“The Amazon of Design.”
^ This moniker is what Bailey, the founder of design studio Honeywave Creative, has given her company.
Like Amazon, the services she delivers are turned around remarkably fast. As in: a single day.
Like Amazon, she has leveraged this fast-delivery into a strong reputation…. and in doing so, scaled her company to $50k months, with more than half of that revenue coming from her single-day offers.
And – crucially – also like Amazon, she’s able to achieve this level of volume while maintaining a good client experience because of her super-tight operations.
Listen, serving 2-3 clients a week with VIP Days, collecting more than 200 past clients in just a few years… well, frankly, seemed impossible to me.
Until I heard how she’s streamlined everything on the backend. And that’s what we’re diving into today.
Here’s our conversation, edited and condensed for clarity — link at the end to listen to the full, raw interview that’s more like a podcast!
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How much of your revenue comes from the done-in-a-day offers?
Yeah, so right now, our monthly revenue is floating around the $40K to $50K mark. A bit over half is coming from our ‘done in a day’ services. Keep in mind, a lot of our clients are on payment plans, right? So we’ve got money rolling in from websites we did in previous months, thanks to our four-month payment plans.
And is the positioning of your offers all around the accelerated timeframe?
I do attract a lot of clients who value the accelerated timeline we offer. They’re often in urgent situations, like needing a website for a program launch next week, or they’re fed up with a designer who’s taken a year without delivering. Many are instantly sold on the idea of getting their site done in a day, without a two-month wait.
Others might not prioritize the timeline as much but are drawn to the streamlined process and the ease of working with us. We make it an experience for them – like, they’ll get Starbucks on the morning of the design day, be treated like a queen, and can stay focused while we do the heavy lifting.
But yes, our whole thing is really quick, quick, quick. So if you’re a past client or current client and need an answer, we’re not going to make you wait two, three days for us to get back to you.
Okay, so how do you manage that, though? If you have 200ish past clients, plus your 2-3 current clients of that week, who could all potentially be reaching out to you…
Every morning, I’ve got like four or five emails waiting for me – from new clients, past ones, or folks in the middle of the process needing some help. I’ve got this system where I batch my responses. I hit them first thing in the morning, then again at lunch, and one last time at the end of the day. This way, I keep on top of it without getting too swamped.
And, you know, if I’m on Instagram and see a message, and I’ve got a sec, I’ll shoot back a response right then. Keeps things flowing nicely without letting email or messages take over my entire day.
What boundaries do you have with clients to keep things moving smoothly? For instance, since the turnarounds are so tight, how do you protect against rescheduling nightmares?
Actually, back when I had longer timelines for projects, like a week or two set aside for each client, last-minute changes were a bigger headache. If someone let me know on the Friday before their week that they needed to reschedule, it left me in a tough spot. Those two weeks were blocked off, and it was too late to book anyone else.
But now, with our design days, I’ve got more flexibility with rescheduling. I ask clients to give me at least two weeks’ notice if they think they’ll need to postpone. However, if there’s a last-minute change, I can usually handle it. I’ll find the next available slot, often the following week.
What often happens, and it works out great, is a swap. Sometimes a client wants an earlier date, but we’re fully booked. If someone else needs to delay their session, I offer that slot to the client who wanted to move up. They usually jump at the chance, and then the other client takes their later spot. It’s a system that’s turned out to be really effective for us.
What is the structure for your single-day offers?
I’m usually in the office by six in the morning – yeah, super early, I know. But I don’t start bugging my clients at that hour. First thing, I check my emails, get everything lined up for the day. By about 6:30 or 6:45, I’m diving into the design work, getting a head start.
At eight, I send my client a good morning message with a Starbucks gift card – a nice little start to their design day. For brand design days, I first work on the mood board and creative direction, sending that over by nine for feedback. Then it’s onto designing the logo, colors, fonts, maybe a brand mark, and I aim to deliver those around 10:30 or 11. We go through feedback, make revisions if needed, but usually, clients are pretty happy with it.
By noon or 12:30, I’m expanding the brand – different logo variations, brand marks, icons, the works, wrapping that up by around 12:30. After any final tweaks, we move to the ‘brand wishlist’ items in the afternoon. This could be anything – business cards, thank you cards, social media templates, email signatures, you name it. We start with their top priority and work down, almost always getting through the entire list.
Around 3:30, we show the client everything for a final review. Once they give the thumbs-up, we start exporting all the files. My team usually heads out by five, and I wrap things up by sending a video to the client around 5:30, walking them through everything they’ve received and how to use it. We typically finish up by 5:30, sometimes a bit later, but that’s the gist of our day!
So all big revisions are all done on that day, too, which I’m sure helps keep everything super streamlined for you. How do you handle revisions on such a tight timeframe?
Clients give feedback over Voxer, and we do revisions and send it back, and then they give any additional feedback on Voxer. No back and forth emails or need to schedule a meeting!
How do you make sure that clients give you everything you need before their day?
We do a prep call the week before, and on that call we go over everything, and if they are missing any pieces, they have the week or however many days before to get everything together and make sure that they’re ready to go.
What boundaries do you have with clients once their day is over? How do you make sure that the work doesn’t bleed over and cause a time management nightmare for you?
I offer a two-week follow-up support period for clients, mainly for addressing functionality issues and questions. This isn’t meant for design revisions, though I admit I’m sometimes a bit softer on this rule than I should be. It’s more for things like fixing broken website links, weird mobile display issues, or if something’s off with the branding elements, like a logo issue or a missing color.
I mention it in the offboarding video when sending over the files, and I also remind them in the message I send at the end of the day on Voxer. I emphasize that they should get any questions in during this two-week period because after that, any further assistance is billed at our hourly rate.
What advice do you have for other service businesses (not just designers) who want to use this single-day offer model?
First, check if it aligns with your personal work style. Fair warning, it involves very long days. I experienced this firsthand last week with four design days in a row. By the end, I was practically crawling out of the office – it’s intense.
If you decide it’s good for you, then embrace it as your superpower. Preparation is key. Ensure your clients and you are well-informed throughout the process, and everyone has what they need for a successful project.
How could someone determine if it’s a good fit for them? Like, what makes it work for YOU?
I’ve always been the type of person that would rather sit and hunker down for 12 hours of work than to sit and spread it out over a week long period. I work the best whenever I have that stress and the pressure coming in, making me feel like I have something that’s due and like I have to work quick. If this sounds like you….
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🎧 Listen to the full, unedited 30-minute interview with Bailey, like an exclusive podcast ➡️ Click here to listen.
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About Bailey: Bailey Thibodeaux is an award-winning brand and website designer and the founder of Honeywave Creative. Driven by her mission to pave pathways to prosperity through transformative design, she helps service providers grow their businesses with brands and websites built in a day. Her accelerated turnaround times are setting a new standard in the design industry and revealing that major growth doesn’t have to take months, it can happen in a single day.
Learn more about Bailey:
- Website: https://honeywavecreative.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/honeywavecreative/
