 So I'm going to assume that we're live. Okay. Whenever you are wherever you are. Thank you for joining. So I want to make this session as interactive as possible folks. So drop an emoji from wherever you're training in or just comment below and we will get this session started. So welcome to how to start a UX agency with me, Chris and Ruby. I'll bring Ruby to the stage in a little bit. So let's just go for some quick introductions first. Let me get this off. Sorry about that folks. I'm Chris, a product designer. I quit my head of design job in 2020. Since then, I've tried my hands at numerous things, including consulting and running design sprints, raising money for a startup, joined a startup incubator, but nothing really worked out in that process. And during that process, I started a UX education company called UX Flavor. I help designers of all levels, whether it's building your portfolio, learning fundamental frameworks or managing your first design team. And today, I'm joined by Ruby, a consultant, a researcher, places like BCG and Grab, and who recently started her own agency. So let's just get her out here and find out more about Ruby. Ruby, how are you doing? Tell us about yourself and introduce yourself to the audience. Hi, everyone. I'm super excited to be here and to kind of meet all of you in this virtual setting. I'm Ruby. I'm the founder of Rex, which is a UX research and strategic design agency. I started this agency late last year and about October last year. And it's been a pretty exciting and wild ride so far. And I'm really keen to talk to all of you about it. I'm Australian, originally from Melbourne, Australia, but I've lived in Singapore now for the past five years and since living here, I have worked with some of those companies that Chris mentioned, like BCG and Grab. This is my first real foray into entrepreneurship and really nervous but excited to kind of share more about it with all of you. Amazing. Thank you so much. So that's actually a perfect time to dive into our topic, right? So today's topic is all about how to start a UX agency. And by the end of this live session, you guys should have some takeaways on how to position yourself as a consultant, not a freelancer, how to communicate the dollar value of your designs and how to brand your products and services that hopefully are more premium like this consultant. So some housekeeping from my side today is broken down into two segments. First, we'll discuss the topics I just mentioned. And then second, we'll address any questions from the audience. Yet again, make this as interactive as possible. Drop any questions you have down below and be sure to type that in. And let's kick it off for the first bucket of topic. How do you position yourself as a consultant and not a freelancer? Really, any takes on this? Any insights? Yeah, I think I have a bunch of thoughts about this. So I think the first one is connected to brand. So you need to have a name for your agency and not just represent yourself. So when you go out and speak to a client, you want to make sure that you're there on behalf of Rex in my position. I'm not there as Ruby. And always trying to encourage that the client understands that they would be contracting with Rex, they're hiring Rex, they're not just hiring me. And I think that's also partly why I chose a name that wasn't mine. So I think that the most kind of obvious name that a lot of folks come up with is just first name, last name, Co. Someone told me I should have called my company prior insights, which maybe would have been quite a cool twist. But I actually really didn't want to have my name on the door, because I think it can be a hindrance to growth in the future. Because you get to a point then when clients are like, Well, where is such and such, you know, the person whose name is on the door coming in to do this engagement? Like if I have contracted Smith company, like where is Smith? I don't know that's getting down the road a little bit, but I've got pretty ambitious kind of growth on my mind. So that was definitely something that I considered was setting it up from day one as an agency that's bigger than me. And so that goes into the branding that I have, the fact that I have myself on LinkedIn, I've got Rex's own profile on LinkedIn, and then I have a very separate kind of company website, my own personal website, and making sure that I'm always representing out like a different brand to just being an individual. Yeah, I think there's a discussion to have around here regarding like a consultant and a freelancer, like what are the definitions? And I'll have a stab at it, and I'll try and make this as simple as I can, I guess. So I think for a freelancer, stereotypically, they're more paid for like execution, right? They do the work. And that's kind of it. Whereas for a consultant, the positioning for a consultant is a little bit different, where not only can they do the execution, but really they're paid for their expertise in that domain. And it just feels like that consultant just adds more value in general than a freelancer. However, that might not be the case. But I think a lot of folks might perceive it like that. And I think, is that what you've found as well? And is that the thinking behind that you're like, okay, well, consultant agency versus freelancer, you wanted to separate that I'm just the executor, and I'm like, this entity? Yeah, I think there's a lot like within here to unpack. And I think like to be really honest, part of it was I did what I knew. Like I'd never freelanced before, but I had worked as a consultant for the vast majority of my career. And so for me, at least, it actually felt really organic to take that step into founding an agency and having that kind of consulting hat and mindset from day one. Whereas if you're someone that has done a lot of freelancing, I can understand that it feels a lot more natural to kind of keep going down that path. The other also like very realistic constraint that I was operating under is, like I said, in my introduction, I'm Australian, I live in Singapore, I'm not a permanent resident or a citizen of Singapore. And that means there are these kind of constraints over how I have to like package up my work. So for example, like when you're under certain like work visas, there can be restrictions on what you can and can't do like outside of your workplace. So for me to essentially like get in at all, I had to go all in, because I had to set up a legal entity, I had to sort out visas and all. So it was like in for a penny in for a pound. And I really I really just kind of had to go for it and go and go all in. Yeah. So I mean, that's amazing. I think that's kind of the best way to learn even though you've done this for most of your life, it's like, okay, now things are getting real. And that's amazing. Yeah, I mean, it's so different when it's you, like particularly I think when you work for some of these really global companies, right, like just take BCG, like that brand has so much cashier. And so when you're a BCG consultant, you know, a lot of time organizations, they're going in for that brand and the expertise of that global