#138 – Book Yourself Solid for Creatives with Joana Galvão

Shannon Mattern (00:01.586)

Hello everyone and welcome back to the profitable web designer podcast. Today I'm joined by Joanne Algalveo. She is the co-founder of Jif Design Studios, which is an award-winning agency. She's been running for over a decade, specializing in brand identities and web design. And in 2021, she launched the Ambitious Creatives, which is an online education company helping creative freelancers get book solid with dream projects and without burnout.

So she's the author of a brand new book called Book Yourself Solid for creatives. We're gonna talk about all of this and so much more. So Joanna, welcome to the show.

Joana Galvao (00:41.346)

Thank you for having me Shannon. I'm excited for our conversation.

Shannon Mattern (00:45.468)

So, you just you reached out to me to be on the show. And, you know, as I stalk all of my potential guests, we are we're so aligned in our messaging and, you know, what we're passionate about and who we serve. I'm just really excited to talk to you and learn more about you. So can you just take our listeners back in time to like the beginning? Like, what's your background? What's your origin story?

Joana Galvao (01:15.854)

Yeah, sure. So I always thought I was going to be a graphic designer at an agency. And that was that. I was just going to climb the ladder to creative director, partner, what have you. And it's my journey starts in London where I get my first design agency job. So I'm in London, I'm 22. I'm doing an hour and a half commute to work, by the way, which I realized was a good thing because it gave me a lot of

time to read, listen to podcasts, to dream. So an hour and a half each way, that's three hours a day that I was consuming like personal development stuff. that's where I found Marie Forleo. Shannon, do know Marie?

Shannon Mattern (01:55.631)

Yes, who doesn't know who Marie Forleo is?

Joana Galvao (01:57.742)

Well, the new generation don't know as much I've been finding. But yeah, all of us who started businesses around 2014, which is when I started listening to Marie, Marie was the gateway drug into entrepreneurship, right? She was the one person that introduced me to, this is possible. I could run an online business. And at the time she was doing a launch for B-School where she was showing before and afters of her students. And it'd be like, look,

Shannon Mattern (02:01.424)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (02:06.119)

Yep.

Exactly.

Joana Galvao (02:27.596)

This student of mine was a waitress at a restaurant and now she runs a seven figure empire. And I was like, what? And you know, when it's just like someone shows you a different reality than the one you've been living, it just like cracked me right open. And I started to be so curious. I just felt like everything in my body just come alive and be like, okay, I want that instead of what I thought I wanted. And in one of her videos in the.

for the launch of B-School, she asks us to finish this sentence. And I think it's a great sentence. I use it a lot now whenever I'm thinking of new goals or when I'm journaling in the morning. it's, wouldn't it be great if... And you finish the sentence. So I wrote in the comments of that YouTube video, wouldn't it be great if I magically started to get freelance clients? Mind you, I didn't have any clients. I was just working as a designer for an agency.

enough so that I could join B-School in 10 days time. So I needed to, I was like, wouldn't it be great if I magically made two grand in 10 days to join this program that promises to get me way beyond that? And one woman saw this comment and she replied, or she got in touch with me. She said, I don't have two grand for brand identity, but I do have a budget set aside of $800. Does that buy me a logo?

Joana Galvao (03:58.19)

And I was like, oh boy, am I glad you led with the price conversation because I would have said $150 or something like that. You know, that was half of my London salary. You know, that was my rent. That was back 10 years ago. That was so, so much that when I got that, I'm like, oh my God, my life's about to change. So I...

I jumped on a call as soon as I could with her and I told her about my dreams of B-school and the possibility of this being a thing. And she's like, my God, I'm already in B-school. I'm already in the B-school Facebook group. There's about 20,000 people in there. Like what? I'm going to start spreading the word on your behalf, she said. And she started to just tell everybody. And as we were progressing, because I just started to pump out work really fast for her. And this she's.

She started sharing the mood boards, starting sharing the first logos, which were, my God, they were so horrible. I mailed them out to my newsletter the other day. I'm like, can't believe I'm doing this. And I got enough. I made the two grand in 10 days to join B-School. And that was the beginning of everything. I started to get booked solid right away.

because then I was inside of B-Schools, so now I could talk about my hopes and dreams and be in front of 20,000 people who were all starting their online businesses, all needing brand identity, all needing website design. And I think my first 100 clients came from that group and the connections I made inside that group. I'm still in touch with a lot of people that I made connections with back then today.

Some of them have gone on to become really famous big authors and speakers and it's just incredible. And yeah, long story short, I quit my job very soon after, so started B-School in March and in May I handed in my notice.

