Rai Cornell 0:02
Welcome to Season Two of the SOAR podcast, the place for creative entrepreneurs who want to build healthier, happier, more profitable, self employed businesses. I’m your host Rai Hyde Cornell, business mentor at Chiron consulting and CEO and senior copywriter at Cornell content marketing, get ready to soar.

Welcome to the SOAR podcast. On today’s episode, we have Lindy Nowak. Lindy, thank you so much for being here and tell our listeners what it is that you do.

Lindy Nowak 0:41
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. I am the owner of a website agency called Up In A Day. And we build quick Squarespace websites for small business owners and entrepreneurs quickly. And the whole purpose is to make the process super, super easy for our clients.

Rai Cornell 1:02
So you must, I’ve been obsessed with your business name since we connected months ago. I’m just thinking you must be drowning in business. Because one of the things, I mean, I run an agency, we do websites, we do WordPress websites, in particular. And our fastest process is like a month. But I know people want it done yesterday. And so how did you come up with this up in a day process? And what does that actually look like?

Lindy Nowak 1:31
That is it, so many people do want it yesterday and a month turnaround time is actually fast for Wordpress sites. So kudos to you. So we build all of our websites in Squarespace as I mentioned, and when I started the company, I should say prior to starting Up in a day, I was running an agency called Lino creative. We were small, but we had a lot of big clients, a lot of retainers. And what we were doing then aside from the digital marketing aspect of the business, we were building out very complicated Shopify and Squarespace websites. But what was happening is we kept on getting referrals to us or some cold leads coming to us, of small business owners, people who had seasoned businesses, people who had brand new businesses, people who were pivoting, solopreneurs. And they were coming to us saying, I need a website. Fast. I need it yesterday. I need it to be on budget. And I need it to be obviously found on Google and I needed it to be easy for myself and/or my team to update. And at that time, I just didn’t have it in our margins. Like we didn’t have a process to do quick websites. And I personally had always dreamt of creating a transactional, like very fast, like come and go product.

And one day, I was sitting at my desk, and I was like, Oh my gosh, been working Squarespace for over 10 years. And I was like, Oh my gosh, we design these so fast. Oh my gosh, we can design these in a day, I realized. Oh my gosh, I can create a product around this. Oh my gosh, it’s gonna be called Up in a day. And it was like, literally, like 5 or 10 minutes. The grueling, that was the fun part, the grueling part was spending the next six months devising a business model around this idea. And that business model is all about creating a process and a system in which we bring on clients. And then the designers go to work to actually be able to build these websites in a day. And it’s all about the framework of our websites. It’s about the process throughout the day, and then having the live review with our clients at the end of the day or the next morning. And that’s the whole process as well. So it’s very, like I say, it’s very transactional. It’s very quick. It’s extremely fun. We have a lot of business because they come and go and they come and go quick, and you get to meet so many people. And I would say the most rewarding part about what Up in a day brings to me and my team, which I did not anticipate was making these business owners so happy, because literally at the end of the day, they’re getting a website that their business finally deserves.

Rai Cornell 4:40
Yeah, I love these ideas that just kind of like strike you out of nowhere and then I get these every once in a while and I feel like I’ve had my best ones like in the shower. I’m just like shampooing my hair and then all of a sudden I’m like, Holy shit, this is the best idea that I’ve got. I actually have these things called Aqua Notes in my shower, it’s like the sticky note that has suction cups that goes onto the wall of the shower. And it’s waterproof paper with a pencil. And I like fill that up. And I love that this idea for Up in a day came in that way where it’s just like, boom download. And then of course, like you said, you know, you’ve got to build out the infrastructure. So how did you do that? You go from brilliant idea, which I think entrepreneurs just naturally we’re, like, super receptive to getting these, like downloads of brilliant ideas. But a lot of people stop there. They go, Oh, that’s a great idea. But I have no idea how to actually implement that. So how did you go from brilliant idea to brilliant business model?

