Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
This Week's episode is about a guy who was running a creative agency but wasn't totally happy with what he was doing.
He thought that the agency business model was kind of dysfunctional and he wanted to run a more predictable business, but he didn't have a clue what that business was going to be.
He made a list of what he wanted in his life, both personally and professionally and he started to get really clear about what type of business he didn't want to build and then sat back and waited for inspiration while he did some consulting work on the side to help keep paying the bills.
And a few weeks later he had his aha moment and it was a very simple idea.
He decided to launch a design agency which used a productized consulting model very similar to how pricing for a SaaS product works.
And in two years he's gone from zero to $160,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
That's almost $2 million annual run rate and he now has a team of 45 full time employees.
It's an inspiring story and he's an energetic and entertaining guy.
I think you'll enjoy this interview.
Today's guest is the founder of Design Pickle, a productized service that offers unlimited graphic design support for your day to day business needs for a flat monthly fee.
Design Pickle was launched in January 2015 and in just two years my guest has grown it into a business with 45 full time staff and seven figures in annual revenue.
So today I'd like to welcome Russ Perry.
Russ, welcome to the show.
Russ Perry (02:27.860)
Thanks Omer, nice to be here.
Very excited for today.
Omer (02:30.900)
Now I always like to start by asking what gets my guests out of bed?
What drives them?
Some people like to share a quote.
Some people just like to talk about, you know, in their own words.
So what is it for you that that sort of gets you fired up and out of bed every morning to work on your business?
Russ Perry (02:48.830)
Having as much time as possible by myself until the kids wake up.
So the earlier yeah.
Oh man, dude.
I was featured in the Wall Street Journal for I wake up around 4 o', clock, four to four and it's literally the most best, the best time of the day.
Omer (03:08.270)
What time do you go to bed?
Russ Perry (03:10.990)
Around 10 or so.
I use the Sleep Timer app so it always kind of varies of when I need to go to bed to be able to wake up around the right time.
So I'm not like in the middle of a sleep cycle.
Omer (03:21.830)
Have you always been a morning person?
Russ Perry (03:24.790)
No, it was children that turned me into one.
I was the nighttime stay up all night, work all night, go out all night guy.
And then that just got annihilated by my loving daughters.
Omer (03:37.110)
How old are they?
Russ Perry (03:38.720)
I have three, actually.
I have one who's 11, one who is four, and one who is one just turned one in October.
Yeah.
Omer (03:46.240)
So what do you get, like two, maybe three hours in the morning from 4:00'?
Clock?
Russ Perry (03:52.240)
Oh, no, dude, that's like one hour, maybe one and a half hours.
Like they're early risers, so.
Omer (03:58.240)
Oh my God.
Russ Perry (03:59.840)
If I wake up anytime past like 5:30, I basically can get out of bed and then someone's up.
So.
So.
Omer (04:08.690)
Wow.
All right, so let's talk about design Pickle.
So I gave the audience a little bit of an overview about it, but I mean, in your own words, just tell us a little bit more about the business.
Russ Perry (04:19.330)
I mean, yeah, you nailed it.
We're a really straightforward service.
Started it.
I used to run a couple creative agencies back in my previous entrepreneurial days and just saw a lot of businesses struggling with getting graphic design, like consistent, reliable, good quality graphic design help around the less thrilling exciting things.
Stuff like online ads, stuff for events, just the stuff that is necessary but not super sexy.
And I decided to close my agency and thought, well, maybe I could offer this in a unique, more reliable model from a business standpoint and took a stab at it almost two years ago.
Just saying, hey, here's what we think we could charge for on demand access to a designer and you can use it as much as you want.
There's limitations with, like, we don't do super complex stuff.
I always say, if you can describe it in an email, we're in pretty good shape.
And it's been awesome.
We've found like a really solid niche, a really amazing community of clients and just have provided some really just dependable help along their own entrepreneurial journeys.
Omer (05:29.270)
Why did you decide you wanted to kind of go down that path instead of having your own agency?
Was it about kind of coming up with more of a productized business?
Was it more driven by kind of your own personal aspirations on the type of business you wanted to run?
What drove that decision?
Russ Perry (05:46.790)
Well, it's funny actually, this morning I did a whole presentation on this exact topic of like, how did I get to that point?
And the abbreviated.
That's Like a two hour presentation.
The abbreviated answer is simply I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I had no clue what I was going to do.
Like agencies are fundamentally very dysfunctional business models.
And I knew I didn't want to basically sell people on my ideas and then hope they pay me and like my idea, which is what a lot of agencies and consultants do.
And I hired a coach, a business coach.
I made a really clear list of what I wanted in my life personally.
Just the things I wanted to do, the lifestyle I wanted to have.
