How Shovel Packages Branding, Web Design and Development

Blaze here for Week 9,

Somehow my business has been working. Life is really good right now and things are comfortable, which makes me uncomfortable. Last week I talked about ideal life, this week I’m going to emphasize how I’m defining what Shovel offers and who we service.

Positioning

With a small team (less than 10 people), you’re in a better position to be niched into a specific industry, tech stack, design style, etc. It's easier to solve a problem for a specific set of people compared to solving everything for everyone.

When you have that figured out, you’ll generally be referenced when that specific problem arises

For example, Shovel makes design systems for elevated e-commerce brands.

Let's break it down:

• Design systems = Branding & UX/UI at scale
• Elevated brands = Cultural and taste-inspired customer bases
• E-commerce = Shopify stores

I had this defined when I started Shovel. The people that fit this criteria hang out on Instagram, so that’s where I primarily show up.

You can hit a very wide audience with your content, but with high-ticket services ($10,000+) you want to target the top 5% of individuals that watch.

While it’s not the most profitable moonshot position to be in. This can take me to 7 figures in revenue per year.

Now, how do we create an offer when this is thought out?

3 core services

I’ve only recently defined & expanded these until this year. The first year of Shovel was just finding any way to make money with Figma. The second year of Shovel is building an offer you can’t refuse.

Alex Hormozi already has a blueprint on what makes a good offer. Even if you hate the bro-hustle mentality (a lot of times I do), the book is easy to read with so much social proofing.

What I like to simplify for each of my services is a simple output. What the client is paying for:

• Branding: Brand guidelines starting at a 4-week sprint. You get up to 4 explored concepts with a wordmark logo, an icon logo, typography, and color palettes. When a concept is selected, we blow those out to multiple applications in packaging, clothing, retail, e-commerce photography, the website, and more.
• Web design: High-fidelity Figma screens & a design system starting at a 6-week sprint. This is broken up into 3 iterative phases with their own outputs. Phase 1 defines a sitemap & low-fidelity wireframe. Phase 2 is iterative over high-fidelity screen design. Phase 3 maps out those final screens to a design system that can be shared internally or externally.
• Web development: A documented and modular website starting at 6 weeks. It's crucial that we build this in a component-based structure to allow for more efficient maintenance and expansion over time. While we offer ongoing services to support design & dev, it’s important that there are written SOPs on how to handle the new build.
• Strategy & Consulting: TBD! This is where any design and development studio will eventually aspire to be. When you control the strategy of a brand, you control where the money is being allocated. For now, I think an output is a great go-to-market & investor deck a client can take to internal & external teams.

We have results that have added 5-figures to a client’s monthly revenue. Being able to build case studies in these services is what ultimately ends up making them worthwhile.

If you want to work with Shovel you can contact me through here

This is exactly how I present new proposals. At the moment I’m failing to communicate these on the Shovel website. I’ve been able to get a ton of input from follow-up calls & emails to feed into this. If I can answer every question a new lead has before they even meet me. I have a better chance at the sale.

How I’m structuring and scaling my content

I’ve been in weekly calls with Ryan To and Vivek Rama. Both are creators focusing on their own agencies. This week we talked a lot about our content ops. This is my recap:

A higher level of production generally performs better on Instagram and poorly on TikTok.

Ryan and I both took the path of amazing video editing & motion in our videos to compensate for the inexperience you have in your 20s. While it worked for us, there are some drawbacks:

• You set the baseline for audience expectations. If you go below that, there's a risk to content engagement
• Higher production means more money & time spent per video

I had to break down my videos into 4 phases that allowed me to delegate pieces of the workflow to other talented contractors:

1. Topic: This comes from me currently. This is where you could hire a content strategist (who gets paid the most). A lot of this insight comes from studying the algorithm on burner IG and TikTok accounts.
2. Scripting: Again it’s me, and again you can pay a strategist to give you outlines. For short form, the script is crucial for the audience's understanding of the topic you’re giving value on. The script and topic are the most important components of content.
3. Storyboarding: This is a graphic design role. My intern does this now. You need to define a handoff process from the script to start here. This role will literally design screen-by-screen how the video looks. You only need this workflow if your videos are highly edited with motion or assets.
4. Editing: Straight-forward, I’ve worked with my editor for a year now. It took some time, but we’re at a point where it’s rare for me to have any revisions, and if I do, it's because of a faulty storyboard.

If you want my full workflow. I’m starting to do consulting on how this works in detail and will share more over time. For now you can email me if this interests you.

The Madani Interview

I have an intern, and he’s cracked. Here are some insights for those in the industry.

What’s one tool, doc, or process here that made no sense until someone explained the “why” behind it?

SOPs. I'd never heard the term before Shovel and it stands for standard operating procedures. Whenever I hit a question I knew someone after me would also hit, I'd ask Blaze, and he'd record a Loom walking through it. How to compress images properly before uploading to Shopify. That kind of thing. Each one goes into a database for future people. It made no sense until I understood it wasn't really for me, it was for whoever comes next.

What would you tell someone starting an internship at a studio like ours next month?

Be selective about whose advice you take. Blaze told me early on: listen to people who've directly done what you want to do. In my experience, most advice isn't personal, it's often someone projecting a positive or negative experience they had onto you. You might succeed exactly where they didn't.

And share your outside interests. What are you trying to bring into reality? The studio has more inner workings than your task list shows you. Say what you want to develop and it usually will be facilitated, thats the environment here at least.

What skill mattered more than you expected coming in — and what mattered less?

More than expected would be taste. My previous work under Keep was what I was directly hired for, and it turned out to be genuinely in line with the Shovel brand. That got my ideas, and feedback got taken seriously immediately. I didn't expect a small portfolio to carry that much weight.

Less than expected: formal communication. I default to ultra-formal by accident. A friend told me, "I love you bro" and I replied with "likewise." At Shovel I learned formality isn't the best way to communicate, especially when you actually care about the work. To me, at least, comfort reads as you being invested in the work.

What’s a piece of feedback you got that changed how you approach a task now?

Blaze calls it "content brain." It comes from an extended time making videos. A lot of his feedback on my design work made me stop and think that he's seeing this as content first, design second. Now I catch myself making observations through that same lens before he reviews it. It's a whole way of looking at work in context.

There's a diagram in his Gravel report that says if you have an active project, 50% of your time goes to content. No active project, 100% goes to content. It's the kind of ruthless work practice I love. There's no sugar coating, which is also something I feel to be necessary in the design space we work within.

If you were running the studio, what’s the first thing you’d fix based on what you’ve seen?

Knowing when something is finished. Blaze makes calls fast, and I had to consciously learn how to work around that decisiveness. Working directly with a founder means the feedback loops can be literal hours, and you absorb that speed whether or not you meant to. Actually, it's a pace I've come to love. I'm quite anxious about how I operate sometimes, and this kills that, but also I wonder if I'm leaving myself room to play.

People I met through content this week

Vivek Rama - The IG carousel and LinkedIn master. He cofounded Superline Network. Again, I’m in weekly calls with him and Ryan To which was unexpected, but very valuable.

Take care

Feel free to reply to this email with any recommendations you may find valuable here.

Talk next week! - Blaze