organization. And when it's just you, it's a very different feeling. And I think the first time a client like signs on the dotted line with like your company and your brand and you've built all that brand equity, it's a pretty special and awesome feeling. Yeah, sure. So I kind of want to dive into that. And as you said, you know, starting it yourself. And this is one of the questions that you also brought up that people kept on asking you, which is, what are some of your frustrations of getting set up? I think like for me, a lot of the paperwork I found like really challenging, like having to get a constitution for your company and like read it and understand it. And like, what is a Lee in like, I don't know, like me and Chachi PT, we had like a lot to talk about that day. And then there's like all these like little things, like even like building a company page on LinkedIn, if you want to add in your website, if you just write www.rex, it didn't recognize that you had to do HTTPS forward slash and then you're you're out like just these random little weird things that would kind of slow you down. And it could be really frustrating. But you know, I think it's a journey with such highs and lows, like way more, I think, than when you're employed full time with someone else. And that can be fun and difficult and frustrating all at once. Like, what would you say, Chris? I, when I set up an entity, I kind of just like, it's either a website or a page, like on social media. So I rushed to like, get it online before I do all the background work. Because fundamentally, for me, I don't know if it would work or not. And I don't know if someone would pay me for my service or not. And I on a whim, decided to start a design subscription agency. And within the first 10 days of like, launching the website and everything, I got my first client. And that was good. And I was like, okay, validate it. But then when I started doing the work, I hated it. It sucks, man. This is just me. He is not even an agency, right? And I was like, okay, well, clearly, um, either the service offering was wrong, or the way I positioned it was wrong, where it wasn't that much money. And I was just like, overworking, or there were some boundaries I didn't set up at the beginning. So I guess that's the frustration where it's like, you should be offering a service that one, you can confidently deliver and you're really happy to deliver. And also set those boundaries at the beginning. Otherwise, you're just serving the client. But basically, it's not the optimal scenario because like, it's not the optimal scenario, even worse than maybe having a job, right? Yeah. That was, that was really bad for me. So that was a personal story there. Yeah. You definitely hear founders talking about like trading the nine to five for 24 seven. And I think it's really easy to let it become all encompassing partly out of like the passion because this is now the thing you really want to succeed. But I find I still really need to set some boundaries around not overdoing it because then I find I'm like too tired. I'm not executing as well as I should. And it's you get into kind of a vicious cycle like pretty quickly. And so I think I think that's a perennial challenge to be honest, but one that I very much relate to. Yeah. So let's flip that coin and be like, you know, with every sort of bad frustrating experience, there's also delightful ones, right? So what has been some highlights so far on your journey? So I mean, obviously like first sale, like you never forget your first one. So like it's an, a kind of totally surreal feeling that you put something out there into the world and that someone wants to buy it, particularly someone that you've never met. Like that to me was just so exhilarating and exciting. And I made myself like a voice memo. So I wouldn't forget the moment. And that like, that was fantastic. But for me, there have been all of these little moments of, oh my goodness, like this is a real thing that have just like given me life. So I mean, these are such small examples, but I loved choosing a favicon. Is that we call it on the browser? Like, I don't know why that like spoke to me more than designing my whole website. But there was something about that like, feel so legit, you know, when you see like the one that Google has a LinkedIn has a Facebook has and you're like, I get to pick one, like I loved that. And I also loved like choosing what was on people's credit card statements. Like when someone purchases something from you, your payment provider, you've got to decide like, what's it going to come up as like, how's your brand name going to be represented, etc. And again, like this idea that someone would review their credit card statement and see like little me, like that was just thrilling, super delightful. What about you, Chris? I just had a thought where like, could you have said like, payment failed on the credit card statement? Like, yeah, I'm they're looking at like, who's, what happened? Just completed. But anyway, probably shouldn't do that if you're trying to run a legit business. Yeah, first cell definitely is one to remember, I still have my testimonial from my first ever customer on UX Playbook back in maybe 2020, where like, it started as an experiment she found the product, and I managed to reach out and be like, Oh, hey, how did you find it? What did you like about it? So I remember screen-shotting that and that's still in like, the welcome email that I send folks, because I'm like, Oh, no, that's the first customer, like, they've got to hear what this person has to say, and then see how to probably evolve. Other things I, so I love, I both love and hate this, which is like, touching up the website, like, I love doing it because I do it so often. And I'm always like, Oh, we could kind of like, do something different, and then see what happens when you do that. So like, that's good. Revenue milestones are always good. When someone says something like another test, I think I can't get over testimonials when someone really enjoys it. I have a survey for folks. And if they rate like, 10 out of 10 on two questions, I'm just like over the moon. Even if they're like, of course, leaving a Y is better. But yeah, just having that like, Oh, I found it super useful. That just makes you really, really happy. So it's everything, right? Like, it's just everything. Like when you get that positive feedback from someone, it means the world to us. To say with content creation, like when someone sends you a DM and takes the time to say, Hey, like this post really resonated with me. I've been able to use this information in these different ways. Like it's incredibly meaningful. I want to switch gears on to the next topic. I know you spoke about this a lot. You've done talks and consulted around the subject. And for me, this is selfishly me just picking your brain online. So that's good. How do you as a consultant, given your background, communicate the dollar value of your design? Like, can you help me deconstruct that a little bit? Yeah, this is something that I do talk about quite a lot and like write quite a lot about online as well and teach