And then I kind of turned that over and I said okay, for me to be able to travel, which is something I'm very passionate about, I have to have more of like an online business.
I can't have something that requires me to come in every day.
And I just went through these outcomes and created this list of, I call them filters that I needed to have true.
So that I could have this lifestyle.
And one of those was that I was 30 or 2930 at the time.
I didn't want to learn something new.
So in the back of my mind I knew it was something in the creative space and I just had those lists and didn't stress.
I did some consulting on the side to pay for life and my family and all of that.
And one day I just had the aha moment when I was reading Dan Norris book seven Day Startup and he has, he just sold it actually to GoDaddy but a productized WordPress support site.
And I was like, holy, this is it.
I'm doing this thing.
So what happened was I saw a similar model of a business that I knew I could do with my skillset and I kind of mashed those two things together, my expertise and that business model and out birthed Design Pickle.
Omer (07:45.010)
Yeah, I mean Dan was a, a guest on this show a while back.
I think it was episode 36.
And, and there are a lot of similarities obviously in terms of the way that Design Pickle has been kind of built.
And, and that was a question I had for you was whether you had used his, what he had done with WP Curve as a model for what you, you, you decided to do.
Russ Perry (08:11.710)
So that the aha moment actually was that I already was doing that in my consulting and I forgot to mention that.
So when I was consulting prior to discovering WB Curve, I was really, I wouldn't say I was like over higher than doing the design work myself, but you got to remember I had 20 something employees at my other creative agency and I hadn't Been doing design in a long time.
So all of a sudden I had these consulting clients, and they were wanting me to do everything from a brand strategy to a website, to a WordPress theme to a business card.
The small stuff, frankly, sometimes takes up the most time.
So I actually hired an outsourced team, put everybody on a ticketing system, and just said, hey, clients, if you need a sales sheet, here's your email.
Go.
And it wasn't complex.
Anyone can do it.
And that started to scale a tiny bit.
I had a few more clients using it, and it was working well.
And then that's when I read the book and it was like, oh, my gosh, this is how they do it, and this is what I'm doing.
I have this.
So I already had.
Had it running.
And that was just the motivation and the awareness that this could become something bigger than what I had previously thought.
Wow.
Omer (09:30.100)
Have you read a book called Built to Sell?
Russ Perry (09:35.540)
So I read that after I had launched Design Pickle.
And reading that book, it was like reading my life.
I was just.
Unfortunately, he had a much better outcome than he sold his agency.
I think I forget the ending and I read that, but it just was like, oh, thank God I got out.
I made the right decision.
I felt almost like I dodged a bullet.
And I was just so thankful that I had figured this out.
When I read that book, I was
Omer (10:07.820)
just about to say, I mean, kind of sort of going through your story, it reminded me of that book.
Russ Perry (10:15.020)
Yeah, it's like a biography.
I mean, you could swap out the details or the names, and that's like kind of what happened.
I just ended up creating something slightly different than a logo company, I think is what he created.
Omer (10:27.260)
I think once folks have heard this interview, we'll link out to the book as well.
And again, John Warlow, the author, I had a.
He was a guest on the show as well, some time back.
So we'll include the links to that.
But, yeah, I think it's just incredibly.
It's incredible parallel from going into a guy who is running a design agency or some kind of marketing agency doing everything for clients like you described, and then someone saying to him, no, just do logos.
It's like, what.
How can I possibly build a business just doing logos?
But there's a.
There's a lot of sense behind that, and I think we probably can get.
Well, we'll just tell your story.
That will explain the book.
Russ Perry (11:03.410)
Yeah, well, the thing is, it's like you're.
It's like logos.
That's so boring.
And like, what we do, it's like face.
I mean, we do a lot of stuff, but I mean, a lot of it is not exciting, but it's like, hey, that's we're doing really.
There's a lot of people that need the boring stuff.
Omer (11:19.170)
All right, so you worked with a business coach.
You kind of try to get more clarity around what kind of business you wanted based on the kind of life that you wanted to be living.
You talked about having that aha moment.
I'm wondering how long did it take from the point where you started thinking about wanting to run a business to getting to that aha moment.
And you said that you didn't stress too much.
You were doing some consulting along the way to kind of, you know, pay the bills and keep things going.
How long did it take for you to have that moment?
Russ Perry (11:53.630)
The whole process from aha to paying clients was less than 30 days.
It was more like the 30 day startup versus the 7 day startup.
But I basically, the consulting was my micro proof of concept.
And reading the book and realizing that, hey, I'm onto something.
And frankly, going back to those lists that I had mentioned earlier and double checking, does this concept, will this allow me to still be in alignment with this lifestyle that I wanted?
And it did.
And it really, it was very supportive of that.
