Let's Think About It Podcast
Welcome to the Let's Think About It Podcast with Morice (Coach Mo) Mabry! Are you ready to break free from fear, doubt, and uncertainty to unlock your true potential? Join Coach Mo on a transformative journey as we tackle the barriers hindering your personal growth. In each episode, we engage in insightful conversations with certified coaches, career professionals, and thriving entrepreneurs. Together, we uncover practical strategies to overcome self-imposed limitations and cultivate resilience. Gain clarity, boost confidence, and thrive in the face of uncertainty. Coach Mo, an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and a published author, serves as your guide on this empowering quest for self-discovery and growth. Through mindfulness and mindset mastery, we empower you to navigate the inner critic and life's challenges to seize opportunities for success. Tune in to the Let's Think About It Podcast to equip yourself with the tools and inspiration needed to embrace uncertainty, conquer fear, tame the inner critic, and chart a course towards personal fulfillment. Start your journey to greatness today!
Let's Think About It Podcast
The Art of Blending Creativity with Business Ventures featuring Carina Gardner
Discover the journey from academic design to entrepreneurial success with the extraordinary Carina Gardner, who joins us from the wintry landscapes of Utah to share her story of resilience and strategic breakthroughs. ❄️🚀 Venturing beyond her PhD in design, Carina has built a thriving business and mentorship program that marries creative prowess with business acumen. 💼🎨 Together, we traverse her path from overcoming the initial hurdles of her design business to building the Design Suite program—a beacon for designers seeking to accelerate their learning curve and achieve mastery in both the creative and business aspects of their craft. 🌟💡
As creatives, managing our time and fostering a supportive community can often be the difference between stagnation and success. 🕒🤝 This episode peels back the curtain on the transformative power of joining forces with like-minded individuals, like mastermind groups, which can catapult business growth. 💥 I recount my own revelations of how tapping into collective wisdom has shaped my personal and professional evolution. Carina and I also touch on the unexpected career shifts that can fan the flames of passion for design, underscoring that proficiency in this art is an acquired skill, honed through dedication and practice. 🔥🎨
Wrapping up our revealing conversation, we celebrate the triumphs of designers who've harnessed our strategies to scale their businesses and achieve financial freedom. 🏆💰 These inspiring tales, ranging from a designer who tripled her sales to another funding her children's education through her freelance work, highlight the profound impact of education and community on success. 📚🌟 We also provide a glimpse into our onboarding process for new students, exemplifying our commitment to cultivating a community of lifelong learners. 🎓🌱 Carina's presence has been invaluable, and I thank her—and you, our listeners—for joining us in this continuous journey toward self-improvement. 🙏🎧
Welcome to the let's Think About it Podcast, where we embark on a journey of thoughtfulness and personal growth. I'm your host, coach Moe, and I'm here to guide you through thought-promoking discussions that will inspire you to unlock your full potential. In each episode, we'll explore a wide range of topics, from self-discovery and mindfulness to goal-setting and achieving success. Together, we'll challenge conventional thinking and dive deep into the realms of possibility. Whether you're looking to find clarity in your personal or professional life, or seeking strategies to overcome obstacles, this podcast is your go-to source for insightful conversations and practical advice. So find a comfortable spot, chill and let's embark on this journey of self-improvement together. Remember, the power of transformation lies within you, and together we'll uncover the tools and insights you need to make it happen. So let's dive in. Welcome to another episode of the let's Think About it podcast. I'm your host, coach Moe, and I'm here today with the one and only Karina Gardner. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm so good and I'm so glad to be here with you.
Speaker 1:Awesome One of the things that I do with my guests when they first come on. You got to share where you call in and from. Tell us what part of the region of the country you are in.
Speaker 2:I'm in Utah. So I'm in actually, a little subdivision not far off from Salt Lake City, Utah, so I'm in the northern part. We are still in the snow at the time of recording this, like it's snowy outside. It got sunny last week for one hot second, but I'm not going to lie. It's been a gloomy winter here in Utah, so not lots of snow, but just gloomy.
