How to Attract High Paying Web Design Clients Part 2

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Hi, I'm Chris and I'm super glad you're here. 7 years ago I taught my self-web design and freelancing. Now, I do my best to teach others what I've learned so they don't have to struggle as much as I did.

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So many freelancers think it takes some secret to find good web design clients. But, in reality, it’s actually pretty simple.

Here’s a hint.

It has nothing to do with how long you’ve been in business, how many skills you’ve mastered or even whether you’ve got a degree in some related topic.

If you want to find good web design clients you have to be able to answer this one simple question that every person that is interested in hiring you is asking.

What’s the question?

“If I hire you, will you make me more successful?”

It might seem too simple. But, it’s not. Don’t believe the gurus out there that make it seem like you’ve got to have some large scale marketing game plan or huge social media presence.

If you figure out how to tie the success of your client with your own success, you will never have a hard time being able to find good web design clients.

That’s the topic of the next half of my conversation with Mr. Lee Blue of Double Stack.

Last week Lee talked to us about his own journey with web design and gave us some solid insight on how to get started. This week he’s going to dive even deeper into how to take the skills you already have and use them to find clients you love and love you back.

How to Use Your Unique Skillset to Find Good Web Design Clients

One thing that I really love that Lee shared was that you don’t have to be an expert in web development, design, copywriting, digital marketing, etc. etc.

Mastering all of those skills would take multiple lifetimes.

You can take the skills that you already have and the things that you are already interested in and use them to find the kind of clients that are willing to pay top dollar for what you have to offer.

Are you a health nut who loves working out every day and is always studying up on the latest diets?

You’d be the perfect freelancer for fitness coaches.

Are you an avid reader?

You’d be surprised how many authors there are out there who’s website desperately needs some attention.

When you take what you’re already interested in to niche down and find good web design clients you’re able to speak the client’s language in a way that most other web designers won’t be able to.

And, more importantly, you’re able to really get inside the clients user base. Why? Because you are their ideal user.

Let’s look at skills.

Do you love doing photography as a side hobby?

Guess what one of the most important aspects of a website is?

I didn’t have to answer that right? You knew I was talking about images.

The point is, take those skills and use them to make sure you haven’t just built a client a website. Use those skills to give them a unique online presence that will help them move forward in life and in business.

When you do that you won’t ever have a hard time being able to find good web design clients.

You’ll Learn

  • How to get recurring payments from clients you build websites for
  • How to niche down your web design services
  • How to keep yourself from becoming obsolete as a web designer
  • How to figure out what type of clients are willing to pay you what you’re worth
  • How to shape your mindset to be confident that you are worth high paying clients
  • How to overcome self-doubt as a web designer
  • How to have integrity as a web designer

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Chris Misterek 0:02
What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Self-Made Web Designer podcast. So glad to have you here with us this week. This episode is an extension of last week's episode called How to Attract High Paying Web Design Clients with Mr. Lee Blue. If you haven't listened to part one of this episode, I want to encourage you to take a second go back, listen to it. It is chock full of awesome stuff. And Lee's going to dive even deeper into how to find the kind of clients who are willing to pay you what you're worth. It's gonna be fantastic. I know that you're going to enjoy it. Hey, have you subscribed to the podcast and left us a rating if you haven't done that. I want to encourage you to take a second and do that. That's going to help other people just like you who need this content, be able to find it themselves, and enjoy it. So let's dive into the episode. We're going right into a mid-conversation with Mr. Lee Blue.

So So let's say somebody has some skills to create some more websites and maybe they've done a few. And they're trying to find their sweet spot like you were mentioning on clients that they serve the best. How do you encourage people to go about finding that I know you mentioned like things that you're naturally interested in will tend to be things that you can be more beneficial for helping a client with, but what does that process look like for people that you have taught or mentor?

Lee Blue 2:00
So the first thing that we do is we look at your skills and figure out what do you have because a lot of times people, especially in the WordPress world, have other skills like a lot of other skills other than just web design, like music. Tons of people don't do music, photography, videography.

