Episode #4 - Elizabeth Creighton - Scaling Your UX Consultancy: Newsletters, Courses, and Deliverables

Show Notes

In this episode of the UX Consultants Lounge, host Kyle Soucy sits down with Elizabeth Creighton, the owner of Brazen, a UX consultancy that offers UX research and training services. Elizabeth shares her journey from starting Brazen to scaling her business by creating valuable resources like newsletters and online courses. She also talks about the importance of investing in the quality of her deliverables, including the decision to hire a designer for a new presentation template.

Key Topics Covered:

  • The Power of Newsletters: Elizabeth discusses how starting a newsletter helped her connect with clients, maintain visibility, and generate new business. She shares practical tips on managing the workload and gaining subscribers.

  • Creating Online Courses: Elizabeth explains her experience developing a user interview skills course on Maven. She provides insights on choosing a platform, balancing course creation with client work, and the impact of teaching live cohort-based courses.

  • Enhancing Deliverables: Elizabeth shares her experience in hiring a presentation designer to elevate the quality of her client and course presentations. She shares the value of investing in high-quality templates to improve professionalism and efficiency.

  • Managing a Leave of Absence: Elizabeth and Kyle also touch on the challenges consultants when needing to taking breaks for personal reasons, like maternity leave, and how to bounce back afterward.

 

View the episode chapter links for the full list of topics that were discussed.

Links and Resources:

Listener Interaction: Have questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes and/or want to share an anonymous consulting story? Submit your questions and stories here: https://bit.ly/uxconsultants-question-story

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Elizabeth Creighton

UX Research & Training Consultant, Brazen

With 11 years of experience conducting impactful user research, Elizabeth has shaped the design of dozens of websites, apps, services, and physical products. Her experience is complemented by a PhD in Cognitive Psychology, which gives her a deep understanding of how users think, behave, learn, and remember. Elizabeth frequently speaks on topics related to UX at conferences and events, including UXPA, Web Directions, IXDA, and ConveyUX. She also teaches courses in UX research methods for O’Reilly Media & Maven. Outside of work, she’s a black-belt martial artist and mediocre banjo player — though in reality she spends most of her free time chasing after her 2-year-old daughter, Rowan.

Transcript

Kyle Soucy: Welcome to the UX consultants lounge. I'm Kyle Soucy, founder of usable interface an independent UX research consultancy. You can find out more about my work and the services I offer at my website, usable interface. com. I'll be your host here at the lounge where I'll be providing a place for UX consultants to gather, share stories, and learn more from one another.

 

Kyle Soucy: My guest today is Elizabeth Creighton. She's the owner of Brazen, a consultancy that specializes in UX research services. It was wonderful to talk with Elizabeth because she has so many things going on.

This was truly an interview that's just packed with a lot of [00:01:00] practical how to information. We covered a lot of topics, including how to create a newsletter, which Elizabeth has done, Back in May, and has over 600 subscribers, which is amazing.

 So we discuss how important it is to have a newsletter and how she's done it. We also talked about creating an online course for Maven. Elizabeth has done this and she's working on her third cohort for Maven. So we talked about how to fit this into your client workload. If you're interested in teaching a course and having possibly another revenue stream and really what student management has been like for her.

Elizabeth also. Talked with me about designing a new presentation template and really how important it is for us to invest in our deliverables. And we had a good discussion around whether or not we create pitch decks or word docs for our proposals. And Elizabeth shared her experience with hiring a presentation [00:02:00] designer.

Lastly, we talked about something a little bit more personal. What happens when you have to pause your consulting practice? Elizabeth and I are both mothers and we both took a maternity break, which was quite scary to do and we talked about our experience and what it's like when a consultant really has to pause things and what it's like to pick work back up again. So let me tell you a little more about Elizabeth before getting into the interview, uh, with 11 years of experience conducting impactful user research, Elizabeth has shaped the design of all sorts of products, including websites, apps, services, and physical products.

She's based in Toronto, Canada. And frequently speaks on topics related to UX at conferences and events. She also teaches courses in UX research methods for O'Reilly media and Maven, which I just mentioned, , which we talk a lot [00:03:00] about. So let's get to the interview. Please enjoy Elizabeth Creighton.

All right. Well, hi, Elizabeth. Welcome to the

UX consultants lounge.

Elizabeth Creighton: Thank you so much. I was so flattered that you

invited me to be on today.

Kyle Soucy: Oh yeah, totally. I love that we have an opportunity just to chat one

on one this morning.

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, me

too. It's gonna be great.

Kyle Soucy: I wanted to start with a very random question. Would you say you're

more of an early bird

or a

night

Elizabeth Creighton: Oh God. Uh, definitely. I'm naturally more of a night owl. But now that I have a two and a half year old, uh, she forces me to get up, you know, relatively early. When I do get up early. I really enjoy it. Like, I feel like I'm more productive in the morning. Um, but if I were left to my own devices and I didn't have a kid, I would probably naturally wake up at like nine to 10 AM or something, but now it's more like, six to 7

Uh, not by choice.

Kyle Soucy: Totally. My kids have ruined me when it comes to my night owl routines or my old night owl [00:04:00] routines. I used to stay up so late and being forced to wake up early. Now I'm lucky if I can

get through a movie, it's a miracle.

Elizabeth Creighton: I know. I feel the same way sometimes. I feel like I aged 20 years, you know, just by having a kid,

but that's okay.

Kyle Soucy: Yeah. And, you know, as independent consultants, we have the luxury of not having to punch in and punch out at a certain time of day, which is really nice. And I'm curious, what are your morning routines like? Do you

have any rituals for starting the workday?

Elizabeth Creighton: That's a good question. Um, not really, but it's something I've been thinking about a little bit. I think part of it is that, my husband and I usually kind of decide on the fly in the morning, who's going to take our daughter to preschool. We're not really sure who's, who needs to shower, you know, who needs to leave the house, that sort of thing.

But then once I do come home from drop off or whatever, and I have time to get started with work, I, I mean, I always make myself a big cup of tea and a particular mug that I care about a lot. And usually the first [00:05:00] things I do are, uh, checking any notifications that happened in the morning before I got started, usually Slack stuff or email stuff.

Um, and then just kind of diving right in, but I know a lot of people, it's very, like. You know, founder mindset sort of thing to have kind of more of a regimented routine and maybe get a workout in and, have a journaling time or whatever, but I just haven't gotten there yet. Maybe one

Kyle Soucy: No, I have a routine. it's regimented or in any way geared towards work. So I'm at the mercy of my kids too. So I wake up before 6am only because I have to get them ready for school. I would not wake up that early otherwise. And I do, usually from 630 to eight, I have to get a workout in.

And then I like to take my time and as I'm eating breakfast, I'm checking email, getting into slack and all that. But it's funny because unless I have a meeting, I am rarely showered before

10 a. m.

Elizabeth Creighton: Um, yeah, that happens to me a lot [00:06:00] too, especially if I'm not the one bringing her into preschool, like I'm, you know, still in my pajamas, maybe getting work started at home in that case, which, which is fine. But then ultimately, at some point, I do feel like I have to shower. And then that's kind of like annoying to have to take a

break and go do that.

But, you know, important

Kyle Soucy: It is. It is. It is so annoying to have to break and shower, like I,

Elizabeth Creighton: have solved this by now. Like there should be a way

to just have this done for me, you know?

Kyle Soucy: I've actually told him like, maybe I should wake up at five, four, I'm like, no, no, that's crazy.

Elizabeth tells us about her consultancy, Brazen, and the services she provides

Kyle Soucy: Oh, well, well, let's, get into your consultancy brazen. I'd love for you to tell us a little

bit about brazen and the services you offer.

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah. So great. So I've, uh, a very small consultancy called Brazen. It's usually just me, but sometimes I bring in other people as subcontractors to help out. You know, with larger projects or with stuff that I'm not very good at, like, for example, if I have to run research in a different language, I might bring someone in to help you with [00:07:00] that.

 And so, yeah, I've been around for seven years doing this or rather this is my seventh year. Um, and yeah, focus is just totally on, on user research. So I would say that, maybe like 75 percent of the projects I do these days are more like generative research and foundational research.

A lot of like user interviews kind of based projects, um, often for clients who have maybe never done a lot of research before, never done any, and they just don't know anything about their users. And they need to kind of get a sense of, you know, who their users are, what they need, why they even use their product in the first place, and then help them make decisions about what they could maybe be.