All the way down to me saying, hey, I want a recurring revenue type business, frankly, because I spent eight years chasing invoices and I didn't want that anymore.
So I went back, it matched the, matched my checklist.
It supported my lifestyle.
Here was someone else doing something in a different industry with the same model.
I was already doing it.
And then I just did what I knew best.
I created a brand.
I created a WordPress site and we launched, I emailed and got and talked to everybody I could and we were launched, I think January 21st or 22nd, I can't actually remember the exact date.
We had quote, unquote launched and we were cash flow positive by the end of the month.
I think at the end of that first month of January, we had like, our MRR was like $6,000.
So we were off to the races.
Omer (13:14.370)
Do you think that was because you'd already been kind of building the foundation for that business and kind of, as you said, already doing something like that, or was that all completely new stuff that you started in January that was all new revenue?
Russ Perry (13:29.170)
I'm a pretty good marketer, so like that's me dusting off my agency skills and instead of using it for other clients, using it for myself.
And it was a grind.
Like it wasn't easy in terms of like it was emailing every single person a million emails.
I got blacklisted by Google because I had not, I had not.
I wasn't using a marketing email marketing system yet.
And so like I spammed basically my whole database that I had collected over the last few years and my amex records got all like blacklisted from my registrar.
Cause I was emailing just too much.
And so I had to figure that out fast.
But it was just going and getting the word out there.
And so those are all new clients that we got.
And frankly I attribute a lot of our success is having like making a profit and having money early on, like from month one that we could reinvest in marketing.
Because two months later we sponsored our first event ever at the infusionsoft conference here in Phoenix.
And then that was just like the next level and the next level and the next level.
So we've always been able to invest in those things because we just.
I didn't have any investment.
I just knew that hey, I need to make money and have profit so that I can keep growing and marketing.
Omer (14:55.330)
Did you have full time staff working for you in January or like what was the setup of the business at the time?
Russ Perry (15:05.090)
I had no full time staff, including myself in the sense that I was not taking a full paycheck.
Like I was taking some money but.
But I still had a book of consulting clients through this.
And I didn't go full time aside from our team in the Philippines.
So our team in the Philippines, where our design team is, they were working for me full time pretty quickly with I'd say the first 30 to 45 days.
I didn't go full time until June 2015.
That's when I was able to financially quit all my consulting and then go full pickle.
And it wasn't until August of 2015 that I was able to hire another staff here in Arizona.
Omer (15:49.930)
You said you emailed like everybody you could think of.
Was that the kind of the primary way that you ended up getting your first however many clients?
Russ Perry (16:02.170)
Yep, it was just elbow grease.
Just getting out there and saying, hey, here's what we're doing.
Have a.
Having a pretty ridiculous offer that really caught people's attention and people would try it out.
And that's always been our sales strategy is really just try it out, like see if it's a fit for you.
If not, no problem, you can get refunded.
So it's such a low risk.
Proposition.
We were really lucky that we had a lot of people giving us a shot.
I mean, we still have clients, like from day one that still use our service.
They got in at a lower price point.
I won't mention, because we've raised our prices since.
Omer (16:38.560)
But you said it was a ridiculous offer.
What was it?
You were just going like, seriously low with the price or there was some other aspect to the offer?
Russ Perry (16:45.480)
No.
In comparison to the buyer's experience of purchasing design services.
So up until we came onto the market, no one has really ever heard of a flat rate graphic design company before.
So it was very disruptive in terms of our sales offer.
Just.
Just the model itself.
And our price point was super low.
To the point where you're like, well, I could get this company services for a whole month for really what I'm paying my local guy for a few hours worth of work.
I might as well try this out.
Omer (17:17.680)
First month, you hit $6,000.
A lot of grinding.
Just kind of getting the word out.
Then you mentioned the infusionsoft event.
Tell me a little bit about that.
I read somewhere that was.
Was that the event where you dressed up as a pickle?
Russ Perry (17:35.780)
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's a.
That's like an infamous event in a lot of people's lives.
I still get emails from that event.
Literally three days ago, I got an email from that event over the weekend.
Or no, on Monday.
So that event came up.
Well, we're in Arizona there, in Arizona.
So we.
I got connected and it was just like, hey, you need to be here.
You need to go to this, this, this event.
And we were so late in the game in terms of the sponsorships that there were no booths left.
We couldn't afford a booth even if they had one.
And so I negotiated, hey, how about we hand out pickles at lunchtime?
And they're like, all right, cool, whatever.
That's a weird.
That's a weird idea, but we'll do it.
So I bought the world's most expensive pickles because I couldn't bring my own pickles.
I had to buy them free through the convention center.
And they were like, astronomically marked up.
But then I was like, well, one of my high school jobs was being a mascot for the AAA team in Tucson.
So I was like, I'll dress up as a mascot.