Speaker 1:Does that mean you do a lot of skiing?
Speaker 2:I personally don't ski, but my family skis. I'm actually originally from Tennessee so I didn't grow up skiing, so I ended up here. My husband skis. It's crazy here in Utah because the kids start skiing in third grade and they let them out on Wednesdays or Fridays depending on what's going on. They get on a bus and they go up and ski together. Wow.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool. I'm here in Sacramento, california, and we have the Sierra. That's where we get our snow. You want to drive about an hour or an hour and a half and that's where we experience the snow. But enough about that. Tell my audience who you are and what was your journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay, so I am first and foremost a mom, and it's so crazy because the thing everyone knows me for is design. I have a PhD in design and every time I would get a degree, I have a baby. So I'd get a degree like a master's degree, and two weeks later I'd have a baby. I'd finish a doctorate. 10 days later I would have a baby. So I have three degrees and I have three babies. So there you go. My kids are actually quite a bit older now, just because I had them when I was young. So I have a 20-year-old, a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old. So I'm like the whole gamut right now and I never thought of myself as a creative, which is crazy because I'm a designer. I have a degree actually in marketing, and then I went to the University of Minnesota and I got a master's degree in design and a PhD in design, thinking full well that I would teach at a university. And I did. I taught at the University of Minnesota for five years and I loved it. It was wonderful before I decided to start my own design business, and I think a lot of people would look at my first year as a designer in my own design business as a total and complete fail, Because if you look at it financially, for the first 11 months I made $300. Like I did not know what I was doing. It was rough and figured a couple of things out. And once I figured those things out and the number one thing I figured out was that I needed eyeballs on my work right Like I needed to build an audience or I needed to use somebody else's audience and once I kind of figured that out, it started clicking and I started understanding the way business should be run tactically. And once I figured that out, I really I was able to grow. Within five years we were like a $200,000 business. And when I say we, I mean it was me, Like it was me by myself, with my babies at home and me running my design businesses.
Speaker 2:Fast forward, three years ago I started a program called Design Suite and the reason I started it because I had some ideas that maybe I'd go back and teach at university while I was running my design business. Because one of the things I was seeing is that people were designing and they had no clue about how to make money like zero clue about what it really took to make money. Because we're so creative. We just wanted to do all the creative stuff and I decided to start this program because I knew I could bypass some of the things that happened at university. We could teach business at the very beginning. We could get people going and starting to make money in the first couple of years, versus waiting four or five years.
Speaker 2:And it has been a roller coaster of amazingness. We have grown. We have over 250 current active members in our program. We are more of like a college program. So we're not a cheap program and when I say more of a college program, like we're right now in the middle, we have 17 courses within the program itself and we are in the middle of changing them, moving them all to 15 week semester long courses, so many of them already. They have quizzes, they have essays, like it is like true coursework, and it's just because we're trying to bring the highest standard the highest like academic standard, but also smart, business, tactical standard to our students and that has been a whirlwind.
Speaker 2:So I went from being a solopreneur as a designer for 13 years to the last three years running a business we have. Well, I think we have 18 people. We've been in the middle of hiring. We've hired six people in the last month, so about 18 people on my team and just loving what we are doing, I still love being a designer, I love teaching design and then, of course, my kid aspect, which is I now have kids who are growing up, who are modeling what I'm doing. They're not in design Neither. Neither of my two oldest are doing design work, but in super creative careers and creative fields. And it's just been really fun to watch because as I teach my designers, I'm realizing, oh my gosh, all of this stuff it applies to every creative field, so it's fun.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's a fabulous story. Do you mind if we go back a little bit? Cause one thing that's registering with what you said and I think a lot of people kind of struggle with this, that's trying to start their own business or get into entrepreneurship. You mentioned that first endeavor where you were 11 months and only made 300. How did you persevere to keep pressing forward when you had potentially had all of this doubt, worry, fear that probably was in existence? What was it about you that allowed you to propel forward and just see it through when you were either making any money those first 11 months?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'm gonna say this, and this is why I tell this story, cause I've had, I think, five or six business. I would say most of them. The first year I made no money and since that is a trend, I think, amongst starting a business, like the first year you really it is very difficult to make money because you just don't know what, you don't know right and you're just trying things, you're throwing spaghetti at the wall just hoping something's going to stick okay. So I already knew this, because I had owned at least one business before this maybe two, I'm trying to think, I think for sure one where I kind of was like oh I see how business is, you just don't know. You're trying stuff. It's not really working, you have to pivot, you have to try something else that doesn't work until you kind of find that groove where it really works right. So I had a little bit of experience under my belt with that.
