Branding G'Day Frank

Ian Paget: So on your website, you have this nice introductory story, and I think it'd be a nice way to open up the interview. So.. once upon a time in late 2017, "I want to start a business." Says Frank in a text message to Samantha. "Do you know how to do that?" Replied Samantha. "No, but I'm sure I'll figure it out." Frank energetically replied. So I think that's a really fantastic kind of introduction to your website. And I think it's a good opening for this podcast as well. So I'd like to find out more about your story. So I think that's quite a big moment to make your mind out that you want to start your own business. So what were the events that led up to that for you to make your mind up that you want to start your own graphic design business?

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah, I mean, I could say it's like a story as old as time type of thing, but it really doesn't feel as momentous as it possibly sounds. I think at the end of the day, for me, I was working in television production design role. And so I was coming up with identities day in day out for new TV shows. And after seven or six years at the time, six and a half years, it was kind of drawing along tether and I was not so enthused about it.

The team was just not having so many wins and things, and it's a really low hit rate. It's kind of like the hit rate you might have on an e-commerce store where it's like three to 6%. This was a kind of hit rate for TV shows getting up on air. So it was a bit deflating and not seeing your work out there as much as you'd hope it would be and all these kind of things.

Anyway, I got to this point where I was starting to reconnect with, I guess, the design community that I felt a part of when I was in my uni days, six, seven years prior. And I just thought to myself, look, there's got to be something that I can do more than this. I don't think I want to go into working at another agency or another production house or something like this. And I'd always watched my father, who is a self-made man of sorts.

He's a contractor in the music industry and does really big amazing shows from anything from Elton John to Coldplay to just you name it, he probably worked on that tour. But watching him having done what he's done, working from home, having that diligence to actively do the work while being in the home setting and obviously flying away and doing tours and things.

But to see it's actually possible, kind of gave me an idea that I don't want to work for somebody. I want to do it for myself. And so this was the kind of catalyst, at some stage I want to do my own thing and I think I can potentially do this. And that's, I guess, when I started seeing a few different people on YouTube that were doing design stuff and I joined some Facebook groups, one of them was yours actually, Ian.

And just saw this amazing community. And I was like, oh my God, a lot of people are doing this. This is fantastic. And then most people, probably a million or more people out there discovered Chris Do and The Futur and what they were teaching at the time was quite revolutionary, if you will, and it just sparked something. I was like, this is it. This is the time I want to do this.

And me chasing bright lights, it was just like falling down a rabbit hole of all these different bits of information, either business or how to interact with clients and all this kind of stuff. And end of 2017, I just thought to myself, look, my child at the moment, we had not even a one year old, I don't think of that stage, six months old, and we've got married, we've done all the things.

And we've got to the point here where I think this might be my time. Let's do this. And that's when I sent that message to my wife and I sent that text message and we worked in the same building, we're in the same office. I mean, I could have just walked over there, but sent her a text message anyway.

And she sent that back and then we had a chat over lunch, I think, and it just kind of snowballed and just the momentum kept going and then six months later I handed in my resignation and kind of was out of there, but there's a bit more to that story, but I don't want to keep rattling on there, but that was kind of where it went.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Well, I'm keen to go into this story because I think a lot of people get to the point where you are in your story right now, where they work for a company, they're no longer happy or fulfilled in that company, they have stuff going on in their personal lives. I was in the same situation, me and my partner at the time, we had a little one and I think that's an important moment for a lot of people and they feel that they want to be able to be at home more.

So I think this is common. People feel this way, but a lot of people don't know what to do to go to that next step. And that's something that I'd love to go into. So I'm aware that you created good... I can't get my words out. G'day Frank. Got it out in the end. I wouldn't make a very good Australian, would I?

And so you made your mind up whilst working in a stable job that you would like to leave that stability and work for yourself and earn enough income to cover all of the living costs and everything for you, your family, and for your little one. That's a big jump. That's a big commitment. You mentioned about there being a six-month gap. So that's scary for a lot of people. So when you decided to leave, did you have any clients yet? Did you have any website? Did you have anything? Was there anything there yet, or is that what you got ready in that six months?

Reagan Mackrill: Nothing prepared, no clients per se, but I will say this is the big caveat to all of this of why it was a successful jump and it wasn't a leap like most people would have to do and hope and pray and all the rest of it. It was just a pretty easy jump because when I left the company I was working for, I kept them on as a client.

And so I kept doing the same work that I was doing and was on a retainer with them for 18 months after that and then had some additional work within that same company that raised my income or revenue, if you will, even more and then started bringing on clients as I could do more and more and more. And work capacity wise, that was no problem.

It was just more the business acumen side of things, which was just non existent. And I think for many designers, many creatives, we all excel in the creativity and creating things and doing all the amazing things that many, many people can't do. What we severely lack a lot of the time is this acumen to know finances, to know legal, to know business etiquette and running that's profitable and all these kind of things.

I'm still learning, don't get me wrong. I'm still making mistakes and still figuring things out here. But I think if I didn't do the due diligence that I did at the start, which was things like connecting with a lawyer, and that, for me, opportunely was someone I used to work with that was the head of legal at the time and he knew his ins and outs, and it was very easy to connect with.