Lindy Nowak 5:43
Oh, such good question. A few ways. I would say the primary way was I knew, when I came up with the idea and started, you know, taking out my sketch pad and writing down what we’re going to do and what we’re going to have. The first thing I did is, what do I want this business to bring me? Where do I want to see this business in one year, five years and 10 years? What is the overarching goal of Up in a day, and for me, it was to either franchise, well, three things. One, to make my life easy, because of retainer clients. Like for me, I just felt like I was working in corporate again, because you’re almost like working for them. And which is fine. It just wasn’t for me. So having the end in mind, of clear vision of how to get there. And once I had that kind of, and businesses evolve, and ours has evolved twice. But I knew where I wanted to be. And so I took that and then I created steps for me to get there. And I didn’t know how long it was going to take.

And I’m the type of person that when I want something I want it right now. I move really fast. And I had some hurdles along the way being that type of person, but I had to you know, set my priorities, set my goals, still run Lino creative on the side, because I needed the income coming in. But going from this step by step process, what do I need to do first, second, third. But it was full of overwhelm for many months. So like, you said, that you were in the shower, I love the idea that you have a notepad, but your shower is my 3am which I swear to God that was all the six months, I’d wake up at 3am in a panic and Oh, my God, I’m an idiot, what I did yesterday, No, that’s not right, back up, back up, we get to do it this way. So I jump out of bed and write it down. And then I go back to sleep because it’s out of my head and on paper.

Rai Cornell 8:00
Yea, you don’t have to stress about forgetting it. So I’ve known people who tell their clients like, Okay, we’re gonna have your website up in a week. But within that model, you know, if this is the week that their website is going live, they are preparing, copy and design and infrastructure and all of that for weeks before that. So it’s not really actually your website getting done in a week, it’s like, the exact same process that we follow, which is, render your copy first, and then your design, and then your development. And then we’re going to push it live, technical test, you review it, if there’s any changes you want us to make, we’ll do that. But that takes like usually six weeks, six to eight weeks is our desired turnaround time. So there’s kind of been these people who’ve come before you and been like, oh, yeah, we’re gonna do this super fast websites. But when you actually look at the process, it’s really not that, so how did you actually break through all of these obstacles that I feel like the marketing industry as a whole has just never been able to solve? You know, how did you build this digital product where people can actually have a website up in a day?

Lindy Nowak 9:13
That’s another great question. So the way I did it, because you’re talking about like, they need to gather all their content and the content that they don’t have, then you’re probably creating it for them, right.

Typically, we write all of their content. They don’t provide us anything, because it’s usually terrible, because people are terrible writers.

Yeah, that’s true. Well, we do two kinds of websites. I’ll try to speak to both. So we do the new businesses who have never had a website and then we do existing businesses who have really bad or outdated websites. Those are the two. Low hanging fruit is obviously the latter because all we have to do is take off their what they have right now and just build them a brand new site with that same content just making it look like 20,000 times better. So what I did is I created add-on services. So the add-on products. So Up in a day websites, that’s a product, right, that’s a productize package that people buy

Rai Cornell 10:14
Like they book the day and that’s the day that it’s being designed and being built and approved, and all of that,

Lindy Nowak 10:22
Totally. And then the Add-on services, a blog, copywriting, stock photography. I come from an agency world, so I kind of knew like price points, but we have to stay like within our margins, we also have to be very, we try to be as affordable as possible, because these are small business owners. Some are doing well, some are unarmed, some are like, you know, iffy. So everything is one set price, that’s the other thing. And we’re very, very communicating. And we’re very clear about what they get, how long it’s gonna take, what they need, and what we can offer them additionally. So what are some other add ons, I mean, we’ll throw in like, you know, like patterns and stuff to make their website, give it some depth. But if they need like custom graphics, we’ll do that. If they want icons, each icon is a set price. And then we have a process for that. So obviously, like that’s going to delay your day, but people are okay with that.

