This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, my friends. What's up? Sidus Old School Community. Awesome people of the internet. Amazing person who's listening to this podcast.
Thank you so much for being part of a community. People all over the world who are interested in creating positive change in their life. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I have the privilege of bringing you the stories, sharing my experience, my expertise, such as it is. But fortunately, it's not just me.
We have a collective expertise in more than 1,300 episodes of people all over the world with real jobs, responsibilities, et cetera, who yet somehow find a way to invest in themselves and create something that might end up being completely life changing. Or if it's not life changing, it's something that brings them extra money, pays off debt, opens up opportunities, which in itself is life changing, right? So whether it's a minor change or major change, the whole point is positive change, okay? So this is Throwback Thursday. Every week, we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them.
And we're going way back to year one, year two of the podcast. Recently, we've heard from a cybersecurity expert whose side hustle brings in seven figures. That is more than a million dollars a year, all while he still works his government job. And the near and dear faux taxidermy service has proven surprisingly resilient. They've been getting lots of orders during the season year, what seems like a decade lifetime of COVID-19.
Now today in our latest feature, we're gonna hear from a graphic designer who specialized in pet businesses. I often mention this person as an example of choosing a specialization even in a field where a lot of people don't do that. This was very smart of her. However, she's now trying to go off leash and retrieve clients in other industries. But is she barking up the wrong tree?
She's actually not barking up the wrong tree. I just thought that was, you know, it was just a good little sentence. So I included it there. What's happened since she started? Let's hear directly from her and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up.
So we're gonna hear from Kayla with Doc's Design. [Music]
My name is Kayla Pipko. I own Doc's Design, a branding studio located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And we were featured on episode 485. Doc's Design helps small businesses grow through what we call drool-worthy branding and packaging design.
So we're a small remote design agency full of illustrators, copywriters, marketers, and more. And our number one goal is to help small businesses resonate with their ideal customer to help them grow. I actually went to school for design and luckily for me, my school put their design program in their school of business, which isn't very common. So rather, instead of taking pottery, I took marketing. This really kind of helped me get a sense for business.
I ended up graduating. I worked at one of the top agencies in Midwest. I was working really crazy long hours. I have three Docsons, which is what inspired me to start my side hustle. And I was quickly realizing that this path I thought I wanted to take for the last four years wasn't really for me.
Having to leave the dogs in an office job wasn't really just what I wanted. So I started freelancing on the side and dog businesses kind of just came naturally to me since I am a dog mom of three. So I started freelancing under my own name for about a year. And about after two years, I doubled down, filed for an LLC. And I actually have a team of designers now.
We are now a team of three designers. I am the creative director that I lead. We have one copywriter and we have helped over 70 small businesses grow and communicate to their ideal audience through branding. So when we first started, I was kind of just designing everything for everyone myself. But now I'm actually managing a full team.
This is my full time thing. And we started with just pet businesses, and that really was our niche that we established. We have primarily been servicing pet companies, being a dog mom of three. That really was just my passion. We help a ton of pet accessory companies, dog walkers, pet treats, that sort of stuff.
But since we are growing our team and we are taking on more clients, we are trying now to work beyond that niche. So I would say that has definitely been our biggest struggle we are facing currently is when we do reach out to business coaches or restaurants, pretty much any other small business, the first question they always ask us is, do you only design for pet businesses? Which no, we design for everyone, but it's a question we've gotten a lot. So we are currently working on our brand language to frame us as dog loving designers instead of designers for pet companies because every small business either has an owner or an employee who loves animals as much as we do. So it's an instant connection that way.
Even though it's currently a challenge right now, I would say building a community or a niche right away definitely helped us grow fast. As much as expanding beyond our niche right now is something we're trying to fix, it's definitely the reason why we grew so fast. By niching down into a specific industry, it really allowed the referrals to come in faster. Other pet companies would see our clients post their new brand on social media. Pet companies follow other pet companies and they would reach out.
So for a designer specifically, if you're a generalist, it is really easy to get lost in the crowd, especially on social media. So if you have something that makes you different, whether that's a niche in your design style or your clients you serve, it's really like that special sauce that really helps you grow faster. - Awesome, thank you so much, Kayla, appreciate that. I wanna focus on this whole issue of specialization versus being a generalist, et cetera. We talk about it from time to time, but this is a great example.
And Kayla said, in her update, she was talking about how if you're a designer specifically, well, there's that word again, specific, if you're a designer, it's really easy to get lost in the crowd, especially on social media. And so what actually helped her to stand out and to grow her agency to where she was able to go full time and now employs other artists is that specialization of saying, I'm gonna be the graphic designer for pet related businesses. I'm gonna be the graphic designer for dogs, kind of a shorthand there. And so she started with that niche, okay? But now she's expanding.
So that's the question, is it a mistake? I think the answer is no, the mistake would be the other way around. The mistake would be trying to do it in the opposite direction, okay? So she started with this focus. She started making all these different websites for pet related companies.
And over time, her business grew, she now has that increased capacity with other designers, and she also started getting other requests and such. So now it's just a question of, she does have the challenge of, okay, this is what we were doing before, how can we expand? But I think this is a much easier challenge to solve than trying to be all things to all people, et cetera. So I actually think even if she's going to serve general clients, wherever she can maintain that anchor of, we are pet owners, we are pet lovers, we have done a lot of work in the pet industry, I think that's gonna be very helpful. So I'm grateful to her for being a real world example of that lesson.
Kayla also has a free Facebook group that provides design support for small businesses. And you are invited to join, if you're interested, that is, at facebook.com/groups/designforsmallbusinesses. So again, if you're on Facebook, design for small businesses, I will link it up in the notes page. We'll be doing these new segments throughout 2020, which is more than halfway over now, can't believe it. But let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than 1,000 stories.
If you have a question, if you'd like to update us about your side hustle, if you would like a dachshund, also known as a wiener dog or a sausage dog, or as a doxy in the US or badger dog in Germany, I learned all kinds of things in researching these episodes. Well, if you'd like the first thing that's come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Can't help you with the dachshund, but I had fun looking up the different names. We will continue to feature listener content. As I said in the beginning, I'm so grateful for you.
I'm so grateful for our community and the best is yet to come. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1335. I'll be back again tomorrow and I hope you'll join me. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
