When I started my business I did what many of us do - I scoured the web for what other designers were offering and made a combination of their services and deliverables.

Back then, I didn't think much beyond that. I didn't consider who my ideal clients were or what they truly wanted. I didn't factor in what my business needed to support my life and lifestyle.

But let's face it, being a designer is more than just crafting stunning visuals or websites. If that were the sole objective, we'd be working for design agencies.

It's about being able to work from home, having more flexibility in how you spend your time, and having not just more time but also mental space to be present with your loved ones. And for that to happen, you need a financially stable business.

So, if that's the goal, why create your services in isolation, without considering the broader picture of your business, your personal preferences, and your way of life?

When you want your design studio to be sustainable and be able to contribute more to your family's expenses, you'll need to be able to effectively manage your time, emotional and physical capacity.

Are you feeling like you've maxed out your capacity? And I am not talking about capacity in that you're fully booked with design projects. I am talking about capacity in terms of time, energy and mental space to take on more clients. You don’t have to take on more clients to increase the revenue of your design studio. Here are 4 ways you can do this.

Are you a designer who is hesitant to start time blocking? It can be intimidating to start working with a time management technique that feels too restrictive for a creative. So if you're feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work on your plate, read this blog post for helpful tips on how you can get started with time blocking.

Ready to make your design studio run smoother? Take these five simple steps this week and see how efficient you can become! From streamlining processes to structuring your day based on your energy levels to keep your design studio on track.

Traditional to-do lists don’t work. And this blog I am diving into why they may not be effective for designers and look at an alternative method to manage your time and boost your productivity and creativity.

Have you ever said to yourself: I have tried Notion, Asana, Trello and Clickup and nothing is working well for me? The good news is that you're not alone as this is quite common. I often hear from clients that they have been switching from system to system and are still not happy with how their current Project Management System is working.

Want more good news?

This can absolutely be fixed. You just need to know what the reasons are that you are struggling to make your Project Management System here. That’s why in this blog, we'll get into the 4 main reasons you might be struggling and what to do to change this.

When you no longer want to offer a certain service or work with a specific industry you stop promoting this. This usually means that you stop creating content, stop being visible and don't want to take on any clients from the service or industry you are so fed up with.

But because you either have not decided what this new service needs to look like or how to reach the niche/industry you want to work with, you also don't know yet what content to write.

So you do nothing. So let’s create a plan so that you can make this change without burning your business down

How many times have clients crossed your boundaries? Probably more than you want to admit. So let’s look at why it's so important to set boundaries and which boundaries you can set with your design clients. I'll also show examples of where in your client process you can set these boundaries.

Building your design studio on just referrals and word of mouth is a great way to slowly grow a design studio until it's not. So let's look at a few reasons why I am not an advocate for relying on referrals or word of mouth only and what you can do instead.

The Dubsado Scheduler is a powerful tool in your arsenal to provide great client service. You empower your client by having them choose the best time to schedule a meeting with yourself without going back and forth to schedule the meeting. So let me walk you through how to set up your appointment scheduler in Dubsado

You know how important it is to track your revenue. But how do you actually do this? Spreadsheets are a logical choice, but most creatives don’t like working with them. And it's probably not just the spreadsheet, it's looking at numbers in general. As most of my clients are creatives I worked on creating a revenue overview that did not involve spreadsheets. Enter ClickUp.

Maybe you want to spend less time on client work because you don't have time left to work on your business, maybe you feel like every client project you are reinventing the wheel or maybe you just want to be more on top of your client process so that you can provide the best service possible. Enter: Dubsado. In this blog, I’ll walk you through how to get started on setting up your Dubsado

Do you have a revenue number in mind that you need to make this year in your design studio? If you do, what’s this based on? A ‘random’ number or is it based on your enough? Because only you know this, you can put a plan in place to get you there. Not sure how to get to that enough number? Then you're in the right place because in this blog we'll get into how to create a revenue budget for your design studio.

When you want to create a sustainable business you need to know the numbers at which your design studio is sustainable. So let's look at what this actually means for you + 4 key pieces of your finance routine you need to get comfortable with so that you can determine what a sustainable design studio looks like for you.

What is a task in your business that is outside of your comfort zone, that you tell yourself you don't have enough time for? Because as long as you are only working in your business on what you feel comfortable with (aka the creative side) there’s work that isn’t being done. The strategic work, that will lead your business forward, so that it can support the way you want to live your life.

You've probably noticed that it's one thing to have an action plan to optimise and streamline your client processes, increase your pricing or launch a new service, but that it's a whole other thing to consistently keep taking action to complete the steps on your action plan. So in this blog, I’m diving into 4 things to consider when creating an action plan to make sure you'll actually implement it.

Mentor Program Case study for Cait Morgan Photography by Stephanie Taale - Mentor and Brand Strategist for designers

In another blog, I dove into the most overlooked part of your design client process: the offboarding. I talked about what the offboarding process for design clients is and what all the elements of the design client offboarding process are. So now let's dive into how you can organise and automate the steps of your design client offboarding using Dubsado.

Onboarding a client almost goes automatically. But what about the offboarding of your brand and website design clients? What steps do you take after you have finished the final revisions and sent the files or handed over the website? Is that it? Or is there more you can do to make sure your client walks away happy? And what about how this project can help you land new projects?