Speaker 2:The second thing is, I knew I was a good designer. You know, I think a lot of people have doubts because they've never done the thing before. I'm going to tell you right now, even if you felt like you were a bad, whatever it is you're trying to do. You're probably better at it than you realize, but I knew for a fact I was a good designer. I had a doctorate, I taught university, like. So I was like the problem isn't the design work, the problem is I don't know how to run a business and I'm not getting eyes on this, I'm not getting distribution, and it's clearly a business problem, not a design problem. And so, based on that, most people actually have a fantastic product. Most of the people I know, like they're showing me it's amazing they just haven't figured out the business part of it yet. Most of us are good at making products, not as good about getting the eyes on the product.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay. So then let's say a person has a passion right and I know you mentor a lot of business women in this regard how do you help them turn that passion into a business? What's the hurdle they gotta kind of get over.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, there's a lot, don't you think? I mean, you coach people on this kind of thing? There are lots of hurdles. I think the first one, of course, is their own self-worth. Do you see that a lot?
Speaker 1:Yes, I call it the limiting beliefs that they carry and the syndrome that they carry absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the first hurdle, because if they don't, even they might believe a little, but they can do it, but if they don't believe enough, they won't actually put in the effort. And the second thing they have to have is the effort right, like they have to actually put action steps in every single day so that they're consistent and they're doing the work. And so I find like it's got the limiting beliefs part. If that's a problem, they're never gonna move forward, so we gotta get past that.
Speaker 2:Then the second thing is, I think one of the things that in a lot of ways, designers and creatives really struggle with, which is planning your time, which means that every day you have blocked off time on your calendar to design or do your creative work, or to list your stuff or to research methods of getting audiences in front of you or getting your work in front of audiences. I should say so it's like all these little tiny detail things that you need to put on your calendar so you can see that you're moving the needle. That's how I knew that, like after 11 months, I had done the right things, or I knew the things I was doing so I could make some changes. A lot of times people don't document their process and I do. And when you do that and you see all the actions, you know you're moving in the right direction. Right, you just need to make little pivots.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's that visualization. You need to see the progress of the steps that you're taking to move forward, which makes total sense. And what about, like the environment? Because when we carry that doubt, we need that reinforcement of people around us that says you know, you got this, you can keep going, but the reality is there are more people out there that doubt us or I like to say kind of hating on us, right, and that kind of contributes towards the self-doubt that we carry. What advice do you give a person and how to create this type of environment where they have influencers that help propel them to move forward?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you and I both believe in community, like you have to have community. It's something I think about. You know, five years ago I would have been like, huh what? And then, like I remember, as I look back and I'm like, yeah, but if I ever ran into a problem, I could call this creative director, I could call this designer, I could. So I had it and didn't even realize I had it.
Speaker 2:So I think, first and foremost, it takes a long time to build it, unless you are willing to build a program or go into a coaching situation or have a network that you pay into. That's almost the easiest way. I personally did this about three years ago. I was like I don't have the right business knowledge, so I'm gonna go join a mastermind. So I did, and I've been in masterminds ever since, because I find that when I pay for knowledge, we almost can double, if not triple, our income and our sales because we are doing the right things. Now, if you don't have money to do it, you do have to spend some time right Networking, building that network. So you just it's a time versus money thing Is, at the end of the day, what it is.
