Ad Agency Rep Designs Wedding Stationery

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hello, what's up? Welcome to Silenceful School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, so glad you're here. In today's story, a Nebraska account services manager for an advertising agency gets creative and starts a side project designing a wedding stationery. That would be stationery with an E, not an A.

She is not stationary. She doesn't stay put. She's actively designing that stationery, teaching herself through YouTube tutorials and learning along the way about pricing, which is something we're gonna look at a bit at the end of the episode. She also encounters a really demanding client who wants everything to be perfect. So I'll tell you about that as we go along.

Now, this is a $0 startup, which is one of my favorite kinds. It costs exactly no money to start. And I am willing to bet more than $0 that there is a project you could start with no money at all. So that's my question for you today, and I'll cycle back to that as well at the end. If you had no money at all and you had to go out and make, I don't know, let's say $5,000, which is exactly what this person does, what would you do?

How would you figure that out? Or at least how would you try? How would you attempt to tackle that challenge? You got no money at all, but you do have your existing assets and resources in terms of your relationships, in terms of your connections, in terms of perhaps any design software on your computer, which again, relates to this story, but maybe there's something different that you have. All right, so stay tuned.

Add agency rep design to wedding stationery, coming right up. [Music]

Anyone who has ever planned for a wedding knows that it is no easy task. Brooke Senke, who works at an advertising agency during the day, discovered this firsthand three years ago when she was roped into her sister's wedding prep. It all began when her sister found herself approaching her budget with wedding stationery and programs yet to be made. There was also the matter of style.

Almost all the available designs looked like carbon copies fresh off a template. When Brooke learned about this, she thought, how hard can it be? Although she had only taken a few college classes in design, she knew enough to work from video tutorials on YouTube. Sure enough, she was able to put together a draft program that her sister loved. At that moment, Brooke realized how fulfilling creative design was, and she knew she wanted to help others bring their vision to life as well.

That marked the start of her journey into wedding stationery design. One of the first things she did was reach out to local businesses and ask if there was any work she could do. She even offered to do that work for free, knowing that any experience she gained would be valuable. This proved to be a good move, as Brooke was able to showcase all the work she had done for clients on her website. In fact, a few friends reached out to her for help with their own wedding designs and became clients as well.

Since then, Brooke hasn't looked back, and she also doesn't do it for free anymore. Although this service business runs mainly on her talents, there are still a lot of moving parts she has to take care of. She first meets with the client to find out about their needs and does her best to set expectations. Then she designs the required stationery before sending it off to a company that prints the final pieces. Because each client is looking for something customized and unique, Brooke often has difficulty estimating how much time is required, which in turn has caused her to charge less than she deserves.

This was a huge problem at the beginning, but with more experience, she can now provide better estimates. Interestingly, she's also had to learn a bit about human psychology as well, a skill she didn't expect to need as a designer. Some of her clients are highly invested in every aspect of the process. They want to be in the loop at each stage. Others are preoccupied with different aspects of the wedding prospect and really don't care to be as involved with stationery.

Gaging the desired involvement of her clients in this particular aspect of the process is vital. It helps her determine how often she should check in and let them know about things that happen along the way. Gaining this awareness has been useful at helping her to customize how she interacts with clients. Now, last year she encountered a particularly difficult client. She had to design the stationery for her own wedding.

You'd think with her experience, Brooke would have no problem, but the stakes were high, prompting her to start her design from scratch numerous times. She says she was picky, but she never thought about firing herself. Today, Brooke's designs include everything from wedding programs, menus, welcome signs, to seating charts, and even table numbers. And now it's not just weddings. She also gets clients who request invitations for bridal and baby showers, Christmas cards, wall art, and other personalized gifts.

Brooke made $5,000 in profit her first year. As she tells us, she knows that if she challenges herself, she'll continue to grow and nudge that number higher. Speaking of that, she has made marketing her number one business goal this year and hopes to eventually match the salary of her day job. Having already designed the perfect wedding for herself and so many others, she's now working on designing her ideal career. [Music]

All right, so let's delve a bit into the pricing, into the money, profits, and costs, and all that kind of stuff.

So in 2018, Brooke had 20 clients, and she would charge anywhere from $700 to $2,200. And for the most part, the bulk of the work was for invitations and wedding programs. She would charge $3.50 each for the most basic invitation. And on average, her clients had around 200 guests. So that would mean 200 invitations.

But depending on the finishing touches they wanted, like special paper, wax seal, customized envelopes, et cetera, an invitation could run up to $10 each. Now, pricing ended up being one of Brooke's biggest challenges. She had to take a few different things into account. Her target audience, which is mostly fellow millennials, what other marketplaces and designers were charging, her time and how much it would cost her to produce a single unit. Initially, she wasn't charging what she was worth, but eventually she decided she needed to attribute more value to what she was doing.

Now, so far this year, she's already working with eight clients at the time of recording this. We're just through the second month of the year. So she's expecting to bring in at least $15,000 in profits this year. And perhaps that's even a conservative estimate. So it definitely seems like she is on the up.

All right, congratulations to Brooke. Good work. If you need some wedding invitations or wedding programs, especially if you're in Nebraska, but I think she probably works with people elsewhere as well, go and check out her website, which we will link up on the show notes. And hey, listeners, don't forget, what could you do if you had no money at all and you had to make, again, $5,000? Let's just say that number is kind of arbitrary.

So if you had no money at all and you had to make whatever it is, X amount of dollars, what would you do? What resources or connections or relationships or skills, knowledge that you have, what would you draw upon to make that happen? I know it's possible because so many people have done it in different ways. So that's my challenge and encouragement for you today. Thanks so much.

Those show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/791. That is for episode 791. I'll be back again tomorrow with the weekly recap and so much more on the way. My name is Chris Guillebeau "This is Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.