We recently connected with Phoebe Palmer and have shared our conversation below.
Phoebe, thrilled to have you on the platform as I think our readers can really benefit from your insights and experiences. In particular, we’d love to hear about how you think about burnout, avoiding or overcoming burnout, etc.
I think you have to experience burn out to realise when you’re taking on too much. People can deal with different amounts of work differently and so I think it is definitely up to you to learn when is too much. I think it’s totally normal to experience burn out as a new business owner because you never want to say no, you want to take on as many clients as possible and you want your business to be thriving however you THEN learn that that is not the way to go. I overcame burn out because I got burnt out. I took on so many clients last March and when it came to doing their projects I almost didn’t sleep for a week it was so insane, I was exhausted, and one client felt let down. This has never ever happened with any of the 50+ clients I have worked with and I just felt so upset that I hadn’t given a client the best experience possible and this was all because I was burnt out. One of the most important things to me now is to make sure I am never on the road to burning out, I have my CRM (Dubsado) set up so I never have to be constantly checking in on clients, I make sure I take time out and I don’t take on more than I can. We’re only human!
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Behope Studio is a one stop shop for creatives to start their online business. It didn’t start as big as this, I was simply offering Dubsado set ups to help creatives streamline their client experience but the more I worked with different clients the more I learnt and then Behope started to grow! I LOVE what I do, my brain is half strategic half creative, so the fact that I get to use both sides of my brain – every single day – keeps me loving what I do without getting bored. Essentially what I do is streamlining peoples businesses for them because WHO doesn’t want that?! We take your processes from the moment someone enquires with you all the way through to offboarding and make sure there are workflows in place for all scenarios. I also offer website design which I love, it is a huge creative outlet for me and it makes me so happy when I hand over my clients websites to them and they are so proud of their site. These services are every so slightly on the pricier side and I never wanted to not be able to offer my services/products to people starting out in business so I also have a Behope Studio Shop where I have a Dubsado Guidebook which is essentially a course to set up your own Dubsado at 10% of my set up price! I also sell email templates and workflow templates in order to cater to as many people as possible.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think one of the biggest qualities that was most impactuful in my journey is that I truly believed it was going to work, no matter how hard it was to get clients at the beginning, no matter how much I had to learn to get where I am now I kept on going because I believed there was no other option and this was going to be something, and through my trust, hard work, and strong belief that I can do it. I wouldn’t be where I am without Chanel & Lee Dubsado Pro Acadamy that taught me how to use Dubsado initially and by the end of that course I had my first Dubsado set up with a real client. The way the course was designed and I think this should be the way people learn regardless of the course was pretending we were setting up real accounts and that made me learn so much quicker than just reading a load of instructions. I do that a lot, I often just say yes and then learn how to do whatever I have said yes to because everyone can do anything if they put their mind to it.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I would love to collaborate with project management experts who are also creative. I feel like this is slightly missing from the offering on my shop and I’d love to offer a project management template to sell on my website. It would be super cool to do this as a collaboration. If anyone would be interested in this then please do reach out via instagram @behopestudio
Contact Info:
- Website: https://behopestudio.co.uk/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behopestudio/