And we just did a bit of a barter of services to create my contracts and know a little bit of the lingo to be able to negotiate contracts and things like that, which served very well at the time. But then also connecting with an uncle of mine who was, at the time, had just retired from a very high up position in business and in finances.

And so he helped me set the business up and gave me some good footing of what to kind of do next and then connected with an accountant. So they set me up and did all the rest of that kind of thing and took that obligation away kind of from me to have to really know what the hell I was doing and make it something that seemed like I knew what I was doing.

And I kind of did, I guess, halfheartedly, but looking back on it, I knew nothing. It was like that thing in Game of Thrones, you know nothing, John Snow. And it kind of felt like that now looking back on it, but you kind of wing it, I think that's the thing and you had that gut feeling that this is going to work. This is going to work.

And so that six months was watching, A, a lot of The Future, just ridiculously just on replay and watching live streams that they were doing and all the rest of it was fantastic content at the time, really helpful. At the moment, it doesn't really fly with me at the moment because I'm, I think, a little bit past it. But in terms of at the time, it was what I needed then, and then finding other books that were about how to start up a creative business.

I think one book I bought was the Creative Truth, I think it was. I can't remember what the author's name was off the top of my head. And then just trying to absorb all the different things and all the legalities for government stuff and all the hooah that goes with it. And so that way, once I handed my resignation and I felt confident to say, I'm out, my boss was just like, "No, please don't go. I need you."

I said, "Well, I want to go, but have a bit of a tether, still have a lead in here and still help you out. I don't want to cut you guys out at the moment. I'm wondering if you'll allow me the opportunity to fly and do my own thing, but still work with you to do all this stuff?" And that worked harmoniously for 12 months. It got a bit hit and missed in the last six months of that 18 months.

But once I walked out of that with a contract in hand, I was like, let's go. So June 30, this is the end of our financial year here in Australia, July 2nd was the Monday after that Friday and it was rubber hits the road. So there was a kind of a lot to it. I have glossed over a fair bit of it, but for the nuts and bolts of the main things, that's what I kind of did and just winged it, I guess.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I think you were really lucky there when you handed in your notice that they were open to you.

Reagan Mackrill: Oh, yeah. And that's hard thing. There's no guarantees with what that conversation is going to be like and what the result of it is. I mean, I was prepared to at the end of the day, walk away from that and just figure it out and just take that risk. And if everything balls up, I just move back in with my mom or something like that with my family and just work it out kind of thing.

There's that fallback. And not everybody has that fallback. And I think that's the big thing that you can't kind of learn from someone else's journey a lot of the time. You got to figure out in your own circumstances. But it's freaking risky, I got to say.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I was really lucky that when I got to that point and I handed in my notice, first of all, I already had a client. So I already had a stream of clients. I already had a presence online. So when I handed in my notice, I probably would've been okay, but I was lucky that it wasn't something that I asked for, but they offered part-time and that worked for me.

There was that transition. And being honest, I think if I did completely cut and lose them, I probably would've really have struggled because, like you said, you kind of figure stuff out as you go. You can read as much as you can from books, you can watch as much as you can online, but when you've been working for a company and you've just been doing that one role and now you leave and you suddenly have to do everything and you can't rely on anyone else, you're going to make mistakes whether you like it or not.

So having that transition between the two is amazing, if you can have that. So there's so much that we could possibly go into in terms of your story just based on what you said then, but there's 1000 things I want to talk about with you. I know we can probably talk for a long time. So let's see if we can break this down. So one thing that I think you are amazing at, incredible at is the ability to create a personal brand.

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah, I'll take that.

Ian Paget: I think it's something that you are really good at this. In terms of graphic designers online, I think you are one of the best people that I know that do this. And I want to make sure that we dedicate a decent amount of time to this topic. We can dive into other stuff-

Reagan Mackrill: Don't make my head any bigger here. It's already big enough.

Ian Paget: Okay. So personal branding. Why G'day Frank? Frank isn't even your name. Your name is Reagan. So how did G'day Frank come up?

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah, let's take it back to that. So everyone kind of wigs out when they're like, that's not your name. It's like, well, if you know me on LinkedIn, I have it as my actual name, legal name, but Frank comes from my middle name, Francis. Everyone might go, oh, Francis, but it's such an old-timey kind of name, but it's both my grandfather's names.

Interestingly, when my parents met for the first time and they said, oh, what's your parents' name? And what's your parents' name? And both my grandparents on both sides are Betty and Frank. And it was this weird conversation my parents had and it's a great story. But for me growing up with the name Reagan, there's nothing wrong with a name, there's harder names to pronounce and spell than mine, but it was always misspelled and mispronounced.

I get Reagans a lot and weird spellings that sound like I'm a Game of Thrones character. It kind of always grinded either my gears or even my parents' gears and especially my surname as well, Mackrill, people say mackerel like the fish, and it's just a bit of a conundrum. And so to introduce myself to people, I've had even an instance where I said, oh, good, my name is Reagan. And this guy just totally was off completely.

And he said, "Oh, Greg?" I was like, "Mate, do you want to try again?" And so from there, I just wanted to give some person that I connected with the easiest way to connect with me and remember me and I knew that wasn't going to be with Reagan. It just isn't going to fly, even just seeing emails that come back with different spellings.

