Emma | Birdbox Designs: Hi everybody. Today, two presentation designers with two very different routes into the world of making decks for a living. We have Courtney Allen, who turned a freelance PowerPoint gig into 16x9, a multi-million dollar presentation design business that's produced more than 10,000 presentations. And Dekishea Gordon who started in business and marketing. But discovered presentation design was actually a career and made the jump during the pandemic and she's never looked back. So we're going to find out how they got here, what they've learnt along the way, and where they think this slightly unusual career is headed next. Welcome to this episode
PK Steffen: Yeah.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: of Next Slide Please.
Courtney: Yeah.
PK Steffen: Yay!
Emma | Birdbox Designs: No Thank you so much guys. And we're joining from all over the world, which
Dekishea: Thank you.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: makes it even more exciting.
PK Steffen: So I've known Courtney for for a little bit. we're online friends. we know each other through the Presentation Guild, which I think is a really great organization for for presentation designers who are getting started, as well as old pros who wanna help other people out, et cetera. and Courtney has an incredible story of of building a business. And taking it up to to seven figures. So I think you're getting close to five million dollars in in business now. which is in in and of itself, I think is just an incredible story. I think all of us wanna get into presentation design and make a living at it. Being that successful it's it's mind-boggling. But what I really love about Courtney in What I have learned about Courtney over the years is that she helps other people and that's the thing that that I wanna learn more about, you know, mentoring other people and helping them get a leg up and get an get a start in this presentation design business. So you guys actually Dekishea and Courtney know each other, that's why we've got you on. Can you guys tell us about that connection
Dekishea: Okay, so I discovered Courtney on a webinar through someone that I met while travelling They started a platform I think people who work remotely and were like kind of digital nomads and I saw Courtney on there and when I saw a presentation designer I was just like I design presentations and I've gotten paid for it but I've never got paid that much for it. So
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Ha ha
PK Steffen: Right.
Dekishea: I reached out to Courtney for I was just like, Hey, I saw I saw you on this webinar, do you mind taking a few minutes? And she did and we connected about twice, in a period I think of a year, year and a half until I made the the jump and she helped me. Yeah.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Amazing.
Courtney: And yeah, let's see, that was back in early of twenty nineteen. And yeah, I was like Dekishea said, we chatted a couple of times and I was able to, I think the second time review her portfolio and animation portfolio and things like that. And yeah, what I really was impressed with is that I have had I I'm not always sure why, but I have had you know, a number of people reach out over the years wanting to kind of quote unquote pick my brain or things like that. But what really stood out to me with Dekishea is just yeah, just how prepared she was and you know, she had examples and and had a vision and yeah, I I just really was impressed by that and it was a pleasure. Connecting with her and and being able to see her journey throughout this time.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love it. I love that.
PK Steffen: I I think So I think even on on your posts, your posts help a lot of people out just by learning more about you and and your story and and your business 'cause you really get into the details on on your posts in LinkedIn. I l I love those. Yeah.
Courtney: Thank you so much.
PK Steffen: So do
Emma | Birdbox Designs: That's brilliant
PK Steffen: you did you wanna get help other people out or is it just something that's just kinda happened as a result of of you gaining this attention and and people seeing who you are and and wanting to learn more.
Courtney: Yeah, I've always at first, I'll be honest, I didn't feel very confident in being able to educate or or lead other people, but over the years as I've been kind of sharing more on LinkedIn or having kind of these one on one meetings and having a longer term mentee as well, yeah, I've really I've gained a lot of both confidence and value just in being able to talk to other people and be able to share kind of my my perspective and my knowledge and my experience and yeah if it's able to motivate or inspire others then yeah that that's really meaningful to me. So while that was not my original intention, yeah, I I am happy. And and derive a lot of joy from yeah, being able to mentor, speak to others about kind of my journey.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love that. And I love that it was through a webinar as well. Cause I feel like we're you can you you got so like PK said, there's so much information out there about running a business or just, you know, obviously specifically presentation design. But yeah, and I love that you reached out to and and kind of took that step because I've had people reach out to me and I I had the same feeling of like, I don't feel confident, like what can I give them? And then you just have this amazing conversation and you, you know, you're both getting something, it's like a mutual kind of benefit. And it's really lovely to hear.
PK Steffen: I think I think
Courtney: Absolutely.
PK Steffen: I think whether you whether you want to or not You are a role model for a lot of us in in terms of in
Dekishea: Mm-hmm.
PK Steffen: terms of your business acumen and and how you've built that business, in terms of the fact that you're a woman in in you know, in presentation design, right? I think we need more examples there's a lot of examples of, you know, the male testosterone sort of approach to doing business,
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
PK Steffen: right? Has that been difficult for you? You obviously didn't set out to be that that role model you just wanted to get your business rolling and and I'm sure help out other designers 'cause you do employ quite a few people, right?
Courtney: yeah, I have a a small but mighty team. and yeah what I would say is role model is not necessarily a term I have been able to place upon myself yet, but it
PK Steffen: I'm sure, I'm sure. I'm sorry I did that. I'm sorry I did that.
Dekishea: Ha ha.
Courtney: but no I really appreciate I'm I'm honored but I would say it is nice to be per you know maybe a different showcase a different approach to business as a woman or as a woman of color and yeah be able to provide my voice to the conversation and in the presentation design space itself. so yeah it's been it's been very cool to yeah to be here and and to be a part of this community.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, and I'm gonna pick up a little bit on that as well. Like you said about your whole team being women and women of colour. Was that something that was intentional or did that kind of just come about naturally when you were building and when you were bringing people on board?
Courtney: Yeah, what I will say, just as a caveat, you know, we've always been you know open in our hiring practices and we have had men and and you know all all sorts of people, all races of people have worked with me. But yeah, just now as kind of my team has actually it's distilled a little bit or Or has gotten a little smaller. And yeah, now that we all are women of color, I I really do enjoy it. I think because all of them have worked with me for over five years and most of them for the full nine years of since I started the company. yeah, we're just able to kind of communicate so well with each other and there's just kind of loyalty and working style and and just kind of a really symbiotic just atmosphere and energy and and company culture. yeah, that comes with that. both just the the makeup of the team and just kind of the length of time we've been working together. but yeah, I am really proud to we have been women in minority business certified. for the past five years or so and yeah I really I'm really proud of that fact.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, amazing. Amazing.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: fantastic.
PK Steffen: Love it.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love it
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: And so your business has got some incredible stats and you've been featured in Fortune, Entrepreneur, Business Insider Magazine. When you started, what did success actually look like to you? Did you always want something this big? Was that always the plan or were you just kind of like, let's see what happens?
Courtney: Yeah, that was I always call myself an accidental entrepreneur and that was not the plan. when I started 16 by 9 in tw 2017, yeah, to be honest, my my aspiration and goals was to get out of the $35,000 in credit card debt and to be you know gamefully
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
Courtney: employed. And yeah, once I was able to kind of accomplish that, then my next goal, which was a bit loftier, was to be able to build a a company that generated at least a million dollars in annual revenue. And yeah, once I had hit that goal in 2022, I was very shocked and and played A Milli by Lil Wayne on repeat for a short period of time.
PK Steffen: Love it. Yeah.
Courtney: but what I will what I will say though
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Okay.
Courtney: is now my my business goals have changed a little bit and and really it's about kind of freedom and and flexibility and maintaining my free will to be able to fly to Toronto for BTS for a K-pop concert and still be able to manage my business. And so yeah, I would say
PK Steffen: Yeah.
Courtney: my business goals and aspirations are always shifting. but yeah, I I never imagined it would get to this level. and yeah, I I I still am a bit surprised when I sit and really think about it.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love it. I ha I can't let the BTS comment go. My daughter is obsessed with K pop and she was like, Are you going on recording your podcast with the with the K pop lady? I was like, yes, I will ask her about K pop. Just 'cause she lives there, it
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Hahaha.
Courtney: Ha ha
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Ha ha ha ha.
Dekishea: Hehehe
Emma | Birdbox Designs: doesn't mean she knows like
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Dekishea: Ha ha.
Courtney: Ha ha
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, let's get I'll tell her that
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: I want to ask you.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: you went to see BTS and she'll be very pleased. Yeah.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: I wanted to ask you about that.
Courtney: Excellent. Yes.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: You met on the global nomads webinar. Has that always been part of the business? This kind of like work from anywhere freedom and why Seoul? Is that just where you are now or are you kind of like there for a little while and moving on somewhere else?
Courtney: yeah, so remote work has always been important to me. I even when I worked at Cisco Systems, I worked remotely as well. So I've never worked in office. and at this point, I I'm not sure how I would adjust. but overall I my entire team is remote and I have advocated for kind of that. sort of environment on LinkedIn and and stuff like that. I've lived in Seoul now for coming up on five years in October. And I'm not gonna lie, part of the reason was for the love of K pop. and so
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Courtney: I did open a branch office here in Korea and legally sponsored myself as an employee. and and finest my way here to Korea. But yeah, I would say that besides that reason, my mom actually lived here in Seoul at the time when I initially moved here. She then moved to Mallorca, Spain. it's cool, it's cool. But yeah, those were a couple
Dekishea: He he
Courtney: of reasons why I located myself here in Korea.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love it
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Very cool.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Very cool. And so Dekishea
PK Steffen: So
Emma | Birdbox Designs: your route was a bit different into the world of presentations. Do you feel like having your marketing background sort of gives you a different aspect? S something that maybe someone coming from a design background maybe doesn't have that gives you that edge?
