Today we’d like to introduce you to Morgan Specht

Hi Morgan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.

I went to college for graphic design and marketing, and when I graduated in 2015 I fully intended on working a corporate job for 20 years or so, then maybe considering freelancing or starting my own business. I did land a pretty killer agency role right out of college, but it took me less than a year to realize it wasn’t a good fit for me and I definitely COULD NOT do this for the rest of my life.

Several job applications and lots of late nights of (unpaid) overtime later, I landed a in-house web design role and a tech company which was honestly pretty boring, but it did allow me plenty of free time to start freelancing on the side.

After about a year of doing that I realized that I’d made way more money freelancing than I could have ever expected and thought “maybe I can just do this full time”. So I hired a business coach and worked with her for a little over a year while we built my side-hustle into a full fledged design business that replaced my corporate income and allowed me to ditch my cubicle for good.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

There have definitely been hard days, days I wanted to quit, and days where I’ve spent more than a few hours searching for jobs on LinkedIn.

The biggest struggle that I think nobody can really prepare you for is the pressure of EVERYTHING being up to you. From bookkeeping to marketing to managing your team to actually executing the design work, every single decision comes back to you as the business owner which can be a lot to manage if you don’t have solid systems and support in place.

Getting used to the ebbs and flows in income was another big learning curve for me. I was so used to having X amount of money deposited into my bank account every two weeks, and learning to budget and plan for the slower months rather than just throwing all of my money back into my business when we had a good month was something I had to really get disciplined about.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

My agency offers brand strategy, brand design, and website design for online service providers. We specialize in building comprehensive brand experiences that are truly rooted in strategy, so while they (of course) look beautiful, they help our clients to actually grow their businesses, make more money, and reach their goals faster.

One of the things that’s really important to me and that I take a ton of pride in is how much time and effort we put into educating and empowering our clients around their brand. I hear so often from folks that their designer just handed them a brand guide and now they have no clue what to do next and that really breaks my heart, so we make it a point to teach our clients exactly why we made the decisions we did, how to use their new branding assets in a functional sense, and how to build upon what we’ve created to continue growing their brand and making sound, strategic branding decisions.

Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?

The best mentors I’ve ever had have been people who I truly could connect with on a friendship level. When you find someone who not only has walked the path you’re on before but also has a genuine intrest in you as a person, and makes you feel like you can be totally open and honest with them, it’s truly invaluable.

As far as networking, I really shifted my focus in networking this year from “networking to find clients” to “networking to find opportunities” and that’s changed the game for me. Before, when I would leave a networking event without a discovery call booked (which was most of the time) I would feel like a failure but now I enter networking events looking for places I can provide value to other peoples audiences, or people who I can collab with who have something meaningful to share with my clients/audience and that has been SO much more effective in growing my audience and my business.

Pricing:

• Branding starts at $2,997
• Websites start at $2,497
• Designer Days (VIP Day) $1,200
• Six Figure Brand Society Membership $197/mo

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.spechtand.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spechtand.co
• Other: https://www.sixfigurebrandsociety.com/join