Hello, we trust you are thriving in your business. Today's guest is a bit of a celebrity in the arts world in Bermuda, although I suspect he doesn't consider himself as such. He’s a humble and incredibly talented, mighty creative businessman and poet. We're talking with none other than Stephan Johnstone, Founder and Creative Director of SJD World.
Laura is so ready to geek out with Stephan about all things design, and if you're into art, into graphic design, into marketing genius, into gorgeous and creative ideas, or if you're into learning how a young man grew his business over 20 years to become a fully fledged design agency in a small and mighty place such as Bermuda, this is your episode.
Welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs, the podcast where we speak with business owners and entrepreneurs from all around the world, from all walks of life, in the hopes that something you hear will leave your business a little richer. We're your co-hosts, Vicki and Laura from Two Four One Branding, supporting new entrepreneurs as they launch their business and offering you the tools you need to succeed. It's exactly why we invite experienced successful entrepreneurs like Stephan to this show, to share his wisdom with you on this podcast.
Now we ask just one thing from you. If you will. We'd love you to share your love of this podcast by subscribing on whichever platform you're listening or watching on now, and you'll help other startups and business owners to discover this great resource for themselves. This podcast is not like chocolate, there is always enough of Resilient Entrepreneurs to go around. So let's share it far and wide. By the way at the time of recording, we are edging on 10,000 downloads so thank you for getting us there.
Now back to Stephan. Stephan, it's an absolute pleasure to share our platform with you. Are you ready to geek out with us about all things entrepreneurial?
Yes, I'm excited.
Thanks, Steph. We're so excited to have you here. I always like to start these conversations understanding a bit about our childhood, our journey, where you started. So, you’re a young man who grew up in Bermuda, that's pretty interesting. We have a lot of international listeners out there. So I think they'd love to hear what growing up in Bermuda was like and what your childhood experiences were like. Were you an entrepreneurial type kid? What were your parents like? Give us a little bit of that backstory so we understand you a bit better.
Yeah, I feel like I was a little bit of an entrepreneur growing up. It was kind of a mix of I always loved to be creative, I struggled with, I remember I had an art class once and my art teacher told me I had great ideas but the execution wasn't always that great. So when growing up, I loved to be creative in different ways. I did sell art from time to time but all of this has kind of evolved over the years. It wasn't really a goal to be an entrepreneur, it's just kind of, hey, this is what's happening let's roll with it. So growing up in Bermuda, it's island life, it's a small community, and you kind of know, or everyone kind of looks familiar. I didn't know in the beginning what I was doing. Originally, I wanted to be a boat pilot. So I was very interested in learning about waters, and I wanted to study everything nautical in school. So I was gearing up to go to school to study to get into that field. And before then I had sailed on the tall ships because the tall ships had come to Bermuda, and I sailed from Boston to Halifax. I flew out to Boston and sailed on a Polish ship. And when I got to Halifax I purchased a scanner. And I bought the scanner back to Bermuda and it wasn't working so I left it in the corner for a couple months. And I was so angry that I spent money on this scanner, I took it apart and I fixed it, and I started scanning images and manipulating them, and I've been doing that ever since. The boat idea just went straight out the window, and I started to play around with it a little bit more. And then over time, I was speaking to different people and one of those people was Laura. And I was like, what is this? What am I doing? I'm trying to figure out what these next things are. I really love manipulating things on the computer. I didn't know what it was called. Everyone was giving me different advice and telling me what it was. And at this point, I still didn't know what I wanted to do, I was caught between leaving this boat pilot idea to go to computers and images.
So I went away to Acadia University for one year where I was doing general studies. Financially it was a bad move but I grew as a person so that was awesome. And when I was there, that's when I actually started conversations with Laura. I'm like, yo, what am I, I don't know what this is called. Like, what am I doing exactly? And she gave me advice on what this is called and some schools and a few other people were telling me what it was. So after Acadia, I moved back to Bermuda, I worked here for a year. I was working at Washington Mall Magazines, which was a magazine and bookstore here. And what I would do is, I was ordering Photoshop books in because back then you have books with the CDs in it. I would order them in and whoever purchased it, I would slip in my portfolio in their bags. And that's kind of how I met a lot of the industry here on the island. So people were like, oh, cool Well, this is what you do. This is where I went to school. And it was really a kind of an undercover hustle where I had a whole, I created a whole section in the bookstore full of Photoshop, Illustrator, design books, and whoever purchased it, they got my portfolio. So from there, I went to George Brown College School of Design in Toronto, and that was actually the first time that school made complete sense to me. Like everything just stuck. It was so weird. I'd go to school, go to class, and everything made sense, I didn't even have to study afterwards. Everything just started to click. So I was in design school for three years, and then I worked in Toronto around the city for a year and then decided to come back to Bermuda in 2010 to start the business full time.