Shannon Mattern (06:13.394)

Beautiful. I love that story. Yeah. I'm like, you just telling that story. I started around the same time, found my way to Marie Forleo as well. I never ended up enrolling in B-School, but I worked with a lot. I did work with a lot of people who had been trained by B-School and like working, enrolling in their programs and

Joana Galvao (06:14.208)

and then starts the rest of the story.

Shannon Mattern (06:40.024)

I just like when you were sharing that initial like thing that happened where you're like, I just posted on this YouTube video and it created the spark. was the spark that created everything. I remember that same feeling the first time I got paid for something I was doing for me, it was a little bit different. you know, online by a stranger, right? I had.

I had been getting some freelance clients here and there just through word of mouth, like at my day job, like saying, I do freelance web design on the side. And people are like, you do? I need that. And like, you're just shocked in the moment because you're like, wait, you're going to pay me for this? like you said, like a whole new reality is being shown for you that like, you don't have to have a job to make money. And then I undercharged and then I found my way to B school and I was like, I'm going to teach people how to build their own website.

I started the free five day website challenge. taught WordPress and I'm going to just give it all away for free like Pat Flynn does. And I earned affiliate commissions from that. And I remember my very first affiliate, my very first subscriber, my very first affiliate commissions that came through. there's just like a magic in that moment where something in your brain clicks in like, is possible. This is possible.

Joana Galvao (07:46.926)

smart.

Joana Galvao (08:03.406)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (08:06.102)

and I haven't looked back, right? And it's a series of events leading me to this podcast and all of the things. So I can so relate to that. And I'm so, can't wait to dig into like, okay, well, we're 10 years past that. Like, happened next? Tell me what happened next.

Joana Galvao (08:08.814)

Mm-hmm.

Joana Galvao (08:27.488)

Yeah. So, and that moment, that magic that you were talking about as you were sharing that, I was like, yeah, we have to work hard on not losing it because as we progress in our journeys, as we get older, as we have setbacks, as we see others have setbacks, it's so easy to lose that. What if? but what if it was possible? But what if this could really be my reality, you know? And for those, for your listeners, maybe they're thinking like,

Shannon Mattern (08:36.729)

Yes.

Joana Galvao (08:56.974)

There's some goal that they want, but if our subconscious is already like, that's not going to happen, then we don't leave the comment. Then we don't reach out. Then we don't put ourselves out there. So that's something we need as you were speaking. I'm like, yeah, we need to always keep that magic alive or keep that wonder of like, anything is possible. We have to keep ourselves open to that. So.

Shannon Mattern (09:21.714)

Oh yeah, our thoughts create our feelings, drive our actions, create our results. And I love how you really tied that very specifically back to, if I didn't believe that, I would have never done that one little thing that changed everything. So good.

Joana Galvao (09:36.224)

Yeah. So Shannon, I'll tell you another story of like that one little thing that changed everything. One of the things, first of all, actually, in B-school, the minute you enroll, like there's a couple of welcome videos, probably not now because they've been re-recorded, but at the time, Marie suggests a couple of books. And one of the books she suggests is Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port. So I'm like, OK, being a good student, buy that book, order it.

It'll come full circle in a moment, as you probably guessed. So that was the first business book that I buy. Then in one of the modules, she mentions how you should try and reach out to somebody who could potentially be a potential referral partner to you, who could, who's a couple of steps ahead of you that could potentially introduce you to the clients that you want to have. And

I wanted clients like Marie. And so I thought, well, I'm not going to reach out to her because she's probably already having 20,000 people reach out to her. that's, I'm just going to be one of many, but who do I know that has Maria as a client that could be like that halfway point? So I start to dig around, research. And as I'm listening to a podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire,

I listened to an interview where Selena Sue, whose book is also coming out around this time, I love that synchronicity as well. Selena Sue has Marie Forleo as a client. She has Danielle Laporte as a client. She has Louis Haas as a client. She was doing publicity at the time. And so I thought, I could get in front of Selena Sue, that could be my way to get in front of these other clients. So I email her, no reply.

I think, okay, I need to be more creative. And I think what would get her attention in her inbox, you know, being creative with the resources you have. And I'm like, I have a client that sells dresses and they're quite expensive dresses. and they're business dresses. They kind of look like the dresses Selena would wear and definitely like the ones her audience would buy. And so I proposed to my client that we mail a dress out to Selena at no cost, proposing she

Joana Galvao (12:04.046)

features it in her newsletter that at the time had, I don't know, 20,000 subscribers. My client says, yes, I asked if I could be the one to take care of everything, so I'm the point of contact. And I reach out personally to Selena. This time she replies, and she's very nice, and we exchange back and forth, like, what's your size? What's your, what are you gonna, this is the blurb about the company, et cetera. This now has me, gives me an in. Now she'll recognize my name in her inbox.