Dekishea: I would say yes in terms of like the communication, storytelling,
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Mm-hmm.
Dekishea: some writing and also having to communicate with like different teams, executives, like marketing really prepared me and I wouldn't even just say marketing. In college I worked in retail and it taught me how to communicate with different personalities, right? So whether you're in business or in the corporate sector is like communication is is important. So that skill that I have or that I've developed has helped me throughout my career.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, love that. And do you mention storytelling? Is that something that you do a lot at the minute at in your current role? Is that something that you kind of bring bring to the role?
Dekishea: yeah, so in in the beginning when I worked with my current started with my current company, they let me know like, hey, like we just just don't need anyone to just come in and make the slides pretty. We need help putting the story together for the sales team, whether it's a pitch deck, whether it's a keynote speech, or whatever. So yeah, I that has been a part of my job. I tried to stay clear of that when I first started presentation. design. I didn't want to touch the content at all, but I want to say in marketing I had had to do like certain tasks, whether it's like a press release or a blog post or anything like that, so it translates over to what I'm doing now.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.
PK Steffen: So I mean you guys have both sound like you you have really good soft skills when it comes to to communicating. I know Courtney's not designing so much now. You're probably working with the clients. Dekishea it sounds like you you've figured out where you want to be in presentation design because of those marketing skills and communication skills that you have. so you have that in common. The other thing I picked up that you guys have in common, which I I'm kind of blown away by is that you both designed PowerPoint decks when you were kids, which that's that's not something something th that I did. So you you you you have these these skills that really help you not just in terms of design but also in terms of communication. Can you guys talk about that and how that has really helped you? either the design skills or the communication skills? Is there one that you think is more important than the other?
Dekishea: I think they're both equally as important. but you have to know how to communicate in order to design, right? So you have to know like w what are we trying to say here and does this visually how do we visually make it s make sense for the audience? a lot of times like I run into issues where someone wants to put a whole manif manifesto on a slide, but it's like how can we break that down visually
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
Dekishea: with not so many words to make it Look good, yeah.
Courtney: And yeah, I I echo that sentiment. I would say maybe particularly with my role now being more client-facing or kind of people management, I lean definitely heavily into the communication aspect. And when people do ask me about starting a presentation or creative service business, definitely the soft skills of communication and communicating to clients, whether it's, you know, in regards to the design work itself or even the nitty-gritty of what if there's some conflict or budgets, negotiations, things like that. yeah, I found that to be paramount just being able to to have those corporate communication skills and be able to communicate to different audiences, which I think translates well into the design work.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah. Love that.
PK Steffen: So are any of those skills that you picked up when you were a kid building PowerPoint decks skills that you use now?
Courtney: Yeah, I would say definitely was trying to you know, without knowing the right words or things at the time, really was trying to be persuasive, and also get attention. and I think in sort of particularly this space and just kind of with the online society at large, knowing how to to share your viewpoint or your story and to resonate with people and attract people to your message. yeah, I think you know, practicing that as a kid was very helpful.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, so my my teenage daughter in the UK, they they use Google Slides a lot in their high school. So they do a lot of their lessons, they'll be through Google Slides, but they also do a lot of their homework and they have to produce Google Slides. So she is a whiz at Google Slides, like she is brilliant at it. And just naturally, and I think because you've she's used it so often and and so regularly, that yeah, that she's really good at it. I'm quite scared. She's gonna take take over my job.
Dekishea: Mm-hmm.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: So Courtney, can we ask you about your role in Microsoft's PowerPoint templates and pulling all that together? I mean, it's something that millions of of people use to build their decks. Can you give us some sort of insider knowledge of kind of how that came about and, you know, how when you built it, is there something in there that we should look for and and make sure that we pay attention to?
Courtney: Yeah, you know, first of all, shout out to Upwork. that's where I I
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
Courtney: got that opportunity. yeah,
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Amazing.
Courtney: in 2018. And it was originally supposed to be a 10 week contract for 600 templates and it expanded into over two year contract. and yeah, it really was a incredible opportunity and in some ways it besides just kind of helping to oversee the the templates and things like that, also got to build a internal team and things like that. And yeah, that all was really kind of educational and fascinating. insider knowledge, what I will say is that and maybe this is like a a defending statement towards Microsoft, but You know, I know there's been a lot of commentary maybe about how Canva or other competitors you know, might showcase more creativity or have a more robust collection of of templates and things like that. But something I I think maybe not everyone realizes about Microsoft templates is that each individual template for the most part has to be cross-platform compatible. So not only within the actual software, but for also PowerPoint online, which has different restrictions, and also to be able to integrate with designer, which is now co-pilot, and things like that. And yeah, additionally just the different aspects we chose for the templates where Where it be the color combinations or the imagery, we all made sure that they're kind of globally and accessibility compliant. So
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Right.
Courtney: yeah, just kind of making sure all of the templates are really inclusive for everyone. And yeah, I think those are just kind of some back-end things people might not know about kind of the process or or effort involved in. creating those templates, but yeah, I just wanted to call that out. But I I
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love that.
Courtney: still love Canva as well. I I do utilize Canva from time to time.
PK Steffen: We got another kind of a person here. Yeah.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: And Emma loves that
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love that. Yeah,
Courtney: Ha
Emma | Birdbox Designs: yeah, I love it
Courtney: ha ha.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: too. I love it too.
Dekishea: Ha ha ha.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love that. And then it's really interesting you say about how being sort of globally accepted the templates and the imagery and the sort of symbols and stuff. Was there anything when you were building them that you had to take out because it wasn't maybe acceptable in certain countries or on certain cultures?
Courtney: yeah, absolutely. So we were particularly sensitive about kind of modest dress. so we did a collection of like wedding templates and things like that. And, you know, maybe originally we showcased maybe strapless dresses or things of that sort or even as another example, someone pointing with, you know, four fingers, that can be considered offensive, I believe, in Japan. And so yeah, just kind of different things like that were flagged and just kind of making sure that yeah, we keep everyone kind of happy with sort of our selections.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, I love that.
PK Steffen: templates are the basis of every great presentation, right? Even though I'm always telling people you should you should ditch the template in certain situations. It's like if you don't
Emma | Birdbox Designs: huh.
PK Steffen: have a good template, it just kills your efficiency
Courtney: Absolutely.
PK Steffen: Dekishea do you do a lot with with templates in in your work? you've had to build good templates for one OneRail?
Dekishea: when I went into OneRail we already had a template in place. and then, you know, we've gone through different brand changes. So I I don't really work with the template too much, but in my previous company we would have to build out a lot of templates for like medical companies. Yeah.
PK Steffen: Cool.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: That's interesting. And it do you not use the template because you're a presentation designer and you don't
PK Steffen: Okay.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: you you can kind of freestyle it a bit with a blank slide, or is it because the template isn't fit for what you want to use it for?
Dekishea: So, w we do use the template like company wide.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
Dekishea: it's just I didn't have to go in and like rebuild it, well yet. I haven't had to rebuild it yet.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I see, I see, I see.
Dekishea: and then we also have it like incorporated like other things like Templafy and you know, other tools to help keep that brand consistency
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I like it.
Dekishea: across the company, yeah.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, Brilliant.
PK Steffen: So s so if you're using Templafy are you using AI then to to build some of the presentations?
Dekishea: So yeah, we just started trying to get more AI involved in just the way it like looks and stuff. to like so it's easier for non-designers within the company to make their own their own slides. But yeah, we're just trying to give people the freedom so they're not always waiting on me to build it out for them.
PK Steffen: You're a limited resource, huh?
Dekishea: Yeah
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Just
Emma | Birdbox Designs: that.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: a random aside, we had this 20 questions the other week for ourselves. And one of the things was, I think it was template or no template, just like a point blank question that we all had to answer ourselves. And Emma's response was, is it one of my templates? I just love that. like, have I approved it? Have I gone through it line by line? It's like...
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah. I love templates, but I don't love everybody's templates, yeah.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Everybody's templates exactly right? Has to be mine.
PK Steffen: Wait, wait, you guys wait, you pointed out that maybe my template was the problem for me not using templates. Maybe my
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Sorry about that.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
PK Steffen: maybe my template was deficient in some way.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: sorry about that.
PK Steffen: I mean templates you can go really deep with templates, right? I used to have to go into the XML to to before Bright Slide could set those special color wells, etc. in PowerPoint. I'd have to go into the XML and do that and and one wrong character in the XML and you could you could kill the template. It was always fun trying to figure
Dekishea: Ha ha
PK Steffen: out how we'd screwed things up in those days. Do you guys does anyone else go that deep into templates? I mean did you have to do that Courtney or was it all just more the design aspect that you guys were looking at?
Courtney: Say more of the design aspect. I've always been very impressed with my senior project manager and also technical expert. She can do the XML. that has always been above my my skill set, but I've always been super impressed. but I would say that templates are kind of our I would say one of our two core specialties nowadays, and so Yeah, I love getting into the nitty-gritty and doing template audits for potential clients and yeah, just trying to make a very user friendly but also beautiful template. yeah, I really enjoyed that aspect of our work.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Do you see a lot of, sorry,
PK Steffen: Ca can I can I
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: PK, I was just gonna say, do you see a lot of requests for making them AI friendly these days so that teams can kind of install the template and then have AI build the content or is that not really happening just yet?