I'll buy a pickle outfit.
And then I took it one step further and I found a, like a Mexican popsicle cart, which are pretty predominant in west coast, but it's like a little cooler on wheels.
With the bells.
And I put some graphics on the side for Design Pickle.
And I literally just rolled around lunch like, ding, ding, ding, who wants a pickle?
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
Who wants a pickle?
And these pickles were individually plastic.
They're wrapped in plastic.
And then we rubber band a flyer around them.
So it was just this bizarre dude, grown man handing out pickles.
And then it kind of becomes a conversation like, what do you do?
But honestly, I couldn't even collect a lead.
I didn't even collect a business card because people were crazy about the pickles.
I mean, it was as if I was handing out $100 bills and people were coming up to me the next day like, oh, I hear you have pickles.
I need three.
Like the staff of the convention center.
So we handed out like I think 600 plus pickles.
And I could have handed out 5,000 if I had enough.
Like it was, it was nuts.
Omer (19:44.570)
What are you, like the Richard Branson of Arizona, like doing all these stunts with.
Russ Perry (19:50.890)
Well, well it.
Because we were chatting about this before we started recording.
Like my eight and a half agency year career, I basically worked with boring technical companies, always pitching really creative ideas, only for them to be just completely gutted by the time they got to approval that it's, it's like I'm like a, it's like I'm a pent up creative that never got to express any creativity.
So finally, now that I'm in charge, I could that do whatever we want.
Omer (20:19.840)
All right, so I want to make sure we, we kind of, kind of pick your brain a little bit in terms of what you've done to, to grow this business.
And I mentioned at the intro that Design Pickle was a seven figure business.
But I think we get more specific and I think you're okay with that, that currently you guys are doing about $160,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
So I really want to kind of talk about what were some of the biggest drivers that have helped you to achieve that.
And obviously a lot of grind and hustle in the early days to get the initial traction and the word out about the business.
We kind of talked about the infusionsoft event and I know that events are also sort of a part of your kind of growth strategy.
But what other, what, what were the other kind of avenues that you guys have taken to grow this business and get it to, to where you are today?
Russ Perry (21:22.260)
Yeah, well, the, the, this is not like a tactic or a tip, but I will say we looked at what our clients or Our potential clients were the most frustrated about within our space.
A lot of it had to do with communication with their designer.
And so we created a system and a product that just solved like such a frustrating piece of the design process.
And so first of all, it's just like delivering on what we say we're going to do.
And that, as simple as it sounds, doesn't happen in the design industry by a wide margin.
There's a lot of broken hearts in the design industry.
And so that was the first, that was the first thing.
The second, which then is more tactical is we've done a lot of acquisition on Facebook and that is because a lot of times most like the best ideal client for us, they have a designer, they have an in house person, they're not actively looking for someone.
So we never really had success on Google because AdWords was always finding some.
Like, if you're searching for designers on Google, you probably don't have a lot of experience and you don't make for a very good client for us.
So Facebook, we found, was a good place to sort of find people and interrupt whatever they're doing and get them starting to think about, oh, maybe I do want to try a new design service.
Or when their designer goes MIA for a week and they're freaking out, they see these ads and they're like, okay, we're going to try design pickle.
Omer (22:58.240)
Okay, so let's kind of talk a little bit about the.
Well, let's start with Facebook.
So that's kind of like the sort of straightforward piece and I think it's, it's something that you still do today, right.
In terms of continuing to use that as a, as a sort of a way to acquire new customers.
What, Tell me, just tell me a little bit about like, how, how do you, like, what's, what's the experience that somebody sees?
Is it just like a big pickle pops up on their screen or.
Russ Perry (23:34.840)
Well, we're always testing stuff.
And so we've really had kind of three approaches.
The first is the disruptive approach.
It's yeah, like a dude in a pickle pops up on your screen, like, what is this?
So that's kind of our first tactic.
And then from there it's thinking about more contextual stuff around target audiences.
So maybe a message for, like, we really are popular with gyms, like if you have a physical brick and mortar gym, they're always doing online content, social media stuff.
So we might do a sample work or like a case study around them.
But it's softer, it's not do a demo.
Like we used to do demos.
And the demo is me talking for 20 minutes and then pulling up my email and being like, all right, well, here how that works.
You basically send an email and the demo's over in like 45 seconds.
So, like, there's not much to demo.
It's not complex.
And we just cut out a lot of that.
I think there's still a few of those things floating around because they actually do convert.
But we just tried to streamline it and just say, like, at the end of the day, it's just try it.
Just try it and see if you like it.
And that, to me, has always worked better than any type of funnel automation webinar sales process we've tried is just asking people to try it.
Omer (25:02.400)
Yeah, we were talking about that a little bit earlier.