So I just thought let's go with my surname and what my grandfathers called themselves is Frank and made that a thing. The G'day part of it, I mean, low and behold, I'm an Australian and that's how I greet people rather than saying hello, or hi, or, hey, I'll say G'day. And literally walk down the street and someone walks past, and I'll say, G'day, if they're local. If they're just some random in the city, I'm not going to say hello to everybody.

But that kind of salutation creates an interesting instance where I can answer the phone and say, G'day, Frank speaking, and kind of use the brand name right there. Or I can, write an email or a client can write back an email to me and say, G'day, Frank, and my brand name is right there in that first greeting, if they want to use it.

And a few clients have, and they put the little smile emoji after it and see what I did? That of thing. And it always makes me smile when that kind of thing happens where if I say, "G'day, how are you doing?" They say, "G'day, Frank." And it's like there's the brand name right there. So it's nothing new. There are a few businesses in Australia that do use G'day at the start of their business name and it works quite interesting.

And it's just to say that I'm an Australian, my name is Frank. It's not really Frank, but it's my middle name. So it's still not just a made up thing. And it's just easy to remember, easy to spell, easy to pronounce and that's what a brand should be. It's what a logo should be. It's all these hallmarks of branding.

And I don't think I considered it like that too much when I was creating it. Originally, I wanted to call it Frank but then I found out there was heba businesses called Frank and it wasn't original at all, but then found G'day Frank was free on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, on domain name for gdayfrank.com. And I was like, let's roll with this. Let's see what happens. And the branding side of things, I just made a logo and kind of slapped it together, used pink and blue because it was like, boy, girl, I'm not offending anybody there. Let's do real stereotypical.

Pink might be a little bit off center for a guy to be using. Low and behold, there's a couple of other guys seem to do branding that have pink as well, but that was kind of the guts of it. There was nothing too overly considered about it. But since then, it's evolved and I've started to understand what I can do with it and really make it something into so many different touch points. So that's where it comes from that inception. That's a really long answer, but that's what it is.

Ian Paget: No, you explained that incredibly well. And I think one of the amazing things about it is you can't really forget it. And I think you are right that Reagan, I will be honest, I've never heard anyone else with that name. So I can understand why people would spell it incorrectly and I can understand why you made your mind up to go in a different route.

Reagan Mackrill: Especially in Australia and the UK. In America, they've had a president, Ronald Reagan, I think that's where the name originally came to my parents. So if I was in America, Reagan, it's generally a female name of all things. So the only other person I've met that's a Reagan is a lady and she was American. So it's not uncommon.

If you typed in, you know that name thing you might have seen on Instagram about looking up your name in Urban Dictionary or something like that what that means, it's always a female kind of definition. There's no blokes ones in there, but it's a bit of a tricky one at times, not to say that I'll change it or anything. I'll just use it kind of as someone on a stage name would use, Ringo Star's name isn't Ringo Star kind of thing and just make that a thing.

Ian Paget: Yeah, definitely. So in terms of expanding on your personal brand, another thing that I feel that you've done well, and I don't know if it was like this from the outset, your website, your social media, you have, first of all, fantastic images of you. They all seem to capture a lot of personality. And when you read your website copy, it also has that same personality.

It feels like there's some great plan to this that you've really... It's almost like you created a strategy for how you wanted to come across and you've worked hard to put that all into your content, your images, your social media, and everything like that. And is that the case? Because I think if anyone needs a good example of how to do a post of the brand, go and look at your website because I think you've done it all well.

Reagan Mackrill: Let's say yes, but no. I mean, I'll take the compliment as well, but I think for me, it's just, again, figuring it out as I go and I don't think there's any grand master plan. If it looks like it's put together, fantastic. I mean, that's the ideal result. But for me, it's not knowing until someone else says it's good or bad or enticing to want to work with me.

So I guess, the thing I want to deliver to my clients to be slightly different in the way that I go about it is to, the first thing you see on my side is be seen, heard, and remembered as a brand with personality. And if I can't deliver that for myself, then how does a client have the confidence to think that I can do it for them?

And I think that's that mirroring of expectations that if he can do it from himself, what could he do for us kind of thing. And especially if you took it in the light, which most clients are going to consider this, but for us as creatives, to create a brand or a logo or any kind of design for ourselves, it's really tough.

I remember designing my wedding invitations, that was like pulling teeth, trying to get something that I was happy and proud of and represented both my wife and myself and what we wanted to create as a celebration of our relationship. And it was very similar with my own representation of how I wanted to present myself but also as an extension of, this persona that I've created that is Frank and removed myself from who I am as Reagan, which is not as loud and verbose and vibrant as you might think.

It's a little bit more normal, I don't know, whatever normal is. And it's just kind of developed over time. So for me, that first website that I created took me six months until after I started my business to actually get it kind of up and have some content on there. And it's had such different iterative looks and feels, and now it feels like it's at a place where I think I'm best fitting of how I see branding and then what it is I do and there's some clarity there.

And the big thing for me, there was this kind of epiphany moment halfway through this year was coming up with my own kind of definition. It's so bloody audacious of a designer or a branding person to come up with their own definition, but here we are, we're all trying to do it. And it was creating a captivating moment of connection from clarity.

And that captivating moment for me is turning up with an ungodly amount of personality, and colour, and vigour, and energy when I don't even drink coffee and make it something that's compelling to sit through or flick through or read or whatever. Even if I rattle on, like I might on a podcast, or my captions on my Instagram, if that captivates you and that forms a connection, fantastic.