You know, creating next for them. And then the other maybe 25 percent of my work is more evaluative research. So usability testing, sometimes card sorting, you know, surveys, things like that, to help people kind of narrow in on a possible solution to a problem and then making sure that solution is easier For people to use and, you know, enjoyable and all that kind of good stuff.

 So I have clients kind of all around, I'm based in Canada. So I'm based near Toronto. Uh, [00:08:00] so maybe around half my clients are Canadian. Then the other half are mostly American, but, sometimes,

in other parts of the world as well.

Kyle Soucy: well.

you're the first non U. S. guest.

Elizabeth Creighton: Oh, that's, that's exciting. Yeah. Exotic Canada up here. Yeah.

Kyle Soucy: So you are strictly a research gal

like myself,

Elizabeth Creighton: Totally. Yeah. A

hundred percent research.

Elizabeth's journey starting Brazen

Kyle Soucy: Okay. And can you tell me a little

bit about the origin story of brazen?

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, for

sure. So, um, I first started thinking about starting my own business when I was at my first UX job, actually, I was working at a, a UX research consultancy called Centralis in the Chicago area. That was my first post grad school, UX job. And they were, you know, a relatively small consultancy, uh, around, um, Like six to eight people at any given time.

And I remember working there and, kind of doing these projects for clients and being like, huh, like I bet, I could kind of take on projects all on my own eventually, once I kind of get good at this and stuff. And I kind of really, uh, like the idea of one day starting my own much smaller [00:09:00] consulting business, probably just me, or maybe a couple of employees.

That's kind of what first came to mind. Put the bug in my head was working there. Um, and then, a few jobs later I was at Shopify and Shopify, is a company that really encourages people to start side businesses of some sort, because, the product is for small business owners. And so I was thinking about it more then.

And I made a kind of, uh, promise to myself that I would quit my job at the end of that year, which was 2017. And start my own business for 2018. And I did it. I mean, I, I committed to it and I did it. Uh, and kind of got some stuff sort of set up before I actually quit and then just kind of jumped right into 2018 with this new business and it's been going, going really well ever

The story behind Elizabeth naming her business 'Brazen'

Kyle Soucy: That's awesome. And you have to tell me, what is the story behind your

company name? I've always wanted to ask

Elizabeth Creighton: so, um, I, I kind of forget, I think I was actually working at Centralis, you know, again, a million years ago, and I think maybe I was Kind of goofing off for a bit and taking a break from work. And I was, I was trying to think of words that are related to like, um, like [00:10:00] boldness and, you know, like the kind of thinking was that when we give, recommendations from user research, we're being bold and we're kind of challenging what our clients might, You know, what assumptions they have, what they might think is right, that kind of thing.

So I wanted a word related to bold and I also wanted something where I could get a domain name, you know, I guess. And so I was just, I think I was, looking at Google, a different list of synonyms and stuff, and I came across brazen and I, and I think I found that I could get brazen. io as a, as a domain name and I don't remember if I actually bought it way back then, or if I waited and just kind of peaked on it every so often to see if it was still available, but that's kind of when I decided on, on brazen as the name, it seemed like the best fit in that kind of category.

Category of, of

Kyle Soucy: I love that. I always find it so fascinating to hear about, where people came up with their names and, and, uh, How that came about. So that's really fascinating. It's not what I thought. I'm like brazen. I'm

like,

is

this her personality? Like,

Elizabeth Creighton: Well, and I like your business

name because it's so straightforward, like usable interface, like you know exactly what you're [00:11:00] getting with a company like that. Whereas Brazen, nobody really knows what I do

until I tell them about it.

Kyle Soucy: well, okay. So that may be true, but I get, I did mention, uh, in the last episode with Becca that I wish it was almost more narrow because do you really know what you're getting? Like usable interface that could be development, you know, Graphic design,

but it is what it is. And you know what, someone told me a long time ago, does it really even matter what we name our business?

Probably not, but it's still important. You know what I mean? I know we care probably more about our business name and our logos more than anyone else ever would, but it

matters. It's, It's you know, how we present ourselves.

Elizabeth Creighton: Totally. It's like an extension of your personal brand and your personality and whatever. And

I think that's important too.

Kyle Soucy: Yeah. Now, so you jumped in, uh, after Spotify, you jumped into consulting and Um, you know, what was that journey like for you starting your business? Was there fear or were you pretty confident in that?

I mean, it's been seven years, so it's gone [00:12:00] well.

Elizabeth Creighton: definitely. And actually,

first of all, it was Shopify, not Spotify. Everyone always, that was like a big, a

big joke when working

at

Shopify. It was like, everyone calls it Spotify. So yeah.

Kyle Soucy: Oh my gosh. You know, and I'm in like podcast world, so I'm all like

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it always happened when I worked there. So yes, when I was at Shopify, I was nervous at first. I remember asking my dad for a lot of advice cause he'd had, small businesses kind of throughout, throughout my life. And, um, I, some of the things I did to kind of prepare, before I even quit my job, I'd like worked on creating a website. I think I started to make a list of people I might want to reach out to, you know, when I actually got started. And actually the first project I got, as a consultant was through, a Slack group, the mixed methods, uh, Slack, which I know you're, you're a part of as well.

And I think they had a channel that was like. you know, freelancing or something like that. And someone posted that they wanted someone to help with a market research project. And I'm not really a market researcher, but I think I was kind of like, ah, you know, whatever, I can do that. Like it actually seemed like more of a desk research sort of, um, thing, which I'm, you know, I was [00:13:00] comfortable with.

And so I got my first project that way before I'd even quit my job, actually. And that was pretty cool. Cause it kind of gave me the confidence to be like, okay, like I've already kind of proven I can get some work. It was a small project, but I was still. You know, at my full time job. And then, when I actually did quit my job and started it, full time on my business, um, that was sort of like a nice thing to have in the back of my mind.

And then I kind of, I think I mostly just, you know, I tweeted about my business. I wrote to some friends, you know, everyone kind of knew it was what I was doing. Um, and this was back when Twitter was like a more enjoyable place and there were a lot more kind of UX people on there. Um, yeah, I miss those days a lot.

And, um, and so like, uh, you know, got, got some decent. action on whatever posts I made and people were retweeting it and leaving nice comments. Um, and then the first kind of, you know, real client reach out was through that Twitter post. Um, someone who I'd originally known many years ago from a book club I went to when I lived in Chicago, she reached out over DMS on Twitter and was like, Hey, I saw your [00:14:00] post about starting your business.

Um, You know, I'm working at Mozilla now and we have a project coming up. That would be a really great fit for you because of your kind of background at Shopify with e commerce and you know, you're kind of, uh, you know, you're, you're consulting now. So like, uh, we have an e commerce related project for you to help out with.

And so that was really exciting that I, um, got my first kind of real big project, um, that way. Uh, and I've been working with them for ages now. Mozilla was my first kind of real, real client. And, uh, I just finished up a project for them. Uh, yesterday, actually, so they've been kind of, you know, ongoing, uh, for many, many years.

So it was just really, I feel like there's a lot of these kind of serendipitous connections that lead to projects. And that was one of them. It was a cool early

example of that.

Kyle Soucy: So I think that you are the great example of just proving how important it is not necessarily to do, self promotion. I know some of us think of it as a dirty word, but just letting people know you're out there. Like you, you know, you posting that on Twitter, if you hadn't done that, maybe they wouldn't have [00:15:00] connected.

It's just so important to, to give that reminder.

Elizabeth's experience creating her newsletter

Kyle Soucy: And I think that's a really good segue into , one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. Which is, a little bit about business development, you know, conducting outreach, and business development is hard and there are a lot of different ways to go about it.

I know you recently started a newsletter back in May, and I know that because not only do we talk and, um, We have, private groups that we talk in and stuff. But you also share these things on LinkedIn and other places where you're talking about things that you're trying, which I think is really great that you're transparent about the things you're doing.

And I wanted to chat more about what this experience has been like for you creating this

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah. I mean, that was kind of a, a surprising decision for me. I think I'd never really been. Thinking about doing a newsletter before usually I'm pretty focused on client work and I don't really like to do a lot of extra stuff because I, you know, I'm busy enough with my, my client work. But there were kind of two things that happened that [00:16:00] made me think of starting a newsletter.

One was I was working on, um, a course for the Maven platform, which I think we'll probably talk about later in this conversation. And I was trying to think of ways to kind of get the word out about my course. And I was thinking about newsletters and then also my client work had kind of gotten a little bit slow.