The company actually started online as an online magazine where I was featuring people, artists, poets, writers, and other designers. I started that in 2004 and was also promoting my work. So I was promoting my stuff and my portfolio, but also featuring people. So people were coming to check their friends out and also they were getting used to my brand and what I was doing. And it wasn't until I had one of my professors, we had been nominated for a Webby Award, which was a big online website award in the student category, and I was telling one of my professors this, and he was like, you know what, this can be your full-time job. And I was like, what do you mean? And that was kind of a light bulb moment where I realised that this is something that I can kind of do and not just a hobby and from there was a slow shift from just being this thing that I did on the internet called SJD World, to being a business. And it was all very organic. It wasn't like after he told me I just said, oh, I'm going to start a business. It was my whole mindset slowly shifted to turn it into a business. And yeah, from there, I worked in the city for a design studio and print shop for three years. And then like I was mentioning, I freelanced around the city for a year and then came back here in 2010 to do it full time. And then yeah, from then it's been nonstop.
I love your story. I love your journey. I love that I was a part of it too. And yeah, I met Stephan when, yeah, I thought you were in high school, but I guess you had graduated high school. You already started in university.
I don't think you realised how cutting edge on the beginning part of the digital design world you were. When I started design, I was 16, and I was working in an in-house agency for a retail store and we were literally cutting and pasting ads to go in the Royal Gazette, the Royal Gazette being Bermuda's newspaper. And it seems like such a lifetime ago, it's so insane to know it used to take two weeks to design an ad where now it takes two hours. The difference is drastic. But while I was in university, I started learning Photoshop and then it was Quark Express. We didn't really have InDesign, right? It was before then. And it was such basic stuff I was learning, but I was still doing a lot of hands-on work. By the time you were shifting into university, it had gone so far into the digital world, and you were able to learn that digital design where so many other people were still trying to catch up and figure it out. Because now we were past university age and now we were trying to learn it. So you had such a unique opportunity to get in there before others and that helped, I think, your rise so quickly because when you did come back to Bermuda, you had the knowledge, some experience by being outside, which I think is a good lesson for young entrepreneurs and people who wanna do something and you come from a small town, just get out, go see the bigger world, get experience in a big agency or any business that you're interested in, get that experience early on and then you can create your own thing. So I love that that's all your journey and it's just really helped me understand right now just how cutting edge you were. And when you came back to Bermuda tell us what it was like to shift into launching your business here. Did you find it difficult? Was it easy? Had you already built up enough names by sharing all those portfolios? I love that story by the way. So tell us what launching was like. We love the early stages.
Yeah. So I came back. I remember I had a broken laptop and I had one bag of clothes and I landed in my basement, my family's basement. And from there, Bermuda is super expensive so it was just trying to save up enough money to get a new computer - working out the basement, my personal business was all merged into one, trying to have business meetings in my basement bedroom and this is all before Zoom and online meetings were really a thing.
So it was, I think one of the biggest challenges was getting money to get it going and also convincing people that I'm really doing this. You know what I mean? So as things started to grow and I saved money, I rented one of the apartments in my granny's house next door. So she had a vacant apartment. I turned it into an office and I started from there. And then I started to slowly legitimise the company in different ways, bringing on different team members. And then after two or three years in that apartment, then we moved into this location here, which is on Front Street in Bermuda. And we've been here for about 10 years. So the team has grown. There's right now, including myself, there's six of us. There's myself, Talisa McClashen, Anna Dill. We've got a new intern, a new admin web support person that we’re slowly bringing in, her name's Raven Walker and we have two web developers in the south of India and they've been with me for about 10, 11 years. So I think from the basement, it was just very, very hard to get the money to legitimise. In Bermuda, it's very hard to when you're starting out to be legitimate and run a company is hard because all the fees that come with that is just not something you can jump into. So I was a pirate for a long time and I'm proud of my pirate status but as of today we're 100 percent legit. But we had to avoid things to get it going because there's no other way. You had to do what you had to do. And my theory was always I would do things until they told me to stop and I had to pay this and do this.
Yeah, doing what it takes, right? Doing what it takes. And I think that's the entrepreneurial way a lot of us often will at the beginning anyway, bumble along, and just work it out as we go. And it's the dream and it's the why that really keeps us going and calls us in to keep doing what we love. And so when you say it wasn't necessarily legitimate, are you saying that you didn't set it up as a corporate entity and maybe didn't pay some of the things that we're meant to pay? I'm not gonna say too much because I'm not sure if there's a statute of limitations after 20 years. I don't want anyone coming to chase you down.