So we’re doing the time between the build out and you know, you coming on board. So we’ll create all of those add on products first, and then we’ll send them to the client to get approval. And yeah, knock on wood, they’ve all been like super fast turnarounds. Because you know, some clients will say in two weeks, excuse me, your website build outs coming up. But they’re cool. If they’re cool with it, then we’re cool with it, like we are on their schedule, as long as you know, they’re coming to us because sometimes it’s not always about the speed that they’re looking for. Now I’m realizing they’re coming to us because of our great customer service. And our great customer service lies in being very punctual, being very clear and communicative, and also nurturing them, you have to nurture your client, as annoying as some of our clients can be. You have to think about those referrals coming your way later.

Rai Cornell 12:28
Yeah, I think a lot of people, I guess I should say, the service providers, those of us who design and write and build websites, we tend to think that clients want this like super extravagant, you know, like, everything’s animated, and everything’s like, wow, boom, bang, like super impressive websites. But then when you talk to clients, what they really want, they’re just like, I just need a piece of internet real estate, I just need a digital business card, I just need something to put on my business card. So that I look like a legitimate business, I just need a website that looks great and functions. I don’t need this, like massive production. And so you found a way to productize that very simple and overwhelmingly common need that so many business owners have

Lindy Nowak 13:22
So true. And you know, we do get those people that come to us, obviously they don’t read our website. And they come to us and they want all those bells and whistles and want things to move. I come from Lino creatives always saying yes. And now I am really good at saying, No, this is not for you. And I’m going to be very honest with you. We’re not going to be able to do this for you. But I have some really great partners that can. And so we have a lot of partner agencies too that we just pass referrals back and forth. And that’s, I mean, may be for your audience, I didn’t know that that was going to be a recurring stream of income for us. But you can partner with other agencies that can provide what you don’t and have a referral program with them. That’s awesome. That’s money in your pocket. And all you have to do is make an intro over email.

Rai Cornell 14:18
Yeah, absolutely. And then those leads that are coming your way. They’re pre warmed up. They’re this close to saying yes, anyway, and they’re the best deals to close because they’re just like, tell me what it costs. I already have pre-vetted you because you came highly recommended from this other person that I trust. And so it’s just Bing Bing, boom, done. We’re going to take a super short commercial break.

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We are back with Lindy Nowak. So Lindy, this whole idea of taking a service, like as creative service providers, you know, we’re writers, we’re designers or developers we’re VAs, we provide a service, and yet you have found a way to turn that into a product. What advice would you give to someone and maybe, you know, if there was like a mindset shift that you had to go through, maybe tell us a little bit about that. But what advice would you give to someone who is trying to get out of this kind of hamster wheel of service providing and, you know, the custom proposals and every client is different, that kind of pattern and get into something that is more turnkey, in that product based formula?

Lindy Nowak 16:35
I would say take what you’re doing now, choose what you love doing. And if you’re doing awesome, good, that’s where you need to be. And then next time you have project that’s coming your way, start writing down the process and what it takes for you to get from start to finish on that project. And then in another note, write down what you love about this type of client and what you don’t like about this client. It’s all about like doing that, like, less or more exercise where on the left hand side, you write, I want less of all these things in my life. And on the right side, I want more of all these things in my life, like start doing that with your type of client, write down your processes, time yourself, and then price it. Price your time. Your time is valuable, obviously. In the service industry, and being a provider, you will find yourself doing a lot of communication outside of the actual execution. And that is one thing that I had to build into my price too. So I would definitely suggest that. And if you find yourself that you’re in a hamster wheel, I’ve been there a million times, maybe decide, I mean, everyone works so differently, maybe decide some options, like have some ideas.

Maybe decide you’re only going to focus on 1-3 industries for the next like two or three quarters. And then if people come your way, take them obviously, because you need the money. But just really focus on creating, doing what you do for that industry and do it the best and only speak their language. And you’re going to see that what you provide is really going to start to button up into this nice, neat little package. And it’ll be more enjoyable and easier for you too. I mean, there’s nothing worse than having clients come in and you think it’s going to take a week, and it takes six weeks, because they keep nit picking up stuff or they come back and they have a team that’s trying to weigh in. And so you have all these changes. I mean, that can be pretty brutal. I would say the other thing about that, now I’m just thinking about clients coming back and back and you know, you’re like, Well, you have two rounds of edits, and they’re like on edit 8. Put it in your agreement, and then put an hourly fee behind that. That’s what we do we say, you get one review. And if you want to make edits outside of that one review, no problem. It’s x amount an hour after that.