people how to do is think of the value of particularly UX research, but I think UX in general, both I think if you're in house, but also if you're external, the methods are really similar. The first thing I would say is take the step of connecting UX work and UX metrics to business metrics. So it's very common that UX folks will dwell a lot on UX and product metrics. So what I mean by this is things like conversion rate and task completion rate and error rate. Obviously, these are critical and super important metrics and we should have our eye on them. However, we need to take one step further and translate that into a business metric like a dollar value. And really, it's not that difficult to take that extra step. So ideally, you could get if you were in house, for example, and you had made some change to a flow, you could then work with your internal accounting team and understand was there actually an uptick in revenue? What did that really look like off the back of an increase in conversion rate? But even if you don't have the exact figure, if you have a sense of average order value, you can do that maths yourself. So you can just say the increase in task completion rate was 3%. We know that was approximately 30,000 customers. Our average order value is $100. Therefore, that's an increase in $3 million. Amazing, right? And I feel like UX folks get really focused in our org. And I would actually say this is very common in the tech part of a lot of businesses can become kind of insular and forget about the business side of a lot of these organizations. And for so many of them, the business side can be bigger than the tech side, incredibly influential. And I'm a real advocate of building those bridges between both sides of the organization. And I think a lot of my work in my consulting life was with business sides of organization rather than tech. And I think we just shouldn't be kind of scared of taking that step and building that bridge and using those kind of dollar value metrics. Yeah. And I guess how has that helped you joining a product company from a consulting background? Was it just immediately really obvious when you joined a team and you're like, am I the only one that cares about these things? Was that a beneficial thing for your career? How do you think about it? How do you feel joining a grab or something? Yeah. I think whenever you join an organization, there's this process of feeling out where you're different and how valuable that difference is. Because you want to be part of the team, you want to make sure you've got your bases covered in terms of your core competencies. But I think particularly as you get more senior, you really need to lean into what's your point of difference that's going to make you shine. And it's going to make someone want to take a bet on you, want to promote you, want to see you as a leader. And I started to realize that my background is not super typical necessarily of someone in research that most folks haven't had the experiences I've had, haven't been embedded in teams with MBAs in the same way that I had. And I started to kind of think about this, like I gave a talk at a conference at the end of 2022 and it was the first time I'd done a little bit of this kind of maths where I tried to put a dollar value on customer frustration, I guess. Like if you have an interface that's really, really rubbish and an experience that's really rubbish and it takes your customers, let's just say outlandish, an hour every day to do the updating of their inventory or something for like a B2B e-commerce software, we can calculate how much that's actually costing our clients. You say, okay, if their average wage is like $20 per hour and it takes them one hour a day, so it's like five hours a week, five times 20, that's 100 a week. If we have however many customers we can calculate per week, we're essentially costing our customers like $10,000, $100,000, $1 million across our entire customer base in their time. And time is money. And it was kind of the first time I did it. And I dwelled on this thought about it, whatever. And then I had a couple of other moments internally where other ideas kind of came to me. But honestly, I really only sat down and started like putting all of my thoughts out there into the world when I went really hard on LinkedIn in July, August last year. I started to really write a lot on LinkedIn, including like about this methodology and just got a pretty interesting response from it that has inspired me to keep going. Yeah, that's really cool. And this, I'm guessing, would be something that comes up in your pitch as Rex, right? Like, I'm guessing so. This is part of your repertoire, like to be like, this is potentially how much our agency can save you. Or have you been measuring these? Let's figure out like, you know, how much money you can actually get back for your business through our services, right? Yeah, like it definitely can be a conversation like to have with clients. And I think it can manifest in a couple of different ways, right? Like some people just want to learn the methodology. And so some teams are just really keen to be like upskilled in this kind of style of thinking, because it is very unusual, I think to a lot of us in UX. And some of it can feel uncomfortable to be really honest, like it's a different way of thinking about time, emotions sometimes, like, and it's just a different way of accounting that, you know, not everyone necessarily agrees with either, but it's just like a tool that we can have in our toolbox, I think, to start having these conversations. So I think like similarly with clients, like same kind of deal is like, you can go in and start having these conversations with them. I would say like, and there's a comment here, I think, from Shandan, about isn't the metric only gained after deployment? So you can only generate the quote after you finish the project. So how do you actually like backwards engineer and work that out? Like, I think awesome question. The answer is like, you can sometimes still get to a figure. So last year, my husband actually was going to like books and flights online, and he got like stuck in the process of searching for a quote. So with this airline, you had to make an account and a login before you could see the results of your search. And he just sent this to me being like, Oh, this is so annoying. And I was like, this is costing the money. And I sat down, right, and did all of the maths on my best estimate of how much money this UX moment was costing this organization. And like, I know nothing about this company, I use all publicly available data. And it's still possible to come up with an estimate. So like, you can still do it in some instances, whether UX is like particularly egregious, you can you can still kind of form an opinion on it. But I would say like, like super real talk, right? In consulting in the world of consulting, it can be difficult to contract based on outcomes that you do not get control over every step in that value chain. So what I mean by this is if I'm coming in with research, if I'm coming in with UX, I'm then not doing like deployment, I'm not doing the engineering, I'm not doing the coding, I'm not doing the QA, I'm not necessarily even doing the pricing, right? Like pricing strategy is a whole different ball game. So the ability as an outside like external person sometimes to connect down every single part of that value chain, like that can that can be challenging, like not gonna lie. So I think that's also really something to keep in mind when we talk about it. Like what are you, how are you entering into this conversation with a client? Are you saying UX is extremely valuable? Here's how it can be valuable to your organization? Or are you saying you should pay me like this based on these results? And those are actually like very different conversations need to have some mindfulness about how you're how you're conducting that. