Traits of successful ecommerce founders as design clients

Week 5 from Blaze,

This week I’m closing some projects that will position Shovel very strongly in the ecomm design space. I’m very thankful that most of my projects are going smoothly, but that only comes from the pain of projects going terribly wrong

Pricing, getting attention, and qualifying new clients are some topics in this

Common traits of clients that are winning

We work with brands making $1 million to $15 million a year. That’s a very specific range, because founders that get here have these commonalities:

• Knowing exactly what their time is worth so they can justify the investment of another person's time
• Trusting the professionals they hire because they’ve spent time improving the skill of talent seeking
• Constant testing in relevant marketing channels like shortform, influencer, or meta then not worrying about being “cringe” or “looking cheap” because they’ve found out how to look visually appealing here (from testing)
• Being extremely data-driven… Higher numbers guide your decisions

Here are some recent clients below that definitely fit into these traits ↓

Imagine the opposite of these traits now

• They have no idea what their time is worth. So giving money to another person is unjustified and stressful
• Hiring someone they don’t trust. They might be getting fed decisions that would positively improve the business, but they don’t listen to them
• They’re either killing it or struggling with Instagram organic posts when the effort might be lower and the money is higher on Meta ads or TikTok shop
• Making key decisions based on feel with no proof of return

Even from my contractor POV, I’ve found those things to be a heavy influence on our creative work together

Attention is the highest leverage

Actually doing the production work is one thing, but getting the work is an entirely different process

Something I’ve found as a creator is that the personality of a “Leech” shows up more. These are people who want your leads/referrals and have no proof of work & also do the work poorly

A person isn’t a Leech when they’re the right person for the job based on proven experience and outcomes they’ve credited towards. You can make a lot of money giving these people more referrals

Sponsorships for content work the same way. For reference, you can make about $1 per 25-30 views on posts, and that’s probably the low end. Above 100k followers your baseline views are higher, which helps, but if you’re really tapped into the algorithm, you can easily make $5k - $10k per post

Being a creator is entirely a job by itself. From my POV, running a studio gives me the trust and insights to make the creator gig work. I make my money from the top 1% of my audience, not paid sponsors at the moment

Pricing QnA

My DMs are always open btw

Content is getting harder, so now’s the time to start

Shovel Clones have arrived, some taking my content bar-for-bar, but some with just a strong visual inspiration. I can’t hate on either. I just want an opinion on it

Most of these accounts are really engaged fans, so I don’t mean to put them on blast, even though I kind of am. There’s something to learn from this

How I hit 100k followers was NOT by:

• Showing the same websites as another creator
• Hiding the credits of the designers and developers
• Stealing scripts & hooks word-for-word
• Having no proven experience with clients or professional work
• Referencing creators from my exact niche

Web design already felt like a red ocean market. My friend David and I were making the web design algorithm feel fresh

This is the rat race of being a creator. If the algorithm starts seeing more of the same, your results go down. I’ve positioned my content to be longer and bring much more authority. Experience and research will take you so much farther

1,000 YouTube subs

My latest video has had good reception. Thank you all for the support.

There’s a million how-to-style videos online for the deep design work.

This channel will be for higher-level type of content. It’s about to hit 1,000 subs, I think that’s a cool thing

Cool people I met through content this week

Luke Long - Has a really cool Wyoming-based brand. 100 years of history is the hardest reputation to build. They literally have a roster of cowboys

Piet Aukeman - He’s been in the design game for a long time. Really great to learn from his experience in NYC. I’ve realized it’s the best place to be if you’re a designer. He’s just another person that’s convincing me to relocate soon

Ali Mohammad - Smart, young, ambitious front-end developer. He approached me not begging for work but asking for portfolio advice with a strategy. Turns out I liked his portfolio and we might work together soon

Take care

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

Talk next week! - Blaze