Today, we're going to talk about how to level up and grow your website design business. And this is a big one for website developers because we tend to be there doing all of the things and, you know, being on that hamster wheel and not knowing when we can get off. Well, right now, I am going to give you the permission to slow down, be strategic, and make more money through your website design business. So how do you know that it's time to level up in your business? Well, the first thing would be a really obvious one, and that's that you are overrun with website projects. That you're booking your next one and your next one and your next one, and you're thinking, I don't actually know when I'm going to get all of these done. And we've all fallen into that trap as well, where we think, oh, well, I'll just book it for like three weeks after the first one, and then three weeks after the second one, three weeks after that, until it gets to the point that it's just not sustainable. Often the case here is we're actually not charging enough for the projects. And that's not to say we want to charge so much that we send people away. We don't want to do that. But we want to make sure that we're being really fairly paid for the website that we're creating, the experience that we're bringing to the table, everything there, but also so that we can get some help with running our businesses or with building the websites or wherever it is that's needed within your business. One of the first signs that actually it's time to grow, it's time to scale, it's time to level up, however you want to call it, is feeling burnt out. And I know that this sounds like really counterintuitive advice because you think, well, if I'm feeling burned out, I need to rest. Yeah, you need to do that too. But you also need to be able to get your business into a shape where you can actually step away from it and do that rest. It's like lots of people say about the true mark of a successful business is being able to step away from it and have the business run without you. And for some of us, that would be a really good move and it would be the aspiration that we all go over to. And for others of us, they say, no, we want to stay in the business. We love what we do in the business. And that's great. But let's do it on our terms. Not the terms that our clients are dictating or that, you know, the sheer volume of websites we have are dictating as well. Now, another sign that it's time to level up is actually going to sound, again, a little bit kind of controversial, is that you're not getting enough website projects. projects. And you're probably going to think I'm crazy in this one, but trust me, I've been in this game for a really long time and I've seen it happen. And most people do not get enough website projects because they're actually undercharging and people don't trust that kind of too cheap, kind of not going to get a good enough project kind of mentality. And, you know, I'm still in, you know, Facebook groups and on LinkedIn and stuff like that. And this website, mentor capacity. And I see people crawling all over each other when someone advertises a web design job or a website rebuild or something like that. Only last night, I was on Facebook and there's a group I am in for like women in web design. And this person says, hey, we're, you know, we're looking to scale. We're an agency. We're looking for website developers and they need to be able to build landing pages. Bear in mind, landing pages are quite a big job. And you think, I charge £950 for a landing page. And this company was in America and they said this page should be custom built. It should take one to two hours max and we will pay between $20 and $45 an hour. That is, looking at the lowest level, that is $40 for a landing page. I mean, get out of here. No, I mean, it's just unethical. But, you know, that's a whole other story. And the people who were answering it say, oh, I've just applied. thank you for this opportunity. No. These people need to learn how to get clients for themselves. They need to learn how to grow and how to level up their businesses. And if you sit into either of these categories that I'm talking about, the feeling burned out because you're overrun with stuff or you're not getting enough projects, this is the episode for you. So let's get stuck in. the very first thing i want you to do is look at your pricing and pricing really kind of doesn't matter whether you've been going for you know 10 or 20 years or whether you've been going i was gonna say for 10 or 20 minutes but that's a little bit young but you know whether you're in your first year of web design okay your first year of web design is not going to be perfect and there are going to be all sorts of things that you do on websites or mistakes you make on websites that you're going to look back even just a year later and you're going to be like, sheesh, I'm glad I'm not doing that anymore. But we all start somewhere. If you're a website designer or developer who's looking to strengthen your community, get expert advice and not have it take up all your time, I've got the solution for you. My Sparks program is a weekly group mentoring call for people working directly in the web design space where you'll get advice, support and collaborate with other designers. We meet each week for an hour and you'll come away with reassurance, knowledge and the next steps for your business. Check out the Sparks Group Mentoring at websitesmadesimple.co.uk. And the best thing I could say is get a website mentor to really support you with this. you will find that your growth absolutely is exponential if you work with a mentor. I mentor website developers and someone who can go through like the design elements alongside kind of how you handling your clients and the processes and what kind of website you handing over at the end of it whether you including training and user manuals and