How I Run A Solo $6K/Month Design Business In The Craft Beer Industry
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Mike Shaefer and I'm the founder of LabelGurus: a label & packaging design service for emerging and established CPG beverage brands.
I’ve been running LabelGurus solo since I launched at the end of 2019. My current monthly revenue for LabelGurus as of this article is averaging around $6,000/mo from new and recurring clients.
I spend a total of about $260/mo on operating expenses which include subscriptions for various design tools, web hosting, and internet service.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I’ve been a freelance graphic and web designer since I was about 15 years old. Before starting LabelGurus though, I was working as a head brewer and production manager at a brewery in Oakland, CA. We ran a lean operation at our brewery, which meant that I was responsible for a wide range of tasks.
During that time in the craft beer industry (2017-2019), breweries were just starting to brew hazy IPAs, slapping a punny name on a colorful label and canning it in 16oz cans. Some breweries releasing +4 new beers a month.
As the production manager and head brewer, I wanted to figure out how I could do the same, alongside our existing core products, which was already maxing out the brewhouse.
But, I did. (There was a lot to it, and if you’re a brewery struggling with this, get in touch and I’d be happy to share some insight and creative ways to make it work.)
So now that we had a new beer in the tank, we were going to need a name and a label for said beer and we needed it fast. Being as I was a graphic designer for the past 10 years, who better to do this than my already overworked self?
Knowing the beer takes about 2 weeks to finish fermenting and our label printer takes 10 days to print and deliver, I only had a few days to crank a label design out and get it approved. So any downtime I had at the brewery would be working on a new name and label design.
Craft beer shops at this time were stocked head to toe with a variety of 16oz beer cans with fun, brightly colored labels. So I did my research in front of the beer fridge analyzing what popped out to me and brought those elements into my label design so they’d pop!
As time went on, my system for regularly releasing new beers improved and I was proud of what I had built. But, I was getting burnt out at the brewery. Brewing was something I enjoyed and took pride in, but it wasn’t something I wanted to do for the next 5 years. The hours were long and the pay didn’t match the work.So, I put in my 6 months notice.
When the main investor at the brewery got word of my leaving, he suggested I start my own company helping other breweries do the same thing we were doing. He’d mentor me along the way, so long as I don’t work with any neighboring breweries.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
I came up with a name and launched LabelGurus in about a week. I landed on the name LabelGurus as my initial vision was to have this grow into a team of packaging designers working with all different industries. I bought the domain and snatched up all the socials (which were all available), built a Squarespace site in a couple of days and an Instagram page, then uploaded my existing label designs to them.
I had about 10 labels to showcase at the time. My initial offering was just label designs for craft breweries and each design came with a free product mockup to use for social media, etc. I was offering label designs to breweries for $350 each with a 3-5 day turnaround. Which was a great deal in my opinion. I figured it took me on average 5-6 hours to complete a label design at that time, so that would allow me one label a day, which would be great! If I had one label a day.
I didn’t bother with any legal stuff from the start so my startup costs were next to nothing. Just the $18/mo for a Squarespace website and $6 for a g-suite. The great thing about starting a service business like graphic design is you can do it from anywhere in a matter of minutes. As long as you have some work you can show, you’re ready to start.
Describe the process of launching the business.
I launched at the end of 2019 while still working at the brewery. I was offering my label design services directly to craft breweries from the start. Targeting small and medium-sized breweries that had poor label designs and/or were canning their core beers but not their other season or taproom-only selections. My mission was to get breweries to release new canned beers regularly and continue to use me for their label designs.
I had two routes I was going to take to initially get customers. The first was through social media direct messaging. I started on Instagram by following every single brewery in the US I could find. At first, I was just using the search bar and typing in ‘brewery’ and then following every brewery that popped up, and that was taking forever. Then I thought, I’m probably not the first person to take this approach, so what other businesses would want strictly breweries as clients?
Hops and Malt producers! So I found a company that was following over 5,000 people, and nearly all of them were breweries. My thumbs got to work following everyone until Instagram told me “You’re doing this too much”, and I’d pick it back up the next day. I ended up finding a bot to do this for me and eventually maxed out my 7,500 follower count. At the time there were about 8,000 breweries in the US, so I tried not to follow the macros I knew I’d not be approaching at this time.
Now that I had followed all 7,500 breweries on Instagram, I started going down the list and vetting them to see if I could be of help to them. If they looked like they fit my client criteria of a production brewery, either poor current designs, or not packaging all of their offerings, I would DM them.
Instagram allows you to create saved replies that you can populate with just one character, so I created a few different pitches and tested them until I started getting more responses. I don’t remember how many I sent before I landed my first client, but it took a few days of cold DMs.
If you need a design portfolio but haven’t worked with any clients yet, just make up some brands and design some assets for it to showcase. Clients just want to see what you’re capable of.