It’s one of those things where you go and then you hit a limit and they're like, okay, you need to do this. And then you got to do what you got to do and you reach a new level. And you're like, okay, this is a new air up here. Now what do I got to do next? And you just keep on going until someone says, hey, hold on, hold on, you got to do this. So it was just kind of one of those things, which I think is normal for everyone here because there's a lot of grey areas when you're starting a business and you're trying to, you're just trying, you're trying to get everything you need and there's only so much that you can do. I didn't incorporate SJD World until two years ago. So before it was just a sole proprietorship, and we incorporated it because we started to move in a lot of different spaces and offer a lot of different types of services. One of them specifically our subscription model that we've been working on where clients can pay for the whole year in advance for unlimited design support, which is a high value service which we've been slowly developing. So those kinds of offerings because it costs more than the normal things then decided to incorporate and obviously our team got bigger and our clients got bigger so we had to protect ourselves in that way. But yeah, it's been a journey. It's been like, ok, figured this out.
As you do, and I wanted to ask you, how did you learn about business? Because back then, now we can avail ourselves in Bermuda of a number of accelerators for entrepreneurs. And of course, BEDC, the Bermuda Economic Development Corporation is an opportunity for people to always get the answers that they need if they're starting out in business. How did you learn about business?
I'm really just been making it up as I go along. I didn't study any business in any school. In 2017, I did take a Streetwise MBA course at the College, which was in partnership with the BEDC, I think at the time.
Yeah, I recall that one. Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, so that was very interesting for me because by 2017, I was rolling. So taking that course, it was kind of cool because it put names to things that I was doing. So things that I kind of figured out organically, I was like, oh, that's what that's called. And then also talking to other entrepreneurs who were in the course who had problems that I've already solved, or they'd solved problems that I was having. So for me, it was kind of like you're driving and just cleaning the windshield a little bit, like, okay, cool, I know what this is called now, or this is how somebody else has solved the problem. But, as far as business, I've just made a lot of mistakes and learned from everything. I like to say there's no losses, there's only lessons. I know a lot of people say that, but it's facts. If you feel like things are falling apart, you just got to study it, figure out what happened, what went wrong, and keep it moving. Yeah, it's really just been me making it up as I go along. And that's from the beginning, even going back to like, going until someone stops me, it's just figuring it out.
Yeah, I kind of like that. What about failure? Because you're just mentioning about making mistakes and learning the lessons. So what is your mindset around failure? And has there ever been a moment where that was it for you and you're, maybe I need to go hit a nine to five and forget this business thing?
I don't, there was never really a moment where I was like, I'll see, I'll hit a nine to five. But there was brief moments where I'll be, hmm, I'm not going to do that again. You know what I mean? A lot of times I feel like I've come too far to turn back now. I'm just, oh man, I've come way too far to turn around.
I like that. I like that. Yeah.
Like it's, there's no way. If I turn around now, I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life. So I'll have that thought and I'm like, all right, cool let's keep going. But yeah, at this point, I'm in way too deep. And I don't think I could work for anyone at this point. But there hasn't been like a hard stop where I'm like, oh, I just feel like giving up. It's been a new challenge, because we're into so many different spaces, like we may fail in something specific, but then also there's been a lot of success in something else that we're doing. So it's always been kind of finding that balance.
How important, Stephan, is partnerships and your team that you've built, to your success?
Yeah, team is super important. I feel like that's one of the things that I'm most proud of because it's only so much that one person can do in a day. So having a great team around you only pushes the company forward and supports you so I don't go too crazy. So the team is super important. That's one of the most things that I'm proud of, the people that I have around me. And the majority of people around me, they've been around me for years. So we don't have a big turnover rate. So I've been very lucky with the people that I've been able to hire. So that's been super important.
I don't think it's anything to do with luck, I think it's a lot to do with culture. And culture is led from the top. So it's the culture that you create for your business. So talk to us about that. What's important to you? What do you value most in your business and in life in general?
Balance is super important. I feel like everyone that's on the team is opposite of me in some way. So they bring something to the table because I know my strengths and my weaknesses. So I think that's super important to understand where you are weak and recognise that and then bring on people that complement your weaknesses. Because if everyone on the team thinks the same, has the same experiences, has the same strengths, then there's going to be areas where there's going to be blind spots. So everyone on the team has different perspectives. And I like the fact that when we leave the office or we put down SJD World for the day, everyone goes off, has different experiences, live different lives and then we come back to the table and we all see things differently and can bring different perspectives. So, that's super important to me. And also that everyone's job is flexible. I'm not super strict. Like even the designers that are on the team, I encourage them to do freelance, as long as it's not too much in the office or on my system. But I feel like that's important that as designers, we go out there and make mistakes and then you learn from your personal clients and then you bring it back to the company because that’s how I built myself. I designed a lot as an intern, I interned for a lot of agencies as well. And while I was interning, I was doing freelance work as well. So I think that was super important, because I made a lot of mistakes along the way in my freelance work. So when I came back to the agency, it was, oh, I went through this before. I think that is super important and it's weird because I know working with a lot of agencies they’re non-compete, but backsell your time. Go ahead and make all the mistakes you can and then come back here and you don't have to make those mistakes with me.