So I actually had time to start a newsletter because I did. was going through a slow period. And so I was kind of like, well, it seemed like a big commitment. I'm like, what am I signing myself up for? Right. I kind of have to keep this going for a length of time if I don't want to be embarrassed and quit really quickly.

 But I figured I would experiment with it and you know, I had some time on my hands and I wanted to promote this course. So I figured I'd, I'd give it a shot. Um, I also actually another related, aspect of that was I joined a Slack group called Design Creators. And it's like a very small, like kind of invite only group.

Um, that's mostly focused on people who are doing a lot of like content creation and newsletters and like kind of all this other kind of extra stuff related to design or research or other UX things. And there's some people in that group who have like very [00:17:00] successful newsletters through which they get, you know, most of the money they make is through, courses and things they advertise through newsletters.

That was another kind of. thing that put a bug in my ear about starting a newsletter. Um, so yeah, I picked a platform pretty quickly. I use ConvertKit. I don't really remember how I picked it. I think probably just through a recommendation from someone. And I started playing around with different templates and things and trying to kind of get a visual design that made sense.

I think I also, um, signed up for a bunch of other newsletters to kind of get examples for how people structure them and, you know, and whatnot. It's been like a lot of experimentation since then. I think my next issue is the 11th issue or maybe 12th, so not been around that long.

I send it out every two weeks. Thanks. Um, on Tuesdays and, um, yeah, I'm happy to, answer any questions about how that's

been going so far. It's been interesting. Right.

Kyle Soucy: and, I know because I get the newsletter what it includes, but can you share with the

audience, what you're putting in your

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, sure. So the kind of main feature of it, I guess, is like a kind of longer form, kind of blog posty type bit that's usually [00:18:00] centered around some sort of piece of research related advice. So backing up for a second, the kind of audience for the newsletter is mostly designers and product managers and content strategists, people who are, you know, interested in research, but aren't necessarily doing a lot of research themselves.

They want to get better at doing research. So, there certainly are lots of researchers as well who subscribe to the newsletter, but I kind of write it with, people in mind who are maybe not research experts. It's more like people who are trying to get better at research. And so, yeah, the kind of main kind of feature of the newsletter is, um, Is usually some sort of, longer form thing where I'm imparting some sort of, uh, piece of advice, usually related to research.

So, for example, like a topic might be how to get your participants to actually show up for their interviews or usability tests or whatever, right? Like that can be challenging sometimes getting. people to actually come, even though they've signed up. So that might be something I might talk about in the newsletter.

 And then the rest of the newsletter, there's an events listing section. So usually over the preceding two weeks, I've kind of, every time I've seen something interesting posted on LinkedIn or through various listservs and other newsletters I'm [00:19:00] on, I'll kind of, , file away for later stuff I might want to include in my events.

And I, Share them there. Um, and then there's also like a section around other resources like articles or courses or, podcast episodes or whatever that I think people might be interested in. So it's kind of a mix of like, here's, a deep learning piece of information and then here's a bunch of like listings of things you can go and check out if you have more time and want to, dig into some events or articles or

Kyle Soucy: I think that doing this is so fantastic because it's probably making you way more active and, it's probably making you a better researcher, just staying on top of all the trends because you have to share it in your newsletter, like keeping your ear out there much more perked than you maybe would

normally if you didn't have this newsletter to put out every two weeks?

Elizabeth Creighton: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's made me aware of a lot of events I wouldn't have ever really kind of considered because I'm kind of, I have an eye for trying to find them now. It's also made me, you know, when you're trying to teach someone something and you're kind of writing it in that sort of way, it makes you really dig into like, okay, what is the most important [00:20:00] nugget here?

Like what should everyone be kind of remembering? And that helps me refresh myself on some of these concepts too. Sometimes, going back to the example of getting participants to show up for research, like, you know, I kind of know how to do that from my many years of experience, but actually writing down like here, like the actual things you can do, like concrete steps you can take, you kind of realize, Oh, right.

Like, so. Some of these things are things I don't always remember to do, but now that I've kind of taken the time to write it out, I actually have re informed myself about some of the things that, I kind of take for granted or kind of assume that I know, and really I don't actually always, have them at the top of my

So it's been helpful for that for sure.

Kyle Soucy: Absolutely. Like, if you want to get better at something, even our own craft, teach it, or write a book about it. Cause it really does. And, and I have to say, I love your newsletter because it, it does. I'm like, Oh yeah, that's a good

tip. And it's like, I know I know that, but I forgot it, you know?

And like, that's

right. I forgot about that. I could do that. So I've been finding it super helpful. And for the listeners, I'm going to put a link in the show notes, where to subscribe [00:21:00] to the newsletter. It is called research for all, and it is really good.

How much time it takes to create a newsletter and the impact on Elizabeth's workload

Kyle Soucy: Uh, before we jump from this topic though, for those consultants that are really Starting, this and it is a heavy lift.

I can just imagine every two weeks having to put out something like this. Now I myself have never done a newsletter besides. I have a newsletter for the podcast. Just let people know a new episode is out, but that's nothing compared to this. I can't imagine, doing this because I, I want it to be done right.

And I know that it's a lot of work. Can you describe what this has been like an impact on your workload? How do you get subscribers? Just a little bit more

of that.

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah. One thing I learned pretty quickly is that, writing the newsletter itself takes a lot of time and there's things you can do to save time when creating the newsletter, the kind of biggest one that I don't think I realized at first, but now pay attention to is like, look for ways to kind of standardize the sort of sections you have in your newsletter.

So you're not reinventing the wheel each time. So I have templates I use for the event listings and the [00:22:00] article listings and whatnot, and I can just kind of drop in whatever images and links I need. And that's much better than, uh, when I first got started, I was Recreating these sections from scratch every time.

And, it was very silly. I also kind of look for ways to make those sections like simpler. I'm just like simplifying formatting. When it comes to writing that longer form article, kind of deciding it's not going to be super, super long. So I don't feel like I have to, write pages and pages.

Um, so that's, that's something I kind of keep in mind. Yeah. In terms of benefits I've seen and stuff. Right now my newsletter has. It's I think

just under 600 subscribers or so. So it's like, yeah, I mean, it feels amazing and also it feels both small and big at the same time.

Right. You hear about lots of newsletters that have, tens of thousands of people,

but 600 is also pretty cool. Um,

Kyle Soucy: Since May. That's fantastic.

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah. I mean, it's

600 people that I previously would not have been corresponding with. So that's pretty neat. Um, and so, yeah, for me, one of the main benefits of doing a newsletter is that.

You have a direct line to these 600 people. Like there's no platform that's controlling it. Like LinkedIn and Twitter have their algorithms. They can choose what to show and [00:23:00] what not to show. Whereas these are people like I have access to their email inbox. Like that's pretty special. Um, they don't have to open my email, but I am there.

 And that's really neat. And one of the reasons why I started the newsletter is because, I wanted a way to keep in touch with past clients as well. So. I, send out, like a holiday card to my clients at the end of the year. And that's one, one kind of touch point I have with them, but several of them have also signed up for the newsletter.

So that kind of keeps me on their minds as well. It's all about kind of keeping yourself on other people's minds to make it easier for them to remember that you exist and think about you when a research need comes up. So that's something that I try to keep in mind and it's actually happened.

 I'm talking to a company right now about doing some training for their team. They're a German company I'd never had heard of before. And the way they got in touch with me was, um, someone at their company subscribes to my newsletter and through my newsletter watched a short talk I'd given on a research related topic.

And I guess really liked the talk. And then they. Um, and then, you know, a couple of weeks later, they told their company, Hey, you should hire Elizabeth for this training so that she wouldn't have been aware of me if she hadn't, subscribed to the newsletter, [00:24:00] which is really cool. I'm hoping that more of those kinds of connections happen over time.

I feel like, with a lot of consulting relationships, it's sort of a slow burn thing where like you make these connections and then maybe years later, someone comes out of the woodwork and hires you for a project. But, for me, it's worth it. I mean, it does take it, you know, a few hours, um, probably.

two to four hours to like pull together a newsletter, which is not a ton of time, but it is a, chunk of time. And usually I procrastinate. So I'm like, Oh my God, I have to do my own newsletter by tomorrow. It's frustrating, but I really do think like long term it's going to be worth it for me. And I also really enjoy when, occasionally a newsletter reader will just write back to me and be like, Hey, I really enjoyed the newsletter this week.

I, you know, you made me aware of an event I, I didn't know about or whatever. And that's always really touching, especially when it's someone I don't know, to write to

me like that. So that's really cool.