Just whatever they can do even offline design skills, like can they do like, could they build like, like a, like a menu for a restaurant or signage for an event, like, like, like community events or whatever. And so we just kind of layout on the table, what all your skills are. And then we said, well, what industries might need those types of things. So like, for example, with like, the restaurant thing, we're just talking about, like if you can do kind of offline design, it's like, well, restaurants need menus, and they've got signs all over the place. And, you know, that would be helpful. And if you could do photography, then what if there's a live event at the restaurant, you know, let's take a picture of that. So people know what to expect when they get there and how much fun everybody's having. And, and so just try to figure out what are some of the other skills that you can bring to the table? And then say, Well, what industries would that be helpful for? And then also, who do you have access to? Like, it might be one thing to be like, yeah, I've got the great greatest skills for

We're helping restaurants, but I don't know, anybody who runs a restaurant, I don't eat out ever, you know, it's like, maybe you've got, you know, a peanut allergy. So you just never go to restaurants, something like that. And so a little, that's probably gonna be a good fit. Because, you know, to generate those leads, it's all gonna be cold traffic, because you don't know anybody in that in the industry. So let's think of another area that you know, might be something where not only are your skills well suited but you also either know somebody or know somebody who knows somebody so that you can you at least have some degree of a warm connection before you start reaching out to people. Because the worst thing that you can do, in my opinion, is just cold call cold email people and say, Do you need a better website or try to teach them why their websites bad so that they hire you to fix it? Because it's just like everybody tries to do that. The whole fear-mongering thing I just don't think works very well. And it's just like it even if you do well, like even if you're successful when it comes

To cold traffic, the stats are one to 2% conversion from reaching out to getting a phone call. That means you got to call it 100 people like maybe 50 to 100 people just to get one person to book a meeting with you. And that doesn't even mean they hire you, it just means you have the meeting. And so that's a lot of work. Whereas if you have a warm lead, you know, like, you know, somebody or something, you can be introduced by a mutual friend or something like that, you know, then you have like a 30 to 50%. That means you only have to reach out to like two or three people, and you've got somebody meeting with you. That's a lot better than 50 to 100. And in terms of actually having them hire you, I don't have stats on what the conversion rate is on actually getting hired from, from a meeting like once you have the meeting, Is it cold traffic more likely to hire you versus warm? I don't have the stats on that. But it seems like the trust would already be there from the mutual friendship or from the fact that you guys worked together before whatever, that you would have an even higher conversion rate from the meeting to the actual work. So just like warm leads is the way to go. And so in terms of like, who do you work with? It's like, what are the skills that you have? Who do you have access to? And then we begin to figure out what markets you can go after.

Chris Misterek
What would you say? Because there's a lot of naysayers when it comes to online work, especially for like WordPress, like I was even arguing with the guy on Reddit yesterday about how, you know, the web design industry is not dead, you know. But his response was, well, I was building $10,000 websites for people until Squarespace came around, and then nobody wanted my business. So what's your response to that? Because I hear that so often that, you know, web design is a race to the bottom, and eventually it's going to be outsourced?

Lee Blue 6:00
Well, there's a lot of truth to it, but it's not the whole truth. So, like, for example, a ton of people that I work with, and I've talked to and even my progression, like when I went from various stages of web development for design firms and direct mail companies and stuff. It's like over some time the technical aspect of it got easier and easier and easier to the point where like, like the very first thing I did was I just built websites for people that usually sent out direct mail, like, like physical paper mail. And they didn't have any sort of web design department at all. And they said, Hey, Lee build websites for us. He's like, okay, cool, I can do that. And then they're like, well, we don't need you to build the website. We've got WordPress and themes now. So you know, we don't need you anymore for that. But can you put these forms online? And can you help us sell things and e-commerce and PCI compliance and gateways and all the more complicated stuff? It's like, okay, so and so I even built a whole e-commerce platform that we were in for, like 12 years. And so, there was that, but now we're to the point where there's WooCommerce or Shopify, there's, you know, a ton of other things out there. So that's easy, too. And I'd like to your friend that said, Hey, I used to build $10,000 websites, but now people buy $10 websites for Wix. That's true if all you're doing is the technical implementation of the website. And two things have changed one is the technical implementation just outside, you don't need to do it. And it's just there. There are platforms that can do it. But the other thing that's changed is it used to be the case that getting online made a difference. All you had to do is be online, and you had an edge over people who weren't online. And then it got to the point where like, if your site wasn't responsive enough, like if it looked horrible on mobile, that was a big problem. And so just fixing that was a big issue. And then Google shifted over to like, they have like the whole mobile-first indexing thing going on. So like, the most important thing to them is how is the mobile experience? And so like just fixing that had financial value because you know, Google would bump you up and you know, you just had a better overall outcome. Like you would get more traffic, you get a better experience, you get more conversions because your mobile experience is better. But today, all of it's fine. It's like the websites gonna be responsive, right? Like if you set up a website on Squarespace