Speaker 1:What exactly is a mastermind, in case there's people that doesn't know what that is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's so funny because I feel like mastermind has been warped a little bit over the last few years. Originally masterminds and I can't even remember which it's like a Greek. Somebody came up with the idea of the mastermind. It's basically you bring together minds that are very smart, affluent, have experience. You bring together a group of people and they talk and give each other ideas so that they coach and influence one another, and the whole idea of is that the sum of the parts is stronger than the parts itself. Right? So I'm a part, you're a part, and if we were masterminding together, I have information you don't have and you have information I don't have. And so that's really how masterminds kind of started.
Speaker 2:I heard about. I want to say it was like seven or eight years ago I heard about this idea of the mastermind and at that time there wasn't a lot of mastermind communities out there. What was is CEOs or creative directors coming together in groups of three, four, five people and just having meetings and being like let's talk about your problems, let's talk about my problems, and you kind of work through it. Masterminds have evolved a little bit to be not just quite that, but they're being hosted Like I own a mastermind. They're being hosted and so they have more of an educational component or a coaching component to it, and so usually now they have a leader involved, like I'm the lead of my mastermind and we're instead not just like it's not just willy nilly, like here's this, here's this, here's this. It's a little bit more like guided, like a guided meditation. It's guided so that you're getting the right things out and you're not wasting time.
Speaker 1:Yep, and it's synergy amongst the group. And what I love about mastermind particularly when you talk about entrepreneurship you can stage your mastermind when you have someone in marketing, you have someone in banking, you have someone in advertising, you have someone in communication. You have all these experts in various fields and everyone comes together to support each other, which ultimately creates the synergetic being of the group and it helps everybody moves forward. It's a win-win. So thank you for sharing that. But what I want to talk about is why design? What was it that, like, really got you into becoming a designer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's so funny because I talk to people all the time who are like I could never be an artist or a designer because I can only draw stick figures. The world has changed. I don't think I was like some crazy artist. In fact, I have an undergrad degree in marketing. Right, I wanted to get into advertising. That's why I wanted a design degree. What I kind of figured out was whoever was in control of the layout and the photographs and all of that was really in control of the messaging, and so that's why I wanted to go get a design degree. It was to help me in my marketing, not the opposite, which is what's happened.
Speaker 2:I fell in love with design, and what I figured out was what I didn't know is that, because of software, you don't actually need to know how to draw to get started. It is a learned behavior, just like anything else, just like a surgeon's going to. I mean, I actually think what a surgeon does is like so beautiful and so creative. They have to learn how to precisely cut and they have to learn exactly what they have to tie up, and there is most things in this world can be learned, I think, and design is one of them. So like just because you don't know how to draw doesn't mean that you can't design, and some of that has come from the programs.
Speaker 2:When we moved to graphic design software, suddenly it became yes, you can draw on the software, but if you can see the world in shape like a ladybug? I teach how to make a ladybug in one of my design bootcamp that I do and literally it's Oval's and it's like OK, if you know how to use this ellipse tool here and make a circle, then I can show you how to cut it up in a gazillion different ways so that it can turn into a ladybug and it looks really beautiful, it's easy to make and so for me it was the logical part. Now it took me years before I even called myself like an illustrator or an artist. I still prefer the term designer or creative director. But at the end of the day, learned, learned behavior, and if you understand the software, it's more about expanding visually what you think you can do with the tools that you have.
Speaker 1:Early on, when you started going through this process of becoming this entrepreneur, how much time did you put into the voting towards your craft?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had the luck of, like I spent so many years in education. First, you know really learning how to design, so you could tack that on. But if you really want to talk about you know learning to design in terms of running a business, which is totally different, right? So that first year I was probably dropping in at least eight hours a day on top of teaching at the University of Minnesota and the Arts Institute, which I was at the time, I was teaching at two different colleges on top of things and I had two small children on top of it. Okay, so it's totally doable. It's a little bit crazy, but I was just like this is what I'm doing, I love this, I'm going to do it. So I would put in six to eight hours a day of design work. I would say the ironic thing is, you know, you think you're going to back off of it, but, like for years and years and years, I think I worked a solid five to six hours minimum, sometimes eight to 10 hours if I was under a deadline for something.