Courtney: I would say I'll speak to it in two ways. One, my day-to-day clients, I would say they have been a little more reticent in kind of utilizing AI just because of the sensitivity of their information. when there is AI incorporated, it's normally purely from a image generation standpoint. if they wanna kind of develop a a particular photo or illustration. however, we have been involved with a couple of companies in training their AI tools and things like that, and working towards kind of the removing some of the the tedium of kind of formatting and and things like that. And so we've been working with companies with AI in that sort of different aspect. and that's been really fascinating.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah. How about you, Dekishea? Do you do much? I mean, you mentioned the Templafy work. Do you use a lot of AI in decks just at the moment?
Dekishea: so I'll use AI just for like ideas or like image generation. Especially if like the CEO he has like a specific thought in his mind. Like I use my assistant chat to help me figure out what he's talking about, maybe generate an image. it has been helpful to not have to look through certain stock sites for images anymore. so So and then throughout the company I imagine so many people use it to help them as well, just to get them started. Yeah.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah, yeah, very cool. It's kind of an ongoing discussion we have and there's a lot of talk about it in our world right now, isn't there, about like a lot of people think, yeah, it's one and done and everything's AI now. And then I think actual people who work in the industry, it's not quite there just yet for us. So yeah, it's interesting.
PK Steffen: I mean I I think it's going to change the way that we work, right? Because AI is going to get good at basic layout of stuff. And I I think templates we keep talking about templates here, templates are gonna go They're gonna shift to something different. I'm not gonna say they're gonna go away, but they're gonna shift. I think I think something closer to like we see in web design with with cascading style sheets where where you just kind of define what you want your header to be and what the body is gonna be and and whether you use rounded pictures and where where you place things on the on the canvas, stuff like that's gonna be handled by AI
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
PK Steffen: pr pretty soon, right? the rest of it? I mean I I think both Dekishea and and Courtney are making decisions for for companies that that's not gonna be handled by by AI AI for for long time in terms of creativity and and communication. but w wha what are you guys thinking about on on that front? Is it just kind of a wait and see like like the rest of us? Do you do you have opinions or ideas on on where we're going?
Dekishea: For me it's not a wait and see because it's we've implemented AI within my company already. and you know, it's a it it's a big a bit of a tug of tug of war for me because it's just like, ugh, that doesn't look that doesn't look good
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Okay.
Dekishea: or like I could do that better, but but then it's
PK Steffen: Hundred percent.
Dekishea: like on the other end I do see like within months how good AI is becoming, you know what I mean? So it's it's here to stay. I don't think it's gonna completely remove presentation specialists, but I feel like our our roles are evolv evolving into I think it was you that said this PK in an earlier webinar we were in together but we're strategic communicators now. Like
PK Steffen: Yeah.
Dekishea: it can make a slide look nice. It could be just good enough for a customer or CEO or whatever, but like can it could we have to make sure it's communicating the right the right message in these presentations.
Courtney: And yeah, from my perspective,
PK Steffen: Cool.
Courtney: sorry, from my perspective, I think yeah, absolutely. To to echo what Dekishea said, just our roles as presentation designers are evolving and it's kind of a matter of choosing which direction you want that to be. it I will say, and maybe it'd be a bit surprised. That I lean less towards the storytelling aspect and more towards the technical side. And so in that sense, kind of what I just spoke to, being approached with to being approached and working with different companies with the the creation of these AI tools or the testing or refinement of them. yeah, I I kind of am enjoying being on that side of the space and and getting a a sneak peek of seeing potentially where where the future's gonna be and yeah just trying to make sure that I stay ahead and and keep job security and all
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: ha
Courtney: of those things. yeah I
PK Steffen: I hear ya.
Courtney: I it's it's a bit intimidating and nerve-wracking but I I'm curious to see how we will all evolve as the years progress.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
PK Steffen: Love that
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love it.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: scary and interesting at the same time, right? It's like, it's good. It's gonna be all right.
PK Steffen: I mean, yeah, it's been like I look back on some of my posts from like a year ago on LinkedIn and I'm like, wow, it has changed. I mean it's it's evolving. Every three weeks there's another iteration of Claude or something like that and it's it's definitely moving moving at a at a at a fast pace. can can I ask you, Dekishea What's one thing that you love about presentation design? What w I mean you did it when you were a kid, and you you want you shifted to this as as a career. What's one of the things that keeps bringing you back to this this profession profession? What's something that you love about it?
Dekishea: I would say from a kid to when I jumped in here it was it it it was the creativity, being able to create something out of nothing, be able being able to make something look nice. Like I do not have a graphic design background. I didn't go to school for it. nothing like that. I just learnt along the way and probably still have a lot of learning to do, but it was just being able to create and then the second part of that would just just be a being able to communicate with different people like coming into the space as well as my getting in communications you get to you know I could talk to a food company one day and then a technology company the next day within the my role now with in house I get to communicate with the product team, the sales team, implementation, like I I like that aspect.
PK Steffen: Ne never gets boring, right?
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, always something different.
PK Steffen: Courtney, what would you say about presentation design the space? What what what is something that you really love about it that that keeps you coming back to it?
Courtney: yeah, what keeps me coming back to it is a few things. One, as Dekishea just said, just the wide variety of topics and and people and industries I get to interact with. And really I feel like it's a great pursuit of knowledge. you know, getting to read some of these decks and and see just learn about all sorts of different topics that maybe I would have never had gotten a chance to know about and diving deeper into you know clients stories and intentions and things like that has been very interesting. and secondly what I would say is really I just love working with people and and making people happy and and satisfied and It brings me great joy when I do, let's say, some presentation design or PowerPoint training, being able to show them a tool and they're like, What? The reset button, like that blows people's minds every time. and yeah, just kind of
PK Steffen: Ha Totally.
Courtney: being able to make people happy and assuage their their fears and be able to instill confidence in them. and having a good presentation and feeling yeah, feeling confident to share their story, I think, is my favorite part of being a presentation designer.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, I love that. I love yeah, I love
PK Steffen: Love that.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: the training side of things. It's like sharing, you know, like the mentoring as well. It's like sharing your knowledge and having that moment where people go, Pfft, my mind is blown, you've saved me hours of time. It's really good. Yeah.
Courtney: Right.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah. Yeah.
PK Steffen: And if if someone someone doesn't know what the reset button is and what it does in in
Emma | Birdbox Designs: yeah.
PK Steffen: PowerPoint, we we we need to do a little good to great on that. It's if your template's
Emma | Birdbox Designs: We should.
PK Steffen: set up cor correctly and you reset the slide, right, click on it and choose reset, it should go back into place, right? And people don't know that. That's I love that.
Courtney: Exactly.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love that. can I go back back a little bit, Courtney, as well, about on the business side of things? When you were building that team and you kind of had that, you know, you had to build quite quickly, how did it feel to kind of let go of some of those sort of design as aspects that you were basically solo freelancing before and making all the design decisions? Did it did it feel a little bit different? And how did you kind of get over that hurdle of having to trust someone else to do the the work?
Courtney: yeah, I would say one. I was fortunate, like I mentioned, a lot of my team not only had they did I work with them almost from the beginning, when that 50 Deck Yelp project came in, but they actually were designers that I worked with in the similar aspect. I was a project manager. at Cisco Systems and they were my design team there as well. And so on one hand I had a little bit of a cheat, a little bit of a leg up in that they already kind of knew my preferences and work style. We we kind of all trained under the same expectations for you know timing and things like that. And so I I came in working with contractors or other designers feeling more confident than maybe what I would have been just kind of hiring you know hiring new people that I haven't interacted with. But I will say it still required quite a bit of of trust and it it was nerve wracking. And of course there there's always things that can happen. whether it's maybe a a major power outage or other just other things, maybe something doesn't quite hit the mark. And so yeah, it really was just kind of a iterative learning process to figure out how to myself be a better communicator to my team and be able to clearly kind of express the client's vision expectations. and also be able to have that trust and confidence in my team to know that you know I can go watch my BTS concert and be able to
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, ,
Courtney: deliver the deck to the client and then be satisfied. But yeah nowadays I'm probably I'm probably too too not too trusty but too loose in that
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Okay.
Courtney: yeah it just
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Courtney: The team the team works so seamlessly without me. And I do now have project managers who interact with the clients and so in some ways a lot of the company can work, operate without my presence, which yeah,
Emma | Birdbox Designs: No.
Courtney: is very liberating, I would say.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, amazing.
PK Steffen: You you you talk about it so calmly though that it had to be
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
PK Steffen: scary. I mean you get a you get somebody wants you to make fifty decks or you gotta do six hundred templates. Some of these numbers are mind-boggling. It's gotta be scary for a while, right? You gotta be sweating a little bit.
Courtney: Yes, if I can tell you a secret, when Microsoft hired me for the templates, I I did not have a PC. I I am a Mac person. and I
PK Steffen: Ha ha.
Courtney: just and they expected
Dekishea: Hehehehehe
Courtney: all the templates, of course, to be for PC, you know, first and foremost. and so I just secretly went and bought a PC from the time
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
Courtney: that they hired me. until like, you know, a week later
Dekishea: Ha ha.
Courtney: before we started and yeah, you know, and learn PC.
PK Steffen: You learned PC.
Courtney: Learn learn how to use the PC.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Ha
Courtney: and so there are a lot of underground low key kind of anxiety or and I I still get that, you know, just kind of when I work with a new client or maybe a little outside of our comfort zone. but I I try to push through and yeah treat everything as a learning experience. But it it definitely can be stressful for sure.
PK Steffen: No doubt. No doubt.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love that. Yeah.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Do you still perform any kind of quality control or are you sort of so trusting in your team now that you've kind of crossed those hurdles and you can just, is your role now, I guess, more kind of been that director type role, kind of like looking of ways to move the business on and that sort of thing? Yeah, okay.