stuff like that And if you not at a stage where you can afford a mentor, use the opportunity to go into those web design groups. If you're on Facebook, that's great. That's where a lot of them hang out and ask them, say, I'm going to launch this website. Could I get your feedback on it? And you will get some really useful feedback. And always remember that feedback is not personal. It is just people saying, this is how I would have done it, or this is what you need to consider, or I'm bringing my experience to the table. Feedback is a gift. You don't have to pay attention to all of it. But if you're quite new in your journey, this is really going to help you have a community, find a community, utilize that community. If you've been at this a while and you are, as I say, absolutely overrun, the first thing you need to do is look at your pricing. And as I said earlier in the episode, it's not necessarily about pricing people out. It's not saying, oh, well, I am currently doing, you know, 40 websites a year. And actually, I want to price it. So I'm only doing 20 websites a year. You can still do those 40 websites a year if that's what you want to do. But you're going to need some support because 40 is a lot. Plus, when we've been going that little bit longer, we tend to have the website care plans. We tend to have clients locked in. I was on a call with a website developer earlier this week. He said he has in excess of 65 website care plans and that's 65 websites that he has built as well. And that's before he looks at any other form of new business that comes in, he is committed to maintaining and updating and everything, 65 websites. And when you get to that point, it then becomes kind of unsustainable for you to keep going out and winning new business because you have those 65 people tap, tap, tapping you. Oh, have you done this to my website? Can you do this? I hear there's a critical error or, you know, all the stuff that happens. And I myself have 40 websites on website care plans. And I actually have them all looked after by someone who I would say they're in-house, but I'm just sending them out of house now. And I've got someone who specializes in website care plans. And he's going to take all of those over. All the inquiries go to him. I pay him per website and I just don't have to worry about it. And that is so that I can spend my time. I've just launched the Phoenix program. And I want to be able to free up the time to work with the website developers on a one-to-one basis. And I know I can't do that if I'm running WordPress updates or, you know, kind of increasing PHP versions and stuff like that as well. So really look at where you're spending your time and where you need to spend your time. Because things like the website care plans, they can feel like a really quick win as well because they're priced as a kind of insurance pricing. Like in most cases, things don't go wrong with websites when you run the updates. and the money that you kind of bank from the client sits there as insurance when something does go wrong and you need to go in and get the big guns and get it all fixed and stuff like that. But as I say, it's not always a great use of your time. So do look at where you can bring someone in to come and support you with this. If you're worried about increasing the pricing and think, well, I can't just go to my clients and I can't say, well, the service isn't changing, but the prices are increasing. I mean, there are things like looking at increasing in line with inflation and stuff like that. But you can also look at where you can add value where you're not currently doing it. So that could be with website care plans. It could be generating reports for people. Personally, I don't generate reports for my clients because they're not interested in them. I mean, most people aren't actually interested in like the nuts and bolts back end of the website. But if you've been following this podcast for a while, you'll realized that one of the ways that I leveled up, and this was years ago, was I realized that I was handing over websites with an admin login. And I was like, you know, thanks for the payment. Here's the website, you know, bye bye sort of thing. And people were coming back and they're like, I love the website, but I'm terrified of it because I have no idea how to use it. And so I started creating my website manuals. And these are PDF documents. I have the templates in Canva. I also have the templates available to developers as part of my Phoenix program as well. So they get all of those resources that I've created as well. So it has an introduction. It's all personalized to the person. But the personalization actually means only changing a few fields like the website name, who's prepared the manual and it has the admin login info on the first page. So it says, here's the link to click into your website. And this is the info that you need. Here's your username and the recovery email address for it. I always have the website email the person a password reset. So we never put passwords in the website manuals. And then there's like a table of contents. There's a page on updating the website and maintaining it, keeping up to date. and then I include the screenshot of the PageSpeed Insights report from when the website went live on Google as well. So there's like a real clarification of how the website was performing at the time and then it goes into the tutorial videos. So there's a walkthrough of the website and then there's standard videos of how to use the forms, how to upload blogs, how to do images, how to use titles, SEO structure, that sort of stuff so that people can dip in and out of those videos as well. There's a troubleshooting section, which is mainly to do with caching, because usually when someone says, oh, I've done this bit, it's not done that. They normally just need to clear the website cache as well And then there a final section