So I try again, I email her again responding to one of the things in her newsletter, just sharing how much value she gives me or what landed for me in that thing that she shared in her newsletter. And I do this every so often. So we start having conversations every now and then about her newsletter until one day she asks me what I do. So I'm like, okay, good, this is working. And this is what I say to my students as well.

direct outreach, the goal is to get a reply. It's not to get the sale.

And this tour will teach you about the long game, right? So she asks me what I do. I say I'm a graphic designer. If you ever need anything, just let me know. A couple of months later, she emails me saying her graphic designer called in sick, but she's in the middle of a launch. She has a sales page that needs finishing in 48 hours. Can I pull it off? So I pulled two all-nighters or like I worked through the night a couple of hours, sleep very little.

do it for her. I even proposed to her that I don't charge just because I wanted to invest in this relationship. I do I know there's like that could be like we'll put a pin in that conversation. Do we do free work or not? Because there could be posing opinions. But I do think that when you feel that the payoff could be big, just go with your gut. And maybe there could be a couple of projects worth doing this for. That was my feeling at the time.

Joana Galvao (14:08.876)

So I did it for free. And so she in return wants to pay me back with like access to her courses, which helped a lot and an access to introductions to people. But it's not until she posts a post on Facebook that everything changes. So she posts on Facebook, she's looking for an assistant to come to New York to her house. Or I suppose she was looking for an assistant in New York.

but that will come to her house and assist her during her two-day mastermind that she's hosting for her clients. And then the day after that for her two-year anniversary party that she's hosting in her house. this assistant has to just like do bits and bobs, pick up dry cleaning, pick up flowers, help tidy up after the guests leave, et cetera. And so I volunteer. At this time, I'm living in London. She's in New York and she's thinking like, Johnny, you're crazy.

And I reply like, no, look, I'll cover my flights. I'll cover my hotel. I can also be the photographer of the mastermind and the events because I was taking graphic design. I had just taken graphic design with photography and I had professional photo equipment. No work will be beneath me, I said. I'll do anything attitude. And I think I'll learn a lot as an apprentice just by watching you.

lead this event and this party that you're hosting. if you're a game, I'm totally a game to fly myself out there. So I did that. We spent a week working really intensively. ended up then she ended up proposing that I sleep at hers instead of commuting back and forth from Brooklyn. We would wake up at 8 a.m. start working till 8 p.m. Then she'd take us out for dinner. And throughout the week, we became friends.

to a point that at the last day at her two-year anniversary party, she said, actually, Joanna, I want you to come to my party as a guest. I'm gonna get an assistant for the party. And so I show up at this party and Selena introduces me as this is my friend, Joanna Galvao, and she's a freelance graphic designer. She introduces me to Lewis House, who became a client, Derek Halpern, who became a client.

Joana Galvao (16:35.878)

Ramit Sethi, Jim Quick, who has referred me clients, just, you know, really big names. And that's when I just jumped, like we just upleveled again as an agency. also on that trip taught me how to put together a job ad, went back, started hiring. My husband then suggested like, why not then move back to Portugal because salaries are more affordable there.

Rent is more affordable there. can build a studio. We can like set up a studio there, have lower costs and then be closer to our family because that's where I'm from. And so we did. At the peak of our agency, we were, there was a team of 10. We were working with clients, we are working with clients in this caliber, know, people who have seven figure companies.

Shannon Mattern (17:18.418)

you

Joana Galvao (17:34.062)

eight figure companies, huge audiences, huge membership sites, books, speaking, and that became our niche and that became where we became known, basically.

Shannon Mattern (17:53.808)

That story is everything because you just articulated in such a beautiful, I don't know, detail and synchronicity and all of the things about the way our philosophy of marketing here too is to develop relationships, just be willing to ask.

to give, to reciprocate, to pour in, play the long game, to, you know, like the business that we're in is a relationship business, not necessarily a traffic business, traffic marketing business, even though we do those things for our clients. And I've been saying,

Joana Galvao (18:31.864)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (18:40.946)

on the show for several months now is like the trap that I see web designers fall into. They come to me and they're like, I have a problem. All my clients come from word of mouth and I'm not marketing. And I'm like, you don't have a problem. You don't have a problem. Yes.

Joana Galvao (18:54.158)

I know and aren't they the best? Clients that come from word of mouth, they already trust us by design because their friend, colleague, mentor trusted them.

Shannon Mattern (19:07.878)

Yeah. And we just need to like intentionally develop those relationships and ask for the introductions and take advantage of, opportunities you create, like just you, you created so many opportunities through just like really like some strategic thinking, but like, it was also very genuine and authentic. wasn't like you, you know, so that's what I love so much about the story is like,

It's not like scheming. It's not like all of the things people think about. It's very much like, how can I add value to this person and this relationship and without an agenda and see what may come of this?