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And also, yeah, sales, marketing, customer service, like it's it basically influences a lot of the organization, which is outside your control. So if you are doing outcome based, make sure that you're shipping the product to right, or like there's like things that you put in place that is accurate enough so you get rewarded. Yeah, I mean, unless you're sales, I mean, sales is quite natural that it's like, okay, if I make you this amount of money, I'm going to get this, but I haven't really seen that for UX companies. And maybe there should be this, if they can take it end to end, right? Maybe it's a full service agency that also deploys as well. That's super interesting. Okay, I would like for us to move on to our next topic, which is how are you thinking about branding your products and services? Primarily, maybe you can think about or are you positioning it premium or what's your strategy there? Yeah, yeah, I think like a really great question. And we touched on branding like at the at the beginning as well. And to me, like it's connected all the way through to your like your business model and everything, right? Because at the end of the day, like brand is connected to customer experience and customer experience is connected to the business model and the service model and how you're actually delivering that kind of an outcome. So for me, like early days of an agency, right? Like you talk to everybody. And I think like having a niche is really important. And a lot of the advice that you see online is like niche down, niche down, niche down. But taking that advice is like really challenging, to be honest. And I have worked with clients from like multiple different countries, multiple different sizes of organizations and providing lots of different services as well. So it is something that can be kind of difficult. But for me, like definitely last year, like very, very early days when I started, it was a lot based on who I knew and what they knew about me. And then together we would often like reach some kind of agreement about like what that that service would be that I would provide. But a couple of weeks ago, I launched my subscription service for UX research. So this for me was a real like light bulb moment. Like I'd seen people, you know, like you had a design subscription, right? I'd seen a bunch of them around the internet. And I was really kind of interested and taken with this idea. And I started thinking about if we could productize UX research, like is it possible to get to like a unit of research that someone could buy? And I thought the answer to this was probably yes. And once you've got a product, it's actually not much more of a step to take it to a service because you can create a subscription that is delivering that product every month. And so that was a lot of like the genesis around creating a UX research subscription, which I think is maybe the first one in the world. Like someone's probably gonna prove me wrong now, which is like, great, I welcome it. But I did a bunch of research and I couldn't find another one. So that was like, I think a real transformative moment almost for my business is to actually put out a product and put like some pricing around it publicly as well, which agencies often never do. Like you've got to speak to a human before you even get directionally what kind of price point we're talking about. So I think for me that probably opened up more conversations with like startups, early stage scale ups, these kind of organizations. Whereas I think if you really go down that road of always being incredibly relationship focused, then, you know, enterprises maybe maybe kind of more likely. The last comment I want to make on like positioning and kind of client agency fit, if you like, is procurement. Procurement can take months to get through. So if you set your heart on working with enterprise level organizations that have strict procurement processes, you've got to have runway available because it's going to take, it can take a really, really long time to get through procurement. So I think that's also something folks need to really think about. Yeah. And are you following the footsteps of other design agencies where someone can literally come to your website and purchase a package and they're off to the races or are you doing something slightly different? Yeah, I think probably slightly different. So in my research on like design subscriptions, I only really found one where you could literally press like purchase and it took you straight to stripe and then like you were going every other side I looked at the call to action was book a call. And so I've definitely gone down that road because I think as much as the productized version of UX research exists, it is different to productize like UI and graphic design, because UX research has this like input being like recruitment, like you've got to find people to speak to and different companies are going to have different methods of this. And you either are going to have to agree on how you're going to get those folks using like a recruitment agency or that maybe the client already has like a participant pool or something like this. But that's often a really large like input into the cost. And so where I think that with these design subscription services, they can be a little bit more standardization. Like if you want access to 50% of a senior designer, it kind of doesn't matter if you're a startup, you're a scale up, you're Google like all's fair. Whereas if you're like B2B health care decision makers, SaaS versus like mass market B2C FinTech, like that's an incredibly different ballgame. And if you're like a really mature research ops to the nines kind of organization who can help with recruitment or who wants to help with recruitment versus like scrappy startup, again, like a totally different vibe. So I think there are some structural things that make a UX research subscription like kind of different, but the rest of it in terms of like the resources from recs to like services subscription, the skill set of the researchers, et cetera, that actually can be kind of standardized within some parameters. Okay, so given what you just told me, how do you price such a product? Remember, there's this whole array of businesses that could benefit from this from, you know, mum and pop shops to, you