He Turned His 6 Figure Freelance Design Business Into A 7 Figure Agency | With Michael Janda

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is The 6 Figure Creative Podcast, Episode 288

Welcome to The 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place.

Welcome back to another episode of The 6 Figure Creative Podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood, and today we have a wonderful guest that goes by the name of Michael Janda. Actually, if you get to know him, he prefers to go by the name Mike. And the reason Mike is such a wonderful guest is because, you know, I might call myself the 6 Figure Creative, and we talk about running a 6 Figure freelance business for the most part, or creative business for the most part. Or I might talk about 6 Figure Creative, Mike is a 7 Figure Creative. He started off as a freelancer, and within like a year or so, he was making 6 figures, but he actually quickly scaled that into a 7 Figure design agency.

He actually had something that very few design agencies ever have as a successful exit, where he actually sold his agency to someone else in 2015 And since then, he has just been out there putting out books. He's got a couple books. One is called Burn Your Portfolio, which I suggest people go check out. He's got another one called The Psychology of Graphic Design Pricing. But we had Mike come on the podcast, not to tell his story, which is wonderful, we get into a bit of that, but actually to just come teach us. I don't very often get to speak to 7 Figure agency owners. Usually if I'm talking to somebody who's earned 7 figures, it's either through selling courses or through selling software or something that's a little bit more scalable, but I really get to speak to someone who's did the freelance thing and scaled it up to a 7 figure income through having an agency. So there's a lot that we get to talk about in this episode, but the things that I want to point out and the things I want you to state and pay attention to, are when we get into something called The Rule of 7 This was his key to success. In my opinion, there's a bunch of things he did and we talk about some of those things, but this was one of those key things I think were a huge takeaway from me. It's this thing called The Rule of 7, and I'll give you a quick spoiler. It's basically the seven touch points you need to have with somebody before they're ready to buy from you. And we talk about what some of those touch points are. We talked about how he implemented those in his business. He talked about how people have implemented those to him as he's hired people.

And we get into also how he had differentiated himself from all the other people in that industry. So whether you're making four figures, three figures, five figures, six figures, whatever range you're at as a creative, this episode's got a little bit of something for you in it. And I can't wait for you to dive into this and learn from Michael. So without any further delay, here is my conversation with Mike Janda.

Mike, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, man.

Michael Janda (2:24)

Hey, thank you, I'm excited to be here. I've listened to some of your episodes and your past guests and stuff, and you're doing a great thing for the creative community, so I appreciate being part of it.

Brian Hood (2:35)

I'm glad to have you here. You actually have been recommended by a couple of our past guests here, and that's one of my favorite types of people to get on the show is when a past guest that I love talking to recommends another guest. That's who we prioritize above everyone else because I can just say, if I already like talking to this person, I know I like talking to Mike, and I might actually accidentally call you Mike, but we talked off air before this, that you prefer to go by Mike, but you go by Michael on the internet, which is a fun thing. And your name on the screen is Michael. So if I go between Michael and Mike.

Michael Janda (3:00)

It's all good, man. Just don't call me late for dinner and I'll be fine. That sounds like an Alabama joke. Are you in Alabama?

Brian Hood (3:07)

I am from Alabama, yeah. And I can turn the accent on if you want. It's up to you.