Speaker 2:But it just really does require time because you haven't learned the skills yet, right? So my, my whole philosophy is three years into, any business you start is when you can kind of start pulling back your hours. And so, ironically, we're about at the three year mark for design suite, for our mastermind program and our educational programs, and I'm looking at the calendar right now and I'm moving back my hours on the calendar. Like you put in the time. It's a season, right. You put in the time at the beginning and if you've got it right, then you can start pulling back the hours. I find that a lot of entrepreneurs or new business owners or new coaches, they're not actually putting in the time at the beginning and so it feels really, really slow. But it feels slow just because you haven't put in as much time as someone else who's putting in all the hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause it accumulates over time. Regardless if you're doing three hours a week or three hours a day, you're still adding the pennies to the bucket Over time. That bucket feels and that bucket that's filled is knowledge and experience, and it's up to you to determine how aggressive you want to be and how quick you obtain that knowledge. So total point. And then the other piece I would add to that is your passion, right, if you're not passionate about it, it becomes easier to quit, and I love listening to you, to your journey early on. But what was the click that took you from being this individual designer to creating O-Gram, a big program, and having this big operation working now? I'm sure it's a multimillion dollar business too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it really was like so I have big dreams for my life and I want my designers to have big dreams and I want my kids to have big dreams. But the only way that everyone's gonna have big dreams is if I pursue my big dreams. So could I have continued to just design, making multiple six figures? Yeah, I could have, but I was getting a lot of people asking me how I was doing it. So the average you make when you finish graphic design school is about $50,000 a year. You come out with $150,000 of student loans and you make about $50,000 a year. That's pretty typical.
Speaker 2:So the fact that I was able to make $200,000 a year or $150,000 a year, pretty early on people were confused. They were like I mean, you go on YouTube, you'll hear all these contract designers talk about how they've kind of made it. They're at $80,000 a year. That's like whoa, that's a pinnacle, right. So everyone's just like I mean I wasn't really divulging a lot of how much money I was making, but people could see I was successful, I was doing a lot and I was doing pretty well, and I had this aha moment where I was just like, oh, nobody else knows how to do this. I'm making all this money, but nobody else knows how to do this.
Speaker 2:And so I was like, what would it be like if I opened up a program? And I kept it really small at the beginning, I just tried to. I was like, let's just try this. I was like I will just critique. Like I'm in a university classroom once a month or once a week. We met, I critiqued everybody's stuff, talked about their businesses, looked what they were doing.
Speaker 2:At the time I had eight courses in the program. It was just like kind of backup coursework so that everybody knew what you know, I didn't have to teach every single week, so they knew what to do. And I had so many people sign up the first week that I launched it and I did not have a big audience. Like I, you know, I kind of put it out there. I said I think I'm going to do this thing. You know, I just like. And then it was insane. Like it was insane. I had no idea that the need was so great. I had so many people sign up. It was almost the opposite of what happened the first business I owned, you know, or it was only like $300.
Speaker 2:But this is the key when you own a lot of businesses and you've done a lot of businesses, there is some magic. It's like you kind of figure out all the things you did wrong the first few times. So this time, when I went into it, I had a better idea and I was like you know what I'm just going to do? An offer, we're going to get a feel for it. I know what the program's going to look like and let's see. I think I can't even remember how many people came in, but, like you know, I was hoping for two or three people and I think something like 20 people came in in the first like day and it was. It was not a cheap offer, and so I was like wait, what? What just happened here? Like. And then you deliver right.
Speaker 2:You're like I hope this works, that's cool, but it I'm just going to say like the more you run businesses, the better you get at it. It's just like anything else.
Speaker 1:What was the biggest fear you had to overcome for yourself?
Speaker 2:Working with people. Terrified, really Terrified. That here's the thing about being a designer, and I don't think this is like for everybody, but it is for designers. So, those of you who are creatives, who are introverts, you like, if you're watching this video or listening to this podcast, I don't sound like an introvert. I am 100% an introvert. I like designing by myself. I like being by myself. I like being in my pajamas in a bun watching Gilmore Girls while I am designing Like that is my happiest spot. You know, that's what I thought I was going to do the entire rest of my life, but there's not as much impact in that as actually teaching people to do the thing that you know how to do. Well, and once I figured that out, and also being responsible for people my designers will tell you that I still.