I 100% support that. I think there's a lot of people out there, I'm sure, listening here that maybe have a nine to five and they're just in the stage of having a hustle and wanting to turn it into a full-time career because that's how a lot of us start out as entrepreneurs. Maybe we have a full-time job. My story is I got made redundant while working and I had freelance, I was freelancing for a few other clients and I was like, well, maybe if I can figure out how to turn this freelancing thing into more of a full-time gig. And absolutely, that's exactly how my journey started into entrepreneurship. So there's nothing wrong with that. I totally agree. Most people have to hide it. Like most people have to hide their side hustle, right? But I love your mindset. I think that's really key. And giving your employees the permission to explore and figure out different things. And often like you, I bet they're doing other things besides just graphic design. So let's talk about your side hustles that you have beyond running a very successful agency. But you're also a poet, you're an actor. Let's talk a little bit about your poetry because I think you were designing CD covers for your poetry when I first met you too. So you were doing that way, way back then. So tell us a little about poetry and what that means to you.
Yeah, so I've released three poetry albums. My last one was in 2011. I haven't done a lot since then because I've been building the company. But it's another passion of mine and I love putting together the albums because it uses both sides of my brain. So I was able to write it and then put together all the album artwork. So back then we were putting out CDs, you do the whole album package and all the promotional material, and I was writing it. The only thing that I wasn't doing was actually the recording aspect. I knew nothing about that so my good friend, James Brooks, I brought him on and we partnered with putting together the albums. So, the albums to me, in reference to the company, I see the company as like a plant is the albums and the poetry is like flower and a fruit, where it’s not something that always comes out, but when it does, it's great and it uses both sides of my mind. So I really get off on doing the poetry, writing, recording and the design element of it all. So over the past 13 years, I haven't really been doing as much as I have in the past but I’m trying to do different things with my catalogue. So last year specifically, we put out a short film called Bermudian Poet with another friend of mine named Marquel Rodriguez. And we're about to release on May 24th, which is a big Bermudian holiday here, a short film called Thoughts Become Things, which is about a young Gombey. Gombey is a native cultural figure here in Bermuda who goes to sleep one night and meets his ancestors, which we're super excited about. And I don't like to speak a lot about projects before they come out, but this one, there's something very special about it. We were able to involve six Gombey troops at the time that was all the troops on the island. Now I believe there's two more that have come out since we finished shooting. So it's very, very special and I'm excited for that one to be released. So the poetry is something that's kind of evolving, and I bring it out from time to time on different things. It's kind of like when I'm in the moment or when things happen or it's a very spiritual craft. So it's not something that I do for commercial use. It's not like people hire me to do it. That's never really been the vibe for the poetry. It's been kind of therapeutic in a way and the graphic design is kind of the commercial thing that I do. And my friend James had to actually convince me to sell the albums, I wanted to just give them away for free. He was like, nah, we gotta sell it. I was like, eh, I don't know, man. But yeah, I hope to revisit the album thing again one day. But for now, it's just been kind of the short films and finding out other ways that I can bring the poetry to life.
Yeah, it sounds like the poetry and the films are such an expression of yourself and really sharing who you are behind the business face. I've done business with you for many years Stephan, and I always find that I don't get some fake business front, I always feel like we're connecting and I think that's so special to do business with someone where you feel an authentic connection. Yet perhaps the poetry and the film takes it to another level, and you're sharing your deepest creative juices and so it's kind of hard to put a price to that and then look to sell it. And I think that's what artists often go through.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And what I like about it also is, as designers and working with clients, you're restricted a lot of times. I mean, even you'll do something and you think it's the greatest thing in the world, and then clients are like, nah, that's mug. So we also, mug meaning not great!
Translation!
So those kinds of projects, those experimental projects that the company does, it helps us to continue to be creative. We also have an online shop where we sell stuff that we create. Way down the line, I hope the company gets in a space where we are servicing, we're not servicing as many clients as we are now, but we're just creating cool things and being able to sell them online. Right now the services obviously is the backbone of the company, but I'm an artist so eventually I'd like to get to a space where we're just creating what we want to create and we're selling and we're able to make a living doing it that way. And that could be a range of things from WordPress plugins to art, to digital art, to t-shirts, to books, to doing short films and all those kinds of things is what I would love SJD World to move more in the direction of, than servicing a million people. I am an entrepreneur but I also have a million bosses. Every client is like an individual boss. And there's a lot of times where clients want to create things that are not that great and no matter how much you try to convince them otherwise, it's what they want. So it is what it is.
Let's talk into this. This is a shared pain. Come on, let's go there. It's not a b*tch session. It's really just understanding the limits of when you work for a client, how far do we push? This is going to be useful for any business, any business person listening. How far do you push towards your expertise and how far do you say you're the client, you can have what you want?
Yeah, we'll tell you something two or three times and then after that, we tap out. It's all right, well, it is what it is. Here's the invoice.