I'm curious, what were kind of some of the other approaches that you tried that didn't work?
Because it sounds like.
And I think most of us are in this situation when you start thinking about online marketing and you think about building some kind of funnel, it's quite easy to come up with something which is fairly elaborate, fairly sophisticated.
But that's not necessarily always the best approach.
And certainly, from what I understand with your experience, a much more efficient way to reach out to those customers and getting them to start trying out the service.
So what kind of things did you try, which just at the end of the day, just seemed to be overly complex and unnecessary?
Russ Perry (25:49.260)
The first thing we tried, which was totally my doing, was more of like a B2B enterprise sales process.
And that stemmed from my background running the agency, because that's who my clients were.
We had big companies, you know, companies that would.
The company that would go to, like, the Salesforce conference and you're setting appointments and you're just.
There's the sales process could be three to six months because you're doing a deal that is six to seven figures.
So we tried that and I hired a sales guy, he's a friend of mine, he's really experienced sales guy.
And we had a sales CRM and we had all this stuff rolling, and all that it did was overcomplicated things because rather than someone just trying it, they would want to ask questions and talk about things and wait for their appointment and trying to connect with somebody or find the right person.
And.
And we're always just.
And then that sales model itself, you are disrupting people.
So I decided to just kind of take a look at it.
And at the end of the day, Our Facebook ads were massively outperforming our sales guy, like by 10,000% or more.
And we just said, hey, you know what, we're just going to stick to this channel.
And I let him go.
And it was really hard because I said because I knew him and I kind of had recruited them a little bit.
But at the end of the day, I just saw the sales cycle extend to 30 days plus, whereas now we have an under seven day from you when you enter into our system.
It's like an average seven day purchase for those who do purchase.
That was so eye opening and honestly something that I often still struggle with because I've tried the webinar funnel, I've tried the evergreen like fake live webinar funnel, which seriously was really weird.
And I just stopped doing it because I felt like a con man kind of.
And all of those things just never did as good as just saying like, yo, here it is.
Do you want to try it?
And giving people a legitimate experience to try it.
And for them, those who don't like it, they.
They can get out without having to pay anything.
So like that until I like for now, that is our strategy.
And frankly, I should have my team because I always will try creative stuff and try to make it more complicated because I feel like I need to.
And at the end of the day, it never works as well as just being simple.
Omer (28:22.120)
The sales process that you were going through, your sales guy was going through.
Tell me a little bit about that.
So it would kind of start out by doing some kind of outreach and then there was a whole bunch of conversations that would happen.
And is that what you were talking about when you said, I think, you know, it could take five or six weeks to, to kind of close a deal because there was just a lot of time spent trying to just explain the service.
Russ Perry (28:48.560)
I don't.
Our.
The success of you with our service has nothing to do with.
With me being able to explain it to you.
It has to do with your experience working with designers and being able to clearly communicate.
So no amount of conversations can replace that.
And I just said, well, let's just cut out those conversations because I could talk to you forever.
Well, Russ, I have this business and you know what, we're really unique.
We do Facebook ads.
So it's like, okay, great.
Well, so do like thousand other clients and you could have the same designer as the guy next to you and have two vastly different experiences with our service, not because of the designer's ability, but because you're terrible at communicating and the guy next to you is like a former creative director and knows exactly how to articulate what he needs.
So that.
That was the realization that I had.
And every time.
And this elongated sales process was just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And at the end of the day, everything turned down to, well, I hope you try it, and why don't you try it?
And then nothing of what we said mattered because it just came down to them just using the service and seeing if it was a fit.
Omer (29:56.440)
And then the experience on Facebook is, this is what we do.
Try it out and you get your money back if you don't like it.
Russ Perry (30:06.760)
Exactly.
Omer (30:08.440)
That's the pitch that just blows me away sometimes when you think about how many of us just try to overly complicate things, whether it's.
It's designing a product or a sales process or inbound marketing or whatever.
And it's like, is it.
Is it Occam's razor?
Is that.
Is that.
Are you familiar with that concept?
I'm not like, the fastest way to kind of get something done.
And yeah, I mean, it just kind of blows me away.
Just like how many other things are out there that we're just making unnecessarily complicated.
Russ Perry (30:50.560)
Yeah, you're right.
I did a quick Google.
So Occam's razor is the simplest explanation is usually true.
Omer (30:55.840)
Yeah.
Russ Perry (30:57.760)
Yeah.
So the simplest sales funnel is usually the best.
Omer (31:01.200)
Yeah.
This is fascinating stuff.
Russ Perry (31:03.680)
Now, I will say, like, to all the SaaS guys and everyone listening that are, like, forging the trail ahead on new ways of doing things.
Like, we just do design.