Joana Galvao (19:58.222)

That's exactly it. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (19:58.738)

It's beautiful.

Shannon Mattern (20:02.45)

So I have so many questions. I don't even know where to begin. Yeah, like what were some of like those, you followed these opportunities and you were working with some, those are big names in industry and like well-connected. What were some of your early challenges in like,

Joana Galvao (20:06.254)

You

Shannon Mattern (20:32.496)

the growth because as we know, there's challenges that come along with growth that are maybe unexpected. What were some of the ones that were unexpected for you and how did you navigate those?

Joana Galvao (20:47.284)

so many. I think the first big challenge that really rocked my business was we were growing steadily. had two full time people at the time. We were starting to also need to lean on some extra contractors, freelancers here and there. And there was one day where I left on the table.

I used to not do my books on an Excel spreadsheet. I used to have everything in my head and every now and then put it on paper. Terrible, terrible way to do it. That leads to another problem later on in my experience. So I'm writing like everything that all the projects that we have on, all the payments that had been made, all the payments that were still to come and it amounted to five figure months at the time.

And I left it there and I went for lunch. When I came back from lunch, the piece of paper was gone. And I asked my designers if they had seen it. If they had seen a piece of paper that was on my desk with a bunch of numbers, they said no. And you know, when you're like, your intuition, I just had a sinking feeling in my gut that they were lying to me. The next day it's back on my desk. And so again, that feeling of like,

is not. And I had already been feeling a little bit, there was some tension at the office. In retrospect, I now know how I also co-created that environment. And they asked for a meeting with me, the two of them. And they came to me and they're like, look, we've been doing some research and we've been digging into

what salaries are like in the US compared to Portugal. And we figured since we have American clients and you're charging American prices, we should have American salaries. And therefore we want to triple. We want you to triple our salaries or we're out.

Joana Galvao (23:04.686)

So much went through my head at the time. But the reality was that they had only seen the in-comings. They hadn't seen the out-goings. They hadn't seen rent and electricity and internet and the computers and software and all of the other things, not to mention taxes. So if...

Shannon Mattern (23:18.044)

Yep. Yep.

Joana Galvao (23:31.522)

They thought that with those incomings, I could triple their, like there was no way. We'd get into the red. And so I explained to them, like, I just can't. And so they said, okay, well, then we'll leave. And they both left. I remember, and we were bootstrapping it at the beginning. We were still,

We were, we, I've always done things before I've been ready. So I hired before I've been ready. We hired before we had a legal entity. So we were, we were paying them, but it was all a bit muddy while our lawyers were like incorporating and see what type of business it makes sense for us to incorporate as. So when they call this meeting, we have no contracts with them. So the next day they're gone. And.

That meant that I had to get back to my clients and say, know, Louis House at the time was a client on retainer and I had to tell him, I just lost my entire team. This is so embarrassing. I cannot until I hire and that might be a little bit because I remember that floored me and I was like, nevermind. I'll go back to a full time job. There's no way can do this. I'm not a good leader. You know, all of the.

all of the imposter syndrome and I just let him know like I couldn't carry on. He was very understanding. So were the rest of my clients. And that was the first big setback. And where I started to, you you have that quote on your website, like there's profit in your pain. That was my first big pain and I'm like, well, how?

Shannon Mattern (25:18.29)

Yes.

Joana Galvao (25:22.648)

can I make sure that never happens again? And that's where I dove deep into leadership. I picked up Radical Candor, book at the time, phenomenal book on leadership for those of you listening who manage teams or want to manage teams or even managing contractors. And I started to lead from a place of Radical Candor. And I think that's where I had gone wrong with these girls is I was micromanaging their time. I was

Not really letting them in on my decisions or letting them in on my, on what I thought was the process that we should do our designs. was pausing, interrupting their work and being like, this important client just asked for this link last minute pause what you're doing. Do this. Okay. Now go back to that. was just, I can see now how was terrible for them to work in that way. And I thought, okay, but like, I have an open door policy.

They can come up to me and tell me when things are wrong. But I know now having an open door policy with your team means nothing. Even in there's a book by the guys at base camp. I can't remember the name of the book. It doesn't have to be beep at work. I don't know if we're allowed to swear. Yeah, so your listeners will fill in the blanks.

Shannon Mattern (26:39.186)

I usually keep it PG, but yes.

Ha ha ha ha!

Joana Galvao (26:48.406)

And they say that, they say like saying you have an open door policy as a cop out. Because you're putting, saying that puts the responsibility and the pressure and the hard work on the employees. So now they have to think about when is a good time for you? They know you're busy, they know you're a leader and does this really need to be brought up to the table? Is this going to create more stress in the company and whatever, and they'll keep it to themselves. What you want.

Shannon Mattern (26:53.478)

Yeah.