My second approach to getting clients required a bit more work and personalization. The plan was to find a brewery that fit my criteria, find an email address for a decision maker at that brewer, then record a personalized vineyard video with a slide presentation explaining why they should launch new beers regularly and how I’d help them do it. The video pitch was just a 10-page slideshow about 2 minutes long, with my head in the bottom corner being recorded as I talked through the presentation.
I initially sourced the breweries from Instagram and then used the email address on their page or their website. Then I discovered a tool called hunter.io that allowed me to put in a brewery's URL and get all the known emails associated with that business, plus the job roles of each email. And now that I had this amazing tool, I started to think of other ways I can fast-track this process.
Every brewery in the US registers with the Brewer’s Association. And on the Brewer’s Associations website is a list of all the breweries, along with their address and URL. You can also filter the breweries by region and type of brewery (ie, in-planning, micro, taproom-only, regional, etc.).
So I narrowed my search down to microbreweries in a state that had a lot of breweries already canning beer, which I believe the first state I did was in Texas. I then grabbed all the URLs on the page for Texas and entered them into hunter.io and exported the emails and info to an Excel sheet.
I went down the list vetting the breweries by looking at their IG and website to see if they could be a good fit. If they were, I recorded a 2-minute presentation and sent it over in an email.
This was taking a lot of time and effort just to get a couple of video pitches out per day. I started second-guessing this approach and ended up recording just one video that I could send to every prospect. From there, I started researching cold emailing methods and best practices as I had never done this before.
I ended up creating a separate URL at a .co that I used for cold email outreach just in case I got flagged, then used an app to warm the email up for better deliverability. At this point, I wanted a large list of emails since I was now just going to automate them being sent.
I had let my mentor know what my new plan was, which was when he came back to me later that day with a snippet of code he wrote that could plug into Google Chrome Console and scrape the Brewer’s Association directory page to output the entire brewery list and their listed information. I tweaked the code to only target the brewery name and URL, then had those exported to a spreadsheet.
I was then able to upload that spreadsheet to hunter.io and export every email address from those breweries in just a matter of seconds. I now had over 10,000 email addresses that I start reaching out to.
In the end, the cold DM on Instagram approach was working the best. I was going after smaller to mid-size breweries that most of the time, the owner or marketing director was the one receiving my direct messages.
I could also vet these potentials much quicker by just scrolling through their feed and messaging them in the same app. It was working, so I doubled down on it and stopped the cold email approach.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Since launching LabelGurus, Instagram and word-of-mouth referrals within the beer industry have been my main source of new clients. There are a few reasons for this. The craft beer industry uses Instagram pretty heavily as a whole to showcase their new releases and inform and connect with their customers.
The craft beer industry is also a pretty collaborative and tight-knit industry that supports each other and shares resources with each other. Which is where word of mouth comes into play. One brewery owner asks another who does their design, and bam, I’ve got a new client. As I work with more popular breweries that are doing well, other breweries look at their Instagram and see I’m tagged in their posts and then contact me as well.
My client onboarding process is pretty straightforward. Once a potential client reaches out to me, we hop on a quick phone call and talk about what they need and how I can help. If they want to work with me, I send them a design agreement over DocuSign and we get to work.
There are not usually any more phone calls or meetings after that initial onboarding call. Everything is handled either via email or through a private Kanban-style project management board I created for each client in Notion. The board gives the client the option of submitting design requests and revisions whenever they want, as well as setting due dates, uploading design assets, inspiration, etc.
They can also follow what stage their design is at and provide feedback and revisions all within the design request card. I had originally built the Kanban board for myself to manage all my design work. I would take clients' design briefs from emails and manually input them into my board.
I then realized I could just duplicate the same template and create individual boards for each customer so they could add their briefs and follow along themselves. That’s been a huge timesaver that both myself and my clients seem to value while allowing me to focus more on design.
Being that I start working with most of my clients pretty early in their startup stage, it’s common that they will ask me for design work outside of label and packaging design. And of course, I do it! I’ve got a strong background in design across various print and digital landscapes.
I offer my clients everything from full branding, billboards, and event booth design, to digital content, websites, and just about anything they need. That’s been one of the keys to maintaining a recurring relationship with my clients. The other is that I do consistently great work and build trust with my clients.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Things are going well today! I have a 2-year-old son that I get to spend a lot of my day with and still be able to get work done. The flexibility in my work schedule is something I am very fortunate to have. My current schedule is waking up at 4 am and working until 9 am, then usually again for a couple of hours in the evening before bed. That time is divided between my other design businesses and side projects as well though.
I’m currently still a one-man show at LabelGurus which I never thought I’d still be doing this far into. I’m reaching that point where I will need to bring in some design help in the near future though. It will be for the better as we’ll be able to have more creative ideas to play with and ultimately provide faster results for our clients.
I am also brainstorming a way to combine LabelGurus with my other design service: Topshelf. Topshelf is a subscription design service for CPG food & beverage brands that offer unlimited design requests and revisions for a flat monthly fee.