So it's not like I'm trying to convince you to do some new automation or some new business process that you've never even thought of before, which does require.
And that's where I fell down, is I thought I needed to explain it, but at the end of the day, I'm selling something that most people in business have had an experience.
So that is what has allowed us to have this simple of a.
Of a sales process.
But it also makes me wonder, like, is that a sales strategy?
Just breaking it down to the simplest form of whatever it is you're doing so you don't have to have so many complex steps.
Omer (31:51.350)
Yeah, no, I think that's a really good point because.
Yeah.
I mean, it doesn't mean just because this is working for you guys, that I can take some enterprise security system and kind of run a Facebook ad and just tell people to try it and it's going to work.
I think it needs to be within the context of whatever the product is, the business is, the market is, and that kind of stuff.
But at the end of the day, I think the lesson still applies in terms of no matter whatever you're doing within the context of your, your industry, are you trying to make it more complicated than it needs to be?
Right.
I think that's, that's the lesson for me here.
Russ Perry (32:25.450)
And perhaps you're doing that because you're unsure of the value you're providing or you think you need to overcompensate for it.
That's where I've had a massive shift.
The Russ Perry 2015 didn't have as much confidence in the service as the Russ Perry 2016, simply because we were still learning and we were still figuring things out and there were processes that didn't work in work.
And so the Russberry 2016 is like, dude, if you want to try it, great.
If not, whatever, because I know it's awesome and it's, it's, it helps like a lot of people.
But I, but that came with experience, so it could, it could have evolved over time.
Omer (33:03.230)
Now, one of the other things I understand is that in 2015, I guess you probably weren't as focused on who your target customers were, and there was some kind of, you know, consequences of, of not having that clarity.
So can you share a little bit about, like, what was kind of going on and then sort of the lessons you learned from that?
Russ Perry (33:26.820)
As we were discussing, everyone has design experience.
So when we looked at the horizon of who our target audience was, I dodged that question for probably eight months or nine months.
And it wasn't until I brought on a marketing guy that he kind of held me accountable to say, like, look, Russ, we don't have unlimited budgets.
Yes, everyone can use design, but we, we can't target everybody because you're just going to be dicing and slicing a very limited budget too thin.
You're not going to make an impact.
So we tried several times to narrow in our target audience and, and something.
It was an interesting process because we were really, really, at one point last year focused on in house marketers.
Someone with a company credit card, someone that had just a strategy that they're doing and working through and they needed ongoing stuff.
And that person can be very successful with our service.
However, we found they didn't have that emotional connection to us.
They just don't want to get fired or they just want to look good in front of their boss.
So whenever there was a small bump in the road, boom, they would ditch Our service and the retention was so much lower.
Whereas if we were working with an entrepreneur or a small business owner, someone who's just more emotionally vested, when we hit that bump in the road with the creative process, which you, which happens, it's reality, they would, they would be like, okay, cool, like let's just keep going here, let's fix it.
They would, they would roll with it a lot better and you know, we would keep those clients.
So that's then when we finally shifted to say, well, really we want to be focused on more that small business demo of someone who's going to be using our service but has an emotional investment to the outcome of whatever we're creating.
Omer (35:14.700)
How did you decide that those are the people you're going to focus on?
Because I mean the explain, you know, what you explained about the in house marketers makes total sense and that probably made it clear to you those were the people you didn't want to spend time with.
But from my experience, both personally and talking to a lot of entrepreneurs, it's really hard to commit to a target customer.
It's just like, it feels like almost like a, a marriage decision, right in terms of is this, is this the right person I want to spend the rest of my life with?
So was it about you'd kind of gone through the process a little while and you were getting a feel of the customers that were out there and that gave you a little bit more confidence to choose the type of customer you wanted to focus on.
Would it, would it have been much harder if you try to do this at the beginning, let's say in January 2015?
Russ Perry (36:01.920)
I don't think it would have mattered.
I think we would have been just as successful, even more so had we picked because we could have focused.
At the end of the day, everyone pays the same.
So like our price point, there's just one price.
So it doesn't matter if you're a Fortune 500 CMO or a mom Etsy store, we get the same value out of you.
So it didn't come down to really money initially.
It came down to happiness, which I know is not a very measurable thing.
But who was the most thankful or grateful for our service?
Who is happy with their designer and liked them and communicated with them and didn't treat them like a faceless robot of design, production and that was the small business space.
But what we then found out was okay within that we wanted to go after a more established business that isn't just trying to launch and figure things out because that's hard.
They don't even know what they're doing.
So it's hard to instruct someone on how to help them.
It was that established entrepreneur who's been around for a few years, who's growing, who's expanding their team and we can come in and connect with them.
And again, not measurable.
Like people that think we're funny and have a good sense of humor because that actually helps out a lot.
Like if you.