Right there, we've got something going on about a brand that you're going to remember me for. And then all this comes out of clarity of knowing who it is I want to connect with, how I want to connect with them, what I want them to feel, all these kind of things to create an experience and everything of ties in with it. So for me, I feel like I'm quite grounded in what it is I do now.

I mean, it's only been three years and this will probably change in a fleeting moment in a year and a half maybe. But I think just knowing and being comfortable in your shoes of where you're at and maybe this comes with age or whatnot, but just being content at least for a certain amount of time and go, yes, I'm proud of where I am.

And then that way, you can talk more naturally, you can communicate as you think you are who you are and what best is a reflection of what other people see of you and all these kind of things so that if you turn up in person and that person goes, hey, you're totally different to how you are online.

I don't want that. When I went to a design conference halfway through the year, a lot of people came up to me and they knew me. I had no idea who half these people were, that they followed me on Instagram and I was like, "Hey, how are you doing? Introduce yourself." They were like, "Oh, hi, I know you. I follow you on Instagram."

I was like, "Come on, let's start up a conversation here." And they're like, "Oh, that's fantastic. You're so welcoming and just like I thought you maybe might be, but I wasn't too sure. When you meet some people, there might be totally different in person." There's just a lot of different ways that you can go about presenting yourself in a different way that is not just, hi, I'm a designer. Here's my work. What do you think?

You can entertain, you can educate. You've got so much opportunity to connect with people rather than what designers had 10, 20 years ago where you had to do it face-to-face, you had to call people, you had to do all these face-to-face meetings. You had to knock on doors. You didn't have the same opportunities as you had now. So it's, why the hell not? Why wouldn't I put on a wig and have a little bit of fun and not take myself so seriously? Why wouldn't I get in front of microphone and think I'm all that and make a podcast.

Doing all these things just to show up and have fun and not take it too seriously, but also understand what it is you do and what kind of impact you make and show people the way, I guess, and give people the confidence to feel like you know what it is you're doing that you can help people, I think is what helps you kind of get a bit of an understanding of what you bring to the table and you go from there and you be comfortable in that.

Ian Paget: Yeah. You know what, I find it really interesting what you said about these websites where people say, hey, I'm a graphic designer. Here's my work. I remember a lot of people doing that type of thing five years ago or more, maybe 10 years. But I think now, and I don't know exactly why it's going down this route, but I'm finding that the most successful designers or people that are doing well or well known tend to almost act like a celebrity.

So I feel like I fall into that category because I've got my own podcast, I've got my own community, I'm doing all these things. You are doing this stuff as well. So you have your own community, you got your social media, you attend these conferences, you speak events, you are kind of a celebrity. And I feel like in order you succeed, you kind of need to do this. Do you agree with that?

Reagan Mackrill: I'd say yes and no. I mean, I always say this to somebody, especially if they wanted to make a podcast, you don't have to make a podcast to connect and speak your truth about what it is you want to do. You can happily go along with life and just create great things in silence and do your thing and people can admire you.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I agree.

Reagan Mackrill: You don't have to get out there and do all these things. There's amazing physicians out there that change people's lives and they're unsung heroes and kind of things. Whereas other people are not so much, I don't want to say chauvinistic, but just happy to revel in that limelight and it might pump them up. It might give them some inspiration. It might just give them that opportunity to connect with people and share and belong and do all these kind of things.

And I think once you get to a point where you've maybe done it, I don't know, altruistically or just for the fun of it, I feel like I've made what I've made for the fun of it rather than some hairy, twinkling my hands, like Mr. Burns kind of thing of plotting some crazy strategy out there. It's not so much that.

It's just having fun with something can then people notice and it just perpetuates and people start to share things and go, hey, there's that guy. I like what he's doing, or I like what she's doing and you follow along and you've got this thing called social media there that just amplifies that and it makes those connections a lot easier than it probably would have back in the day, like I mentioned.

So it does, I think, potentially help open doors. Having this idea of fame or notoriety good or bad, you can be polarising and still be very successful. There's many cases of that in many different industries that can help you, or you can just be an all round amazing dude, like a guy like Mike Janda just wants to be everybody's friend and is such a lovely bloke and gives and gives and gives and gives and you become known for something.

And I think if you turn up and you become known for something, it might be intentional or it might not be intentional. I mean, totally oblivious and you just, all of a sudden you're like, that Emily in Paris show where she's just has hundreds and thousands of followers because she's just taken some photos of herself in Paris and everyone starts following her for some reason.

It can be a hit or miss. But I think for me, the experience that I've had at least of creating content, creating a podcast, creating other accounts that was helping share what it is I was learning and sharing the learnings of others in this G'day Design Life thing that I had going for about a year and a half, a year or so ago. And that led me to meeting the guy that designed the logo for Apple, Rob Janoff.

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I've seen that video. I'll share that in the show notes. It's very good.

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah. Thanks, man. That was just awesome. I mean, it was such a geeky moment, such Logo Geeky moment of meeting Rob, and especially when he is such a humble, down to earth bloke. And just these weird and wonderful things where doors open and you have these conversations and these connections, and it might not lead to work necessarily and to revenue things and all these kind of things, but it might be that catalyst that helps you become more confident, more apt in how you communicate.