Rai Cornell 19:26
Yeah, I do the same thing.

Lindy Nowak 19:28
Really? And you know what that does? It gives you a peace of mind. And in your agreement, just make sure it’s like front and center. Bold it if you have to. People love that. Your clients will respect you more if you are very upfront with them with your costs because they’re gonna go okay, this person’s worth it. Wow. Okay. And it keeps them on track too. I worked in corporate for 15 years. When I started Up in a day, I knew that kind of grueling like back and forth, back and forth when you’re working with teams. If it’s like you providing something to a team of people, that can become like really long and really daunting. So that’s why I created a process, I put pricing behind everything. And then I knew I needed to be very clear and upfront with these clients, because they don’t know, they don’t know the creative process. They don’t know what’s happening behind closed doors. It’s a lot of what we do.

Rai Cornell 20:29
Right. And oftentimes they don’t know. So they don’t know what the process is. They don’t know what your terms are. They want to know, they don’t really care what the terms are, they’re happy to agree to them. They just need to know what they are. And like you, I do the same thing. I kind of do these little nuanced, I don’t know, maybe like subliminal messaging in a way where anytime I list like, Okay, this is what comes with this package. And then at the end, I always say, includes two rounds of revisions, comma, if needed, I always add the if needed. And typically, like 99% of our clients, they use one round of revisions. And that’s it. They never use that second one, because it’s not a “it includes two rounds”. And then they go, Oh, well, I better get my money’s worth and use both of these rounds of revisions. No, it’s if needed. And then below that I put, if you take longer than seven days to get back to us, then you’re outside of the revision window. And it’s going to be this much to do your revisions per hour. And, you know, all those other things to kind of expedite the project.

So oh, shoot, I had a great question for you earlier. And I completely… ah yes, okay, I remembered it. So I want to know how you started to streamline this process, you know, as you’re talking about, like your add on process, and then the actual booking of the day and the designing, the building, I was thinking of anybody who knows me knows I’m a total South Park fan, like a total South Park nerd. And there’s this special that they did called six days to air where Trey Parker and Matt Stone are talking about how it used to take them a couple months to produce an episode. And then, one day they did it in like four weeks. And then they’re like, Wait, can we make this faster? Can we make this faster? Can we make this faster, and they kept kind of trimming and trimming and trimming. And then they got to a point where they were literally doing one episode every six days. And they actually got it to the point where the seventh day was the day the episode was going to air. And so they had no excuses, they had to get it done. And I imagine that that’s similar to what you had to go through where I liked that you said, you know, pick one thing that you’re really good at and that you really enjoy doing, and then write down the steps. And as time goes by and you do more and more of those projects? Did you end up finding ways to trim time and maximize efficiency? I mean, how did you go about doing that?

Lindy Nowak 22:56
Totally, it was complete South Park scenario. When I started Up in a Day, I started by creating the processes, just from the little that I knew, you know, thinking about what it would entail. And then of course, as the business evolved, so did those processes. But yeah, I spoke earlier to our website framework. So the more websites we started doing, the more I realized, and I did a lot of them at the beginning, the more I started realizing, oh, no, these are all kind of like the same flow, user experience. So we took the user experience that we find that works best for our clients and in certain industries. And then we create a wireframe. It’s that easy. And then we have a copy document that if we’re not doing the copywriting for our clients, and they want to do it on their own, that’s totally fine. We have a very cool copy document. We call it the copy framework doc, where we send it to them and we ask them very specific questions, they answer, and it goes on their site. And then when we’re building out the site, we finesse the copy and they know that. Like our clients are the type that they just want it done. Just like I’m a busy business owner. I trust you guys. Here’s my contact. Just get it done. I’ll see you next Tuesday. Or tomorrow, I guess.