Kyle Soucy: Oh, that's great. And, the clients, this is maybe a silly question, but do you, let them know that you have this newsletter and give them the choice to opt in or do you automatically put them on

and if they [00:25:00] want to, they'll take themselves off of it?

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, good question. So I, I've never

automatically put anyone on my newsletter, whether it's a client or someone who's on the wait list for my Maven course, for example. Like, I know some people will do that. I would rather people very much be aware of and like consent to signing up for the newsletter because What I care about is that I have, engaged subscribers who will, like, click on links and maybe, you know, pay for something or whatever, as opposed to people who just get it in their inbox and never open it or open it but never click, you know, that kind of thing.

So yeah, for my clients, I did like a mid year, email. Usually I just do a holiday card email. This year I did a mid year email, or I guess it was before. Prior to mid year. Cause it was before my newsletter started and I mentioned it as a thing that I was doing and, you know, gave the link. And so, a handful of people signed up that way. I also have it in my email signature. Um, so it's there if people notice it and want to sign up. There's a, a woman who I think is really cool named, Lex

Roman. And I believe you're aware of her too, cause I think you

Kyle Soucy: Uh huh.

Elizabeth Creighton: one of her trainings.

And, she is just so awesome when it comes to anything related to emails and conversions that way and [00:26:00] newsletter stuff and whatnot. She has two great newsletters. One is kind of sunsetting in about a week or so, which I'm sad about. Cause it's really great. But it was called low energy leads and I really like her content because it's all about

how do you find these, you know, low energy ways to like generate leads and keep yourself on people's minds and get newsletter subscribers and whatever. So, um, definitely recommend anyone listening to check her out. Yeah. Lex Roman, um, low energy leads. com. And even though her newsletter is kind of sunsetting, there's a whole archive you can, access and she does a bunch of cool trainings and stuff.

So, that's someone I really recommend for anyone who's interested in

getting into newsletter things.

Sending holiday cards to clients

Kyle Soucy: And the holiday card. So, I normally do a

virtual one. Do you as well, or is

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah. Virtual. I used to mail it back in the day. I used to email.

Kyle Soucy: Yeah. Back

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah. Pre pre

pandemic. It was mail. Now it's email. Yeah.

Kyle Soucy: Yep. Same, same. And it's funny. Cause way, way back in the day, like my first two or three years in business, I would do little gifts and then it was way too stressful.

Oh my gosh. Trying to think of something unique and different than something that wasn't like a [00:27:00] tchotchke or lame.

And I and I, just. I

said forget it. It was just too

Elizabeth Creighton: I actually, so I copy what Centralis did back when I worked there and I do a donation. So I do a donation kind of like on behalf of my clients and that way, I do get to kind of like spend some money on my clients, but I don't have to worry about sending, flowers or, cookies or

whatever all around the world.

Sending a mid-year email to clients

Kyle Soucy: Right. Right. And, the mid year email, that's brilliant. I, I love that. Is that

something you'll think you'll continue to do?

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, I think so. I always feel kind of awkward doing something like that, you know, just sending out an email blast to all my, current and past clients being like, Hey, this is what I'm up to. I have time for projects. Hey, I have this newsletter.

I have this course, but also like, whatever, it's just one email. They like me enough that they're not going to, uh, get upset at me, um, for sending out, one or two emails a year. So, yeah, I think I'll keep that up. I think, I'll do the holiday card this year and then I'll do like a, you know, a mid year and holiday email next year, I think.

Um, and I think that's fine. And then, as I mentioned, like, you know, a good handful of them are signed up to the newsletter too. So they kind

of have that touch point as [00:28:00] well.

Kyle Soucy: You know, I have the same feeling. I, really struggle with staying in touch with my past clients and that shouldn't be a problem. Be and I know any good salesperson would want to slap me across the face right now and be like, what are you crazy? You have to, you know? Um, but I get a little, that icky feeling when I'm just like, am I bothering them?

Is that too much? And you know what? I know though, when I hear you say this, that that's. You're right. Like one or two emails a year for me is not asking is not a lot. And it's just a nice check in. It's nice to say, not just I'm still here. Remember me, but also do you need help? I'm here

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah,

Kyle Soucy: Um, And I, I think it's really great that you do that. You do that way more than I do and I know I have to get better at that. So I always kind of look up to you and how you're, you're really good at it. You're good at just kind of being the squeaky wheel and you need to, you need to do that. So I, I love hearing these stories from you cause

I'm like, damn, she's really on it.

I'm like, that's right. I should do that.

Elizabeth Creighton: Well, that's really

sweet. I feel like, yeah, I mean, the holiday

[00:29:00] card thing, it's interesting because I, I always get like a handful of really nice responses back. And , usually two or three of those responses are like, Oh, Hey, thanks for the holiday card.

 I actually have a project that might be happening in January or February. Like, let's make a plan to talk in January. So it's actually getting potentially getting me business. Or I remember one year, in my holiday card, I announced that I was having a baby and I got so many nice responses to that.

So I know I'm not bothering people too much. Like if they're going to read it and like , be happy for me or whatever, and send me a nice email, then it means that they appreciate it. And, you know, again, like, One or two emails a year and we're, we're in the sort of business where our clients know us as people, right?

 It's not like we work for a huge company. We're interacting with our clients very directly. And so I think they kind of appreciate that we're colleagues and sort of, you know, friends sometimes. And it's okay to, to check in a couple of times a year on your

How Elizabeth continues to get more subscribers to her newsletter

Kyle Soucy: Yeah, yeah. And, you mentioned, uh, talking about your newsletter on LinkedIn. I was wondering, you know, now that you're at this point, you have 600 subscribers. How do you continue that trend of getting more subscribers? Do you [00:30:00] promote your newsletter

anywhere besides LinkedIn?

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, that's a good question. So, yeah, getting newsletter subscribers is, is hard and confusing. I don't always know where they come from. I do try to, yeah, occasionally post on LinkedIn and kind of like tease the next, you know, uh, issue. Though it's, it's just funny because like last time I did that, which was two weeks ago, I guess, I posted this kind of teaser, highlighting like what was going to be coming up in the next issue.

And , I got I think 2000 views on the post and like probably 50, likes and reactions and comments. And one person signed up to the

newsletter from that post. So like

Kyle Soucy: Hey, it's still one person. That's all right.

Elizabeth Creighton: Um, what's actually been the biggest driver of newsletter signups is, um, so ConvertKit and most of these other newsletter platforms, , they have something called the creator network.

So basically, when someone signs up for my newsletter, they get a little pop up being like, Hey, you might be interested in these three other newsletters. And I've kind of selected. People whose newsletters, you know, what kind of fit with my target audience and then other people also recommend me.

So through this, um, design creator Slack that I'm a part of, there were a [00:31:00] few kind of like really big newsletter people on there who, will recommend me recommend my newsletter. And so, um, usually, between each newsletter, um, edition, I get about 20 to 40 new subscribers and probably at least half of those come through this creator network where other people are signing up through my newsletter because they're signing up through.

a different person's newsletter and they get recommended to choose my newsletter as well. And that's really

Kyle Soucy: And, for those that are considering again, starting a newsletter, what other resources have been most helpful for either creating

or promoting your newsletter or any advice you have for

Elizabeth Creighton: I think not being, uh, ashamed to your newsletter link everywhere. So for example, like it's in my email, it's in my email signature. Um, if you go to my LinkedIn profile, they let you have a link, you know, kind of in the top. I think right now it's like sign up for my newsletter.

So I have it there make it really easy for people to find it basically. Um, and also my newsletter kind of sign up page. Um, there's a version of it that has like the archive [00:32:00] of all the past issues. And that's the one I tend to share. I feel like it converts better because people can actually see.

What the newsletter looks like, as opposed to just getting a little blurb about what it's about in general. Um, I think people like to see examples because through that little blurb, you can, you know, you can learn a little bit, but I think one of the kind of, um, positive, you know, positive things about my newsletter is it's written in a pretty casual style.

Like, as, as you know, like, I'm kind of writing very familiar early, like the first little blurb is usually like me relaying something that happened in my life or whatever. And I think if you like that sort of style, you'll kind of understand that that's what the newsletter is all about. If you can see an example or two.

And so I think people. Uh, like to convert through that page because they can get a chance to

see what it's really all about.