And that might come across in how I articulate myself in a podcast like this that I can happily get in front of a microphone and just talk. Whereas probably three, four years ago before I started my business, I think I would've been a little bit more boring, to be perfectly honest. So it has its positives, but it can have its negatives, I got to say, Ian, as well.

I don't know if you experienced this of you can have criticism or you can have people that don't like you and you can bite heads with people. I've had that in several instances of late or in the last couple of years where just you have conflict with people and people have conflict with you because either you are doing something that they're not, or they're doing something that you are not.

And you get a bit of tall poppy syndrome happening and I don't know if it's jealousy or if it's just difference of opinions, whatever it might be, where you to become on a stage with people that either have a similar limelight or wanting to have a limelight and getting their nickers in a knot, whatever.

Ian Paget: I think that type of thing is sadly part of being on the stage that you are open to criticism. But I feel that you need to ignore that unless someone starts doing that to you, just block them. You don't need that type of person in your life. I think in terms of all of this stuff, even though you said it doesn't always bring in any clients or doesn't impact your revenue or anything like that, I do feel that all of this stuff collectively creates credibility and reputation.

It's mainly for reputation growth, making people aware of who you are. So you mentioned that people notice. And I think that's really important because if people notice you and know what you are doing, that means that when they need branding or a logo, who are they going to go to? The person that they noticed and that comes to their mind when they think of that thing.

Reagan Mackrill: That's it. Who you gonna call... Ghostbusters. That's exactly it.

Ian Paget: Exactly. So I know we agree you don't need to become "like a celebrity". I'm using that word in quotes because I'm not sure the best word to use, but you are right, it opens up doors. When I started just posting on social media, posting on Twitter, so posting on Twitter daily, I know Twitter is not the big thing now, but at the time, that was one of the main channels, that opened up doors that opened up other doors that opened up other door that opened up other doors.

There's always a domino effect to this type of thing. And I know with you and everything that you're doing, if you hadn't done a load of this social media stuff prior, you probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to sit down and interview Rob. You wouldn't have been personally prepared to sit down and have the confidence to actually interview him.

So I think I know a lot of graphic designers probably find the idea of doing what we are doing right now terrifying, and I've been there. I've been through that. And I know by persevering with it... So when I first started my podcast, and to be honest, you can go right back and listen to the first one. So you can listen to something that I did prior-

Reagan Mackrill: Oh, I have.

Ian Paget: ... called SideGig, I was really nervous and it's all very monotone in the way that I'm speaking. And a lot of the time I had to rerecord parts in the interview and you can really hear that it's all kind of fudged together. But if you don't start and you don't try, and when I say this, I'm not just referring to a podcast, this could be video, it could be audio, it could be posting on social media.

If you don't start, you are never going to get good at it because you are not allowing yourself to learn and to make mistakes. But I really do think that graphic designers now in order to succeed, I personally don't think you can just sit there and post stuff online, just post stuff on your website. You'll probably get clients, but I don't think that you're going to really thrive in the way that you want unless you get out there and start creating a personal brand.

Reagan Mackrill: Exactly. You can't just sit in your house. Even if you had a soapbox, you stood on it, you had a megaphone and decided shouting, I'm a graphic designer, no one is going to hear because you're not in front of people. You need to be in front of people for people to hear you, see you, interact with you and then, as you say, think of you at the time when someone might need you.

They might not need you right now. And I think if you do make content and people aren't engaging, and the only people that are engaging is your mom, hi, mom, if you are listening, but I don't think you know how to get to the podcast. If that's the audience at the moment, that's okay. There might be somebody there that is just a bit of a lurker and they come and tap you on the shoulder three years later and go, hey, I've been following you actually for a while here.

I might not have actually pressed the follow button, but I keep checking your content and keep looking at you and now is the time that I've got a business and I need someone like you. And I really admire what you do and I've connected with you and understand what your kind of personality is. I think you'd be great to help us here. How about it?

That can happen. I've had that happen of somebody that's just stalked me for about a year on LinkedIn and just said, "Dude, I've got something for you. You want to chat?" And I was like, "Let's go." And then you find out that he said at the end of the day, "I've been watching you for a year." And I'm like, "That's weird." But here we are.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I've had the same experience because you kind of have to keep making people aware of what you do. I think that's what it boils down to. You kind of want as many people as possible to know what you do and you want to keep reminding as many people that you do what you do and to always be on their mind.

And you could do that just with telephone calls or with text messages or whatever, but we're in this one wonderful day and age where we have the Internet, we have social media, we have all of these platforms. There's endless amount of platforms. There's new stuff always coming out. If you use those to your advantage, people can become fans of you. They can get to know you, they can enjoy your work, they can enjoy your content.

And, like you said, something like a logo or branding, someone is not just going to decide when they first speak to you, "Oh, I need that. I'm happy to invest my money in that." They will need to wait for the right time and then they need to be able to think who could do that for them. And if they know you, if they like you, if they trust that you can do the job and you being able to consistently prove that you can do that, who are they going to call? They're going to call you.

Reagan Mackrill: Exactly. I think that there's one kind of pitfall, I guess, to doing this and showing up and creating a kind of a following or an audience or people that engage with you in a community or whatnot. I think for many creatives, you start to attract those that are like you. You can't help it. I didn't set out to make content on Instagram to appeal my fellow creative.