Courtney: Yeah, absolutely. there are a few times where I'll step in for quality control or for creative direction and that's really with kind of more high profile projects or clients or if you know there is a rare instance where, you know, there may have been a escalation or a design didn't quite hit the mark and they they kind of asked me to step in and do some overseeing, but otherwise, yeah, the we've been fortunate that most of our clients now are kind of long-term clients. And so at this point, you know, they all kind of have their own relationships built with the other project managers and things like that. And so yeah, just mostly working towards, you know, sales and and business development.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Makes sense. And Dekishea do you have a team of designers working for you or do you, are you still hands on with the decks at the end of the day or?
Dekishea: So my role has currently like recently changed. So I'm stepping a bit back from the general company's decks and only working with on like the CEO and executive decks. but I do have a team that does help on like if it's like an important meeting that's going to happen with a client or something, then I do have a team that will step in and help and I could divy that work out too.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
PK Steffen: Yeah, and i is that scar ever scary for you having to I mean you talked about having to learn about you know what they're talking about or maybe the language or something like that. What what are the scary moments for you when it comes to to presentation design? w was it
Dekishea: I would say within this company. I joined this company not knowing anything about the industry. They literally hired me. They're like, You're great at PowerPoint. We need to
PK Steffen: Ha ha
Dekishea: communicate our message. We'll teach you whatever. I
PK Steffen: We need you. That's great. That's great.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, yeah.
Dekishea: Yeah, I knew nothing. But being able to work with all the teams within the company. I like I got to learn about logistics and how things get delivered that it opened my mind to a whole new new world.
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Dekishea: so that was very intimidating when I first started. and then also working on decks that I never really had to that were you know, it might have been a really important deck for the CEO to move the business forward and sometimes I went into it like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll figure it out. But it's you know, and just
Emma | Birdbox Designs: We've all been there, huh?
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Love it.
PK Steffen: Yep.
Dekishea: being open with them. So, yeah, that that part of it is intimidating.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: kind of
Emma | Birdbox Designs: So
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: a fake it till you make it kind of a thing.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yes.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Sort of getting on with it.
PK Steffen: I
Dekishea: Yeah,
PK Steffen: I think we've all d we've all had to do that, haven't we?
Dekishea: yeah.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: We've all done there, yeah. Definitely.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: I totally
Emma | Birdbox Designs: So so that's so that
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: know how to do that. Yeah. Give that job to me.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: that's now. But I think both of you have had some experience at the beginning with upwork and finding work on a platform like that. I think it might have been called something different before, but tell us a bit about how that worked and how that sort of developed, because it wouldn't be a normal place for someone to say start a multi-million dollar business. But that's how it kind of worked for you, Courtney. But also Dekishea, I know
PK Steffen: Hundred percent.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I know that you you've kind of went down that route and got maybe the idea that you could have presentation design as your career through that channel.
Dekishea: Yeah. So I started off, like I said, in marketing. So I was actually on Odesk at the time working on a marketing contract
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
Dekishea: for like a year or two. And I didn't really know how the platform worked. That's just what the company chose to hire me on. And, you know, I just would randomly get requests to like do design work. so I just do it. I just thought it were was one off projects. Never clicked to me that people actually pay the bucks for this until I ran into court Courtney , and I was just like, well I have a whole bunch of design samples that I could put in a portfolio and make this a career by the time I found her.
PK Steffen: Love it.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love it. Love it.
Courtney: yeah, my experience with upwork really it came out of, like I said, my 2017 goal, get out of debt. and I had recklessly quit my corporate job to start a travel company. And so I wanted to freelance on the side. And so yeah, I came across, I believe I was on Odesk at first as well. and then it transitioned into Up Work. and yeah, just at first, I I tell this story, the first client I had, they were going to pay me five hundred dollars and I was very excited.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: ,
Courtney: but after I completed the work, they actually only paid me fifty dollars and then ghosted me. after and so, you
PK Steffen: my goodness, ouch.
Courtney: know, you know, maybe a different me would have crumbled and gave up on upwork. but yeah, I just knew that I was really motivated personally to to push forward and I I started on upwork I think at twenty seven an hour or so. and then over the years by experimenting and raising my rates, I was able to kind of see the different types of clients, enterprise clients that were on the platform. And yeah, the second client I had after that first client was doing executive decks for Adobe. And so yeah, I just I feel very thankful that I kind of persisted beyond that first initial bad experience and I've been really impressed with just kind of the caliber of clients that are available on Upwork. I know that there's a lot of commentary about and it is difficult to kind of to to start out and to build your reputation on the platform. But yeah, it it really did change the entire course of my life. And at our peak, yeah, we earned over half a million dollars a year through Upwork. So yeah, I will I
PK Steffen: That's incredi that's incredible.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Amazing.
Courtney: will always praise Upwork for that.
PK Steffen: I love this. It's so positive, I love it.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah. I love it too. Yeah.
Dekishea: Ha ha ha.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Presumably you're not on Upwork
Emma | Birdbox Designs: ,
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: anymore, right? That's those days ago. It's a long day.
Courtney: no, I'm still on I'm still on Upwork every day. Yeah.
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Ha ha
Courtney: you know, they they have those non circumvent rules. but no, I yeah, there's still clients that that we attract on Upwork, although we do less work on there now and more direct clients. But yeah, recently over the past year, I think we did work for Pepsi through upwork. work and Johnson and Johnson. And so yeah, there's still a bunch of really big opportunities on there. So yeah, I I'm still there on a daily basis. They still see my face for sure.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love that.
PK Steffen: Alright.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: My partner works for Enterprise and they use YunoJuno a lot as well. So they need a resource for their freelancers so they go there. yeah, it doesn't connect with me. I'm like, no, there must be some kind of enterprise only freelancer program that you need special keys to get into. But no, they're just using the same platforms everybody else uses. yeah, that's great. That's a great, great tip.
PK Steffen: I mean ev ev ev every company needs freelancers, I think, right? There's just
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah, totally.
PK Steffen: don't have enough people to get the job done and and there's a lot of work out there. So yeah, I think there's
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: especially
PK Steffen: room for freelancers all over the place and it's great to hear that Upwork still still has opportunities. That's great.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah, and the place my partner
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Absolutely.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: works, I'll try not to say the name, although I probably have done before, but they are kind of... more than 50 % freelance. Their actual full-time employees in-house are very, very small. They don't use big agencies, and then when they don't use agencies, they use freelancers. So that, you know, should everything go horribly wrong, touch wood, hope not, then they just fall back to a very small group of freelancers, sorry, full-time employees. So their head count's very flexible. So yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting that they have that.
PK Steffen: But I mean it it
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Really good.
PK Steffen: it makes sense. I mean, if you don't
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
PK Steffen: have to have someone on full time and and you get you get an expert for a short period of time, you may have to pay a bit more money. Let's let's sing the praises of freelance, right? It's they they get an expert, they get for when they need them and they're paying less money than they would to have a a full time employee. Sometimes it just it makes sense, you know. It d makes sense to have somebody full time like Dekishea who's if you've got a lot of work and you need it you know, n need that community. Communication done properly, etcetera, then it makes sense, but freelancing makes sense too. So
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Absolutely. So I'm just conscious of time, guys. I was gonna sort of end with a question to both of you. you know, if there's some sort of wannabe or aspiring presentation designers or people that just do presentation as part of their job, what's the one piece of advice you'd give them to be get really good at and maybe not worry so much about something else that maybe they're spending too much time worrying about?
Courtney: I would say not to completely echo what I said previously, but I do think having the the soft skills, particularly client communication, has been the most important thing to me. And when people do ask to pick my brain or ask for advice, I do I do touch on some of the design and I touch on some of our process, but really it's Communication just covers so many aspects of kind of presentation design and running a creative business that that's kind of the key skill that I that I stress upon.
Dekishea: Yeah, and I I'll piggyback off of Courtney saying communication, also listening. if you sit in front of a client or your boss, like or even a team, being able to listen, record meetings if you can, so you could go back and just really see what the asks were. And don't be afraid to ask questions if you don't get something. You don't have to know everything. You just have to make sure you understand their needs.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, I love that. You can't underestimate just listening and yeah, I
Dekishea: Mm-hmm.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: love that. Brilliant. Well,
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Brilliant.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Courtney, Dekishea, thank you so much for joining us. It's been brilliant hearing not just your journey, but what you've learnt along the way and what you're giving back to each other now as well. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Courtney: Yeah thank you so much for having us.
Dekishea: Thanks for having us.
PK Steffen: Yeah, keep up keep up the strong work guys. We love seeing all the posts and and all of the stuff that you're working on.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Absolutely.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah, it's wonderful. Thank you
Courtney: Thank you so much.
Dekishea: Thank you.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: so much. So that's it for this episode of Next Slide, Please. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to know more about us, you can find us on LinkedIn and YouTube and Spotify and Apple podcasts. And just a quick shout out to say we're missing Andy this week. He's still in Costa Rica. We hope you're having a great time, buddy. And we'll see you on the next one.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I've been Emma Pritchard. You can find me at Birdbox Designs on LinkedIn and also on Instagram.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: And I'm Mark Robson, you can find me at 6mileshigh.com or on LinkedIn or Instagram at sixmileshigh.
PK Steffen: And I'm PK Stefan, you can find me at pkdigital.net or on LinkedIn.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: And even though he's not here, if you want to know more about Andy, you can go to andybundock.com or you can find him on LinkedIn or on Instagram as well. We would love to hear more from you. We're a friendly bunch. So anything you don't like, please tell us. And anything you do like, please tell everyone else. We'll see you on the next episode of Next Slide Please.