Elizabeth's experience creating her online training course on Maven

Kyle Soucy: love it. Okay. And you mentioned your course and your Maven course. And I'd like to talk about that now, just the training you provide and this new online course called a user interview skills for designers and PMs. Um, I know there are a lot of consultants interested in teaching [00:33:00] courses, maybe as a, a second form of income or just a way to, to, you know, share their knowledge.

And I'm sure they'd love to know

more

about how you created yours.

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, absolutely. So, I guess kind of to back up, I first got started doing like course creation stuff back like pre pandemic. I went to a conference and someone from O'Reilly Media approached me and was like, Hey, you know, I liked your talk. And Have you ever thought about teaching a course?

We have this online platform and I ended up developing like a three hour online course on usability testing for that platform. And it took a whole bunch of work to prepare that content. But after I had that content, I could then, you know, reuse it for clients or, you know, in other situations. And so I, before I started teaching with Maven, I at least kind of knew what it was like to run a course and, Create all that content and whatever.

So that kind of was helpful. And then it was, I think I first started talking to Maven in like January or so of this year, I think I had a friend who worked there and that, you know, that kind of got me interested. And, they used to have an accelerator program where they're kind of like help you get started with creating a course.

And that helped a lot because I feel like [00:34:00] even though I'd done a lot of course content before, there's a lot that goes into trying to like market a course and get people to actually sign up. That's really confusing at the beginning. Um, but yeah, anyway, sorry. I'd like the course. Yeah. It's called user interview skills for designers and PMs.

As you might imagine, it teaches people who are not necessarily researchers how to run, really good user interviews and plan them and analyze the data and all that kind of good stuff. And right now it's a three week long course. Previously, I taught it as two weeks, but I wanted to make it a bit more of a relaxed pace.

So I changed it to three weeks and it's on the Maven platform. So it's, a live cohort based course. So, you're in a class of, maybe 10 or 20 people, you know, depending on how many people sign up. And we meet several times for these hour and a half long workshops. And then there's also some asynchronous content, like written lessons and video lessons and stuff I've created.

Um, there's a couple of short assignments as well. So it's not really like a webinar or a one time thing. It's an ongoing course that happens over a few weeks. So you get a chance to kind of, uh, meet other people, like network a bit, become friends. We have to do mock interviews with each other as [00:35:00] part of the course.

That's kind of fun. Um, Um, and then by the end, hopefully you've really like kind of solidified this stuff because you're kind of, um, doing your own little mini user interview project

along the way, which is kind of fun.

Kyle Soucy: That's really intense.

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, it

Kyle Soucy: And, and, uh, so tell me a little bit about that decision process of, wanting to do that cohort based, learning versus the asynchronous, you know, webinar,

or you can download it anytime.

Do it at your own pace.

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, that's a good, a good question. I mean, part of it was that, um, this was, you know, again, back when business was a bit slow for me, so I kind of had time to think about running a course. And I was really impressed with the Maven platform. Like, as you said, running a cohort based course is a lot of work, but they make it easier in that, they host all of your recordings and your syllabus and, um, you know, it's got a Slack type platform for students to use to ask questions.

They can submit assignments, all that kind of stuff. So that kind of. Got me interested in the cohort things. That's how they they run their courses I think also like whenever I run training for clients and and stuff like [00:36:00] I feel like you get the most out of the interaction with the instructor and like the questions people ask like getting people enjoy when I can answer their questions and we can have Discussions and whatnot and you miss out on that if it's just a pre recorded video, of course, right?

um, I also in my mind like recording a video just sounded like a lot of work. I don't know why. I mean, I feel like it's the same, the same work that I do when I teach live, but, um, I feel like when you record a video, you feel like it has to be perfect. Whereas when I teach live, they're usually pretty casual sessions.

And, um, you know, there's a lot of questions from the students and discussion and whatnot. And also when you teach a live course, you can have lots of activities. So there's usually like breakout room activities. We do stuff on Miro. We do mock interviews, it's a really busy. way to spend our time.

But I feel like having all those different activities really helps people do and not just listen and actually internalize

what they're, they're doing.

Kyle Soucy: That's great. And I feel like it, it probably helps when you're teaching live. You feed off of their

energy rather than just recording. Yeah,

Elizabeth Creighton: exactly. And I've been lucky that I've only taught [00:37:00] two cohorts so far, but I've been lucky in that both of them were pretty high energy, especially the second one, like tons of questions, really good discussions. And that makes it

feel more rewarding for me too.

Kyle Soucy: Oh yeah. I love that. There's nothing worse

than when you're teaching and they're not really even wanting to be there. Yeah.

Why Elizabeth chose Maven for her online teaching platform

Kyle Soucy: Now. Maven is one of many online platforms, um, uh, to choose from like Coursera. And there's

just so many, what made you choose Maven?

Elizabeth Creighton: I mean, honestly, I hadn't done much research into other platforms. I knew about some other ones, yeah, like Coursera, and like Udemy, and you know, there's more. I think, again, because I had a friend who worked at Maven, and I followed them on Twitter, I was seeing stuff being posted about Maven, so that kind of got into my mind.

But it also seemed like a much more, selective platform. They didn't have a ton of questions. like tech focused. It seemed like my audience would be there, like tech people. It also seemed like a platform where the kind of typical price point was on the higher side. So it kind of attracts people who are like, maybe working in tech, have a bit more money to spend, like maybe have a [00:38:00] professional development budget, whereas some of these other platforms, I think, are more about like, You know, uh, uh, shorter, but cheaper courses and maybe not a lot of live stuff.

Also, the folks that work there are very nice. It's like a small team. They're really helpful. Um, they have like a Slack, uh, for instructors where they'll answer questions. So it was just nice. I feel like that kind of level of support is probably not available with like a, you know, a bigger, more established company.

So that was a

selling point for me. Yeah,

Kyle Soucy: many questions now, everything you say, I'm like, Oh, I want to ask this now.

How much time it takes Elizabeth to create and teach her course

Kyle Soucy: So you mentioned that you had material from, you know, teaching previously with the O'Reilly course. What was that time and, effort like to modify that material so that it fit like a cohort, class, like Maven in like developing

your course and teaching it, how much time is involved in

Elizabeth Creighton: that's a great question. So I went from the O'Reilly course and took that material and then taught versions of it for clients for like a few years. So I already kind of adapted it. Like I took it from being a, a usability testing [00:39:00] course and adapted it to be a user interview course at some point.

It was only a three hour long, . workshop basically, right? But at least I kind of shifted it over to user interviews. That was helpful. Um, but then yeah, doing it for Maven, it was, it was probably a lot more work than I expected. Um, one thing I wanted to do was take those three hours, you know, that would normally be taught all at once, which I think is too much, too much time to spend on anything.

Um, and kind of break it out into like, you know, you know, four or six, like one and a half hour long workshops. And so definitely there were more topics I wanted to include and I had to do a lot more kind of slide creation there. I also completely changed my slide template, which we might talk about later and like re kind of redoing everything and like a nicer looking template, which was a thing.

 Also, so Maven really encourages you to have a lot of interactive stuff in your, um, course. They kind of have this like, I do, we do, you do format where they recommend, which is like, you know, you kind of lecture or teach a concept a little bit for maybe like, you know, 10 minutes, five minutes, then you kind of all do something together.

Like, maybe you [00:40:00] do like a guided critique of something together, or you like, you know, build a diagram together, you, you kind of do something together and then they go off and do something on their own or in small groups. Like they have a discussion or like they do a Miro board or whatever.

So you're kind of like. Guiding them towards doing things themselves, um, which is so I think it works really well. I found that like the version of the course I do for Maven has so much more interactivity and like not like not nearly as much lecturing as, my previous way of doing things.

It's totally changed the way I teach. Honestly, even when I'm teaching a private workshop for clients, I do a lot less talking and a lot more interactive stuff. And I think it goes over better. So, yeah, I mean, in terms of number of hours or something, probably a lot. I mean, like, probably to, you know, to kind of create my, what is it, like, now I do a six hour and a half long workshops and two office hours.

 Probably each workshop is taken, you know, . 20 plus hours to kind of create, starting from zero, thinking back to, the O'Reilly days, kind of like starting from zero and like actually coming out with a finished slide deck. Um, [00:41:00] I'm just lucky that since I've taught a lot of, a lot of the stuff in different contexts, I can pull examples and stuff and kind of like, uh, from different sources and kind of Frankenstein a presentation together and then try to make it look good and kind of

flow well.