At no point did I, until I really made a side account that I could just share what it is I was learning and learn at the same time with G'day Design Life. And I think a lot of designers might potentially, like me, get sidetracked by wanting to educate others or share that knowledge or share that process rather than trying to target and aim that content at a potential business or client or individual that could benefit from your services or what you do best.

Everybody at some stage has created educational content for their fellow designer or for the fellow creative, which is nothing bad, but it might detract your attention away. Sorry. Is the word detract? No. Whatever the word is. Just take you away from what it is you should be realistically doing that's most viable to what it is you need to do.

That's just one thing to kind of keep in mind if you do show up like this and just kind of think to yourself, do I need to be sharing what it is I know with fellow designers? Is this is going to be advantageous to me finding a new client? Is a client going to find this interesting? They might say that this guy knows what they're doing because they're showing me how to do these things.

I don't know how the hell to do it. They seem like the expert. That's great. That can happen. I see Made by James, James Martin doing that really well, but he still shows the actual work. He's doing a lot of it. And so there's always exceptions to that rule, but I think we might just get a bit clouded in wanting to share and do all the things.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I know I'm probably not the best example of that, but in my case, it's very much a conscious choice, I intentionally wanting to go down a route of creating content for other graphic designers. But what I found by doing this, and at the beginning, I did fall into that trap and it was kind of my accident. But as my business has progressed, creating this content now, I'm making an income from this through sponsorship.

But also the way it is anything you do, no matter who it targets, it grows your reputation, it improves your reputation, it kind of cements credibility, it opens up doors. So even though I'm creating that content for other graphic designers, it still achieves all of that stuff that allows me to attract clients in indirect ways, but that's a whole topic in its own and I've got more questions that I want to ask you.

Reagan Mackrill: Let's go. Let's press on.

Ian Paget: So I want to ask you about niching down, and I have no idea how this has gone. I can't remember when you started it, but at some point, I think it was about a year ago, you set up brandmypodcast.com and I have checked this online and I don't know if this has gone well or not for you because it feels like now it's not so much of a priority for you. So can we talk about this?

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah, let's go.

Ian Paget: When you started out, you decided you're going to be a generalist branding identity guy then at some point, I think you listened to the interview that I did with Mark Des Cotes.

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah, that's the one.

Ian Paget: And you was inspired by that.

Reagan Mackrill: Absolutely.

Ian Paget: So you created brandmypodcast.com and from what I could see, you did all the right moves. So you created a podcast about it, you created a website about it, you was using Clubhouse and having these daily calls. In terms of strategy and everything that I feel that a graphic designer should do to succeed in a niche, you was doing all of it. And if anyone wants a good case study, go and check out what you did with Brand my Podcast. But can you talk about that? So why did you decide to do that? And then how did it all go?

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah. I'll start by saying you can't find it anymore. The URL won't exist in a couple of days. So it didn't go well and for a few reasons. But I'll come back to that. So I remember it as clear as day listening to that episode with Mark. I was at my kid's swimming lesson. I had my AirPods in watching him and just listening to this episode. It was about podcasting. I was like, oh, I have a podcast or two. Let's have listen to this.

This guy does branding and does a bit of it with podcasters and helps them create their cover arts and always comes up. So I was like, damn, why have I not thought of this? This could be interesting. There might be something in this. And I didn't think it really needed all that much to create something that looked the part, sounded the part, and all the rest of it.

So I could create the landing page in a couple of days and kind of sub-branded just G'day Frank in a way, put some headphones around my little GF logo and made it kind of look the part and everything. And thought, let's make a podcast that accompanies it and create content around it. And so from January 11th was my birthday start of this year, let's go, let's make something different.

Let's niche down because everybody says niche. I hate the word niche now because it doesn't mean absolute Jack S-H-I-T because if you don't get it right, it's not going to be worth it. And it wasn't worth it for me. In six months, it just fell flat maybe because I wasn't actively going after the right people. I don't know. But it just wasn't viable quick enough. And I think for me, a niche needs to evolve over time.

It's not something you just go now I'm going to do this. It might look, it might work. Who knows. But I think for me, if I'd done it as a side thing and just sort of built up a bit of a notoriety, I guess, in the space and sort of put it out here and there and offered it as a sort of a side service like Mark has, it's a better way of going about it.

And I think you build up that credibility over time. Just saying overnight, I wanted to be the person that does podcast branding and just think that everything is going to come flooding in. Just because you say it is doesn't mean it always is going to happen. And that was what I experienced. This is the first time me really talking about this because at the time, it was just a bit of a craft one but by four or five months in, I was just like, what am I doing?

I'm having fun, but this isn't really working. I have all the clarity around it that I need, but it's just not viable. And I found that it's not viable because there's somebody on Fiverr charging $5 for artwork, for cover art and how many podcasters that are starting out that it's just every day Joes like me wanting to shell out a few thousand dollars for some guy to brand it and make it a proper legit looking thing.

Not many because I know that not many podcasters succeed in creating podcasts. You get Podfeed and you die right after five to 10 episodes, maybe 20 if you've had a good crack at it. It's not as viable, especially commercially to generate revenue out of it. You need to be doing it for a long time and get sponsorships like Ian does.