Speaker 2:I mean, even though we have a lot of people in our program, I feel so responsible, like I feel like are we giving them enough? Are they making the strides they need to make? Like I feel stressed out all the time, and it's because I just want them to get results. I think there's a lot of irresistible coaches out there, irresponsible programs out there, where they promise a lot of things and then they deliver whatever they've got and then that's it I. That stresses me out, and so that's why we really tell people it takes three years to build a design business. It took me three years, with a PhD and a master's degree, to still build a design business. I show numbers, I still show everybody what I'm making in my design businesses. Like I'll show like this is our best seller this month, like this is killing it this month, we like. So I feel like there's a sort of responsibility that I feel that might come from one, being a little bit of a people pleaser, right, but two, from actually being an introvert.
Speaker 1:I'm an introvert too. I'm quiet, I'm locked in, I'm focused, but I'm intentional about my enthusiasm and my energy too. So podcasts like this this is something that I found very enjoyable. I remember when I had the idea of putting out my own podcast, it was like you said what are people gonna think of me? Oh, my goodness, I'm not gonna do that. And I just said you know what? I got value to give. I have people that I'm connected with that have value to give. I have to do this. So I did that. And here we are today, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's being vulnerable with yourself and being open to criticism, which is hard, especially for those of us who are creative, who really do enjoy and try to build value in our own way. Because there is a little bit of I don't say imposter syndrome, because I don't really suffer from imposter syndrome, but I do suffer from a little bit of feeling like are you gonna do the things I tell you to do? Like, are you going to perform? Because I want you to perform to make sure that I'm giving you the value right? I have figured out over the last three years that I can deliver as much as I want and I still will have people who do not perform right.
Speaker 2:This is part of life, right yeah. And now that I've let go a little bit of that and just put my effort into everybody, you know, I've just kind of accepted that. But my philosophy is still and I have kind of a weird philosophy for someone who has so many people in her program but my philosophy is the one is important, the one is the most important. And so when we focus on one person and that was my whole goal at the beginning I was like if I can affect and change one person's life, this will be worth it. And that's still my philosophy. So, even though we have a lot of people, I still look at the individual. We still treat everyone like individuals. We try very hard to give them individual attention. We haven't grown so big and my hope is that we never grow so big that the individual still isn't the most important thing.
Speaker 1:Listening to you, it just sounds like your program has high integrity, and I love that. I really do. Tell us a success story from one of your students that stands out right now, oh my gosh, we've got so many amazing success stories.
Speaker 2:I was just on today, so we actually over the three years it's a crazy because people won't leave and then, like we literally built it around the members. Like they said Karina, we want a community. I was like what I just want to hear. I want to be here teaching you design. They're like no, no, no, we want to talk to each other. I was like, fine, and I build them a community. They're all like chatting with each other all day. So excited. About six months in, they were like hey, karina, we like want to see each other and talk to each other. I was like huh, what? Like I thought you just wanted to be here so I could teach you design. They're like no, no, no, no, we want to talk to each other. I was like fine, I actually brought everyone, which is a lot of people, into a huge meeting space and I said, ok, what do you guys want to do? And they were like we want to have meetings together. And I was like OK, I think I can make that happen. So we put them in smaller groups. I made them name it. So I was like y'all are in charge of naming this. They ended up choosing squads and so now they have squad meetings once a month each other, but we literally every probably three to six months, changed some of the program to meet their needs. Like they just said, we want this and we're like, OK, so now not only do we do that, but we have something called Marco Polo the app. We have groups of 30 to 50 people in each group so they can video chat with each other and we have a coach on every single one. So we have this crazy community. So, all that to say, I was on video chat today with my elite group, which is my very top group, and we have people in that group. It's insane, they will tell you. I believe Emily just said that she just three times her sales from last month to this month, literally because she's playing the volume game that we told her to play.