It's gonna look fine on mobile devices because all of their templates are designed. They're designed to do that. And so you have to do more than just try to fight against the platforms like Squarespace and stuff. Because another thing too, by the way, that I don't think a lot of people have tapped into yet, or at least in terms of the realization of what they're fighting against. Squarespace ran a Superbowl ad.

How do you compete with that? They have unlimited that millions of dollars of marketing that they're just throwing into getting people to buy this kind of starter business website. And so if you're out there as a web designer, trying to run your own Google ads or your Facebook ads, to try to get people to buy kind of starter websites for starter businesses or whatever, you will not win, you can't compete against that. And even if you do get a lead, like even if somehow, the drop in the bucket that you somehow land in front of somebody and they come to call you, they're not expecting you to charge them $5,000 they're expecting your prices to be somewhat in line with Wix and Squarespace, you know, maybe 500 to 1000. My experience is that if you know, wait, when you get to about the 1500 to $2,000 price point, people begin to you know, start backing up a little bit. Yeah, this is getting kind of expensive. I don't know, I just, that's too much. So that seems to be kind of the threshold. But, but just trying to overcome the marketing thing alone is a huge problem. But I do think I think that if you can come and deliver a better outcome than what you can get on Wix or Squarespace or from a cheap designer or someone only doing web design by focusing on the marketing side and the business development components to what you can offer, then everyone should hire you. Because like, you can't get results by yourself. But if you're a piano teacher, and you just, you know, want a quick website to say, Hey, I'll do piano lessons and you're not you can't do high volume and you can't do high ticket, meaning like, you know, if you're a piano teacher, you're not going to charge, you know, 5000 a month to teach a kid a piano lesson. Nobody could afford that. And you can't have 5000 students, the living rooms too small. So if you have that kind of a situation, then definitely go to Squarespace or Wix or whatever, and, you know, get a low budget website, and they'll serve you just fine. But if you're not doing that like if you have something where you can either leverage by way of volume, like a restaurant, you can serve lots of people, or high tickets like a fitness coach, or something where you can deliver a good outcome, then those are the people that need people like you and me to come along and help and be like, hey, not only is this gonna be a great website but here's how we put that business plan in place for you. Then when you do that, you can charge usually between three to 10,000 to kind of build everything out. But then I say for the marketing side, you know, put something in a place where maybe you start at like $850 per month, that's kind of my starting point in terms of what I'm going to do and I usually allow about 10 hours per month to you know, fulfill whatever that's going to be, even if it's just like, you know, an email marketing sequence or just trying to build a list, to begin with, with like lead magnets and what can be a free content upgrade that you get when you sign up for the list and just kind of put some thought into that and test out a couple of different things and see what works best. And I mean, 10 hours a month is only like two and a half hours a week. So it's, it's not a lot of time. But it's enough to do something to start generating results like outcomes for people. And so you know, put that in place because it's, it's less than 1000 bucks a month for your client, it's 850. But for you, it's over 10 grand a year. It's like $10,200 is it 50 times 12. And so if you think yourself, okay, I just built this $5,000 site, I've got this, you know, you know, $850 per month retainer coming in at over 10 grand that's like $15,000 for the year from a client from one client. And you're like, well, how many clients do I need to get to the revenue goals that I have? Well, what have you wanted $5K a month? That's $60,000 a year. That's for clients, it's like, that's not that bad. You can do that part-time, in what if you want six figures you're looking at like seven or eight clients. And so and so that's what I would say. It's like trying to add that extra stuff into the mix to hit those types of goals.