know, larger, more mature organizations, incumbents, what have you? Yeah, I mean, I think pricing is like the hardest thing for everybody. Like, everyone I speak to, no matter your business, like from having a bakery all the way through to having like a AI, whatever, whatever, like everyone struggles with pricing it so hard. I think there are like two main ways that someone can think about pricing. So the first one is like, like, it's got a better name than this, but like input based pricing. So the idea of what are the inputs into this, like the raw resources at a margin, and there's your price. So for those of us in a service based business, our res our inputs are usually our own time, maybe some subscription services like your zoom and stuff like that. And for UX research, maybe recruitment costs. So you could add up how many hours you think it would take, add on some of this stuff, put on a margin, and that will be for you to set the margin. And then that's how you would price it. The other option is value based pricing. So value based pricing is saying, I think this product, like, I think someone is willing to pay this much for this product, because they value it at this price point. And that's how much I'm going to sell it for. And generally, I would really encourage people to think about value based pricing rather than this kind of input based pricing, because that's what we should aim to do. Particularly when you're really good at what you do, you do it fast. And so if you're only pricing based on how long it's going to take you to do something, you could often really be selling yourself short. And I think, again, maybe that goes back to that consultant versus freelancer, like I think consultants really don't shy away from doing that value based pricing and having those kind of conversations with clients. But I think freelancers tend a lot more to sell their time and come in and say, like, I'm going to work for you for like three days a week on this project. Not always. I know some freelancers will also kind of do based on a project. But I think that's really important is to kind of think about the value. So for me, like, don't want to give away like my proprietary algorithm about how I do my pricing. But, you know, I definitely think about it in terms of those things. And yeah, I kind of my website have like, this is the one price for everybody. But I wanted to put like an indicative number to start with. So people knew at least like ballpark, it's going to be around here. Some companies will be more, some will be just that. Yeah, exactly. Because you can always sign someone to that deal and have a number of offers offerings around that if they needed it, because a lot of people might need it and don't have these resources or expertise that you have. So they'll just be like, hey, Ruby, can you help me with this? You're like, sure, just slap a number on that. And anyway, that's what I do. So this is my advice. Okay. Yes. There is an interesting question here about curious about how you're pitching this and anything like stuff around business development. So I guess it's kind of pitching business development sales. Any tips that you could share around what you're doing at the moment? Yeah. Yeah. I know a lot of people I think hear sales and either like freak out or get the ick. And I actually kind of love sales. And I think a lot of like UX researchers in particular are really well placed to be excellent at sales. Like if you read a lot of the advice about being a really good salesperson, it could read like how to be a good UX researcher. It's like, listen a lot more than you talk. Let the other person stay what they want. Don't fill in the gaps. Don't go straight to solutions. Spend time talking about the problem. Like it's design, guys. I think it's a really, it's actually kind of exciting. And generally, I find the sales conversation, like once you get face to face with a client, that's kind of when I'm happiest because or potential client, right? Then you get to really talk to them about what they want and what they need. And in the best cases, essentially co-create the offer with them. And I think really giving them space to share all about like what's going on for them and how they see like this fitting into their business and into their world, like can end up working really super well. So I think approach it like a design challenge, like being with this person in this moment and that mindset shift just might help unlock some things for you. Yeah, I really like that. I think when I've tried to do it in the past sales, this is, it has been like, oh, I have a solution for you. And I typically jump there. So I like what you said about like, hey, you're still a designer, approach it like a design problem. And I just kind of soak as much in before you jump the gun. And that co-creation sounds super interesting because bringing them into this design process of like, oh, let's craft a solution together that you're super happy about. And we're super aligned with the outcome and what you want me to help you with sounds like the perfect tactic, I would say. How do you think about like opportunity cost in that situation? Because this stuff takes a long time. And you might jump on like 10 calls before like they even start to be vulnerable and be like, hey, you know, they're just like shopping around or something. How do you think about that? That's such a great question, Chris. And like, I want your answer as well after I give you my answer. Yeah, I would say that's actually like an incredibly difficult thing to manage in this kind of like service-based agency world. And I often think about this like kind of time to contract like how long does it take between meeting someone and getting their kind of signature on the dotted line where you can start getting paid for the work that you're doing? Because yeah, if you front load that conversation too soon, then maybe you can spook people and, and, you know, it doesn't work out. And if you leave it too late, then you realize, hey, I've actually been doing unpaid work for like three weeks. And then this is going nowhere. I think where I really notice this is when clients are like, oh, I know I need something, but I can't quite figure out exactly what I need. And this is also where there's space for business model innovation, right? Because the traditional way of like agencies and the way that, you know, the consulting world often works is there will be like a request for a proposal from a really big organization. They say we need X, Y and Z because we want to, you know, redesign our entire application. And so we're taking like requests for a proposal from a bunch of organizations, or at a smaller scale, you meet with someone and they're like, yeah, I'm confident. Like I need some research because everyone's dropping off our checkout flow. And I really need to understand why. And that's kind of like a dream scenario in some senses where the client has a lot of clarity, but it's just not always the case. So then instead of them buying a project, can they buy access to your time? So can you start selling more of the fractional experience? So can you say, you know