Talk about the invoice, I think that brings up a good point because people will say all the time, I've heard this over and over and I believe this to be true too, that the more you charge a client, the better the yes, the quicker the yes. There's a difference between a low budget client and a high budget client. Let's talk about that a little bit. In your experience, when you're doing the bigger projects with the bigger clients that have the higher budgets, are they hiring your expertise primarily? Do you know what I mean? I think they put you up as the expert because your price is up there too. So for those starting out or beginning stages and can't figure out pricing, right? That is the biggest stress. And it's hard when you begin because you don't know where you are and where you land in the rest of the ecosphere. But talk about that, the difference between a low budget and high budget project and how are they different?
Yeah, so usually the high budget projects, majority of them, clients take our advice. And a lot of times, it is easier to work with. Some of the low budget clients, even the ones that we do favours for, they become very difficult. As we started to increase the pricing, the headaches slowed down a little bit because we started to only attract people that were serious. Some people will come in, we'll tell the pricing, they're like, no, it's okay, we'll find somebody else. I'm like, all right, great, let's keep it moving because it's not worth it if we do it for any cheaper. So I think it is definitely a balance, but then you do get those high price clients that are a little bit difficult, especially if it's boards or a group of people that everyone's got an input on. And then you get the high price clients that are difficult with paying sometimes. They may pay the first couple of invoices but then after a while you're like, come on man, you got a whole department to deal with this. So it's an interesting balance, and then there are some clients that just have a whole bunch of money and then just pay the whole full invoice and then disappear for a year. And then they'll come back and they'll be like, okay, I'm ready.
So yeah, it's been interesting.
I think that's part of the ride, right? That's part of the entrepreneurial ride is figuring out clients and working with clients. It's a fun challenge, it's a fun challenge.
Definitely understanding where you stand, your pricing, not negotiating too, selling yourself cheap and learning how to say no, because some projects are just not worth it.
I really like that natural filter that you were talking about. The pricing becomes the natural filter because you're only attracting the people who are serious about getting this done to a quality standard that you will deliver. If they just want to push something out and they don't, aren't so mindful of the quality then they can get that pretty much anywhere and they will. So I love that you know where you're at. Of course, I would certainly hope you did after this many years. But for people who are starting in business, believe in yourself, trust that the quality of your work is what you say it is. Trust that you're adding value to your client's life and to their business, whatever business it is that you're in, and charge accordingly.
Yeah. So like going for us on average, we're working on between 90 to 150 projects at once. So one client could be four or five projects. So it would be a logo, business card, brochure. And then we've built hundreds and hundreds of websites, but we offer website maintenance plans and we monitor like 25 on a monthly basis, which is a lot for a small team. So we're doing that, and we print locally and overseas. So we've got stuff printed in China and the States and Canada. So we're also dealing with shipping logistics, bringing things in. Then we've got like 10 clients that have disappeared or gone ghost on us. So we've got projects in all different phases and stages. So when there is a client that comes in and they're like, oh, I'm not sure about the pricing, I’m OK cool. We're constantly got things that we’re turning over and trying to avoid headaches as much as possible. So it's definitely being able to set that standard on the type of client we want. I refer people a lot, so maybe it's a web project that I feel is too big for us, and I'm like, okay, talk to this company because this is not something that we can take on. They're like, you sure, you're really referring us? Yeah, I'm really referring you to somebody else. Because this is not something that we're willing to take on. Because a lot of times it may clog up our whole operation, and I have to dedicate way too many resources to it which would slow us up with everything else that we're working on.
That has to be such an important lesson. I really hope people heard that loud and clear. If you didn't, rewind. Listen again because that is key and it can take years to get to that stage of really knowing what works for your business and what doesn't. How long did it take you to come to that place of really understanding what is your sweet spot?
I think, It's hard to say. Everything has been kind of an organic process. I feel like as the team has started to grow and as the accounting has started to become more sophisticated, and I'm able to really measure what I'm paying out, how much these things are gonna cost, then I get a better idea after I've been able to study, get better analytics. You know what, this is not worth it. It's costing this much, we're spending this much time, and it's given us this many headaches so, yeah, let's not do that again. So really trying to narrow and getting those analytics and really studying what we're doing, how we're doing it, how much it's costing has been super important to making those decisions on what projects are most valuable and what makes the most sense because obviously we do favours for people from time to time. That's been a big part of really extending the network and even doing trades, service trades, like you know, you do this, we'll do this for you, if you do this for us type of thing. But being able to know how many of those you're taking on at once and based on what the workload is like in the studio is also very, very important to have that balance, back to balance again. Everything is about balance.
Can you share with us a couple of trade secrets? What are you using as far as systems are concerned? How do you keep your operations flowing?