PK Steffen: Yeah.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: of Next Slide Please.
Courtney: Yeah.
PK Steffen: Yay!
Emma | Birdbox Designs: No Thank you so much guys. And we're joining from all over the world, which
Dekishea: Thank you.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: makes it even more exciting.
PK Steffen: So I've known Courtney for for a little bit. we're online friends. we know each other through the Presentation Guild, which I think is a really great organization for for presentation designers who are getting started, as well as old pros who wanna help other people out, et cetera. and Courtney has an incredible story of of building a business. And taking it up to to seven figures. So I think you're getting close to five million dollars in in business now. which is in in and of itself, I think is just an incredible story. I think all of us wanna get into presentation design and make a living at it. Being that successful it's it's mind-boggling. But what I really love about Courtney in What I have learned about Courtney over the years is that she helps other people and that's the thing that that I wanna learn more about, you know, mentoring other people and helping them get a leg up and get an get a start in this presentation design business. So you guys actually Dekishea and Courtney know each other, that's why we've got you on. Can you guys tell us about that connection
Dekishea: Okay, so I discovered Courtney on a webinar through someone that I met while travelling They started a platform I think people who work remotely and were like kind of digital nomads and I saw Courtney on there and when I saw a presentation designer I was just like I design presentations and I've gotten paid for it but I've never got paid that much for it. So
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Ha ha
PK Steffen: Right.
Dekishea: I reached out to Courtney for I was just like, Hey, I saw I saw you on this webinar, do you mind taking a few minutes? And she did and we connected about twice, in a period I think of a year, year and a half until I made the the jump and she helped me. Yeah.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Amazing.
Courtney: And yeah, let's see, that was back in early of twenty nineteen. And yeah, I was like Dekishea said, we chatted a couple of times and I was able to, I think the second time review her portfolio and animation portfolio and things like that. And yeah, what I really was impressed with is that I have had I I'm not always sure why, but I have had you know, a number of people reach out over the years wanting to kind of quote unquote pick my brain or things like that. But what really stood out to me with Dekishea is just yeah, just how prepared she was and you know, she had examples and and had a vision and yeah, I I just really was impressed by that and it was a pleasure. Connecting with her and and being able to see her journey throughout this time.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love it. I love that.
PK Steffen: I I think So I think even on on your posts, your posts help a lot of people out just by learning more about you and and your story and and your business 'cause you really get into the details on on your posts in LinkedIn. I l I love those. Yeah.
Courtney: Thank you so much.
PK Steffen: So do
Emma | Birdbox Designs: That's brilliant
PK Steffen: you did you wanna get help other people out or is it just something that's just kinda happened as a result of of you gaining this attention and and people seeing who you are and and wanting to learn more.
Courtney: Yeah, I've always at first, I'll be honest, I didn't feel very confident in being able to educate or or lead other people, but over the years as I've been kind of sharing more on LinkedIn or having kind of these one on one meetings and having a longer term mentee as well, yeah, I've really I've gained a lot of both confidence and value just in being able to talk to other people and be able to share kind of my my perspective and my knowledge and my experience and yeah if it's able to motivate or inspire others then yeah that that's really meaningful to me. So while that was not my original intention, yeah, I I am happy. And and derive a lot of joy from yeah, being able to mentor, speak to others about kind of my journey.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love that. And I love that it was through a webinar as well. Cause I feel like we're you can you you got so like PK said, there's so much information out there about running a business or just, you know, obviously specifically presentation design. But yeah, and I love that you reached out to and and kind of took that step because I've had people reach out to me and I I had the same feeling of like, I don't feel confident, like what can I give them? And then you just have this amazing conversation and you, you know, you're both getting something, it's like a mutual kind of benefit. And it's really lovely to hear.
PK Steffen: I think I think
Courtney: Absolutely.
PK Steffen: I think whether you whether you want to or not You are a role model for a lot of us in in terms of in
Dekishea: Mm-hmm.
PK Steffen: terms of your business acumen and and how you've built that business, in terms of the fact that you're a woman in in you know, in presentation design, right? I think we need more examples there's a lot of examples of, you know, the male testosterone sort of approach to doing business,
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
PK Steffen: right? Has that been difficult for you? You obviously didn't set out to be that that role model you just wanted to get your business rolling and and I'm sure help out other designers 'cause you do employ quite a few people, right?
Courtney: yeah, I have a a small but mighty team. and yeah what I would say is role model is not necessarily a term I have been able to place upon myself yet, but it
PK Steffen: I'm sure, I'm sure. I'm sorry I did that. I'm sorry I did that.
Dekishea: Ha ha.
Courtney: but no I really appreciate I'm I'm honored but I would say it is nice to be per you know maybe a different showcase a different approach to business as a woman or as a woman of color and yeah be able to provide my voice to the conversation and in the presentation design space itself. so yeah it's been it's been very cool to yeah to be here and and to be a part of this community.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, and I'm gonna pick up a little bit on that as well. Like you said about your whole team being women and women of colour. Was that something that was intentional or did that kind of just come about naturally when you were building and when you were bringing people on board?
Courtney: Yeah, what I will say, just as a caveat, you know, we've always been you know open in our hiring practices and we have had men and and you know all all sorts of people, all races of people have worked with me. But yeah, just now as kind of my team has actually it's distilled a little bit or Or has gotten a little smaller. And yeah, now that we all are women of color, I I really do enjoy it. I think because all of them have worked with me for over five years and most of them for the full nine years of since I started the company. yeah, we're just able to kind of communicate so well with each other and there's just kind of loyalty and working style and and just kind of a really symbiotic just atmosphere and energy and and company culture. yeah, that comes with that. both just the the makeup of the team and just kind of the length of time we've been working together. but yeah, I am really proud to we have been women in minority business certified. for the past five years or so and yeah I really I'm really proud of that fact.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, amazing. Amazing.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: fantastic.
PK Steffen: Love it.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love it
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: And so your business has got some incredible stats and you've been featured in Fortune, Entrepreneur, Business Insider Magazine. When you started, what did success actually look like to you? Did you always want something this big? Was that always the plan or were you just kind of like, let's see what happens?
Courtney: Yeah, that was I always call myself an accidental entrepreneur and that was not the plan. when I started 16 by 9 in tw 2017, yeah, to be honest, my my aspiration and goals was to get out of the $35,000 in credit card debt and to be you know gamefully
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
Courtney: employed. And yeah, once I was able to kind of accomplish that, then my next goal, which was a bit loftier, was to be able to build a a company that generated at least a million dollars in annual revenue. And yeah, once I had hit that goal in 2022, I was very shocked and and played A Milli by Lil Wayne on repeat for a short period of time.
PK Steffen: Love it. Yeah.
Courtney: but what I will what I will say though
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Okay.
Courtney: is now my my business goals have changed a little bit and and really it's about kind of freedom and and flexibility and maintaining my free will to be able to fly to Toronto for BTS for a K-pop concert and still be able to manage my business. And so yeah, I would say
PK Steffen: Yeah.
Courtney: my business goals and aspirations are always shifting. but yeah, I I never imagined it would get to this level. and yeah, I I I still am a bit surprised when I sit and really think about it.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love it. I ha I can't let the BTS comment go. My daughter is obsessed with K pop and she was like, Are you going on recording your podcast with the with the K pop lady? I was like, yes, I will ask her about K pop. Just 'cause she lives there, it
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Hahaha.
Courtney: Ha ha
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Ha ha ha ha.
Dekishea: Hehehe
Emma | Birdbox Designs: doesn't mean she knows like
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Dekishea: Ha ha.
Courtney: Ha ha
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, let's get I'll tell her that
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: I want to ask you.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: you went to see BTS and she'll be very pleased. Yeah.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: I wanted to ask you about that.
Courtney: Excellent. Yes.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: You met on the global nomads webinar. Has that always been part of the business? This kind of like work from anywhere freedom and why Seoul? Is that just where you are now or are you kind of like there for a little while and moving on somewhere else?
Courtney: yeah, so remote work has always been important to me. I even when I worked at Cisco Systems, I worked remotely as well. So I've never worked in office. and at this point, I I'm not sure how I would adjust. but overall I my entire team is remote and I have advocated for kind of that. sort of environment on LinkedIn and and stuff like that. I've lived in Seoul now for coming up on five years in October. And I'm not gonna lie, part of the reason was for the love of K pop. and so
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Courtney: I did open a branch office here in Korea and legally sponsored myself as an employee. and and finest my way here to Korea. But yeah, I would say that besides that reason, my mom actually lived here in Seoul at the time when I initially moved here. She then moved to Mallorca, Spain. it's cool, it's cool. But yeah, those were a couple
Dekishea: He he
Courtney: of reasons why I located myself here in Korea.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love it
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Very cool.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Very cool. And so Dekishea
PK Steffen: So
Emma | Birdbox Designs: your route was a bit different into the world of presentations. Do you feel like having your marketing background sort of gives you a different aspect? S something that maybe someone coming from a design background maybe doesn't have that gives you that edge?
Dekishea: I would say yes in terms of like the communication, storytelling,
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Mm-hmm.
Dekishea: some writing and also having to communicate with like different teams, executives, like marketing really prepared me and I wouldn't even just say marketing. In college I worked in retail and it taught me how to communicate with different personalities, right? So whether you're in business or in the corporate sector is like communication is is important. So that skill that I have or that I've developed has helped me throughout my career.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, love that. And do you mention storytelling? Is that something that you do a lot at the minute at in your current role? Is that something that you kind of bring bring to the role?