People we connect with on a humorous level, we trust more.
And back to where if things go wrong, we had that layer of trust, then they're not going to bail on us.
They're going to say, okay, cool, well, that sucks, that doesn't happen, but let's keep moving forward.
So those are.
I know that's not super clear, but that really was the conversation.
Like, okay, who do we like working with the most, who likes us the most and who's not a pain in the ass?
Omer (37:57.000)
That's a very important factor.
Russ Perry (38:00.520)
It was, you know, who's the biggest pain in the ass.
And I love them.
I love all of you.
If you're listening to me and you're in this scenario, our agencies, they do get the most value out of our service because their volume's a lot higher.
But it was an interesting realization that they're usually not the end decision maker.
So our communication would get mixed up where they would present it to a client and it would be different than what they thought and then they would be pissed at us because it wasn't right and their client's stressed out.
So we will happily have them sign up.
But let's just say they're not usually as successful with our service as a small business owner.
Omer (38:41.750)
And I think the reason this is an important point in terms of focusing on people who are the happiest and you can deliver the best experience too, is I guess, number one, you already mentioned that a lot of the people who were customers from day one are still customers today.
And the other thing is it sounds like you're also getting a lot of new customers through referrals purely because you're focusing just as much on delighting your existing customers in addition to going out there and trying to find new ones.
Russ Perry (39:25.660)
We even created a new role around that called the community management.
Community manager.
So she's, her name's Michelle.
She's been the pickle of Path events.
She's in charge of just like making sure our current clients are taken care of and making sure that we have them in our sites and, and that we're not just churning and getting new people and abandoning them, but really delivering a great experience.
Omer (39:52.530)
Yeah, I mean, that's such a important kind of part of running any business, I think, is that in the early days, it's much easier to give that high touch kind of experience to your early customers or clients.
And then as you, you sort of start to build momentum and you start getting a lot more new customers maybe a lot faster than you anticipated, it becomes much harder to kind of keep.
Keep everything running and keep providing the same level of focus and quality that you'd been doing in those early days.
So, yeah, I mean, totally makes.
Makes sense.
All right.
One thing I wanted to ask you was around, and I think you touched on this when you talked about the agencies, is how do you deal with the unlimited thing?
Like, do some people really kind of think unlimited means, you know, unlimited?
Well, you know.
Russ Perry (40:58.210)
Well, well, it, it is true.
I always say you can send in as many requests as you want and we will get them done.
Your price never changes.
The throttle everyone always wants to know is just turnaround time.
So you don't have a lot of stuff in your queue.
Your stuff comes back pretty fast.
It's like a production line.
So if you load up 100 jobs, well, your designer is going to get to work and you work with the same designer and they just chunk away.
So there is like an equilibrium, if you will, of turnaround time to business demands that at some point, if you have something that's too urgent that can't be done, we're not going to be a good fit for you.
And I never, ever, ever say have no other design resources other than design Pickle.
First of all, we don't do everything.
Second of all, we're not a good fit for everything.
Especially if it's one of those like, oh, crap, tomorrow we forgot we have this we need it kind of deal.
So everyone finds their unique equilibrium with the volume and the pace.
And some get done with a lot more than other clients because they're way more organized or the requests are much more straightforward.
I had one client, we ended up firing him.
Unfortunately not because of his volume, it was because of him being rude.
But he had a queue out until October of 2017.
But it was just evergreen social media content that he just was just pumping out and creating.
And he was cool with it.
So we were fine with it too.
We had to create special rules and automation for this guy just because of how much volume he had.
And unfortunately, when we fired him, he was really pissed because he knew that he was losing out on a massive deal.
But yeah, so that's how we track it and it works.
And the clients that it doesn't work for, those are the guys that churn out or the gals that churn out pretty quick and we thank them for trying to.
Omer (42:58.660)
So the business has been growing incredibly fast.
When I was doing the research for this interview, I came across something which said you had 10 full time staff.
When I kind of looked it was like you've got 15 or 22.
Then we spoke, it was like up to 45.
It's kind of growing so quickly.
What are you doing in the back end to make sure that you're able to manage the quality of what is being delivered.
And I think as you said at the beginning, this is probably the most important aspect of being successful with this business.
So what do you do as the founder of this business to make sure that the quality bar is always high?
Russ Perry (43:44.990)
We hold ourselves to a high bar and we also ensure we maintain our focus on what we do well and say no to the things that we are not going to do.
We don't bite off more than we can chew, if that makes sense.
And we've taken upon ourselves to develop a whole backend system of quality control.
So between the community manager that I mentioned, we have a full time customer success person to just work with clients that are having a challenge and all of this goes around the client and is wrapped around the client so that if something does go sideways, which it always will with design, we can intervene or find it and say, okay, what's up?