Rai Cornell 24:34
Yeah. I think one of the things that entrepreneurs struggle with, especially creatives is picking the one thing. Picking that one thing to productize you know, especially I think of writers who can do marketing emails and sales pages and website copy and all these things. Or designers who can do logos and websites and social media graphics and it’s kind of one of those things where it’s like, I will do any thing that someone will pay me for that is within my skill set. So how did you, and I’m sure with your background, I mean, you have this corporate background and working in marketing agencies, where you guys said yes to everything at your former agency. So how did you decide on the one thing that you were going to offer?

Lindy Nowak 25:21
Oh, when I started Up in a day, we offered websites in a day, Google ads in a day, Facebook ads in a day, Instagram ads in a day, how do you market that? How do you even keep track of everything? So that wasn’t working. So I said, Okay, well, what’s really easiest, and what brings the most ROI to the client. And it’s the website because you cannot guarantee clicks and conversions when you start running ads for people. That’s a scary place to be if you are not an expert in that field. So yeah, websites was the answer. I’m going off on a tangent ike, going into the whole digital ad world, which I won’t. That’s for another episode. But yeah, so I just decided that websites were the easiest to productize and package because the components in which we plug into an empty template, if you will, because the Squarespace writers start with a blank template were just like, easier. You can create the processes when you’re doing digital marketing, of course, and productize that but it’s not as tangible, in my opinion. And you mentioned copywriters, and like productizing how you do something and choosing what it is.

I work with this copywriter. She’s amazing. She has almost packaged her services up into a product, how she does it. And you know what it is, it’s using third party apps like SAS products that communicate with her clients. So she on the back end is for example, I wish I could share what she uses because it’s so cool. I didn’t know what it was, but it was amazing. So anyway, so we were working together on a copy project for Up in the day that I hired her for. And then we had a kickoff call, about 45 minutes. She’s asking me all these questions. And I must have mentioned like some random other things that I needed written and placed and branded or whatever. And so two days later she gets back to me with a link in an email and I open the link and it’s this platform, this app that basically points out like all of the services that she can provide but she packaged each one up by like subject matter and then you click on the one with the price, one flat price, then you click on the one that you want and you pay for it. That was amazing

Rai Cornell 28:16
It was like a menu

Lindy Nowak 28:17
It was a menu. And it was so easy for me and two days later I got what I needed. So it was super cool. Even her agreements came right after, like all that stuff. I was like so easy for me because then we don’t have to get on the phone with her again and then you don’t have to do like the email communication so that’s pretty awesome.

Rai Cornell 28:38
So for your process and probably for hers as well it sounds like you started by offering a lot of different things Up in a day and it was only through that trial process where you were able to narrow down and go okay, the thing that is the most profitable, that makes the most sense. that has the most demand is websites

Lindy Nowak 28:58
It was and it was scary because of you know there are like millions of website designers but there are also millions of copywriters and millions of digital advertisers. So I said you know we’re just gonna do different. Everybody can do it different. You just, like what sounds fun to you and what will make your life easier? And then if you know what will make your life easier, I you think you do, who can you work with that will get you there?

Rai Cornell 29:28
Did you niche down into a particular industry or particular type of business with Up in a day or do you kind of work with people all over the spectrum?

Lindy Nowak 29:37
Oh, man. I’m gonna be that person that says we work with almost everyone. Yeah, I mean, I wish I could say Oh, well we niche only to XYZ and it’s amazing. But we don’t because we want to be available to everybody. What we do and this is going back to what I mentioned before about choosing a market to go after is we choose, I would say every six months, we choose a industry, for example, let’s say restaurants. And then we go after just restaurants and we do all of our organic marketing to those restaurants. And then we start talking to all these restaurants. We do ask for referrals, things like that. And when I first started Up in a day, like I said, we were working with everybody just to see what sticks, because in my opinion, it’s a new market product. And I didn’t know who really needed it. I mean it could have been plumbers, it could have been like pool cleaners, like I didn’t know, florists.