So just for me, the rose coloured glasses sort of shattered. They didn't just come away. They were just like, what are you doing? And that's where I was like, look, this needs to kind of finish here. I've had fun. I have explored the idea of niching hard and quickly and it's not viable for me to create a sustainable income out of this.

And so I was like, I need to go back to branding the way I was doing it to service in product-based businesses be it here in Australia or abroad and maybe niche kind of in some places where I've had some traction already and kind of say, these are kind of the general areas that I think I'm best suited to based off past experience and things like that and maybe some slightly bit of interest.

But I think to niche, you're better off niching on a type of service offering like if it's branding or if it's illustration or if it's website design, UX, or UI, that kind of thing, rather than doing the kind of the vertical or is it the vertical or horizontal, whichever axis it is of industry.

It can be a bit fraught with danger, but I know people like, I think one of your admin of Logo Geek, Craig, that does schools and that kind of branding, I think over time he probably found that niche that just working him with more and more over time and made something out of it. So it no longer exists, I'm sorry to say.

Ian Paget: Oh, that's a shame. Watching you when you did that, I felt like, in terms of all of the moves, it felt like you were doing all the right things. So you were creating content specifically to help podcasters. So you was doing that through social media, so on Instagram primarily, as far as I'm aware. You were also using Clubhouse to do these really nice live events where you were talking about podcasting to attract people. You also set up a really good website where you outline what your product and service was. But I don't know if you would-

Reagan Mackrill: Social media is everything.

Ian Paget: Yeah. You was doing everything that I would advise someone to do if they were going to niche down. You obviously know what you're doing you did all of that right. Do you think that... Because I don't think niching necessarily failed. I think where it potentially did fail is that there was just not enough people out there that would be willing to pay the amount of money that you were charging.

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah, absolutely.

Ian Paget: Because I know speaking with Mark about this because it's an interesting one. There are different kind of price tiers. There's lots of people out there doing this type of thing from Fiverr and I think Mark kind of has fixed price products and I think they're really cheap still. In terms your pricing, if I remember right, it was a lot more expensive than what's out there. Do you think that's potentially the reason why it failed rather than the concept of niching down?

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah, probably. I think the services that I were offering was probably catered to the 1% and it's a hard 1% and find, I guess, without sort of sounding desperate, hey, your podcast artwork sucks or your website sucks. Do you want something to look properly here because you've got a great podcast. That's not a very easy sell.

So the price is one thing and I think if I was starting out, if I was an 18-year-old still living at home $100 would just make me happy, then absolutely. It felt like starting from scratch, I got to say. So I was back to square one of going, I'm going to need to build up a whole reputation here and then think that I'm the only person doing branding for podcasts or anything like that. Get real.

It was just a bit too fanciful thinking, I guess, but a good learning point, I think, of knowing what works and what doesn't. But I think the other part to it is just time. So being in it long enough to see the fruit of that labor. And for me, what I didn't recognise is that the time that it took for me to find the first client I had as a result of creating content on social media or on Instagram and LinkedIn and having a website and all the rest of it, that took 12 months to have somebody say, I found you on Instagram, or I found you on LinkedIn. Let's work together.

Before that it was a lot of word of mouth kind of conversation or referrals or things like that. So just knowing that, I couldn't wait around until I started getting traction and it wasn't probably going to be a fruitful outcome to be viable for this business to succeed. And me being the kind of sole income earner for our family, my wife is helping with the business, but she doesn't have a job herself, it doesn't work.

So you need to be able to recognise this very quickly. If you don't, then you're really going to be able to creek without a paddle, especially during a pandemic. At the time, it was just an absolute thunderstorm of things waiting to heat that I was like, I can't. I literally laid down on the floor here on my office and was like, what am I going to do?

And that's where I just got the whiteboard out, took it out the back into the backyard and I documented all this and was like, this is what I'm going to do now. This is where the epiphany moment of my brand definition came from and who I was going to work with and how I was going to present myself and just did this pivot. And since I did that pivot, my business is back up and running and it's doing really well.

Ian Paget: Amazing.

Reagan Mackrill: And I think it's those moments that make you or break you. Obviously, that broke me. I was in tears. And you saw the tears as well. If you saw my vlogs on YouTube and Instagram, when I went to this design conference, in one of the last vlogs, I was just a shattered mess. You might not have really recognised it, but I was in pieces. I was just a broken man inside just kind of putting a smile on my face and a camera on my face.

Ian Paget: You worked really hard. You put in the time. You put in the effort. And, like I said, you know how I keep saying that you're very good at personal branding, when you release that Brand my Podcast, you put in everything to it.

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah, that was everything all day every day. It was a crazy amount. And even before I launched it, that was doing it over this time last year of the Christmas-New Year break. And I was just ferociously going at this thing. And I was talking to a few people about it and they're like, "How did you do all this?" Kind of thing. And I'm like, "I just did it. You don't know if you don't go." Kind of thing and whatever. And just pulled it out of my hat and everyone was like, where did this come from? Kind of thing.

It makes sense. You do podcasts. You have a good grounding of it. You can add your branding flare to it and all the rest of it and make it something great. But I think it was a little bit of a hard sell at the price it was and not being able to afford myself the time, especially when runway's dwindling that I had in my bank and all the rest of it. It just becomes a very, very swift decision, but a hard decision at the same time to just cut it loose and just go. Cut this Peter Pan dream can't continue, unfortunately.

