“Small opportunities are often the beginnings of great enterprises.”
– Demosthenes
It’s not every day that we come across opportunities that bring us something that’s completely unexpected, but very much welcomed.
Most of the time, these opportunities are something small and we’d never think that our lives are going to significantly change because of them.
For Shanice Huei, this was the kind of opportunity that knocked on her door when she decided to try her hand in designing landing pages.
Shanice took the leap and joined our community March 2020 when the first Movement Control Order took place.
Shanice is a lecturer who’s currently teaching soft skills in a local university and specializing in social entrepreneurship. Besides her career as a lecturer, Shanice also has a side gig that has been heavily leaning towards digital marketing eversince the MCO started.
Because of the lockdown in Malaysia, she and her partners in this side job decided that their business needed to learn more about changing their business strategy and going online. Shanice was asked to watch one of our webinars to learn the strategies.
After watching the webinar, Shanice was immediately attracted to find out more about what she can learn to expand her knowledge and skills.
She said that all this while, she actually liked to design things but never knew the way to turn her passion into something that makes money.
At that time, she was pursuing her PhD. While the field is something that she really likes, she decided to pause it for a year because she just found an easier way to make more income.
During the catch-up call with Jackson, Shanice said that she was very happy to have made her five-figure income from designing. To her, it felt like she had received a few years’ worth of bonus in just a short time.
“Like I earned a few years’ bonus in a few months!”
– Shanice Huei talking about her first income from her landing page project.
Dealing with Negativity
Shanice said that recently, she had noticed that there is a rise in the number of haters and trolls who commented on her design posts on Facebook. She said that these people basically tried to run designers like her down by saying that they’re just posting designs as promotions.
For many newcomers to any business, negative comments can certainly put a damper on their confidence and motivation.
Because of this, Shanice started to question if posting her mockups and designs to social media is still a good way for her to catch the attention of potential prospects.
The answer to her question is simple; absolutely yes!
Jackson’s advice for Shanice to deal with the haters is just to ignore them and shift her entire focus on the people who need her help.
For every hater that she meets, there is always going to be someone, somewhere who needs her services.
What really matters is how Shanice decides to carry on looking for these people.
A good way to reduce the number of hate comments is to change the way you write posts.
For example, instead of just posting the design with the usual captions, Shanice can elaborate and tell the story of why she made that particular design and share the lessons that she has learned throughout the process.
A simple, regular design post is good to promote your skills and bring attention to your services. But over time, if it’s done repeatedly, some people will feel like you are just promoting and trying to sell them something and this can attract unwelcome attention – the trolls and haters.
What Shanice can do is to add value to her posts so that they won’t come off as promotional stuff. By sharing her journey and the lessons she learned, she gives value to other people and it will subtly showcase her expertise.
Her main challenge now is closing clients. She had to put in a lot of effort into it and one time, she nearly gave up on a client because he requested a lot of things that she couldn’t really understand.
Even so, this was the highest value project she got, which was USD1,000.
This client is quite challenging for her because he’s not giving her enough info for her to proceed with the project quickly. It was still dragging on and she has only been paid half of the total quote.
But even with these setbacks, Shanice is determined to get herself back in the momentum to secure a steady stream of clients. She’s optimistic and will not let all the negativities affect her in the long run and is set on posting more mockups on her Facebook profile once again.
Readying Herself to Become the Boss
Shanice plans to make designing landing pages her full time job soon. For now, she has introduced this business to some of her students and a few friends with the hope that they can be part of her team one day.
This is so that she can take on more projects in the future and outsource. She also thinks that this is a good way for them to learn while she slowly progresses herself since she’s still not clear about how she can go far.
“I’m using this period to gain some experience because when I do this, I will explore this and that. Then in the future, I can get more. Only then I’ll grow (my business) bigger.”
– Shanice talking about her plans to expand her business.
Shanice wants to learn everything about the entire process on her own first before becoming the boss because she knows that if she’s going to be the boss one day, she will want to learn and know the entire process by heart.
Her positive attitude, determination and willingness to learn everything make Shanice one of the star students of Design Hacking Masterclass.
After joining us,
Shanice has managed to secure five clients and seven projects, which generated a whopping RM10,000 of online income for her, all just within seven months!
How did she do it?
What is the secret that’s allowed this lecturer to make two years’ worth of bonus in just seven months?
Check out and join our community here today to learn the tried-and-tested formula that has helped so many generate income, all from the comfort of their homes.