So I kind of went after everybody. And it was all warm referrals at the beginning. And then I decided that I was going to create packages for certain industries to see if those stuck. And they did. They did, like we still have those packages for the industries. And it’s good for cold referrals when they’re coming on the site. And they’re like, Oh, perfect. That’s for me. But yeah, I mean, we also have a package called the professional service package. And that’s just like the cheapest. And that’s what most of the people buy. Lately, we’ve been working with a ton of coaches, and consultants. A lot of people are becoming coaches these days. Actually I will say coaches are great, except they don’t have content.

Rai Cornell 31:41
Yeah. They always want someone to write their content for them.

Lindy Nowak 31:44
Yeah. Or if they have it, it’s usually like a lot of just jargon. So you have to do a lot of cleanup, but it’s fine. We just charge a little extra for that. But yeah, they do come to us. And I’m like, do you have colors?

Rai Cornell 31:56
Yeah, but anything, any starting point? Well, I love that. Because there’s so many people in our industry, and by our industry, I mean, digital marketing, tell us, you have to niche, you have to niche, you have to niche, or you’re never gonna make sales, you’re never gonna make more money, you have to niche. And I think that’s bullshit, I don’t think you have to niche, especially when you have a product that can serve so many people. Now niching can be beneficial if you really have a passion for a particular industry, and you have lots of connections, and you don’t feel like you’re doing the exact same project for every single client who comes through, you know, if you felt like all of your restaurant clients ended up with all the same website, you’ll probably get sick of it. And so that myth of you have to niche, I love that you are a living proof that that’s not true. And you can be very generalist in your industry specifications, still get tons of business, still really enjoy what you do. But it’s less about niching by industry, and it’s more about niching by the product or service that you’re offering. That’s what’s super specific.

Lindy Nowak 33:04
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you said it, and thank you. I do think it’s bullshit. The only industry I could see, at least for us that I’ve had experience with because we don’t work with them. If you’re a web developer, for example, or if you’re a copywriter – law firms

Rai Cornell 33:25
Oh yeah

Lindy Nowak 33:25
That would be like, I niche in law firms. Why, because law firms are complicated. You have to know what you’re doing if you’re working with them.

Rai Cornell 33:33
Yes. And the only one I’ll add to that is financial advisors. Because they’re so much in the compliance of you can’t say this, you can’t say this, this is different by the state, this is different for this state. There’s just so much in terms of regulation around that sector that if you’re going to niche, and my friend, Crystal Butler, who was on the show, at the very beginning of our first season, she specializes in financial advisors, and she gets tons of business because her clients need to know that she gets it, that compliance piece. But other than that, and law is very similar in that way. But other than those, if you can work with everybody, and you enjoy working with everybody, then just get super specific on what it is you’re offering.

Lindy Nowak 34:18
Yeah, exactly.

Rai Cornell 34:20
So Lindy, where can people check you out? If they want a website up in a day? Maybe we have a writer on this, listening to this right now? Or maybe we have a social media person who’s like, I don’t want to have to mess with my website and they want a website up in a day. Where can they go check you out to learn more?

Lindy Nowak 34:36
You can find us on our website and schedule a call. It’s upinaday.co You can also find us on our Instagram, which needs help

Rai Cornell 34:50
Social media managers

Lindy Nowak 34:55
So you can find us at Up in a day at LinkedIn. We’re all at @up in a day LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and then yes our website. The other cool thing about what we offer for people who aren’t quite sure that they need to redesign is we do free website reviews, which is really fun.

Rai Cornell 35:13
Awesome. Well, we will put the link to all of those places in the show notes. Lindy, thank you so much for being here.

Lindy Nowak 35:21
Oh, thank you for having me. It was so much fun

Rai Cornell 35:36
Hey, Rai here again. Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, please subscribe and rate us in your favorite podcasting platform. Want to be a guest on the show or know someone who has an amazing story of entrepreneurship, apply on our website at chironconsulting.us /podcast.