Let's figure this out.
Maybe the outcome is they're not a good fit and we'll part ways amicably.
Maybe the outcome is a technical problem.
Like we've had weird things happen where one time our software would truncate any email anytime someone used an emoji.
So like any point after that the email was erased.
So we would fulfill these design requests and get the same negative feedback that like you're not listening and we're just going insane and we're like what is going on?
And we finally figured it out and fixed the emoji bug is what we called it.
But you know, like so, but, but unfortunately when you're just one on one with the designer and you don't have a lot of graphic design experience when those problems happen, the designer doesn't have business experience, the, the purchaser, the client doesn't, hasn't worked with a lot of designers and they end up Both just saying, screw you, you suck, you suck.
And that's the experience somebody has.
And so we want to change that.
And my happiest moments, I kid you not, is when a client cancels because they're hiring a full time designer or they're now confident enough that they're able to grow their business to the point.
Or we've made that impact and we get a lot of those.
We call them the happy cancellations.
But.
But that's something I've been adamant about and wanting to change.
And frankly, the trolls and the haters online, which there's a lot of them for us, I always come back to is it's like, look, if every designer was amazing at providing an amazing experience and amazing work, we wouldn't be in existence.
Problem is they're not.
So that's the space we occupy is to help people gain that experience, get what they need and not give them a headache and do it in an affordable way.
Omer (46:19.770)
I love it.
It's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
Russ Perry (46:26.570)
Ready?
I like, I was.
And then like, it's, it's, it's time for the lightning round.
So.
Yes.
Okay, go.
Omer (46:35.690)
All right.
What's the best piece of business advice that you've ever received?
Russ Perry (46:39.690)
Focus.
Omer (46:41.210)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Russ Perry (46:44.610)
The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly.
Because it'll blow your mind.
It's all predictions about the future.
Omer (46:51.170)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Russ Perry (46:59.010)
Detail oriented.
Omer (47:01.250)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Russ Perry (47:06.690)
Does waking up at 4am Count?
Omer (47:08.690)
I think so.
I think that on its own is.
You should get some kind of gold star for that.
Russ Perry (47:15.140)
I will add in one more meditation.
Omer (47:17.700)
Cool.
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time
Russ Perry (47:26.180)
being a. I don't know if it's a business idea.
I really want to produce like a high budget rap music video like at some point in my life.
So I don't know if that counts
Omer (47:35.660)
or not, but I gotta come down to Phoenix and hang out with you.
It just sounds like it would be just such a fun day.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Russ Perry (47:49.820)
I have played drums with Green Day.
Omer (47:54.700)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Russ Perry (47:59.100)
Traveling with my family.
I love them to death and I love giving them new experiences.
Omer (48:03.980)
Awesome.
Russ Perry (48:05.310)
Russ.
Omer (48:05.710)
It has been an absolute Pleasure.
Thank you for making the time to do this.
Russ Perry (48:10.510)
Thank you.
Omer (48:11.630)
Now, if people want to find out more about Design Pickle, you can go to designpickle.com and if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Russ Perry (48:22.670)
You can first go to my personal site, russperry Co, and you can get connected there and then on social media.
Russ, just Russell, Russ Perry on basically any channel possible.
Omer (48:35.530)
Love it.
Russ, thanks again, man.
I really, really appreciate you making the time.
I really enjoyed this conversation.
And I'm not joking.
It's like you're going to be one of the first people I'm going to kind of look up when I'm down in Arizona, but it will not be at 4:00 in the morning, I'm afraid.
Russ Perry (48:57.850)
Just make sure it's between basically now and March, like, or October to March.
That's when you want to come down
Omer (49:04.150)
because of the weather.
Russ Perry (49:05.830)
It's so hot after that.
Summers are brutal, man.
It's like 120 degrees.
Omer (49:11.030)
You know, when you live in Seattle, actually, we did this for quite a while because we used to just get so fed up with the weather here that we were happy to go to, like, Palm Springs in August.
And, and for people who are not familiar with that, it was like we'd go down there and be like, you know, 110, 115, 15 degrees Fahrenheit.
And we were okay with that because we were just so deprived of the sunshine and the heat that anything that was a couple of hours away seemed like an attractive proposition.
And then after a few days of that, you realize it probably wasn't the smartest decision in the world to make.
Russ Perry (49:49.710)
Yeah, well.
And you though you could just go to a pool or something.
That's what everyone, they complain about the heat.
But then two minutes at a cool pool and there's a million of them and you're fine.
Cool.
Thanks.
Omer (50:02.460)
And I wish you all the best.
Russ Perry (50:04.300)
All right.
Thanks so much, Omer.
I had a fantastic time on this interview.
Omer (50:07.260)
Me too.
Cheers.