Dekishea: yeah, so in in the beginning when I worked with my current started with my current company, they let me know like, hey, like we just just don't need anyone to just come in and make the slides pretty. We need help putting the story together for the sales team, whether it's a pitch deck, whether it's a keynote speech, or whatever. So yeah, I that has been a part of my job. I tried to stay clear of that when I first started presentation. design. I didn't want to touch the content at all, but I want to say in marketing I had had to do like certain tasks, whether it's like a press release or a blog post or anything like that, so it translates over to what I'm doing now.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.
PK Steffen: So I mean you guys have both sound like you you have really good soft skills when it comes to to communicating. I know Courtney's not designing so much now. You're probably working with the clients. Dekishea it sounds like you you've figured out where you want to be in presentation design because of those marketing skills and communication skills that you have. so you have that in common. The other thing I picked up that you guys have in common, which I I'm kind of blown away by is that you both designed PowerPoint decks when you were kids, which that's that's not something something th that I did. So you you you you have these these skills that really help you not just in terms of design but also in terms of communication. Can you guys talk about that and how that has really helped you? either the design skills or the communication skills? Is there one that you think is more important than the other?
Dekishea: I think they're both equally as important. but you have to know how to communicate in order to design, right? So you have to know like w what are we trying to say here and does this visually how do we visually make it s make sense for the audience? a lot of times like I run into issues where someone wants to put a whole manif manifesto on a slide, but it's like how can we break that down visually
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
Dekishea: with not so many words to make it Look good, yeah.
Courtney: And yeah, I I echo that sentiment. I would say maybe particularly with my role now being more client-facing or kind of people management, I lean definitely heavily into the communication aspect. And when people do ask me about starting a presentation or creative service business, definitely the soft skills of communication and communicating to clients, whether it's, you know, in regards to the design work itself or even the nitty-gritty of what if there's some conflict or budgets, negotiations, things like that. yeah, I found that to be paramount just being able to to have those corporate communication skills and be able to communicate to different audiences, which I think translates well into the design work.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah. Love that.
PK Steffen: So are any of those skills that you picked up when you were a kid building PowerPoint decks skills that you use now?
Courtney: Yeah, I would say definitely was trying to you know, without knowing the right words or things at the time, really was trying to be persuasive, and also get attention. and I think in sort of particularly this space and just kind of with the online society at large, knowing how to to share your viewpoint or your story and to resonate with people and attract people to your message. yeah, I think you know, practicing that as a kid was very helpful.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, so my my teenage daughter in the UK, they they use Google Slides a lot in their high school. So they do a lot of their lessons, they'll be through Google Slides, but they also do a lot of their homework and they have to produce Google Slides. So she is a whiz at Google Slides, like she is brilliant at it. And just naturally, and I think because you've she's used it so often and and so regularly, that yeah, that she's really good at it. I'm quite scared. She's gonna take take over my job.
Dekishea: Mm-hmm.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: So Courtney, can we ask you about your role in Microsoft's PowerPoint templates and pulling all that together? I mean, it's something that millions of of people use to build their decks. Can you give us some sort of insider knowledge of kind of how that came about and, you know, how when you built it, is there something in there that we should look for and and make sure that we pay attention to?
Courtney: Yeah, you know, first of all, shout out to Upwork. that's where I I
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
Courtney: got that opportunity. yeah,
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Amazing.
Courtney: in 2018. And it was originally supposed to be a 10 week contract for 600 templates and it expanded into over two year contract. and yeah, it really was a incredible opportunity and in some ways it besides just kind of helping to oversee the the templates and things like that, also got to build a internal team and things like that. And yeah, that all was really kind of educational and fascinating. insider knowledge, what I will say is that and maybe this is like a a defending statement towards Microsoft, but You know, I know there's been a lot of commentary maybe about how Canva or other competitors you know, might showcase more creativity or have a more robust collection of of templates and things like that. But something I I think maybe not everyone realizes about Microsoft templates is that each individual template for the most part has to be cross-platform compatible. So not only within the actual software, but for also PowerPoint online, which has different restrictions, and also to be able to integrate with designer, which is now co-pilot, and things like that. And yeah, additionally just the different aspects we chose for the templates where Where it be the color combinations or the imagery, we all made sure that they're kind of globally and accessibility compliant. So
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Right.
Courtney: yeah, just kind of making sure all of the templates are really inclusive for everyone. And yeah, I think those are just kind of some back-end things people might not know about kind of the process or or effort involved in. creating those templates, but yeah, I just wanted to call that out. But I I
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love that.
Courtney: still love Canva as well. I I do utilize Canva from time to time.
PK Steffen: We got another kind of a person here. Yeah.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: And Emma loves that
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love that. Yeah,
Courtney: Ha
Emma | Birdbox Designs: yeah, I love it
Courtney: ha ha.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: too. I love it too.
Dekishea: Ha ha ha.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love that. And then it's really interesting you say about how being sort of globally accepted the templates and the imagery and the sort of symbols and stuff. Was there anything when you were building them that you had to take out because it wasn't maybe acceptable in certain countries or on certain cultures?
Courtney: yeah, absolutely. So we were particularly sensitive about kind of modest dress. so we did a collection of like wedding templates and things like that. And, you know, maybe originally we showcased maybe strapless dresses or things of that sort or even as another example, someone pointing with, you know, four fingers, that can be considered offensive, I believe, in Japan. And so yeah, just kind of different things like that were flagged and just kind of making sure that yeah, we keep everyone kind of happy with sort of our selections.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, I love that.
PK Steffen: templates are the basis of every great presentation, right? Even though I'm always telling people you should you should ditch the template in certain situations. It's like if you don't
Emma | Birdbox Designs: huh.
PK Steffen: have a good template, it just kills your efficiency
Courtney: Absolutely.
PK Steffen: Dekishea do you do a lot with with templates in in your work? you've had to build good templates for one OneRail?
Dekishea: when I went into OneRail we already had a template in place. and then, you know, we've gone through different brand changes. So I I don't really work with the template too much, but in my previous company we would have to build out a lot of templates for like medical companies. Yeah.
PK Steffen: Cool.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: That's interesting. And it do you not use the template because you're a presentation designer and you don't
PK Steffen: Okay.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: you you can kind of freestyle it a bit with a blank slide, or is it because the template isn't fit for what you want to use it for?
Dekishea: So, w we do use the template like company wide.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
Dekishea: it's just I didn't have to go in and like rebuild it, well yet. I haven't had to rebuild it yet.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I see, I see, I see.
Dekishea: and then we also have it like incorporated like other things like Templafy and you know, other tools to help keep that brand consistency
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I like it.
Dekishea: across the company, yeah.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, Brilliant.
PK Steffen: So s so if you're using Templafy are you using AI then to to build some of the presentations?
Dekishea: So yeah, we just started trying to get more AI involved in just the way it like looks and stuff. to like so it's easier for non-designers within the company to make their own their own slides. But yeah, we're just trying to give people the freedom so they're not always waiting on me to build it out for them.
PK Steffen: You're a limited resource, huh?
Dekishea: Yeah
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Just
Emma | Birdbox Designs: that.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: a random aside, we had this 20 questions the other week for ourselves. And one of the things was, I think it was template or no template, just like a point blank question that we all had to answer ourselves. And Emma's response was, is it one of my templates? I just love that. like, have I approved it? Have I gone through it line by line? It's like...
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah. I love templates, but I don't love everybody's templates, yeah.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Everybody's templates exactly right? Has to be mine.
PK Steffen: Wait, wait, you guys wait, you pointed out that maybe my template was the problem for me not using templates. Maybe my
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Sorry about that.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
PK Steffen: maybe my template was deficient in some way.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: sorry about that.
PK Steffen: I mean templates you can go really deep with templates, right? I used to have to go into the XML to to before Bright Slide could set those special color wells, etc. in PowerPoint. I'd have to go into the XML and do that and and one wrong character in the XML and you could you could kill the template. It was always fun trying to figure
Dekishea: Ha ha
PK Steffen: out how we'd screwed things up in those days. Do you guys does anyone else go that deep into templates? I mean did you have to do that Courtney or was it all just more the design aspect that you guys were looking at?
Courtney: Say more of the design aspect. I've always been very impressed with my senior project manager and also technical expert. She can do the XML. that has always been above my my skill set, but I've always been super impressed. but I would say that templates are kind of our I would say one of our two core specialties nowadays, and so Yeah, I love getting into the nitty-gritty and doing template audits for potential clients and yeah, just trying to make a very user friendly but also beautiful template. yeah, I really enjoyed that aspect of our work.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Do you see a lot of, sorry,
PK Steffen: Ca can I can I
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: PK, I was just gonna say, do you see a lot of requests for making them AI friendly these days so that teams can kind of install the template and then have AI build the content or is that not really happening just yet?
Courtney: I would say I'll speak to it in two ways. One, my day-to-day clients, I would say they have been a little more reticent in kind of utilizing AI just because of the sensitivity of their information. when there is AI incorporated, it's normally purely from a image generation standpoint. if they wanna kind of develop a a particular photo or illustration. however, we have been involved with a couple of companies in training their AI tools and things like that, and working towards kind of the removing some of the the tedium of kind of formatting and and things like that. And so we've been working with companies with AI in that sort of different aspect. and that's been really fascinating.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah. How about you, Dekishea? Do you do much? I mean, you mentioned the Templafy work. Do you use a lot of AI in decks just at the moment?