Kyle Soucy: And what is, uh student

management

like? Oh,

Elizabeth Creighton: interesting. So my first cohort, I think I had 14 students or something in the second cohort. I had 22 and it's challenging because, um, you know, those are not particularly large classes. Like some Maven courses have a hundred students, for example, um, which is, yeah, which is a lot.

 But, um, You don't really know who you're getting. Like, what level of knowledge they'll have, what expectations they'll have, how many questions are going to ask. Like in my second court, I had some students who were wonderful. They asked a ton of questions, which was great, but also like, made the, sessions feel kind of rushed sometimes, right?

Because sometimes it's like. You know, there's maybe twice as many questions as I might have expected. So it can be kind of challenging while you're teaching live to make sure people are getting their questions answered, but also making sure you can kind of end on time. And, on, on zoom where I, I host the sessions, there's a [00:42:00] chat and I try to keep my eye on the chat as well.

Cause a lot of students feel more comfortable typing in the chat than they do, you know, unmuting and asking a question. And so that can be kind of challenging managing that, in a live session. The Maven platform has, you know, the student area where people can ask questions in a Slack like, platform and submit assignments and stuff.

And, you kind of have to remember to check pretty regularly to see what questions people are leaving and, not make it feel like a ghost town where, like, you know, people asking questions and there's no discussion happening. I was really lucky with my last cohort where like students would answer each other's questions.

And that was really cool. Like to kind of have more of a discussion happening there rather than just me answering questions, one by one. Um, and then having people submit assignments. So there's two assignments people do. And I think I assumed my course is not cheap. It's like 490, I think you'd think people would, you know, do the work and submit the assignments, but maybe about half of students just don't, um, which is.

Yeah, which is totally, you know, their prerogative, right? Like they're, they're paying, they don't have to do anything. I don't, I tell them to do. Um, but I guess I would have thought, you know, this is their opportunity to get feedback [00:43:00] from me, and I do give really detailed feedback. And so, um, it was kind of, sad to see that not everyone was submitting their assignments, but also the people who did submit their assignments, it was great to be able to give them really detailed feedback on their stuff.

And honestly, even like, uh, yeah. Leaving feedback on, you know, 10 assignments instead of 20 is still a lot of work. So maybe I didn't mind that not everyone submitted

their assignments sometimes.

Kyle Soucy: Yeah. I can't imagine planning this. If you want to teach a course and fit it in with your client work, it must be really tricky to try and time it just right. So, you know, you

have. A good amount of time to spend on

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah,

Kyle Soucy: without working crazy hours.

Elizabeth Creighton: Cause you, right. Cause you have to kind

of commit to the timeline for the course pretty early. Cause you want to get it up on the website so people can, buy seats and all that kind of stuff. And so, I'm setting the dates for the course, though, really necessarily knowing what my client.

Work life is going to be so my next cohort is coming up in November and I'll probably be actually kind of busy with client work, but I have it set so I can't, you know, I can't do anything about it. It's it's set. I already have a couple of [00:44:00] students signed up. And what's interesting is actually, this is kind of neat.

So like, um, Now that I have the Maven course and people are aware of it, I've had clients interested in a private cohort of the Maven course. So I'm actually teaching, yeah, I have a new client,

um, next week who I'm going to be teaching a private cohort for. So basically it's like the Maven course, but it's it's 10 people from their company are going to take it.

And I'm just kind of teaching a separate version just for them. So that's one of the neat things about the Maven course is it's given me this opportunity to sell, This, you know, private cohort or just kind of gotten my name out there a bit more in general as like someone who does training.

So it's kind of neat to get opportunities maybe outside of the typical like Maven public cohort platform thing

to do more to do more training.

How much Elizabeth makes when teaching a Maven course

Kyle Soucy: And so if it's over 400 a person for the course, how much of

that do you get to keep versus

Maven?

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, good question. So Maven

takes a 10 percent cut and then Stripe. Yeah, I mean, like,

you know, it's it's not bad for me. I know that there's, there's someone on the platform who, um, they [00:45:00] have like 100 person cohorts that they sell for like 1, 000 a piece that, you know, it's bringing in like 100 grand per cohort, and then Maven takes 10 grand of that.

So it feels like a big chunk, you know, when it's like 10 grand, it feels big for me, you know, it's, it's, it's fine. Um, it's, so it's 10 percent and then Stripe takes 3%. I think it was a bit disappointing in my first cohort because, the idea is like one of the benefits of using the Maven platform is that they will, advertise your course in their emails and on their marketplace and stuff.

And so in my first cohort, I actually only got one student through the Maven platform. Everyone else I brought in myself. And so it kind of Kind of sucked to have to pay my 10 percent for all these students who I brought in, like, they didn't, you know, Maven didn't bring in for me.

 Second court went better. Almost half of my students came through the Maven platform, so Maven kind of earned their money a bit better on that one, where like, you know, I didn't mind paying the 10 percent because they were getting me students. Um, and then my third cohort, I, I barely kind of advertised it.

I have two students signed up so far and one of them is from the Maven platform. So that's nice. I have at least one student who's kind of covering the costs of, of,

[00:46:00] the Maven stuff for everybody.

How Elizabeth promotes her course

Kyle Soucy: Now, how do you get people to sign up? I

see it on LinkedIn. Do you promote elsewhere?

Elizabeth Creighton: So it's so hard, honestly. Like, I mean, it's much harder than I expected. I think I thought because I have a pretty good network and, you know, I have different slacks and listservs I can tap into that it would be easier to get signups. Um, but you know, it's hard. I mean, like my first cohort with 14 people or whatever, That took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get, the 13 that didn't come through Maven.

A few things that helped. I mean, one was reaching out to people individually who I know who, who might want to take the course. And for example, one of my friends from Shopify, she signed up and got three of her coworkers to sign up through, through their professional development fund.

Um, so that got me four students. Through that one connection, which was really helpful.

Kyle Soucy: great.

Elizabeth Creighton: that was really great. I also always do a financial aid application. So, I'll give people like a 50 to 70 percent discount if they're in difficult, financial circumstances. And so I just do a short Google form to collect, info [00:47:00] and then make a decision.

And so in both of my cohorts, I've taken four or five students that way. And so they pay a lot less money. I'm still getting some money, but they pay a lot less money. But I would rather have more students like enjoying the course than having everyone pay the full price. One thing that also has helped is, um, Maven has this thing called lightning lessons, which is where you teach a 30 minute free, you know, seminar kind of thing.

And they advertise it on their platform. And I did a lightning lesson before my second cohort, and got a, I think there was like 800 people signed up for it. Um, which is crazy. Um, about 150 people actually showed up the rest, you know, could get the recording or, or whatever. And so I ended up getting in the end, I think I got four students.

Signed up through the lightning lesson. I gave like a 20 percent discount, code for people who are there. So those are some, some things that have helped me, but honestly, like it's kind of frustrating. I mean, I recently launched my third cohort and I did like an early bird, you know, promo. So you got a hundred bucks off the course.

If you signed up during that first week, put it on LinkedIn, put it on Slack, like put it in my newsletter and I got [00:48:00] one sign up, right. Like, um, so, you know, it's, it's, it's. You can put in a lot of effort and just not see a lot of results, and it's interesting having the newsletter because I can see what people are clicking on.

So, you know, maybe 30, 30 people clicked on the link to go check out the course with the 100 discount and then one person ultimately signed up, right? It's like, it's a really a numbers game. You need a lot

of, of eyes on your stuff.

Kyle Soucy: but yeah, but that's good that showed that they were interested and they may do

it next time you offer it You

never know.

Yeah. Yeah.

Elizabeth Creighton: ConvertKit, I kind of segment those people. I have a segment for like anyone who's ever clicked on my Maven course, right? So I have, maybe a few hundred people there that I can like target for a special promotion or whatever, because they've shown some sort of

interest in the course in the past.

Kyle Soucy: Well for any listeners that are interested in the course I will include a link in the show notes so you can check it out and

Elizabeth's experience hiring a presentation designer to create a new templat

Kyle Soucy: Elizabeth, you mentioned that, you wanted to create a new presentation template, uh, for this course. And a while back, privately you shared with me [00:49:00] that you were, going through this process of creating a new presentation template and hiring a designer.

And I was like, Oh, wow. I wonder what the impetus for that was. And now I know it was this course, but, I think that, It's so important for us as consultants to invest in our deliverables. We want them to look sharp. We want them to look good. And, when you mentioned that you were getting a new template done, I was like, that's a good idea.