I’ve been able to move a few clients from LabelGurus over to the Topshelf membership, and it’s proven to be a powerful system for working with clients that is mutually beneficial. But I’d like to bring it all under one roof at some point. Topshelf uses the same style of Notion Kanban board as LabelGurus clients but with a few differences in how it operates.
For instance, Topshelf members can have unlimited design requests in the backlog, but only one design in progress at a time. That design scope is usually smaller or broken up into smaller individual tasks so that it can be delivered in just a couple of days. Whereas with LabelGurus, there’s no limit to the scope or how many tasks can be in progress for a client at once, as it’s being billed on an hourly or per-project basis.
I’m also currently building out label templates that will be sold on my website and online marketplaces like CreativeMarket and Etsy to add stream of income.
As far as profitability goes - being that I don’t currently spend any money on customer acquisition or an office with employees, my overhead is super low. LabelGurus is profitable and has been since the start. I spend a total of about $260/mo on operating expenses which include subscriptions for various design tools, web hosting, and internet service.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I’ve learned a tremendous amount from starting my service that I feel you only learn from doing it. When I started LabelGurus, I didn’t know how to run a design business as I had never worked for a design studio or agency. I just started with the steps I knew which was to build a design portfolio and start contacting breweries. Everything was learned along the way through reading and discovering, and then testing.
If I were to start over, I would have reached out to other design studio founders and agency owners earlier and tried to get someone to mentor me who had experience in this industry. What I’ve learned is most people enjoy sharing their knowledge and experience with others. It also doesn’t have to be industry specific as most businesses function the same at the core, regardless of their product or service.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
- Webflow for the company website.
- Instagram for Social Media.
- Dribbble for additional portfolio.
- Hunter.io for email validation.
- Creative Market for mockup templates.
- MidJourney for product scenes.
- DocuSign for contracts.
- Adobe creative suite.
- Figma for web design.
- Shopify for client websites.
- Chat GPT for copywriting.
- Notion for project management.
- Toggl for time tracking.
- Stripe for payment processing.
- NounProject for icons.
- Google workspace.
- Calendly for scheduling calls.
- Zoom for meetings.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I draw inspiration for my business and design from a variety of sources that change on a daily basis. I usually start each day with Designer Daily Report as they have a great Chrome plugin that displays their daily newsletter when I open my browser. Email newsletters from IndieHacker, StartupCPG, and StarterStory usually always have something great and inspiring to read daily.
I’ll poke around Dribbble when I need some design inspiration, LandingFolio or Godly when I need some web design inspiration, and FontBuddies or FontsInUse when I need typography inspiration.
As far as influential books: I read The Lean Startup when it first came out and that helped set the mindset I have today as a solopreneur. Aside from that, I love discovering how to build things, what others are building, fun new side hustles, etc. Learning how to do something I’ll probably never need to implement like building a house from the ground up is always something that will get me sidetracked.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
First off, there are so many resources and tools out there that you don’t have to start from scratch anymore. Find the channels and groups that are filled with the people doing what you want to do and learn from them. Schedule calls with them, ask questions and start building and tinkering as much as you can because that’s how you start fast-tracking your learning.
The biggest fear for me when starting something new is the unknown. Not the unknown about whether or not it will work, but the unknown of the steps to take. So learn from others who have taken those steps, and at the same time learn new ways to improve on those steps. Whether that’s automating a task or using a different tool to get a better outcome.
Secondly, do your due diligence and then build confidence with what you’ve got now, as fast as possible with the least amount of money. You’re never going to be done building so don’t try to perfect anything from the start.
For instance, if you need a design portfolio but haven’t worked with any clients yet, just make up some brands and design some assets for it to showcase. Clients just want to see what you’re capable of anyways, not whether or not that company you designed for actually exists.
Lastly, focus on building a system to get clients and customers coming in from the very start, and then focus on improving your service or product once you have those customers coming in. The key is to stay focused on what moves the needle forward and brings you in more clients/revenue.
As a designer, it’s so easy to get distracted tweaking your website or logo every other month because you saw something new you liked and wanted to copy it. Your customers don’t care about that, so quit wasting your time and stay focused on what moves the needle most.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I am always looking to bring in great designers for projects with both LabelGurus and Topshelf. If you're interested in working together, please shoot me an email! I also really enjoy connecting with other founders, creators, mentors, growth experts, etc. If you want to chat, I am always open to hop on a call! Whether you’ve been in my shoes before and have some tips for growth or looking to start your service and need some guidance, feel free to reach out to [email protected] or schedule a call with me here.
Where can we go to learn more?
- Start by checking out the LabelGurus website
- Then hop over to Topshelf, which is my unlimited design subscription to learn more about how that works
- LabelGurus affiliate program is here
- Get in touch with me at [email protected]
- You can find LabelGurus on Instagram
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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