (design only, no coding), book covers, business cards, banners, flyers, small text, color, or layout changes, etc…

Anytime you need a design done, simply submit the task to us via email. We’ll start to work on your design immediately. And you’ll receive your high-end design via email within 1–5 business days.

That’s our offer. But we also need something that sets us apart, something that makes us better in some way and allows us to compete with other services…

Positioning:

Our team are high-end designers. And from the initial feedback I got from the group members, I know that our biggest advantage is quality. So, our brand Design Possum will compete based on the high quality of our work.
But there’s a flip side to this: Because quality design takes time, we cannot offer next-day turnaround time like some of our competitors. Instead of hiding our turnaround time or making excuses, we chose to go a different route…

Addressing Buyers’ Objections Upfront

Rather than hoping our prospects won’t have this particular objection, we come right out and address the big elephant in the room:

(“But other designers promise next-day turnaround time?” Yes, they do. And we won’t do that. We’re not the fastest. Because quality takes time. And we take pride in everything we design…)

Nothing builds trust more than being honest and admitting your “flaws”.
After I thought everything through, it’s time to…

Put Together Our Sales Copy:

It’s where our hard work (design free graphics for the 7-Day Startup group members) paid off. We now have a lot of samples to show your prospects. And I’m pretty confident that our samples will make a good impression.

But let’s start from the top of our copy. First we need to have a Headline and Lead copy that expands on the headline.

Our headline uses a simple formula and highlight our Quality positioning: Get ___ When You Subscribe. In our case, it is: “Get A Whole Team Of High-End Designers To Work For You 5 Days A Week”

Then the lead copy expands on the benefits: “No big financial commitment. No waiting forever for proposals. No hassle.”

…dives into the exact design tasks we do for our clients: “We’ll take care of all of your small design tasks: designing your logo, designing your landing page, creating feature images for your articles and blog posts, creating visual content for your social media, designing your banner ads, book covers, business cards, flyers, editing your existing images (resizing, removing background, font or color changes…), etc…”

…calls out to our target audience & address the price objection directly: “We’re certainly not cheap, and we’re not for everyone. But if you value good design and you’re looking for REAL quality (at a reasonable price), we’re a perfect match.”

Then first thing on the body copy, we show samples of our work. This is the biggest separator as our competitors either don’t show any samples on their website or their samples are very very bad. As soon as our prospects see our samples, (hopefully) they’ll agree that our quality is a notch above the rest.

After that, I just describe what’s included in our offer and what’s not, as clearly as I can. I’d rather turn away a potential client than letting them down down the road.

And finally a simple, clear call-to-action: See Our Plans & Pricing. Nothing fancy.

Client-Getting Strategies:

Our strategies are simple:

Outbound emails offering to do a free design for businesses. If I can get the businesses to allow us to design a free graphic for them, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll win them as customers.

2nd “strategy” is word of mouth.

And that’s it.

Turn away clients that are not a good fit for our business

My #1 goal in life is peace of mind. So I’m picky about the clients we’re working with. So in our copy and in our communication with the clients, we make sure that we set the right expectation from the beginning. I’ll walk away from the sale if I sense that:

There’s a possibility for drama. I don’t want any drama in my life.

Or the client has unrealistic expectations.

The business is now profitable. And here’s what really makes us proud:

We’ve got 100% customer happiness score. It’s still a small sample size. But at least it’s very encouraging.

If Design Possum sounds like something you might be interested in, click here and check it out…

I hope you find this post useful. I wish you the best of luck in your entrepreneurial journey.

(This post was originally posted on the Design Possum blog.)