You know, the one I created myself, which is not as sharp as something a designer would do. I'm like, yeah, that probably needs a refresh. So could you tell us a little bit about what that process of having a new

template designed, for your presentations was like?

Elizabeth Creighton: yeah. So, right. So yeah, definitely the impetus was doing this course where I was like, okay, like I, you know, I've kind of put off for the longest time, doing some, better design work on my template. Cause like you, I had one that I created myself and it was fine, but like, not, not great. It was, you know, I did the job, but it wasn't very pretty.

 And since I was going to be creating all these course materials, including prerecorded videos that might be around for a long time, I wanted to, to [00:50:00] have, um, some nice looking slides. And actually the first thing I did, so I came across someone on Twitter, who, was a slide designer.

It sounded like she was relatively new to it, but she had an example in one of her tweets that looked good. And I think I did a not so smart thing, which is I kind of hired her essentially immediately. We had a, like a Zoom chat and, she sounded awesome. Um, and I hired her.

And she didn't really have much of a process, again, because she was kind of new to it. And so, um, you know, I kind of sent her over the types of slides I wanted to have created. And she did work on it for a few weeks or whatever, and then sent me back, essentially the final version.

I think she actually, sorry, backing up. She'd given me, um, three different kinds of color palettes to pick from. And I picked one of those. And then she kind of took all my slides, came back and was like, okay, here you go. And they just weren't hitting the mark for me.

So, um, I thanked her and I paid her, but I ended up not using those slides. , it wasn't super expensive, but it was a bit of a lesson learned, like, okay, I should really vet people a bit better maybe. And then I forget how I came across her, but I came across a slide designer named Marika.

And of course, I'm forgetting her last name right now, but I can share the, you know, the [00:51:00] link to, to her website. She is based in South Africa. She was amazing. The process was, we had, a Zoom call and just talked about. what I would be using the slides for and, what I cared about and whatnot and, things I liked and didn't like.

And she'd had a bunch of examples on her website. So I could kind of be like, Hey, I really like these three, you know, presentations you've done in the past. So something along those lines would be nice. And so I also then shared with her, like a Google drive where I had, placeholder examples for the types of slides I wanted.

Like, for example, I wanted a title slide and I wanted a slide that had lots of quotes on it and, you know, whatever. She basically created a rough kind of version of a few of those slides. So just kind of like, Hey, here's a design direction I'm thinking about here, what a couple of those slides would look like.

And then I gave her some feedback on a few things. And then she created the larger sort of set of slides. And she was really good about, taking in feedback and making some adjustments and whatnot. What she kind of returned to me was a full deck with all the slides, which is great.

And even a couple of slides that are a bit more about like, you know, here are the overarching goals. Like here's how I'm bringing in [00:52:00] your brand personality. Here's the color palette, and how it works together, a much more kind of professional delivery sort of. And I love the slides. Oh my God.

They're so great. I just, they're so versatile. They have things set up nicely where like, I know exactly what fonts and sizes I'm using for everything. Every time I put an image in, it'll like automatically size it properly for the box it's going in. Like it's just, they're so nice and easy to work with.

 They're kind of like a balance of professional and playful, so I can use them for client presentations and for course stuff. And it feels like it fits well for both of those. So yeah,

I'm really happy with that experience.

Kyle Soucy: And I'm sure it makes the process of creating these decks quicker for

Elizabeth Creighton: Oh, totally. And I feel like, whereas with my previous slides, I knew I wanted to change them. So I didn't love them because I knew at some point I'd be changing them. Now I'm like, okay, I'm probably going to stick with this template for, years.

 Until maybe at some point in the future it'll feel outdated or something. But right now it feels great. So I feel

like invested in using them.

Kyle Soucy: I love that you have this now, this template that you feel really confident in and, and proud of. And I think that [00:53:00] changes, how you approach your work and you're excited.

Like, you know, I'm going to. Wow. You with this report now?

Elizabeth Creighton: yeah, absolutely. And I've had, actually, the first time I used it, I had the client comment after, like, that she loved, she's like, I love the new deck. It looks so great. Who did this? It looks so professional.

So yeah, it definitely is getting good results.

Pitch decks vs Word documents for proposals?

Kyle Soucy: Oh, that's so great. And when you first told me about this, um, that you were having this template done, I was thinking in my head, I'm like, oh, is this for pitch decks, you know, or, or not. And, I remember I asked you, so do you write your proposals like as a deck or is it still a word doc?

Cause I'm old fashioned. A final proposal for me is usually written in, a word doc, or something like that. And I, I wondered, I'm like, huh, maybe I should be switching this up.

But then I

talked to you and you're like, no, no, no. You still do a word doc too. Right.

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, I'm still, I don't

know, old school or lazy or something. Yeah, I, I, I still do like, you know, WordDoc basically, like I have my sections I always include, a little background on the project to make sure I'm understanding their problem correctly, you know, like the scope of work and like a [00:54:00] little, uh, schedule chart and the pricing and whatever.

And I have a couple of pages at the end that are about me and my business and, You know, and stuff. And I mean, that's worked fine for me so far, as far as I can tell. I don't, you know, who knows? Cause I don't know sometimes I don't get a project and maybe if I'd used a deck instead, I would have gotten it.

I don't know, but, um, it's working fine for me, but yeah, like a lot of these, especially like bigger agencies use pitch decks that look, Much more flashy and interesting and I guess I don't know to what extent my clients care about the flash part versus just the content, right? I'm really just focusing on the content of the proposal, whereas a deck can make it, much nicer kind of flashy presentation.

 Now that I have this template, I could probably create a pitch deck template pretty easily, right? I mean, I know what kinds of slides I basically just be taking what I would normally put in a written proposal and kind of piece it out onto slides and make it look a little bit.

Uh, flashier, and maybe at some point I'll try, but I guess part of me is like, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, you know, my current way of doing things is fine, even if it's not super exciting and, you know, I land most of the projects I'm pitching for, so I'm not too worried,

but [00:55:00] maybe in the future, I'll give it a try.

Kyle Soucy: Yeah. I have similar feelings and I'd love to know from the listeners, if you're doing pitch decks instead of written proposal docs, let me know. I, you know, I'll share it with the audience. I'm curious to get people's feedback on this. Um, yeah. Are we old school or just doing things like everyone else?

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah, and also if any listeners want to share their examples

of cool pitch decks, I'd love to see them.

Kyle Soucy: Oh, yeah, me too. Me too.

Elizabeth and Kyle's experience pausing their consulting practice for a maternity leave

Kyle Soucy: Now I'd like to switch gears to talk about something a little more personal. We're both mothers, and we took time off consulting when we had our children, which can be quite scary. And I know there are plenty of consultants, both men and women, who at some point, May need to pause their consulting practice for one reason or another.

And I was wondering if you could share what, you know, what was your experience like pausing your consulting practice when you had your child two and a half years

Elizabeth Creighton: I mean, um, it was, It was scary. It was a scary thing to do. So, uh, so I'm in Canada where like a typical maternity [00:56:00] leave is like either 12 or 18 months. Um, so, you know, pretty much all of my friends who have had kids would take 12 or 18 months off, which, is very luxurious compared to

what many Americans might be able to take, of course.

Kyle Soucy: Yeah. Totally envious.

Elizabeth Creighton: Um, and so I always had in my

mind that I probably wanted to take a year. Cause that's just seems kind of standard here. Okay. But I also knew that, um, I wouldn't get any money from the government. So if I was working a full time job, I would get a chunk of, it wouldn't nearly be anywhere close to my full salary, but it would be, a decent chunk of money.

Um, whereas I wouldn't get any of it because in Canada, your business has to pay into the unemployment insurance, program in order to eventually, access it. and get maternity leave benefits and my business does not pay into it and my accountant has kind of advised me that it's just not worth it like it financially would either be a wash or wouldn't be worth it if I were to kind of pay into it the idea is you have to pay into it for the rest of the life of your business if you ever want to take benefits so like There's a lot, a lot to weigh there.

And we basically decided it wasn't worth it.

Kyle Soucy: yeah.

Elizabeth Creighton: I also, you know, knew that even if I was taking time off, I might want to take on a bit of work here and [00:57:00] there. Like, I had no idea how much time I'd want to be fully off versus maybe like partially off. And so that was kind of another factor. And so, with, with the idea in mind that I wanted to take probably about a year off, I started, Just trying to save a lot of money, basically.

I mean, leading up to when I gave birth to my daughter, I was trying to take on as many projects as possible, trying to squirrel away a bunch of money. Because what I wanted to do was still pay myself my normal salary throughout my maternity leave as if I was still working, because like my household still needed the money.

