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Design Pickle’s Russ Perry Is The Sober Entrepreneur

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Wes Schaeffer
November 29, 2017

Read your prospects to sell how they want to buy

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  • Founder and CEO of Design Pickle

    • Had a creative and branding agency…but was bad at branding themselves

    • He had tough companies he helped brand

    • “You can’t rename a baby”

    • He hated boring names and names he can’t share

    • He hated acronyms

  • “Year of soul searching”

    • Closed his business unceremoniously

    • Had two partners in Buenos Aires

    • Was doing consulting

    • Spent time with two business coaches

    • Two key questions

      • “What do you want?

      • “What kind of business will get you there?”

    • He liked working with companies that needed simple, straightforward design

    • He had an outsourced designer and a part-time project manager

    • January 2015, he launched

      • Everyone is full-time with him regardless of where they are located

      • Guest blogging

      • Blasted his list via Gmail

      • Got MailChimp

      • Hustled

      • Landed about 20 clients in his first month and has been profitable

  • The journey

    • Year one:

      • Defining the target audience and being confident in that

      • Tried personas and target audiences, but then they’d get a big influx of customers who weren’t in that bucket

      • Shifted from an industry to a behavior of the customer

        • They have hired a designer before

        • They see the value

    • Year two: 

      • Growth in personnel

      • How do we organize/structure the team?

      • How do add management layers?

    • Year three:

      • Honing in on the marketing strategy

      • Live events

      • Online ads

      • Partnerships

      • Affiliates

  • 125 full time staff, $500k in recurring monthly revenue

  • His background prepared him for the launch of his company

    • He saw the habits of his clients

    • He knew their typical needs

    • What’s disruptive?

    • What can I profit from?

    • He was too low in the beginning

  • Rigorous hiring process

    • About four weeks

    • It boils down to communication

  • They screen their customers, too

    • Weed out those who don’t follow instructions

    • Weed out the impatient

  • Releasing his first book, “The Sober Entrepreneur”

    • Passion project

    • Struggled with alcohol and addiction. Beat it in 2013.

    • Gotten clarity across the board

    • Was even addicted to a bad business

    • Part personal memoir and part practical

  • Launching a same-day service tier

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