Joana Galvao (27:18.006)

as a leader, what I've learned is there has to be room in the calendar where they know they're going to have a candid conversation with me. And I'm there fully present, no distractions, open to hear how they're doing, how they're feeling inside the company, where they're seeing like what has been going well, but what hasn't been going well and why, and how can I improve as a leader or how can we improve our systems?

And it's been in those meetings that we have really transformed our systems, that designers have proposed new tools that have saved us a bunch of time. The designers have proposed that we take this course, that we go to this event to brush up on our skills, that, you know, and, or that we, like, I have this friction with this other employee, and so therefore then I can intervene before.

you know, things get ugly. And I had to, that was my first setback. So had to learn it then. And ever since we have, I mean, our director of operations been with us for nine years. And it's pretty much that's like a typical turnaround time. It's like, people just end up staying. And so that was the first, but there are so many, my God.

Shannon Mattern (28:46.658)

I can so relate to that story in terms of realizing that you were the one disempowering your team. I had, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I had a team member that I had to lay off because we had a bad year. However, like,

now that it's been like two years almost since that happened. like, I can see in hindsight how her role was supposed to help us grow, but I disempowered her with my, I had my own stuff I was working through and I was micromanaging, jumping in, doing her work before she could get to it. Like my urgency of this was like,

you know, of keeping things moving and making sure everybody was happy and all of the things was like really disempowering. And now I'm like, I could see how I like choked her role off completely and wasn't able to experience the growth that I was hoping would happen that I was planning to happen due to hiring that role because I wouldn't allow it to.

support me. I would not allow her to support me in the way that I logically intended for her to support me. And so it's really interesting, you know, what we go through as entrepreneurs and leaders when we go to grow our team, because we truly have no more capacity and we need to add capacity, but we have to allow people to support us and we have to allow them to

be the experts that they are and get out of their way and let them do the amazing work that they're so, so capable of doing if we could just, if we could let it go and stop being the ones to do all of the things. So yeah, I just really appreciate that story. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'm not alone in seeing that I

Shannon Mattern (31:11.154)

created that environment for this to happen to where I ultimately had to layer off because I couldn't keep funding the position because the position wasn't being able, wasn't, yeah, anyway.

Joana Galvao (31:25.642)

Yeah, well, you know, in 10 years of running an agency, the biggest setbacks, the biggest challenges have all been people related. And some in ways that we can't control, you know, like we had years where it was like, my God, you just a key person in our team just had an important, a close immediate family death.

Shannon Mattern (31:35.857)

Yes.

Joana Galvao (31:50.878)

and this other person went into an emergency operation and is gonna be out for a month. We just lost, like, okay, well this happens and now we need to figure out how can we be there for both of these team members in such important times and then rejig how we're working and then tell our clients and figure it out. And yeah, just.

we're not robots, right? We're people and we go through ups and downs in our lives and inevitably, no matter how hard we try, sometimes that bleeds into work. And so it's like, well, then how do you then help team members navigate that? But also knowing that you need to still be putting your business first while being there for them. I think in hindsight, a lot of

the dips that we've had in our business is when I've always put my team first. I don't have any regrets, but I know that there needs to be a delicate dance. Otherwise, had I also put the company first, there might not have been such big dips. I still don't have the right answer on that one, but

But yeah, it's having a team, it's just gonna be, in my experience, it's just the hardest thing about growing a business. And how to delegate, how to know when they're, because sometimes you hire the right person, they have the talent, they have the ability, but it's, they're in the wrong seat inside your company. Or,

Shannon Mattern (33:25.884)

Yeah.

Joana Galvao (33:45.812)

they're the wrong fit for the culture because maybe they're competitive and they like fast growth and that's not the agency that we were. So some of the people that ended up leaving was because they wanted to keep climbing and there was no, no, really no climbing to be done here. Right. Like, no, like we're going to climb, we're going to rise together and we always raise our salaries and all of that, but you want to be managing a team of 10. That's probably not going to happen here anytime soon.

and so it's not that they weren't talented and not that we didn't lead them in the right way, but just they're after different things. And so just that alone, there's so much to juggle. There's like the role and what the company needs, but also their ambitions and being at peace that sometimes it's just not a fit and that's okay. And maybe we'll come back and future collaborations. Cause who knows.

what I'll be doing in 10 years and what they'll be doing in 10 years, maybe it'll be completely different. We'll be like starting new venture thing together.

Shannon Mattern (34:48.414)

I love that so much. And you said something earlier that I think kind of ties into this. said, I've always done things before I'm ready. And one of the other common things that I hear from ambitious women web designers, you know, in this space who really do want to like

Joana Galvao (34:57.71)

Mm.