Dekishea: so I'll use AI just for like ideas or like image generation. Especially if like the CEO he has like a specific thought in his mind. Like I use my assistant chat to help me figure out what he's talking about, maybe generate an image. it has been helpful to not have to look through certain stock sites for images anymore. so So and then throughout the company I imagine so many people use it to help them as well, just to get them started. Yeah.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah, yeah, very cool. It's kind of an ongoing discussion we have and there's a lot of talk about it in our world right now, isn't there, about like a lot of people think, yeah, it's one and done and everything's AI now. And then I think actual people who work in the industry, it's not quite there just yet for us. So yeah, it's interesting.
PK Steffen: I mean I I think it's going to change the way that we work, right? Because AI is going to get good at basic layout of stuff. And I I think templates we keep talking about templates here, templates are gonna go They're gonna shift to something different. I'm not gonna say they're gonna go away, but they're gonna shift. I think I think something closer to like we see in web design with with cascading style sheets where where you just kind of define what you want your header to be and what the body is gonna be and and whether you use rounded pictures and where where you place things on the on the canvas, stuff like that's gonna be handled by AI
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
PK Steffen: pr pretty soon, right? the rest of it? I mean I I think both Dekishea and and Courtney are making decisions for for companies that that's not gonna be handled by by AI AI for for long time in terms of creativity and and communication. but w wha what are you guys thinking about on on that front? Is it just kind of a wait and see like like the rest of us? Do you do you have opinions or ideas on on where we're going?
Dekishea: For me it's not a wait and see because it's we've implemented AI within my company already. and you know, it's a it it's a big a bit of a tug of tug of war for me because it's just like, ugh, that doesn't look that doesn't look good
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Okay.
Dekishea: or like I could do that better, but but then it's
PK Steffen: Hundred percent.
Dekishea: like on the other end I do see like within months how good AI is becoming, you know what I mean? So it's it's here to stay. I don't think it's gonna completely remove presentation specialists, but I feel like our our roles are evolv evolving into I think it was you that said this PK in an earlier webinar we were in together but we're strategic communicators now. Like
PK Steffen: Yeah.
Dekishea: it can make a slide look nice. It could be just good enough for a customer or CEO or whatever, but like can it could we have to make sure it's communicating the right the right message in these presentations.
Courtney: And yeah, from my perspective,
PK Steffen: Cool.
Courtney: sorry, from my perspective, I think yeah, absolutely. To to echo what Dekishea said, just our roles as presentation designers are evolving and it's kind of a matter of choosing which direction you want that to be. it I will say, and maybe it'd be a bit surprised. That I lean less towards the storytelling aspect and more towards the technical side. And so in that sense, kind of what I just spoke to, being approached with to being approached and working with different companies with the the creation of these AI tools or the testing or refinement of them. yeah, I I kind of am enjoying being on that side of the space and and getting a a sneak peek of seeing potentially where where the future's gonna be and yeah just trying to make sure that I stay ahead and and keep job security and all
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: ha
Courtney: of those things. yeah I
PK Steffen: I hear ya.
Courtney: I it's it's a bit intimidating and nerve-wracking but I I'm curious to see how we will all evolve as the years progress.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
PK Steffen: Love that
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love it.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: scary and interesting at the same time, right? It's like, it's good. It's gonna be all right.
PK Steffen: I mean, yeah, it's been like I look back on some of my posts from like a year ago on LinkedIn and I'm like, wow, it has changed. I mean it's it's evolving. Every three weeks there's another iteration of Claude or something like that and it's it's definitely moving moving at a at a at a fast pace. can can I ask you, Dekishea What's one thing that you love about presentation design? What w I mean you did it when you were a kid, and you you want you shifted to this as as a career. What's one of the things that keeps bringing you back to this this profession profession? What's something that you love about it?
Dekishea: I would say from a kid to when I jumped in here it was it it it was the creativity, being able to create something out of nothing, be able being able to make something look nice. Like I do not have a graphic design background. I didn't go to school for it. nothing like that. I just learnt along the way and probably still have a lot of learning to do, but it was just being able to create and then the second part of that would just just be a being able to communicate with different people like coming into the space as well as my getting in communications you get to you know I could talk to a food company one day and then a technology company the next day within the my role now with in house I get to communicate with the product team, the sales team, implementation, like I I like that aspect.
PK Steffen: Ne never gets boring, right?
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, always something different.
PK Steffen: Courtney, what would you say about presentation design the space? What what what is something that you really love about it that that keeps you coming back to it?
Courtney: yeah, what keeps me coming back to it is a few things. One, as Dekishea just said, just the wide variety of topics and and people and industries I get to interact with. And really I feel like it's a great pursuit of knowledge. you know, getting to read some of these decks and and see just learn about all sorts of different topics that maybe I would have never had gotten a chance to know about and diving deeper into you know clients stories and intentions and things like that has been very interesting. and secondly what I would say is really I just love working with people and and making people happy and and satisfied and It brings me great joy when I do, let's say, some presentation design or PowerPoint training, being able to show them a tool and they're like, What? The reset button, like that blows people's minds every time. and yeah, just kind of
PK Steffen: Ha Totally.
Courtney: being able to make people happy and assuage their their fears and be able to instill confidence in them. and having a good presentation and feeling yeah, feeling confident to share their story, I think, is my favorite part of being a presentation designer.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, I love that. I love yeah, I love
PK Steffen: Love that.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: the training side of things. It's like sharing, you know, like the mentoring as well. It's like sharing your knowledge and having that moment where people go, Pfft, my mind is blown, you've saved me hours of time. It's really good. Yeah.
Courtney: Right.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah. Yeah.
PK Steffen: And if if someone someone doesn't know what the reset button is and what it does in in
Emma | Birdbox Designs: yeah.
PK Steffen: PowerPoint, we we we need to do a little good to great on that. It's if your template's
Emma | Birdbox Designs: We should.
PK Steffen: set up cor correctly and you reset the slide, right, click on it and choose reset, it should go back into place, right? And people don't know that. That's I love that.
Courtney: Exactly.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love that. can I go back back a little bit, Courtney, as well, about on the business side of things? When you were building that team and you kind of had that, you know, you had to build quite quickly, how did it feel to kind of let go of some of those sort of design as aspects that you were basically solo freelancing before and making all the design decisions? Did it did it feel a little bit different? And how did you kind of get over that hurdle of having to trust someone else to do the the work?
Courtney: yeah, I would say one. I was fortunate, like I mentioned, a lot of my team not only had they did I work with them almost from the beginning, when that 50 Deck Yelp project came in, but they actually were designers that I worked with in the similar aspect. I was a project manager. at Cisco Systems and they were my design team there as well. And so on one hand I had a little bit of a cheat, a little bit of a leg up in that they already kind of knew my preferences and work style. We we kind of all trained under the same expectations for you know timing and things like that. And so I I came in working with contractors or other designers feeling more confident than maybe what I would have been just kind of hiring you know hiring new people that I haven't interacted with. But I will say it still required quite a bit of of trust and it it was nerve wracking. And of course there there's always things that can happen. whether it's maybe a a major power outage or other just other things, maybe something doesn't quite hit the mark. And so yeah, it really was just kind of a iterative learning process to figure out how to myself be a better communicator to my team and be able to clearly kind of express the client's vision expectations. and also be able to have that trust and confidence in my team to know that you know I can go watch my BTS concert and be able to
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, ,
Courtney: deliver the deck to the client and then be satisfied. But yeah nowadays I'm probably I'm probably too too not too trusty but too loose in that
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Okay.
Courtney: yeah it just
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Courtney: The team the team works so seamlessly without me. And I do now have project managers who interact with the clients and so in some ways a lot of the company can work, operate without my presence, which yeah,
Emma | Birdbox Designs: No.
Courtney: is very liberating, I would say.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, amazing.
PK Steffen: You you you talk about it so calmly though that it had to be
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
PK Steffen: scary. I mean you get a you get somebody wants you to make fifty decks or you gotta do six hundred templates. Some of these numbers are mind-boggling. It's gotta be scary for a while, right? You gotta be sweating a little bit.
Courtney: Yes, if I can tell you a secret, when Microsoft hired me for the templates, I I did not have a PC. I I am a Mac person. and I
PK Steffen: Ha ha.
Courtney: just and they expected
Dekishea: Hehehehehe
Courtney: all the templates, of course, to be for PC, you know, first and foremost. and so I just secretly went and bought a PC from the time
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
Courtney: that they hired me. until like, you know, a week later
Dekishea: Ha ha.
Courtney: before we started and yeah, you know, and learn PC.
PK Steffen: You learned PC.
Courtney: Learn learn how to use the PC.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Ha
Courtney: and so there are a lot of underground low key kind of anxiety or and I I still get that, you know, just kind of when I work with a new client or maybe a little outside of our comfort zone. but I I try to push through and yeah treat everything as a learning experience. But it it definitely can be stressful for sure.
PK Steffen: No doubt. No doubt.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love that. Yeah.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Do you still perform any kind of quality control or are you sort of so trusting in your team now that you've kind of crossed those hurdles and you can just, is your role now, I guess, more kind of been that director type role, kind of like looking of ways to move the business on and that sort of thing? Yeah, okay.