that gives them other resources like the theme that I used to build the website There will be the link to the documentation And I tend to use Yoast for SEO as well So there will be a link to their stuff as well. But you would be really surprised in creating this manual how much confidence it gave me in increasing my pricing. And how much of a sales tool it was as well. So now whenever I have someone on a call about a website build, when we come off the call, I send them an email recapping everything that we've spoken about. And I send them a copy of a website user manual so that they can see what they will come away with as well. I also send them a copy of the terms of service, which has all the processor information in there. And it shows people what the service is going to be like as well. And it gives them that real reassurance as well. And almost everyone takes me up on this. And because almost everyone takes me up on this opportunity for me to build their website, it means that I have to increase my prices to be able to keep up with demand. I find that it's not as competitive price wise out there as people think when I go into these Facebook groups or things like that. And I see that people are really working on race to the bottom pricing. And I think, no, you've got the wrong strategy here. What you need to do is be adding the value and saying, but I'm charging this because this is the value you get. And people are so much more confident in that. And you would be surprised to see how many people do find the money because they want to work with you and what you're offering there as well. So when you've raised your prices and you still need to get some support there. have a look at working with someone who will white label the websites with you as well and it's completely up to you how you find these people when I use white labelers they're generally known to me before then so I don't just chuck up an advert on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever and say hey I'm looking for a white labeler because I would be inundated with replies that's not really how I want to work in the same way that I have website design clients coming to me saying, I want to work with you. It's got to be you. I want my white labelers to feel the same way. And that's not because I'm really egotistical and say, oh, you know, everyone should be wanting a piece of me sort of thing. It's that I know that when I approach someone about white labeling and they're like, oh my God, yes, this would be amazing. I want to know it's because they share my same values and standards about quality, that when they come in a white labeling capacity, it's not just going to be a case of they know Elementor or Divi. And I say those two bits of software because they've got agency licensing models. So lots of people use them and then come in and say, oh, I know this and I'm going to build this and then I'm going to be paid and off I go. First of all, I want the white labelers to work in the software that I work in, because in my opinion this software is the best for the type of websites I'm putting out there. And I want them to also have that same high standards. I want every client to have an amazing experience. And I want the white labeler to have a great experience kind of learning and shaping up and that sort of stuff. So you do need to be a little bit picky and you do need to invest some time into training them. and I don't like to micromanage people. I think micromanaging is where creativity goes to die and so I generally with White Labeler I will have checked their work. As I said they're usually known to me anyway and we usually have quite a good rapport as well and then I usually get them started on my Simply Sites websites. There is a process with that and they have complete creative freedom within the framework of the Simply site. And then when they get to first draft or if they want some support before then, I will go on a Zoom and we'll go through the website together and I'll say, well, this is where I would change and this is what I'd like to tighten up and stuff like that before we release it to the clients. So when you hire someone, don't think of it as a one and done experience. You know, it is something where if you're going to get the best results from them, you do need to work with them a little bit as well so that you kind of get that joint understanding as well. On that basis as well, I pay everyone fairly. I'm very about ethics and people being paid properly as well. But I'm also not paying for a developer to learn on the job. They should already have that skill set. So it does mean that when I get white labelers in, there is a project price that's capped. And I can assure you it is not $20 an hour and they are not expected to create something in one to two hours at all. In fact, one of my white labellers, Amy, she was amazing. And she said, I know it feels like I haven't done anything, but I've been like thinking about it. You know, I've been thinking about how I'm going to approach this design. And I was like, the thinking is part of the role. You know, it's part of the job. It's where our ideas come from. It's where our design starts and the sparks get lit there as well. So thinking time is just as important as development time. But usually for white labeling as well, I will pay per page. So everyone knows where they're at. And then it's up to the dev how long it takes them on their page. I mean, the longer they work for me, the quicker they get each time as they kind of understand that as well. But you might like to get that. Again, I worked very hard with my Simpli sites to get the process for the builds to be a 12 hour build as well. And then to kind of pay an hourly rate for that. And so everyone knows what they're getting with that as well. So when you are looking at having white labelers come in, be very clear with your pricing and be fair with your pricing. You