what, it sounds like there's a lot of design work that needs to be done inside your organization, considering we're at these really early days, why don't I just come in a couple of days a week, work with the team, start adding this value and can do a lot more of this kind of upskilling and culture building these other ancillary activities as well. And either you can potentially like stay on that model, or after a while you say, you know what, we've scoped out with the team some really solid priorities. It seems like this is the project. Why don't I kind of, you know, close off the fractional arrangement and jump over to a contract that supports what we've got. And like, you can just try it. I know that's my thinking. What have you got, Chris? Not much to be honest, but I will share just off the top of my head, which is how do I think about opportunity cost? I really like what you said. It's I was like, just see where it goes because there's actually like numerous opportunities based on the client's need and you can kind of fit, like you can fit yourself in and think about kind of that what you're selling a bit more creatively. So this tactic that I've done because I'm also thinking about time to contract or time to purchase. So what I've been doing is having this initial conversation. So like, whether it's cold DMs or jump in a call and I actually send the payment link pretty upfront. I've done this. I've done this. Yeah. So I established the rate and I'm like, Hey, just lock it in. And then I follow up quite often. But I also think if you're thinking too much about opportunity costs, you're almost doing yourself a disservice and the client a disservice because you're always kind of rushing them. And it's in the back of your mind like, this guy's not paying. And I don't think that's the right way to approach sales. You have to like actually think about what do they need and genuinely how you can help them. Me sending like a payment link and all that stuff is just like something that I've been testing and has been working. So it's always there. They can access it, but they already know the cost upfront because some people just don't look at your website. They're just like, Oh, what's up? I'll rather talk to you, right? So I've set expectations of this is a Yeah, this is a monetary exchange for value. So it's kind of like I'm not being in the friend zone. Yep. And I'm trying to take that out and opportunity cost wise. I think that there is, I guess it's more of just a feeling of vibes of like how warm is this person on the scale of one to 10? And I'll try to keep it warm. But if it's like any relationship, if someone's backing up and they're kind of ghosting you, you kind of get the picture. So I try not to put too much energy and be over committed, similar to dating where you don't want someone too eager and, you know, proposing to you straight away, you kind of want to be courted a little bit, leave something for curiosity sake. I guess that's my weird analogy of sales. But I think, yeah, I think what you're saying is, is such an important balance to strike between being like tenacious with your follow up versus being really annoying that you're not getting the message that they're not interested. And I would say then this also like intersects really interestingly, I think with your social media strategy, at least for me. And a lot of I think what you read around social media strategy, particularly LinkedIn, which is the only platform that I'm on so far, is about like how to stay tough of mind for employers, you know, people who are out there like trying to find a job and the advice could be like, you know, comment on people's LinkedIn and like write LinkedIn posts and stuff. And I think the same principles can totally apply when you're having an agency and you're trying to win work as well. So one way to make sure that you're tough of mind is to be out there and showing that you are a thought leader and that you are thinking through the types of challenges that you know that your clients have, you want to work on with your clients. And I think social media is like such a great way to do that. And I know there's a question here, like, how did you get your first client? And like, I got my first client through LinkedIn, like they engage with my content, I send them a message and said, like, I do this in house. And they're like, yeah, great. I'm super interested. And I was like, really? And then like, that was it from there. And then honestly, a lot of my other clients have been people that I've known for some time. And they didn't necessarily know that I was doing this. Or, you know, they're not as active on LinkedIn as me. And you know, a couple of them were kind of interacting with my content. I just sent a DM being like, Hey, how are you going? Like hope everything's well with you. Thanks so much for interacting with or thanks so much for supporting my post. We should catch up sometime. And like valid to business. So I think it's not just, you know, putting it out there, just like above the line marketing, I guess, but also then following up with these kind of like one on one messages. I know we've transitioned from like, the warmly that you're in the conversation with to the total kind of fresh lead. But I think social media and content creation is a really great way to do that. Yeah, I definitely agree. I think it's, it's kind of every business nowadays, I believe should be a concept business, right? I have their media arm because how are you supposed to amplify what you do if nobody knows. And, you know, these free platforms are, you know, everybody's using them. So, and yeah, it's so important to have a content engine for I think any business, whether like, you don't have to create content just believe it could be for an existing client, like, okay, this is how we onboard people, right? Or this is the process. And I'll just record a video. Here you go. I don't need to do it again. Right? It's kind of making everything simpler and creating content and actually just releasing it to the public could help also a bunch of people, right? Like you don't need to sell your knowledge, you just sell the execution on your side. So I think that's kind of a good lead generation tactic. I want to go to some more audience questions. Have you found one that's interesting? Okay, here we go. What about this one? Okay. So someone Rebecca says that it's really innovative that you prioritize user research. So how does the element of subscription work for your subscription service? Is it just, I guess, like a routine pricing? What does that mean subscription? Can folks pause, stop, like, all this stuff? Yeah, great question, Rebecca. Thanks so much for asking. So the way that this iteration of the subscription service works is that folks, you know, sign on for the subscription and every month they get a study. That's kind of like the thing that you're getting every month. And over the course of a month up until the study, your organization kind of adds all the questions that are coming to their mind when it comes to research to a trolley board or an ocean dock or however it is, your organization would prefer to