It's evolved a lot over the years. Today, for project management, we use a software called Teamwork, and that's been amazing. So as the team evolved and we got bigger, and some of the team members are remote, obviously, and we started to venture into a whole lot of different things, we started using a combination of excel, a software called Harvest for time tracking and Basecamp. And those were the three go-tos, but then Basecamp started to become too slow. Harvest was awesome and I highly recommend any freelancer to use Harvest for time tracking, but then obviously excel was too slow. So I was looking for a system that can do everything in one and I spent a good part of a year searching and experimenting with different platforms. But teamwork.com, they do everything, this is like a commercial for them because it's the best thing ever. It's got calendar integration, task assignment, project assignment, time tracking, we do everything through there. So as far as project management, we use teamwork.com, QuickBooks for accounting, One Password for password keeping and Slack, Slack for internal communication between the teams and using Slack channels for the specific teams and I guess you can say departments. So those are our main go-tos right now as far as project management. And then obviously on the design side, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and I dare say (Canva) yes.
No, you're using Canva. Tell me are you using Canva?
I hate that we are talking about this, but yes, there is a little bit of it here.
I love it. No judgement in this room!
I'm very, very resistant to it.
I was so resistant too Steph. I was like, hell no. I'm a pure designer, I am Adobe, and I'm still Adobe. I use all the Adobe systems. Absolutely for big jobs, big projects. When it comes to digital work, oh, Canva’s King. Canva’s, pretty amazing.
I think for us, I think what has really caused us to move a little bit in that direction is because a lot of people come to us with stuff that they've done in Canva. And they're like, oh, I did this logo in Canva, but it won't print properly. So we would have to take it apart and fix it. Or with a lot of our web clients, if they're not on our maintenance plans, they want to be able to manage their website themselves, and they're doing all their social themselves. So Canva has been an alternative where we would have to create templates for them in it. And then they were able to run it themselves. But overall, I think Canva's doing the most. They're doing a lot. Everything from AI, they're doing web hosting, and it's a lot. It's a lot happening there.
Yes, Stephan, move over because we do intend to interview the CEO, Founder of Canva. We do intend that. So if you're listening…
She's on our wish list, she’s on our wish list.
Yeah, so yeah, we use it. I'm still a little resistant and it seems like, let's do it. I'm like, yeah, Ok. But I'm a graphic designer, so it is what it is. The industry is evolving. I was actually speaking at MSA High School here last Thursday, I think it was and going back to the conversation of Laura, like when you were coming into graphic design and it was the computer age and everyone was getting into computers and now I'm speaking to them and they're coming into graphic design and it's the AI age where it may have taken me 30 minutes to an hour to cut somebody out of a photo and now it's like, you could just double click on your phone. Or Photoshop has that already built in, and where it's all instant, that is a huge shift when it comes on this side, because everything can be done so quickly now. Where it is almost like the shift into the computer age, where now AI is just as huge of a shift coming into the industry.
How do you see AI changing your workplace and the type of work that you do?
It's made a lot of things quicker. And when it comes to doing proposals and writing things, we use it a lot for fixing grammar and spelling, because that's not really a strong point. But it's changing everything. And I think it's just a matter of staying up to it, on top of it and how we can best use it, because you can't stop it. The cat's out of the bag. You just got to figure out how to implement it in all the systems. So that's kind of where we're at, just figuring out how we can use it better and going from there and taking advantage of it as best as we can. I feel like you're always going to need a graphic designer in some way, but how we design is going to be different. We may end up just being people that know how to write great prompts.
Masters of the tool, you have to be masters of the tool. And I think that's the difference and why I think a lot of people in our industry have adopted AI quite quickly without the fear and hesitation, is because we're used to that constant changing technology. When you're in this field, every program we've talked about today has changed so much in the years that we've been using it, certainly over the last 20 years, but even more so in the last just few.
And I was going to ask you about AI too and how you felt about it. And it didn't surprise me that was your response because I think, you're right, the cat's out of the bag. It is what it is. These kids coming out of school now, they're coming into a totally different world. And if they're going into a creative field, it's going to be throughout their field. So how do you adopt it? How do you use it? How do you become great at it? And how do you become the master of the tool? Because then there's gonna be people using other tools and in other businesses, and they're not gonna be masters of that tool. So you're gonna get hired because you're great at it. No matter if it takes you 2 hours or 20 minutes, that's not gonna be the issue. But we're probably gonna produce a substantial amount of quantity of work that we weren't able to, in the future. And that's gonna be interesting. But one thing I do believe, I believe this strongly, is that people are always gonna want entertainment. Always, and visual arts and entertainment, acting, music, poetry, people are always going to want that because why? Because we need to escape from the drudgery of life and the nine to five and the worksheets and whatever you might be doing. The creative arts is what brings us that escape, whether you just love to go to the movies or you like to read or so that won't change, the desire for that won't change, but certainly how we produce it is I think is really going to change.
Yeah, and I think there's always going to be people who are not creative and just don't have the time and just don't even want to, even if AI is involved and they just have to type a prompt, it's people that are just not going to want to do it. We are here to service those people, so using whatever tools we have to use. And if it is easier for us and I can still charge you the hour, then sure. It is what it is.
