Design Pickle's Russ Perry Is "The Sober Entrepreneur"
Nov 29, 2017
Read your prospects to sell how they want to buy
Stream below or right click here to download the episode.
Sales Tips you'll learn in The Sales Podcast...
- Founder and CEO of Design Pickle
- Had a creative and branding agency...but was bad at branding themselves
- He had tough companies he helped brand
- "You can't rename a baby"
- He hated boring names and names he can't share
- He hated acronyms
- "Year of soul searching"
- Closed his business unceremoneously
- Had two partners in Buenos Aires
- Was doing consulting
- Spent time with two business coaches
- Two key questions
- "What do you want?
- "What kind of business will get you there?"
- He liked working with companies who needed simple, straightforward design
- He had an outsourced designer and a part time project manager
- January 2015 he launched
- Everyone is full time with him regardless of where they are located
- Guest blogging
- Blasted his list via Gmail
- Got MailChimp
- Hustled
- Landed about 20 clients his first month and has been profitable
- The journey
- Year one:
- Defining the target audience and being confident in that
- Tried personas and target audiences but then they'd get a big influx of customers who weren't in that bucket
- Shifted from an industry to a behavior of the customer
- They have hired a designer before
- They see the value
- Year two:
- Growth in personnel
- How do we organize / structure the team?
- How do add management layers?
- Year three:
- Honing in on the marketing strategy
- Live events
- Online ads
- Partnerships
- Affiliates
- Year one:
- 125 full time staff, $500k in recurring monthly revenue
- His background prepared him for the launch of his company
- He saw the habits of his clients
- He knew their typical needs
- What's disruptive?
- What can I profit on?
- He was too low in the beginning
- Rigorous hiring process
- About four weeks
- It boils down to communication
- They screen their customers, too
- Weed out those who don't follow instructions
- Weed out the impatient
- Releasing his first book, "The Sober Entrepreneur"
- Passion project
- Struggled with alcohol and addiction. Beat it in 2013.
- Gotten clarity across the board
- Was even addicted to a bad business
- Part personal memoir and part practical
- Launching a same-day service tier

Listen To Previous Episodes of The Sales Podcast
Support The Families of Our Fallen Navy SEALs
The Navy SEALs and their families need your help. Please donate to my Tampa Bay Frogman Swim here to benefit the Navy SEAL Foundation.
Links Mentioned In The Sales Podcast
- Check out Design Pickle
- Buy his book, "The Sober Entrepreneur"
How'd You Like This Episode?
If you liked this episode, would you please share your appreciation by letting my guest and me know on Twitter and by leaving a 5-star review on iTunes. It helps more than you would think.
If you need more help growing your sales, check out the following resources scattered around this site and a few others I operate, such as:
- Make Every Sale
- Get ActiveCampaign For Just $9
- Hire The Best Keynote Speaker
- Infusionsoft Review
- HubSpot vs Infusionsoft
- Ontraport vs Infusionsoft
- Make Your Marketing Magnetic: This is where it all began for me. You can attract qualified, eager buyers like clockwork when you master the concepts in this valuable program.