Courtney: Yeah, absolutely. there are a few times where I'll step in for quality control or for creative direction and that's really with kind of more high profile projects or clients or if you know there is a rare instance where, you know, there may have been a escalation or a design didn't quite hit the mark and they they kind of asked me to step in and do some overseeing, but otherwise, yeah, the we've been fortunate that most of our clients now are kind of long-term clients. And so at this point, you know, they all kind of have their own relationships built with the other project managers and things like that. And so yeah, just mostly working towards, you know, sales and and business development.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Makes sense. And Dekishea do you have a team of designers working for you or do you, are you still hands on with the decks at the end of the day or?
Dekishea: So my role has currently like recently changed. So I'm stepping a bit back from the general company's decks and only working with on like the CEO and executive decks. but I do have a team that does help on like if it's like an important meeting that's going to happen with a client or something, then I do have a team that will step in and help and I could divy that work out too.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
PK Steffen: Yeah, and i is that scar ever scary for you having to I mean you talked about having to learn about you know what they're talking about or maybe the language or something like that. What what are the scary moments for you when it comes to to presentation design? w was it
Dekishea: I would say within this company. I joined this company not knowing anything about the industry. They literally hired me. They're like, You're great at PowerPoint. We need to
PK Steffen: Ha ha
Dekishea: communicate our message. We'll teach you whatever. I
PK Steffen: We need you. That's great. That's great.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, yeah.
Dekishea: Yeah, I knew nothing. But being able to work with all the teams within the company. I like I got to learn about logistics and how things get delivered that it opened my mind to a whole new new world.
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Dekishea: so that was very intimidating when I first started. and then also working on decks that I never really had to that were you know, it might have been a really important deck for the CEO to move the business forward and sometimes I went into it like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll figure it out. But it's you know, and just
Emma | Birdbox Designs: We've all been there, huh?
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Love it.
PK Steffen: Yep.
Dekishea: being open with them. So, yeah, that that part of it is intimidating.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: kind of
Emma | Birdbox Designs: So
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: a fake it till you make it kind of a thing.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yes.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Sort of getting on with it.
PK Steffen: I
Dekishea: Yeah,
PK Steffen: I think we've all d we've all had to do that, haven't we?
Dekishea: yeah.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: We've all done there, yeah. Definitely.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: I totally
Emma | Birdbox Designs: So so that's so that
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: know how to do that. Yeah. Give that job to me.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: that's now. But I think both of you have had some experience at the beginning with upwork and finding work on a platform like that. I think it might have been called something different before, but tell us a bit about how that worked and how that sort of developed, because it wouldn't be a normal place for someone to say start a multi-million dollar business. But that's how it kind of worked for you, Courtney. But also Dekishea, I know
PK Steffen: Hundred percent.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I know that you you've kind of went down that route and got maybe the idea that you could have presentation design as your career through that channel.
Dekishea: Yeah. So I started off, like I said, in marketing. So I was actually on Odesk at the time working on a marketing contract
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah.
Dekishea: for like a year or two. And I didn't really know how the platform worked. That's just what the company chose to hire me on. And, you know, I just would randomly get requests to like do design work. so I just do it. I just thought it were was one off projects. Never clicked to me that people actually pay the bucks for this until I ran into court Courtney , and I was just like, well I have a whole bunch of design samples that I could put in a portfolio and make this a career by the time I found her.
PK Steffen: Love it.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Love it. Love it.
Courtney: yeah, my experience with upwork really it came out of, like I said, my 2017 goal, get out of debt. and I had recklessly quit my corporate job to start a travel company. And so I wanted to freelance on the side. And so yeah, I came across, I believe I was on Odesk at first as well. and then it transitioned into Up Work. and yeah, just at first, I I tell this story, the first client I had, they were going to pay me five hundred dollars and I was very excited.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: ,
Courtney: but after I completed the work, they actually only paid me fifty dollars and then ghosted me. after and so, you
PK Steffen: my goodness, ouch.
Courtney: know, you know, maybe a different me would have crumbled and gave up on upwork. but yeah, I just knew that I was really motivated personally to to push forward and I I started on upwork I think at twenty seven an hour or so. and then over the years by experimenting and raising my rates, I was able to kind of see the different types of clients, enterprise clients that were on the platform. And yeah, the second client I had after that first client was doing executive decks for Adobe. And so yeah, I just I feel very thankful that I kind of persisted beyond that first initial bad experience and I've been really impressed with just kind of the caliber of clients that are available on Upwork. I know that there's a lot of commentary about and it is difficult to kind of to to start out and to build your reputation on the platform. But yeah, it it really did change the entire course of my life. And at our peak, yeah, we earned over half a million dollars a year through Upwork. So yeah, I will I
PK Steffen: That's incredi that's incredible.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Amazing.
Courtney: will always praise Upwork for that.
PK Steffen: I love this. It's so positive, I love it.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah. I love it too. Yeah.
Dekishea: Ha ha ha.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Presumably you're not on Upwork
Emma | Birdbox Designs: ,
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: anymore, right? That's those days ago. It's a long day.
Courtney: no, I'm still on I'm still on Upwork every day. Yeah.
PK Steffen: Ha ha ha.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Ha ha
Courtney: you know, they they have those non circumvent rules. but no, I yeah, there's still clients that that we attract on Upwork, although we do less work on there now and more direct clients. But yeah, recently over the past year, I think we did work for Pepsi through upwork. work and Johnson and Johnson. And so yeah, there's still a bunch of really big opportunities on there. So yeah, I I'm still there on a daily basis. They still see my face for sure.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I love that.
PK Steffen: Alright.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: My partner works for Enterprise and they use YunoJuno a lot as well. So they need a resource for their freelancers so they go there. yeah, it doesn't connect with me. I'm like, no, there must be some kind of enterprise only freelancer program that you need special keys to get into. But no, they're just using the same platforms everybody else uses. yeah, that's great. That's a great, great tip.
PK Steffen: I mean ev ev ev every company needs freelancers, I think, right? There's just
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah, totally.
PK Steffen: don't have enough people to get the job done and and there's a lot of work out there. So yeah, I think there's
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: especially
PK Steffen: room for freelancers all over the place and it's great to hear that Upwork still still has opportunities. That's great.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah, and the place my partner
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Absolutely.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: works, I'll try not to say the name, although I probably have done before, but they are kind of... more than 50 % freelance. Their actual full-time employees in-house are very, very small. They don't use big agencies, and then when they don't use agencies, they use freelancers. So that, you know, should everything go horribly wrong, touch wood, hope not, then they just fall back to a very small group of freelancers, sorry, full-time employees. So their head count's very flexible. So yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting that they have that.
PK Steffen: But I mean it it
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Really good.
PK Steffen: it makes sense. I mean, if you don't
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
PK Steffen: have to have someone on full time and and you get you get an expert for a short period of time, you may have to pay a bit more money. Let's let's sing the praises of freelance, right? It's they they get an expert, they get for when they need them and they're paying less money than they would to have a a full time employee. Sometimes it just it makes sense, you know. It d makes sense to have somebody full time like Dekishea who's if you've got a lot of work and you need it you know, n need that community. Communication done properly, etcetera, then it makes sense, but freelancing makes sense too. So
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Absolutely. So I'm just conscious of time, guys. I was gonna sort of end with a question to both of you. you know, if there's some sort of wannabe or aspiring presentation designers or people that just do presentation as part of their job, what's the one piece of advice you'd give them to be get really good at and maybe not worry so much about something else that maybe they're spending too much time worrying about?
Courtney: I would say not to completely echo what I said previously, but I do think having the the soft skills, particularly client communication, has been the most important thing to me. And when people do ask to pick my brain or ask for advice, I do I do touch on some of the design and I touch on some of our process, but really it's Communication just covers so many aspects of kind of presentation design and running a creative business that that's kind of the key skill that I that I stress upon.
Dekishea: Yeah, and I I'll piggyback off of Courtney saying communication, also listening. if you sit in front of a client or your boss, like or even a team, being able to listen, record meetings if you can, so you could go back and just really see what the asks were. And don't be afraid to ask questions if you don't get something. You don't have to know everything. You just have to make sure you understand their needs.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Yeah, I love that. You can't underestimate just listening and yeah, I
Dekishea: Mm-hmm.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: love that. Brilliant. Well,
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Brilliant.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Courtney, Dekishea, thank you so much for joining us. It's been brilliant hearing not just your journey, but what you've learnt along the way and what you're giving back to each other now as well. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Courtney: Yeah thank you so much for having us.
Dekishea: Thanks for having us.
PK Steffen: Yeah, keep up keep up the strong work guys. We love seeing all the posts and and all of the stuff that you're working on.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: Absolutely.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: Yeah, it's wonderful. Thank you
Courtney: Thank you so much.
Dekishea: Thank you.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: so much. So that's it for this episode of Next Slide, Please. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to know more about us, you can find us on LinkedIn and YouTube and Spotify and Apple podcasts. And just a quick shout out to say we're missing Andy this week. He's still in Costa Rica. We hope you're having a great time, buddy. And we'll see you on the next one.
Emma | Birdbox Designs: I've been Emma Pritchard. You can find me at Birdbox Designs on LinkedIn and also on Instagram.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: And I'm Mark Robson, you can find me at 6mileshigh.com or on LinkedIn or Instagram at sixmileshigh.
PK Steffen: And I'm PK Stefan, you can find me at pkdigital.net or on LinkedIn.
Mark | SIX MILES HIGH: And even though he's not here, if you want to know more about Andy, you can go to andybundock.com or you can find him on LinkedIn or on Instagram as well. We would love to hear more from you. We're a friendly bunch. So anything you don't like, please tell us. And anything you do like, please tell everyone else. We'll see you on the next episode of Next Slide Please.