work. Things like, you know, we're having problems with this flow, we don't understand it, we've got this great new idea for a product, we need to get some quick feedback, whatever it is. Once a month, we sit down together and we scope out, okay, what can we actually feasibly answer with just one study that we're doing in a month? Because people might want the moon and that's just not feasible kind of on the plan that they're on. We could obviously talk about other ways of finding out what they need to find out, but generally that's how it works. So we sit down and say, okay, I think we can actually answer like three out of these five questions and we'll kick the other ones over to the following month. And then I go and do the research and we will have agreed on like the target market and the number of users right up the front with the subscription so I could get all of them booked in while we're doing the scoping, write the discussion guide, go out and do all of the sessions and come back with a report. Clients very welcome to sit in on the sessions if they would like, of course. Yeah, and then come back with a report, which I know there's a question here also about like what the deliverable is, the subscription service, the deliverable would be in the form of like a written report in the format that the organization wants the most. And I think it's so important to be flexible, right? Some people would be very happy with a one page bullet points extremely like to the point situation. Others are going to want more like a 15 page slide deck. I'm very flexible with what works best for your organization, but that's essentially the deliverable and then a couple of weeks later would be sitting down again and going through that scoping process all over. So that's how it kind of works as a subscription. Okay. And what, so a lot of these subscription agencies do like pause forever or cancel straight away? Like how do you think about the logistics or the technical things about subscription? Like is it, can they do that? Like is that good for the business? Well, I think you've asked two very different questions there. Is it good for the business, right? And this is where, you know, you start to put on your business hat, right? You've got your like UX hat and that's like desirability, right? Like what does my customer want? But then I need to think about like the viability and the feasibility and what does that mean from a business model and a revenue perspective. So I think with this subscription, there has to be, you know, like pausing, right, like could be possible. It just has to be kind of at that point in the month that it makes sense in terms of recruitment and stuff like that. But yeah, like if clients need to pause for some reason, like, of course, we can definitely have that kind of conversation. And right now it's, it's month to month. I might be introducing more like annual plans and stuff like down the road. But we're, we're weeks in. So we are at the early days, you guys are getting like behind the scenes live as it's happening. But, but yeah, like I think all of those kind of options are on the table. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I, a client asked like the first time I got it was like two days before the subscription ended. And they're like, can we pause? And I was like, well, the delivery is like 48 hours. So like, basically you run out of the that month pretty much, right? Or it was less than two days, like one and a half days. So like logistically, it was really hard to kind of say, yeah, it's fine because there's just like one day left. But that doesn't mean anything. So that's why I knew it was a bad client. And I was like, not doing this again. Oh, yeah, people love talking about like firing their clients. Like this is, yeah, this is something that people need to do, right? Like if it's not, if it's not a good fit, if the relationship isn't working out, I think, yeah, that's, that's something people have to be open to. And it's like really interesting to hear you have that experience. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I've left way better jobs than agency of one. So I'm okay with firing anybody that I don't like working with. I'm just like, no, I'm sorry, but of course, mindful of the delivery, right? Like, I've committed, I'm still going to do the work, right? Not going to have a crazy angry breakup. Well, let's let's fingers cross that hasn't happened yet. Okay, let me go through this. I, there was one really interesting one. How do you communicate to someone that needs this kind of service but has no knowledge? So it could be design, it could be research, could be a bunch of things. Do you think using the term designer approach would be useful? Yeah, I think it's like connecting back to what I was talking about earlier in terms of, you know, thinking about like that sales process in terms of design. And I think for me, what's important is that you don't have to tell people that that's what you're doing, right? Like you don't have to walk into it and be like, we're going to try this design process. It comes from design thinking and you can just do it, right? Like, it's just in the way that you communicate with them, the way you listen to them, the kind of questions that you ask. Like when I, you know, I said earlier, like I ended up doing kind of co-creation with a potential client, like, we didn't talk about it like that. And we were just sitting down with a pencil and paper and like sketching things out. And I kind of realized after the fact like, wow, like that's what we were really doing together. But I think using that language is not always kind of helpful with clients. I would also say like, Ahmed, it's important, I think when you are in a really resource constrained environment, as in like, there's one of you, is to think about the clients that are most likely to convert. So I think you can spend a lot of time going after clients that need a lot more work before you get to the point where it would be possible to make a sale. And I think in that case, like, you know, maybe take one meeting and then, you know, check in every now and again. But if you can find clients that are like more qualified leads that are more qualified, meaning they're much more likely to convert, they understand the need for the product that you're selling on the service that you're selling, you might be more likely to kind of have success earlier. Yeah, that makes sense. And this goes back to one of the points where content is so important for a business, because you want to be building awareness and education around it. So they turn into a qualified lead, because if they're at the beginning, they're still thinking like, why do I need you? What, like, what, how does it help me? Then maybe the content that you create will address that, right? Like fundamentally, basically creating demand versus, you know, right at the beginning of the funnel. So that's really interesting. And analogy I would like to use for sort of how Ruby explained it, which is when I fix my mom's iPad or TV, I don't tell her what exactly I'm doing. She doesn't care. I'm just like, or if I'm on the phone