Shannon Mattern (35:13.072)

Breakthrough and build the business and you know have that impact, know, it's like it's not just for them They're not doing it just to make money like they truly Want to help their clients and like have this ripple effect but also they're like I'm afraid to hold all of that responsibility so there's this like there's this sense of

I want this, but there's some uncertainty and what if I can't hold it? It's like, you know, the fear of success, right? So what is it about you that compels you to like do things before you're ready?

Joana Galvao (36:01.806)

At beginning, think, naivety came into play. You know, I was 22. I believed that everything was possible. But it's interesting because I've been getting into a lot of this now because I've been finding that I've been hitting some of my own ceilings because I want to keep challenging myself. I want my business to keep growing. I want to keep doing things, up leveling. And I've been finding myself hitting

ceiling more often now. And so I'm diving deep into that. like, why is that? Why didn't I? Why did I believe everything was possible then and not now?

I've realized some of it comes from our upbringing.

how safe we felt as kids. And that's like, man, that's annoying. We can't go and change our past, no, but we can use that to then inform our present. And some of the things that I think hold me back now is the pain of my failures in these 10 years. Some of them were pretty painful. I don't want to go back there. I don't want to, like nobody wants to feel pain. And our brains are also designed to keep us safe.

So I'm a mother of two now, I have a mortgage now, I didn't back then. I have a lot more weight that I'm carrying on my shoulders that my brain is like high alert, you've got two mouths to feed and yourself to take care of as well. You've got the house to pay, you need to like keep safe. And so that voice that is like, that's not safe, don't do that, gets louder.

Joana Galvao (37:45.72)

But it doesn't say that's not safe. just says you can't do it. Who are you to think like a toxin with different words, but really whenever you hear that voice that says you're not good enough, you can, who are you to charge that there is no way you can handle that much responsibility from that higher ticket client. That's in other words, your brain saying this feels unfamiliar. Therefore I equate unfamiliar with not safe. Let's not go there.

And so what I've been getting really into is things like breath work.

Because what breath work does is it calms your nervous system down. And then you can kind of speak to it and be like, no, we're going to be fine. Look, it's not that big a deal if I take on this client because I am resourceful. I have the right support network. I've got this or that or whatever you need to tell your brain to calm down.

And then see if that helps and then see if then from there, from that space where you've helped your body calm down, you can then take that step. But what I've been feeling is that as I get older, I have more on my shoulders. So it's just takes more effort. You know, it's like if I'm pushing more weights at the gym, it's not as easy to just leap into that next thing. You know, like I remember when I started to get into speaking.

And it was like, what? Competition speak in front of 3000 people? Yeah, sure. I'm up for that. I'll submit the video. I'll go fly to Canada to do it. And I did it. And it was like, yeah, totally no brainer. I could do that. That sounds fun. Whereas now I probably have a lot more resistance.

Shannon Mattern (39:45.746)

I just feel like we should already know each other. Everything you're saying is like what we are so aligned with our messaging here at the Web Designer Academy. It's like strategy is great. You need strategy. But when you go to implement the strategy, if you believe the strategy won't work for you or can work for other people but not for you or

Joana Galvao (39:52.288)

I know.

Shannon Mattern (40:14.672)

We have our next level mastermind where like you have taken strategy really far and yet more strategy isn't making you more money. There is something else in the way you're bumping up against your subconscious safety mechanisms that are like pulling you back. And that's what we work to identify what our paradigms are that like came from back in the day or business failures. Mine are well documented on this podcast.

like fully transparent about all of the mistakes. And we don't even realize that we're holding ourselves back. And we don't even realize how we're holding ourselves back. And so you said something earlier that I wanted to ask you about. You said, as we're talking to ourselves, you want to take on that.

that higher paying client, but you're afraid of the responsibility and making sure we have the right support systems. That's, you know, that's what we do here at the, you know, with, with our programs, but you launched a program called the ambitious creatives in 2021. So tell me more about like how that came to be and

why you like why it is so important to not try to solo your way through this journey of building a creative business. have my ideas that I like tell everybody on this podcast, like we cannot do this alone. You can't see your own stuff all the time. But what is your what is your philosophy? And why did you start that?

Joana Galvao (41:48.439)

I'm

Joana Galvao (41:54.114)

Yeah.

Joana Galvao (41:59.746)

Yes, so that started in post pandemic in my maternity leave. So I got the business ready to work without me in my absence. took four months. I didn't check my inbox once. gave my... I'm gonna... How long do I have to answer this question? Because I have so many, so many, many stories to contribute.

Shannon Mattern (42:24.498)

I don't have a hard stop. do not have a hard stop. as long as you have, like, if you can be here, let's talk about it because I'll say this at the end, but like, I could talk to you for three hours. Like we could dig into all of these things. So.

Joana Galvao (42:31.039)

Yeah.

Joana Galvao (42:36.92)

Yeah... Yeah...