Speaker 2:One of my designers in the first year did $13,000 in the first year. Just by just, I mean like paid the price of her program at the time, just like, literally. She was like I used to pull all my stuff down and Karina was just like, just keep it up, she's kept it up, she followed the program. Like just insane, did so so good. She's seeing double in all her sales this year and her second year.
Speaker 2:We had a designer who's not an elite, but she was just in Mastermind, which is our main program, who made only four sales in the entire first year. Like it was very similar to what I experienced, like right now Many sales. She only made four sales, so she didn't make very many sales. But in month 11, she people started asking her for these custom wallpapers that she was doing and she wouldn't have gotten this deal if she hadn't been designing the way we've been telling her to design. She got this deal. She made $35,000 in like three months after that because people are asked like $10,000 deals, $3,000 deals. We have had designers who work in house now like full, like like a full designer in house for real estate agents and other companies. So you asked for one. I'm just telling you like that's great.
Speaker 2:You can do if you literally just do the business right and follow what we always say follow the money. So just because we teach you one way doesn't mean that you're not going to have a gazillion logo jobs. We have a lady in Australia. She was in the program for two years. She decided to stay for two years we have a one year program, by the way but she ended up staying for two years. She she built out a freelance business. She had no intention of doing this, but she got a couple of jobs through us and built up a freelance business that she just told me was paying for all of her kids thousands of dollars of private school every month, like it pays for it. And I was just like what, are you serious? And she was like, yeah, like the freelance business has totally taken off. I was like that is so insane.
Speaker 2:So I think you can do it. You can build a business where you're passionate and you love the stuff you're doing. It's totally possible. A lot of times you're just missing some of the educational components and the network around you to get to where you need to go.
Speaker 1:Who are the students that come to your school? Who moves that clientele group?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are 100% what we call the encore career. So that means that we, most of our students, are between the ages of 40 and 65, our average client age is 50, which is insane, cause people think like, oh, we've got all these young people and they must be. No, no, no, no. These are people who are building a second career in life and we do have the outliers, Like we always call baby Ashley. She's started in our program when she was 19 and is in elite now and she's 21. But, like most of our women, are actually average age 50, you'll notice our coaches average age 50. We are very into the idea that any time in life is a good time to start a business and start making money and living the life you want to live.
Speaker 1:So what's the process and how they get started If they're interested in in what we do.
Speaker 2:So most we make everybody go to a design boot camp. So design boot camps only $27 and I tell it all Like I mean even here, as I'm talking to you guys, you can tell like I'm kind of an open book. I like to tell people what they can do to get started. So it's five days, it's evergreen, so you can come do it anytime. We have sessions going all the time and it's an hour long workshop every single day.
Speaker 2:I think some of them go a little bit longer than that and I just teach business. I'm like this is how I did it, this is how you can do it. I give them strategy, I tell them all the stuff I did, I give them frameworks for getting started and if that is a good fit for you because we love that $27, it does a few things. First of all, you get real education, because guess what? Lots of free stuff. This is not real education, but for $27,. If you're willing to come, then I will teach you. I'll give you real education on how to run a design business. Second of all, if you go through that process and you love it, you can take a quiz with us and in that quiz. It helps us understand why you want to become a designer and you can get on with an admissions specialist. So we're a little different.
Speaker 2:A lot of companies will just take anyone everywhere. We're kind of more like that college situation. We don't take everyone. We're careful Because we have a really strong community. So we don't want anything to rock the boat and we want to make sure you really care about becoming a designer.
Speaker 2:If you come in and you want to do something else, then once again I told you I feel nervous that we can't teach you what you need to be taught, and so we're really careful about it. Now, that being said, if you have will, if you have desire, if you're willing to do effort, we'll let you in. We're like come on in, we're here, we want to help you. But you'll see, at every level from my admissions specialist to my enrollment specialist, to my coaches you're very much treated like you're the one. You're here by yourself. You're getting this thing done. So that's how we process people through what we do, and a lot of it has to do with just us making sure you're still a really good candidate for our program, and so if you come in, you know that we've made sure that you understand what we do and what we can help you do.