Ian Paget: Yeah. But now you have a great story to tell

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah, exactly. And It'll go in a book or something later down the track. Who knows?

Ian Paget: Yeah, definitely. Well, I think you make a valid point that if you're going to create something new, then building up slightly makes sense. I mean, that's what I've done with all of the Logo Geek stuff. Now I'm at a point where I can specialise in logo design. I can charge a decent amount of money for logos. But when I started out, I couldn't do that because I didn't have the portfolio pieces.

I hadn't built up a reputation yet. I hadn't established any authority on social media or any authority on Google. All of that stuff takes time. And when I've seen graphic designers succeed in a niche, I think you're right, they do tend to gradually work toward that. I know that's what Craig did with School Branding Matters. He obviously didn't do that at the beginning, but he gradually phased towards that.

It's something I've been thinking about, maybe going more down a niche, but I think if I was going to do that, I would do it just as a side thing for a while. Any clients that I get that's in that particular niche, just to put it on that website and to slowly build it rather than... I think, if I remember right, you went in hard. You cut off one thing.

Reagan Mackrill: Yeah, went all in.

Ian Paget: You went all in. You really did and it was impressive to watch and it's really sad to hear that it didn't work out.

Reagan Mackrill: It's such a gamble. It's just like starting a business, it's such a gamble. If you roll a dice, you go all in. You can either win big, maybe, but it's a very small maybe that it's going to happen or you can fall on your face and call it a day and go, well, I tried and at least I can show that I put good bloody effort into it and might be a bit of a case study for others to realize what to be prepared for in those kinds of instances.

If you do it, it's most likely, I've got to say, probably not going to succeed, but if you take anything from it, be prepared for the long haul and make it something that you can build up over time so it does become viable over time. Even if it succeeded at the beginning and I got all this traction, it's not to say that it would've continued either.

You can have that ebb and flow in business like always and it could appear it out. Who knows? But that's just the story that I guess I'd want to share there of just those little caveats that go on, just check in case niching might not be the right thing for you right now.

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I think we're nearly at the hour mark and we've gone through so much of your story. I know that we can keep going. I can keep asking more questions. I've got a long list of topics.

Reagan Mackrill: You can if you want.

Ian Paget: I want to keep the podcast about an hour long.

Reagan Mackrill: That's okay.

Ian Paget: But this has been absolutely incredible. I'm glad in a way that you did try the whole niching thing. I'm glad that we've had this story that you can share and I'm glad that now you're at a point where things are good. They're good, right? I want to end this on a positive.

Reagan Mackrill: I'm on a good track at the moment, which is good. So it's keeping me very busy and I'll be working over these Christmas holidays most likely. But I think it's just something where in life, in business, not to know what kind of can come next. And we all have gone through that in the last couple of years with pandemic life and businesses can fail and succeed in times like that.

But if you're there to grit it out and pivot and reposition yourselves, and that's a big thing about branding is just position yourselves in the right thing and being able to know when you need to change and shift and evolve, it can do you credit over time, but you just got to be prepared, I guess, to slug it out and see what happens.

But if you can have a fallback plan, a plan B kind of thing, if you can just go, well, if it all fails, it all goes belly up, then I'll just get a job. At the worst, that's what it would've been. So it's not the worst thing in the world at the end of the day.

Ian Paget: Yeah, exactly. And I think it's always what earth having those backup plans. I'm going off topic slightly here, but there's a book called The 4-Hour Workweek and there's a really good exercise that I like in there where, I can't remember the guy, oh, Tim Ferriss, he speaks about this exercise that's worth doing and I think it's worth anyone doing that wants to work for themselves.

Is he pictures the absolute worst case scenario. So say in the event that you suddenly didn't get any clients, you didn't have any money coming in, you could no longer pay for your mortgage, you lose your house, absolute worst case scenario, what would you do in that scenario? And obviously, that's awful that that can happen, and in most cases that probably wouldn't happen, but in the event that it did, I don't know about you, and I think you did mention earlier in this that you could go and stay with family.

I could probably stay with family. I've got family. I could sleep on their sofa. Worst case scenario. And it's useful to think of that so that you can take risks. And I think you creating the Brand my Podcast was a risk. In the event that, that did fail, you had backup plans, and it's worth thinking about those scenarios. So in your case, your backup plan, you could just pivot back to what you were doing previously and that worked for you. If that fails, you can go and get a job. If that fails, you have family, you've got that support system.

Reagan Mackrill: I could go and mow some lawns.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I think it's good to think of those things and having that in your mind, the absolute worst case scenario for your situation, it just helps you in those situations where you want to take a risk, do something different, try something out. If it doesn't work out, you have the ability to pivot and change. And I think it's good to think about those things in the way that you have. You've got a good mindset.

Like I said, everything that you're doing, I think you're doing fantastic stuff and people that don't already know you, they have to go and check out what you're doing, follow you on social media, check out your website, see all of the core stuff that you're doing. I think you're a very good case study. So I really appreciate you coming on and I look forward to hopefully doing this again in the future to talk about different topics again.

Reagan Mackrill: Likewise, and my head is about to explode with all that Ian. So thank you very much for having me.

Ian Paget: You're very welcome.