know, you don't want to be burning out other web developers by having them working for $20 an hour or whatever else. You know, if you feel that you can't get a white labeler in and pay them fairly, then you need to increase the price of the website project so that you can So do bear that in mind as well It really, really helps to get your processes in place when you're scaling. And the problem with this is when we're scaling, we usually sit in that busy, overwhelmed state where we can't think about, you know, how to write this down or write that down or do this, that and the other. And it's easier just to do it ourselves and we carry on on that hamster wheel. it's really important that you work with someone who can help you to untangle these processes so that you can hand them over i was speaking to lily oh gosh i'm not going to be able to say her name properly now i'll try and link her as well in the show notes lily atwell rowan on linkedin and she really helps people like untangle these processes and stuff so that they can grow and she's got a brilliant website and she offers different services that are like waffle and rice and lasagna and spaghetti and it's totally totally got my vote here as well but i spoke to her and i said i'm taking on a new team member and i've been so busy i don't know how to onboard them because i don't know what they don't know and i don't know what i need to tell them and i don't and she was just like okay breathe this was all done over voice note and she emailed me a SOP, a document, I want to call it, which is standard operating procedure. And it walks you through step by step how to create this information for the person you're handing over to. And it was so useful. I also have a Trello board, which I have used in the past for website builds. So particularly when I have a new website developer coming in and this Trello board has checklists of how to hand things over, what needs to be done. It has a setup list, which is, you know, kind of install WordPress, do this, do that, change the site name, change the site tagline. Then it's got like the build information of the website copy and the images and the branding and that sort of thing. And then towards the end, it's got what I call a pack down list where we're packing the website down. And then it's got things like create the website manual, create the admin user login, send the information to the client, ask the client for a review. And then when all of those have been ticked off, we then archive the board. But I have a master version of that board that I copy and just rename for the website project we're on. I invite the developer who's working on the project for me to that board and we can jump in and out of that board together as well, then that's quite a useful way of doing it. The SOP document that Lily sent me is for onboarding a new VA. And I can already see how I can create this because whilst it has step-by-step instructions, I work often with video stuff. And so I can use the Tango extension on my Chrome browser and it will, like every click I do and everything I say, it will transcribe it as well and create it as a document there. There's also a brilliant podcast called The Lone Wolf Unleashed by Mike Fox. And he uses AI to really help you speed along systems and processes. But he has a couple of episodes which would really help you with this about how to create this information ready for scaling, ready for freeing up your time because it is all there in a list, in a place and not in your head. And if you've used AI to help you get there as well, even better because it's going to speed up the processes. So that is my main suggestions about leveling up and scaling. And you might think, oh, Holly, you've actually only really talked about, you know, pricing and processes because they're really where it lies. That's really where it begins. You know, you cannot scale if you're not charging the right prices. And we're not here to be, as I say, that race to the bottom stuff. Leave that to people like GoDaddy and people who are happy to damage their reputations doing that, or they're happy to have the freeloaders on there because they're such a big company, they're making their money elsewhere. But for you, you want to have a really good living out of your web design career, and you want to have a really good experience along the way. And there are so many brilliant developers out there who are maybe not getting the business for themselves and they'd rather collaborate. You know, there's so many opportunities to do this as well. If you are in the process of scaling or you think, I really recognize myself in a lot of what Holly said today, you are very welcome to come and join my Phoenix program, which is a mentoring experience. It's actually a nine month mentoring experience for websites, designers and developers. It is to help them scale to the next level. You'll have tons of support. You can find everything on the Phoenix program page on my website. That is websitesmadesimple.co.uk and then forward slash Phoenix hyphen program. And there's also an episode, a bonus episode in this series talking you through the program as well. And knowing how hard that it can be to scale your business and grow it. And yeah, how do you price it when you're not charging enough? The entire program is priced at the cost of one custom build website over the course of nine months. You can pay monthly as well, and it will really support you in nailing your web design business. So thank you for listening. If you have a scaled and you recognize some of this and you think, oh, I've got some more to add, please do drop me a message. You can find me at hello at websitesmadesimple.co.uk. Find me on LinkedIn as Holly C. Christie. And you can even, if you go onto the Websites Made Simple website, you can drop me a voice note from there. I would love to hear from you. So until next time, happy website designing.