But speaking about that, charging the hour, right? Well, maybe that's what really needs to change in our industry. Charging by the hour, when you can produce 20 projects in an hour versus one or half one. The management of that amount of clients and that amount of work is what's gonna take up more time than the creation of that work, right? So, how do we charge for things? How do we change that mindset from dollar per hour to project-based pricing. What's your thoughts on that?
Yeah. So for us, everything is based on time. So when the designers come in, you have your list of projects, and for each project has a stopwatch. So it's start and stop, start and stop. And then at the end of the month, they run a report and pay you based on the time that you have clocked. So it is based per hour, but it is also per project. So if you've only clocked 15 minutes or 20 minutes, then that's what the clients gonna get charged on. So it's more incremental now, where it’s not just an hour. I mean, we can charge for 35 minutes. Obviously, if it's close to an hour, we'll round it up close to 40. The increments will be 50 in 30, 45 in an hour. And we're able to supply reports if a client wants it. Where back in the day before the online timekeeping, you'll be like, okay, this project is I'm going to write it in a project folder and then submit it to the account manager, where everything is literally tracked down to the minute on this site.
So guys, what do you think about charging for value, not time at all? What the project is actually worth? Not worth based on how long it took you, but the value it brings to your client.
I think when it comes down to the pricing on our end, there is a bit of that as well. So when at the end of the month for our bigger clients, we'll run a report and see how much time was clocked by the team based on the team member's experience and level I’ll look at that, and then maybe one of the designers clocked 50 hours on a project and that 50 hours is based on the rate that I'm paying them. And the studio rate is obviously a lot higher. So you value that out. And I may not charge the client 50 hours, may charge them 40 hours, but the company's still making money based on whatever that is. So it comes down to the pricing for me, like based on how much time was clocked, the complexity of the project, who was working on it. So it is kind of a deep calculation on this side. And where value is added, where it is based per hour, but also how complex was this? How long it took us to learn how to do this task? And then what is fair also.
All right. So my takeaway from this whole conversation is that there is no cookie cutter pricing. We just need to work it out for ourselves. What feels right for us as business owners and what feels right for our clients. And again, who we're niching to, who our target market is, that will change depending on who our client is. So, yeah, thanks for being so transparent with all of this. My goodness. And also thank you for your generosity in sharing your operating systems that you use. Like you said, it took you a year or more to really work out what was going to work for you and that's just golden advice for anyone who's listening. If they want to try that out, then go for it.
For me, the sword doesn't make the samurai.
It's a good saying, I like that. It's true.
So you can use all our tools, but I feel like our team is special and we create cool things. So I like to keep a very transparent atmosphere over here. And it took us a while to find certain tools, but hey, they're great. It is what it is.
Thank you.
What do you love most about being an entrepreneur?
My freedom. If I feel the need to travel, I can, I can do what I want to do when I want to do it. If I need to stay home and work from home, I don't really do that much because I've designed this studio, it's completely comfortable and has everything I need for what I want to do. And I've made a very clear separation between work and home. But if I wanted to, then I could. If I want to leave at any particular time, I could. Just the freedom. I think that's the best part. Obviously it has its headaches and its stresses, but I think the freedom and every day is on purpose. For me it's kind of a thing to live by. It's laying in a brick every day for the future. I'm going to do this because in the future, this is going to help me here and planting seeds in different ways and different things. And then it eventually all comes together.
Speaking of the future, any big audacious goals for your future?
Not too big. I mean, it's interesting because I get asked that question a lot. It’s what's the end goal. And it's mostly been about the journey here where it's like, Oh, I want to do this or let's try to do this or let's do a short film or let's bring on another person or this feels right. That's kind of moving this way. I think eventually, like I was saying before, I would like to get a place where we’re just creating and selling and we're making money off of things that we create and not servicing so many people. So I think that will be the eventual shift slowly. But when, I don't know, hopefully before I'm 65. So when I'm 65, I'm just chilling and just making money off of things that we create. But until then, it's just enjoying the ride and continuing to make the company as stable as possible.
Yeah, I love that. And parents out there I wanna let you know that there are ways for your creative children to make a very good living. So, perhaps encourage the art classes or the music classes or whatever it is, because there is a great life out here. Those of us who have turned this into a career can attest. And Stephan and I have a very similar career. Stephan went into more of an agency model, whereas I've stayed more on the freelance before building this business with Vicki that I love so much. And we have this amazing opportunity to talk to incredible people like Stephan, who's 20 years in the business. I mean, wow. And being creative is challenging. It's very vulnerable, cause everything you create is a little bit of you, especially in your, your more external pursuits rather than, graphic design can be fairly safe cause you're working with a client and they're going to give you some parameters and you're going to work within them. You don't push for boundaries too hard in that field, but certainly creating poetry and speaking that. And I know you've spoken live and you're also an actor and you've done performances and all of that's quite vulnerable because you're putting yourself out there. So all of that takes a good bit of resilience.