Speaker 1:And how can my audience find out more information about your program?
Speaker 2:Well, we do have this really fun thing I'm going to give you guys for free, OK, so if you go to, I just recently came out with my second book. It's called Make Art. That Sells and literally, if you're in any creative field, like if you don't want to become a designer, this still will help you and it's a pretty fun book. You can get it on Amazon but past the book, if you go to Make Art Book and you'll see there is a link there for the master class. If you click on that it costs money. You are going to put in the code Make Art. It will make it free for you. Ok, so just put it in the code Make Art and the class has about six lessons in it. It's super fun.
Speaker 2:I teach this fun formula about how to make art that sells. The book is fun, by the way. So if you want to go check out the book, the book is really fun. It's art history mixed with this formula that I teach you. So every chapter of the book you get one more piece of the formula and it usually also features a different designer or artist. So Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh and Yaya Kusama and Norman Rockwell, and anyway, it's really fun and we've tried to make it a really easy, fun read. And then there's this formula that you can plug and play your own stuff in. We even did it the other day.
Speaker 2:My daughter is a creative writer and we did it with books. We're like OK, so this is your product, here's your themes, here's your medium. Ok, how does that work together? How does that build style? And so I'm obsessed with good, strong frameworks that you can use to really build yourself knowledge about what you're doing in your creative career. So go check that out. So it's free and I think you'll enjoy it. You can kind of you'll get to know me and you'll kind of see what we do. If you want to come to Design Boot Camp, design is your thing and I know not all your listeners are designers, but you guys are mostly creatives. That's why I'm saying go to Make Art. That Sells, it's a fun, fun class. But if you know someone who wants to become a designer and they just they've never made it a reality for themselves, If you go to designsweetcoursescom slash designbootcamp, you can go register for Design Boot Camp and come hang out with me for five workshops and learn an awful lot about business.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Really appreciate it. As we wrap up our interview today. What tips, words of wisdom, would you like to leave the audience?
Speaker 2:It is a very short life. Do what you really want to do with it. And as I get older, it just feels shorter and shorter and shorter and my kids keep getting older and older and older and leaving me. It's so sad and I just think I feel super grateful for what I get to do every day. Dream as big as you want, ok, because I think people kind of squash their dreams, even me, like I kind of will squash, like what I'm going to do? I'm like, oh, I'll only do this much. But the more I dream big, the bigger things I do. And if someone had told me that I'd be sitting in this position today with a multimillion dollar company doing what we're doing, affecting people's lives, I won't even tell you what we're on the verge of doing. It's pretty insane. I told some people I was at a sales conference this weekend and I told them what we're in the middle of and they were like what? And I was just like yeah it's insane.
Speaker 2:It won't even come out until 2026. That's how far in advance we're thinking Like. It's just way in advance. And but if someone had told me this is where I was going to be three years ago, I would have just laughed at them. Success is just around the corner for most of you. You just don't even realize it because you just haven't taken the first steps.
Speaker 1:Right, taking that first step. That's action, being intentional. I love that. I appreciate you, karina. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for wisdom, thank you for the knowledge, thank you for your energy and being present here today. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad to be here, coach Moe, and I just hope your people because I know that you care about people as well kind of hear this and they're like, ok, I know what I need to do next, whether it's with me, but more with their current community that they have. So utilize the current community that you have to get you to the next level.
Speaker 1:Thank you, karina. Thank you for joining me in this episode of let's Think About it. Your time and attention are greatly appreciated. If you found value in today's discussion, I encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Remember, the journey of self-improvement is ongoing and I'm here to support you every step of the way. Connect with me on social media for updates and insights. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook, at Coach Moe Coaching or LinkedIn, at Maurice Mavery, or visit my website at MauriceMaverycom for exclusive content. Until next time, keep reflecting, keep growing and, most importantly, keep believing in yourself. Remember, the most effective way to do it is to do it Together. We're making incredible strides toward a better and more empowered you, so thank you, and I'll see you in our next episode.