So, okay, so I get the business ready to work without me for four weeks, four months, four months. So I figured like that's a good enough maternity leave and then I'll ease back into it. I didn't want to, like, I didn't get into this to, know, people get into running their business for supposedly more freedom, they end up with a lot less. I wanted to break that cycle and I was only gonna get to have.

Shannon Mattern (43:03.281)

Yes.

Joana Galvao (43:06.274)

my maternity for my first child once and I wanted to be there for it all. And I wanted to be able to rest if I was sleep deprived and so on and so forth. So I got it ready to be okay without me for four months. And we did it with the help of the book Clockwork. They were our clients at the time, Clockworks by Mike McCullough. And they talk about a framework called IPO.

And it's, it's a framework for how to delegate something. information, information, permission, and outcome. And in that line of thinking, I told the, my director of operations that, okay, information, you have all the information you need. You know, how you run the business. We've been doing this for like at the time, seven years together. Permission. You have permission to make decisions on, with the lens of what do I think Joanna would do?

And you have permission to not double check with me on that. You have permission to also fail because I failed too. So if you make the wrong choice, I'm not going to give you a hard time for it. And you also have permission to, if there's ever something that you're like, I actually don't know what Joanna would do in this situation. You have the permission to get in touch with me. So that was the permission parameters and the outcome. said, look, we don't, you don't need to.

do anything but keep the business breaking even. That's the only outcome I expect is just like, you don't need to take on new projects, but if you do, and she did, she managed to close new projects in my absence. We actually had the most profitable months when I was on my maternity leave. So that led me to thinking, well then why am gonna come back?

just going to come back and try to take everything off from her hands when it's clearly working so well. And that gave me room to dream up new opportunities. like, I think that one of the things that attracted me about Marie Forleo back in the day is that I was like, I want to do what she does. I wanted to be an actress at one point in my young life or like as a kid. I wanted to

Joana Galvao (45:28.814)

I wanted to be a dancer. Marie was doing all of that in her brand. She was dancing and she was being on video and she was writing and doing all the things. And I thought that looks really fun. And so now I'm thinking, okay, well, I've already built and I've already gotten the agency to a point where it's it's doing good.

Some people are already coming to me and asking like, whoa, how'd you do that? How'd you take four months off? How'd you get those clients? How'd you have 10 people and all of that? And so I'm thinking, okay, maybe now I have, you know, like the imposter syndrome, like am I good enough now to teach this stuff? Like, have I learned enough to be able to teach it? Because I think that was always my end goal. I'm a natural communicator. I love telling stories. I love teaching people. Like the minute I...

Like when I built my first website, portfolio website, I taught everybody in my university. When I first quit my job, I taught everybody that I knew how to quit their jobs. You know, it was just inevitable. It's like I find something I obsess over it and then I want to tell everybody about it. And so I think that was always like at the back of my mind, even as even the audience that I chose for the agency, the target market, I think, you know, my subconscious probably at work there too, because here I am.

Shannon Mattern (46:34.034)

Yeah.

Joana Galvao (46:52.13)

building the backend of book launches, building the backend of membership sites, all very useful for when you want to launch your own. And so when in my maternity leave and I'm having more time to reply to student questions at that point as well, I had already been on The Future because I had been invited. I had no end game with that, but I did get a few followers from being on The Future with Christo.

Shannon Mattern (46:54.098)

Yeah.

Joana Galvao (47:20.044)

And so a lot of people were just asking me like, how'd you do this? How'd you do that? And I was having more time to reply as I was nursing my baby. And I just posted a story one day. like, I'm maybe thinking about getting into coaching. Would you like to be coached by me? And I did a poll on Instagram and then I just DMed, like I saw like 50 people had put their hands up. so I just.

DMed every single one of those people. I suggested we jump on a call to kind of do like discovery and understand what are people looking for. I came up with something, I wrote it down on a PDF. I was being coached through this process, by the way, it's not like I had these geniuses ideas and I had a lot of resistance towards some of them. Like the reaching out, the booking the calls, the having the calls, even though I didn't know what I was gonna sell. The putting together an outline of like, here's the program. It's not been written yet, but I'll promise I'll write it if you buy it.

Shannon Mattern (48:00.338)

you

Joana Galvao (48:13.134)

And that was how we launched the first cohort of Ambitious Creatives, Book Solid. We had 30 students. And I just fell in love. was like, my God, this is so amazing. know, I can work through Christmas and New Year's and my client doesn't even say thank you, but I can show up to a call and make a huge difference and inspire someone, lend them a little bit of my confidence and it changes their life.

I want to do more of that.

Shannon Mattern (48:45.81)

You just articulated the whole reason why I do what I do. And it kind of ties back to what we were talking about earlier with you were shown a whole new way of living your life that was like completely unknown to you before by Marie Forleo. And same for me. It was a few different mentors. She was one of them. And I want to be that for people.