 And so I wanted to make sure I had that really big cushion so that I could kind of keep paying myself like usual, and then hopefully just transition back to work and then pick up where I left off. And for the most part that's kind of how it went. Like I managed to have a really good year, got a lot of money saved, you know, that was all great.

 But it was kind of scary coming back because, I'd been gone for almost a year. Um, and I had to kind of, you know, probably send an email out to all my clients being like, Hey, by the way, I'm back. Um, which, you know, um, I think the problem is, you know, with the kind of work that we do is, you A lot can happen in a year and people might hire a researcher in house or make a [00:58:00] relationship with a different consultant or whatever.

And so I kind of lost, um, some client relationships because they'd found another solution, right. Which is totally reasonable. They can't wait around for a year for me to come back. So I went back, uh, in, what was it like April of, of 2023, I guess, and, Yeah, 2023 was kind of a rough year.

I think it was for a lot of people, but in, for me in particular, because I was, also having this challenge of coming back from zero basically, and having to rebuild those relationships and get that kind of engine going again for work. Plus also like the challenge of having a young child, even though she was in daycare at the time, it's still a lot.

On your plate, you have no more weekends and stuff anymore. So I did find that challenging. I feel like it worked out ultimately well in the end. And now, this year is 2024 and it's going to be a better year than 2023 was, but I'm already thinking about, you know, if I do have another kid, um, Going through that whole process again and how difficult it's going to be, it'll be easier the second time around, but I'm still kind of dreading the idea of again, disappearing for another, you know, X number of months and having to come

back and rebuild after

Kyle Soucy: [00:59:00] Yeah. Yeah. So with my experience, it was definitely easier the second time around. So 2009, um, had my first child and I, I was not good about preparing for it. It was just like, I was in like, whatever, like, you know what, it's, it's going to be what it's going to be. And I, I didn't really. Think about it much.

It was on the heels of the 2008 recession or crash or whatever. And that kind of sucked because my time off was longer than I expected it to be. I thought a few months and I'd be back in the swing of things. And I just figured I would just, as. As the leads came in, I'd either turn them down or take them.

But then there were no leads for like 10 months. And I'm like, Oh no. Did I take myself out completely? What just happened in the mixture of the bad economy and everything that was just scary. But then once it ramped up, it was back, you know, but it took a bit. Um, with the second [01:00:00] one, I think I

took, I would not suggest this, but I think I took like three

Elizabeth Creighton: Oh my God. Oh, Kyle

Kyle Soucy: well, it was a hard time. So, uh, my husband was laid off and he was going through a career change. So he's going back to school and it's okay. Cause it worked out, but I was almost kind of mid project and they knew, you know, of course I was taking a break. Um, but things were just there for me. They were okay with me.

 Taking time off and they're like, well, are you going to be okay? I'm like, yeah. And it's so, it's kind of funny. It's kind of funny. Like was I, I don't know, probably not my best, but you just kind of do what you have to do. Like it works out. I don't know. Um, but it's funny. The first is hard.

Cause it's motherhood. You're new, you're new to motherhood. You're new to everything and you're obsessed and you're just like, but the second time around,

it's like a juggling act. You're like, Oh yeah, yeah, I remember this. I got

Elizabeth Creighton: yeah, yeah, like, I mean, right, like, I've already decided, you know, again, if we have another kid, um, as opposed to the kid being home with me for a full year, I'll probably do nine months, because now that I've had [01:01:00] the experience of, shifting a kid over to daycare, I know that it's challenging, but I also know that, The baby can get through it, if you know what I mean.

So I'm like more comfortable with them going, you know, sooner. And I also remember that nine months is when I started to feel kind of antsy at home being like, okay, when's the project going to come around? Like, okay, I should be, thinking about this.

And yeah, I think a lot of aspects will be easier though. I'm also not looking forward to the idea of, you know, um, having a second kid with a very needy toddler also, wanting me at home and, you know, kind of balancing

that. But, I'm sure when it, you know, when it

Kyle Soucy: all works out. Yep. It all works out Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that I appreciate it because I know there there are other folks out there that are concerned, you know If I go out on my own, what do I do if I have to take time off and it it works out You figure it out. Yeah,

Elizabeth Creighton: exactly.

How Elizabeth would describe consulting in one word

Kyle Soucy: well What I wanted to do to wrap up here is just have some rapid fire questions.

Uh, if you had to describe UX consulting in one word, how would you describe

it?

Elizabeth Creighton: um,

Kyle Soucy: [01:02:00] Thrilling. Okay. Yeah.

The best business advice Elizabeth has ever received

Kyle Soucy: And what's the best piece of business advice you've

ever received?

Elizabeth Creighton: Oh, that's a good question. Um, so I think the only people who have kind of explicitly shared business advice with me was, Kathy Kaiser, and Lyman Casey at Centralis, my, you know, my first UX job. And I remember one of the things that they kind of taught us, was, Good news is an email, but bad news is a phone call.

And really it's more like a phone call or a meeting. What they're, what they're trying to say is that you can share good news, with the client in any way you want, but if it's going to be bad news, you want to have that like real conversation with them, it's a phone call or it's a meeting.

It's not just like a, an email saying like, Oh, by the way, we can't get our participants this week, or, Oh, by the way, the, the. Projects delayed by a month or something like that. No, you have a real conversation about it. And I'm not going to say I always take that advice. Sometimes I take the easy way out and send the email and don't have the conversation and hope that no one really cares that much.

But, I do definitely try more often to, inform people in a more personal way and have a really good conversation about it. If I have to relay some sort of bad

[01:03:00] news about a project to a client.

Kyle Soucy: That is good advice. Yeah. Cause

you can minimize a lot of, of damage by having that

Elizabeth Creighton: Exactly. It's like scary to do. It's very awkward and scary to do, but it's worth it in the end.

Kyle Soucy: Love it. Yeah.

Elizabeth's recommended consulting resource

Kyle Soucy: And lastly, what consulting resources have been most helpful for you? Is there a must read book or podcast or a

coach or anything?

Elizabeth Creighton: Yeah. Good question. I feel like I have not been very good at seeking out help. There are coaches and people that can help with this and I, I feel like, um, I always just get so zoned into my world and I kind of forget like, Oh right. I should be doing things to make me better at, at, What I am, right?

I don't know everything about this stuff. One of the reasons why your podcast is so great is I can listen to these episodes, like the one with Karen McGrane, the first episode was awesome. I mean, they've all been awesome, but yeah, one book I really enjoyed that I read, um, when I was first getting started, I think, is called company of one by Paul Jarvis.

 And so it's basically about the idea of, intentionally having a company of one, whether it's a consulting business or something else that you do making software, whatever. [01:04:00] Thinking about the complexity that gets added on when you add even just one more person onto your team is huge.

And if you value having a pretty simple, straightforward, flexible life, you might just want to stick to being a company of one, of course there are drawbacks that too, you can't take on as much work as one person, you know, or maybe you have more ups and downs cause you're just one person.

But for me, I really value like the kind of simplicity and flexibility of consulting and thinking about my company as always being a company of one. Has been a

helpful frame framework, I guess.

Kyle Soucy: Uh, I have to check that book out. I have not heard of it and I will definitely include a link in the show notes to that and really everything that you've mentioned. I am so grateful, Elizabeth, that you could spend this time with us and share just your wealth of wisdom. You're doing so many great things.

You're doing a lot of things right that. Things that I know I should be doing that I'm not

doing. So I'm just so grateful that you could share this with us.

Elizabeth Creighton: Oh, I'm so glad you had

me on the podcast and I'm going to, I'll create a discount code for my course. For your podcast listeners, probably like UX lounge [01:05:00] 15 or something like that for 15 percent off. I'll share that with you. So you can put that in the show notes, but I really appreciate it, Kyle.

 I'm flattered you invited me. I always love talking to you and we never get a chance to talk for this long. Um, so I'm glad that

we did it.

Kyle Soucy: Great. Well, I'm so glad to, well, thank you so much.

Elizabeth Creighton: you too.

Kyle Soucy: All right. Take care.

Elizabeth Creighton: Bye Bye.

Kyle Soucy: All right. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for joining me. So do you have a topic or a question that you would like us to explore on a future episode of the UX consultants lounge? Perhaps there's an anonymous consulting story you want to submit.

If so, click on the link in the show notes to submit your story or question from the podcast website. Until next time, keep that consultancy going. I can't wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode.

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