And as we are, Resilient Entrepreneurs podcast, we always like to ask you what your opinion of resilience is, and how does one become resilient? How do you get to where you are?
I feel like it's just learning to get back up because you get knocked down but learning from those lessons, learning from those failures, there's no failures there's only lessons and once you get knocked down just getting back up again just keep on getting back up that's the best way to describe it because you're going to lose a lot of money you're going to make a lot of mistakes but it's all part of the process. I’ve lost a lot of money. It is what it is. This is the journey that you want and it's something to expect. You just got to realise that and just get your mind in a place where like, this is going to happen, you're going to fail, so get used to it and keep on, not everyone's going to be happy with some of the moves and decisions and things that you make, but hey, this is just the journey that you want. Just got to get back up and keep going.
Is there anyone that helped you get up on that journey, a mentor or partner, anybody that helped you?
That's another question I get asked too. And I've always wanted to find one mentor, but I haven't. It's always, I feel like there's always been different people that've dropped nuggets of gold on me, like you, Laura, in the past, different people along the way, will say, hey, try this or do this, or maybe you should try this. But it's never really been one person that I've come across that has been on the exact same journey, doing the exact same things. And I've always been like, oh man, I wish I had a mentor to teach me this. And then I figured it out for myself. Then I'm like, huh, okay, well, let's keep going. And then I get to another level when I'm like, ah, man, I wish I had someone to show me this and then I figure it out for myself. So I've always kind of wanted someone to show up, but they just never, never have. So just keep on moving.
Well, not yet. You're still young, Stephan. And you've got a lot to give the next generation. I know you've taken on interns recently, which is new for you. And I'm sure they've learned tremendous amount just being in your space, within your team. I know you do have an amazing team. Shout out to Anna, a friend of mine as well. We love you, Anna. And certainly we appreciate you and everybody who listens today or watches this on YouTube is going to get something from it because you've shared so many great lessons. The figuring it out, the bootstrapping it, the not being afraid to take the risk, the building a team and the importance of building a great team, the right team and setting up a great culture for them to, not just do great work, but want to be there, want to be working with you and building with you, right? I think that's so key. So, so many great life lessons in this podcast today and can't thank you enough for your time. I know you're super busy and we really appreciate it and everything you do to keep giving back and sharing your great creative talents with the world. And we're looking forward to May 24th. It'll be out on YouTube, I believe you said. So we may have to share that. We will share that with our listeners when it comes out and people can watch and check it out. I'm really excited for that. Excited for you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. And we also have this Friday, we're having a gallery show at Bermuda Society of Arts featuring some of the projects from over the past 20 years. The show will be out from March 1st to March 23rd. So this week has been, we're gearing up for that. And then once that show goes up, then the focus is gonna go back around to the short film. And then after that, I'm gonna be chilling out for the rest of 2024, because I went really hard in 2023. So I'm gonna need to take a little breather, so we're excited about those two big projects that are coming on.
Amazing, amazing.
What does chilling out look like for you, Stephan?
Last year we did a lot of external projects, so stuff outside of the services. So, chilling out would be focus mostly on internal processes with the company, not doing so many films and external projects, and not being so much out there, and spending more time with family, travelling a little bit in that kind of way. 2023 goal was to do the most, and we definitely did the most. So I prefer to operate in waves, where things get crazy, but then it quiets down a little bit. We have to catch ourselves, regroup, reorganise, and then turn things up again. I'm not a big fan of when things are steady crazy busy constantly for years, years on hand because you get burnt out, especially as artists and designers, that's not healthy. But 2023 the experiment was to try and test the limits on everything. So that's what we did.
I love it. I love it. And I think that's another good lesson right there. The waves, I do think entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster and sometimes you have to grind hard and sometimes you have to rest and recuperate and keep building because yeah, being creative is exhausting because you're constantly in your brain. That's the thing about being an entrepreneur, you never really turn off. You don't, it's really hard to clock out at five o'clock and just forget about work until 9 a.m. Because even if you can leave your studio, which I love that you have a studio and you have that escape, even when you leave it, it doesn't leave you necessarily.
It's cool, but the separation is definitely important too. Definitely for me, it was important. It’s been about 10 years, I've removed my cell phone from everything. So if you have my cell phone out there, it's very sacred. You don’t reach me by cellphone about work. As soon as I leave this room, if you can't reach me you gotta put it in email. You can call the office line and leave a voice message if you want to, but soon as I leave this space, I try my best to disconnect. I don't even have the computing power at home on purpose. So, yeah. Thanks for having me guys.
Thank you.
It's been an amazing conversation with you, Steph. Thank you so much for your generosity and your insights. And we look forward to keeping tabs on all these great things you have coming out and we will see you really soon. So thanks for being on Resilient Entrepreneurs. We appreciate you.
Thank you.