You know, and I, and I, I can so relate to you. I mean, I shouldn't even say that we are that for people. Like, it's not like I have the desire to be that for people. We are that for people and you, we've, we've made a lot of the mistakes we can help your people are going to make mistakes. are going to have failures, but we can help them normalize that and like lead them through all of it. And it's just so beautiful that.

everything that you did led you kind of full circle to this. Oh, someone else showed me a completely different possibility. And now I am that person that is showing other people this possibility. It's just, it's so beautiful. And I know we have been talking for almost an hour. Yes, go ahead.

Joana Galvao (50:07.394)

Well, on that, but on that you're saying like, that's when it comes full circle. So this is where it comes full circle. I then go to my coach at the time. I'm like, I don't have time to put together the curriculum. I just sold people. Like, what do I do? And he's like, well, good news for you. Book yourself solid is now licensing their IP and you could just use it and just like teach it.

So there you've got your roadmap. It's what you've applied. It's what you've learned. It's what you've tried and tested anyway. And it is like everything in the book, like in the system I believe in. And so I'm like, okay, okay, that sounds easy. I love when things are easy and things align. So I took the certification. It was just, you know, and it's like, need, sometimes you just need like a pen and paper in your hand to kind of feel safe, but then you've got it and you didn't even need to look at the pen and paper.

So it kind of was like that crutch for me and then everything else. I just started teaching from what I knew. But then because I started to get students successes, successes after successes, I would like email Michael Port and I'm like, my God, I love this. Like, look at what the student achieved. I'm so happy that I get to do the certification. It just made the process of getting into coaching so much easier. And then he invites me to...

co-write this new edition. It's like, do you know what'd cool? The book's 20 years old. Some of the things are outdated. We're thinking of doing spin-offs. Why don't you write the version for creative service providers? Put your own stories, bring it up to date. And oh my God, like I knew I wanted to write a book. I didn't think it'd be when my daughter was one year old. Because I was like later when the kids are easier. But I couldn't say no to that.

And so, yeah, I guess that led us to us talking now.

Shannon Mattern (52:07.056)

That is just like a mind blowing moment. It's just the power. It just shows you all the power of what is possible when you do believe that nothing can stand in your way and that it really is possible for you. And yeah, so you reached out to me. You said,

I would love to come on your podcast and talk about this and, you know, wrote a beautiful pitch, very, you know, I hate the word pitch because it sounds like, you know, something that's not, I don't know, it just sounds like there's no intent behind it, right? Or something, but wrote a beautiful email to me asking if you could come on the podcast to talk about it. And I'm like, yes.

And like, I'll move the schedule around for you because, you know, the book is coming out. I think it will already be out by the time this, this episode airs, but what your, your message and what you stand for and who you are and what you do is so aligned with our audience. I was just like, I can't wait to meet you and talk to you selfishly, but also I think you are like this too, from what I'm getting from you.

Joana Galvao (53:13.953)

Yeah.

Joana Galvao (53:25.006)

You

Shannon Mattern (53:29.008)

You love to create win-win-wins. And I love to create win-win-wins and just even getting to talk to you and talk about the book and talk about your journey on the show is such a huge win. So can you tell everyone where they can go to learn about the book? You mentioned a masterclass that goes along with the book when we were chatting earlier. Where can they go to learn more about all of this?

Joana Galvao (53:57.986)

Sure. So if you go to theambitiouscreatives.com forward slash profitable web designer, you will get, I'll do a special bundle just for your listeners, where you'll get our two hour masterclass that goes over the whole book yourself solid system. There will be links there to grab the book if you want. You don't have to, but then the masterclass will give you an overview of everything that's inside the book and

some of my best tips and the mistakes to avoid as well.

Shannon Mattern (54:29.88)

Amazing. So I just have one question for you before we wrap up and that is what belief about yourself did you have to change to get to where you are today?

Joana Galvao (54:41.566)

did I have to change? I think I just had to keep believing instead of changing. When I was a kid, I believed that if I asked for things hard enough to the stars, they would give it to me. And it's not that I had to change that belief, I had to keep it alive.

Shannon Mattern (55:04.266)

my goodness. That is like the perfect place to wrap up this episode. I think this is going to be the first of, you know, your, definitely want to invite you back. There's so many more questions that I know our listeners would want me to ask you. Thank you so, so much for being here. I really appreciate it. And I'll link up everything we talked about in the show notes, but yeah, thank you so much.

Joana Galvao (55:08.846)

Thank

Joana Galvao (55:14.667)

Yeah.

Joana Galvao (55:25.058)

And thank you for having me.

Joana Galvao (55:30.178)

It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.