with her and telling her how to fix it, I can't use words that like, hey, can you just like close that interface? She'll be like, what are you talking about? Where's the button? Like, so they don't care, right? They just want it to get done. And if you're the person that could get it done, then that's kind of how you should approach it versus just, you know, like spitting out jargon and, you know, concepts that they are just not familiar to it. So and by the way, that happens all the time, mom and iPad and TV, up of mind. Anyway, maybe when you look at the next question, I can just answer like Jeff's question super quick, like what invoice payment system do you use? Honestly, like across lots of different things. So I use Stripe sometimes I've also done, you know, like, B2C stuff as well. And my website's built on Wix and Wix does a lot of that for you in the kind of back end as well. It can do invoicing and everything through through there. But I also definitely use like good old Microsoft Word for some of my invoices, particularly like when you're really in agency side, consulting side, like you often don't send that many and they're often for a larger value as well. And something else that's a reality of my business is it's very international. And so I need to have a lot of like payment options and Stripe like frustratingly like doesn't always have the space for me to add in all the different payment methods and like international details and stuff that I need. And so I ended up just doing it in Word, which I know people are going to be like tearing their hair. Like, oh my gosh, it's so inefficient. But this is business, baby. We just like hack some things together sometimes. Exactly. Just go with what you know, what works and don't think about anything else. Like it's also not about the tools because so many folks don't get started and struggle to get stuck is like, oh, what accounting software are you using? What project management? It's like, who cares? Just write on a piece of paper, right? Just do the math and you know, do a handshake and walk away. So yeah, that's that's great. Then you're using Word. I'm using Google slides and I'm just like exporting as a PDF. That's that's the way like I spend so much my career working in PowerPoint. Like the things I can do in PowerPoint would like blow most people's minds. Like my first ever prototype, I made it in PowerPoint. Like you can do anything in there. Yeah, my first website, I actually designed in keynote because I was like Photoshop sucks. So yeah, just use what works and don't fuss about the tools. Hey, we are at the sort of tail end of this. Ruby, thank you so much for coming on. I saw another comment saying, you're amazing and I concur. Do you have anything that you would like to share with the audience? Where can they find you? I know rex.ink is the website, but anything you want to plug? Yeah, for sure. So yeah, check out rex. Oh, this is another one of my learnings. I'm actually, oh my God, can I just share this? I'm going to have to change my domain name because I made a very bad decision early on. So when I first started my business, it was, you know, like you said, Chris, like you're figuring it out, you don't know if it's going to be a thing. And so you just you just kind of like try some things. And I didn't realize the cost of my domain renewal. So the first year was like really good value, but the second year is going to be really expensive. And I need to like find the bullet and get out of there because I don't want to be paying like $3,000 for a domain name. So like rex is the brand, like keep keep looking for rex, but the actual domain name might change. You'll find it all on LinkedIn. You can find me at rubypryor.com, my personal website. And of course, I'm everywhere on LinkedIn. I love to hear from the folks like on the LinkedIn live. I have been toying with the idea of getting on a second social media platform for quite a while, like, I don't know, YouTube shorts or TikTok or Instagram. And probably what I'd want to do there is like share a lot more of this, like the actual nitty-gritty of building a business. But I need a bit of a push. So like let me know if that's something that you all would be interested in. Yeah. Otherwise just like find me on LinkedIn, send me a message and it would be great to hear from all of you. Yeah. I guess I would like to hear from the folks down below one. I mean, it's a no brainer. You're interested, but which platform, right? Where is the best like, how do you consume this type of content? What do you like? Do you like YouTube, do you like TikTok, do you like Instagram? Me personally, YouTube? That's kind of the biggest sort of platform. So selfishly, that's my vote. And I think you'll be amazing on YouTube as well. I find video is like such a mental block compared to LinkedIn, because like LinkedIn, I can write in my pajamas and whatever. Whereas like video, you know, like I wash my hair for this, like, it's like a big deal. I feel like, and I don't know, like, I feel like that the setup is more intense, like there's a higher barrier to entry. But then I also think a lot of that is constructed in my own head. And you can just like hold your phone out there and record a video. And sometimes that's all it takes. So I think I've got to figure it out for myself. Yeah, I think with the whole like beastification of video, where they're supposed to look a certain way, crazy animation, I think there's a renaissance of like, roar or tight videos, where it's just your like, basically back when the internet was there. And I can't remember this guy on YouTube that's like grown really, really quickly. But basically, he just holds his phone and he works out every day. It's like a million, two million followers. And it's like, really kind of authentically him. And there's no crazy editing at all. And I think that stuff is coming back. I think people crave for it. Well, that's also what got TikTok really popular as well, like very kind of raw videos of folks. And now it's the over beastification thing. So I think you should do it. And I will be supporting you. I'll, I'll smash some of those buns. Well, thank you, Chris. I really appreciate it. And thank you to the folks here. And also like really interesting that LinkedIn is still a preference. I mean, that will also be an option to just like, say, like talk more of that content. But on LinkedIn itself, which like, maybe I could do too. Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you again. So I will just wrap up. And let's thank you Ruby again. Yeah. So for folks listening, we are about to end this, but I want to remind you of the next live. We have Emily Anderson, a senior product designer. We haven't figured out what topic we're going to speak about. But she does speak a lot about reducing risk in business through design and UX. So that will be on February 21st. And I will see you then again. Thank you, Ruby. You guys go follow her. She's somewhere in the links and just connects with her. And hopefully we can see her on YouTube soon. And that's it from me. Thank you again, guys. And I will see you on February the 21st. All right. Peace out.