Chris Misterek
The core idea of that is having a deep understanding of who your client is, what they need, and then pivoting, when the market pivots, you know, because the markets gonna pivot again, something's gonna come out and, and maybe marketing will be more automated. But there's never something that like you can't find, as a web designer, or, or whatever it is, you're doing that you can go Okay, well, now I can serve this area. And so any, any ideas or guesses about what the next pivot might be in the upcoming market for web designers?

Lee Blue 13:00
Well, let me say, let me answer it this way, rather than it being an actual pivot. I think it's going to be something that lasts forever.

Ever, that you never really have to pivot on, which is helping business owners figure out how to get clients for themselves. Because most like when you connect with the business owner, like when I connect with a web designer, and I say, Hey, you know, look at their website, they just dive deep into the deep like whatever they can do HTML, CSS, JavaScript development, you know, SEO, whatever they did this planet over the website. But the same thing happens for everyone else. Like if you talk to like a dietician, or a fitness coach, or a functional medicine doctor, or just anybody, then you ask them, you know, to describe what they do, well, they start talking about their certifications, and you know, all the details of how what they do is great and awesome. And it completely overwhelms the clients and it doesn't attract anyone, it just, it's just too deep in the weeds. And when you show up there you like, you have no idea what you're gonna get out of it. And so then, if they've hired a traditional web design team to kind of help, what will happen is you'll get these generic kinds of headlines on people's web, like power up your life or something, it's like, well, what does that mean? And so like if you can help people figure out how to like, combine their skill sets and figure out what kinds of outcomes that they can generate for their clients, and then put them in front of those people and create that sort of business plan style thing. That's been the consistent thread like I've been doing this almost 20 years. That's the consistent thread between all of the different spots, whether there's WordPress or not, whether the themes are good or not, whether it's responsive or not. All of those are just kind of stepping stones, that kind of ultimately get you to the point where you have to figure out well, how do I get in front of the clients that I need? What do I say when I get there? And how do we start onboarding new business? And I think if you can get that into your mind and then figure out what can I do with the skills that I have in the knowledge that I have and the people that I know and just all of that combined to help a business get that type of an outcome. That's where you will always win like That will last you the rest of your life.

Chris Misterek 15:01
It's really like you are becoming a business consultant, a creative department, a conversion rate optimization analysts, by way of web design, you know, like, there's so much more to it. And, you know, in that frame, like, it makes sense that you would charge somebody $10,000 for a website, because I'm sure a lot of people are listening to going $10,000 there's no way like, is that as a website is even worth that, but when you keep it close to the revenue and stream for a client, of course, it is. So if you can say, you know, I hate it by you giving me $10,000 I'm gonna make your business another hundred thousand dollars this next year. Right then it's a no brainer.

Lee Blue 15:48
Exactly, exactly what you just said. And so a lot of people will think well, who can afford a $10,000 side, and I was like pretty much anyone who has a raw gross revenue of about 100 grand Or has funding to build a business where they want to make 100 grand. And so, it kind of like you said, like everybody knows, like, once you kind of get into the, like the business development world, everyone knows that a serious business that wants to grow needs to reinvest at least 10% of their raw revenue back into their marketing. And if it's in like retail or something like that, it's more like 20 to 25%. So like, if you have a raw revenue of 100 grand, and that I'm not talking about like what you put in your pocket as profit, but like just coming into the business, then you should be investing like 10 to $25,000 per year into your marketing, which is what you know, which is the 850 per month is no coincidence. It's like 850 per month is 10 grand, which means if you could reach out to somebody who either wants to make $100,000 or is currently bringing in $100,000. That's a really good thing. And one of the big things that that is important to me is the mindset behind the web designer. Like when you show up, you should be believing that when your client says yes to you, it's the best. Yes, they've ever said in their business lives. Because like, what are they going to do? How are they going to take if they have 850 bucks a month that they're going to do something with regard to marketing, and you're showing up saying, Hey, here's landing pages and sales funnels and ways to do direct mail and like all of this cool stuff, like e-commerce and everything, like what are they gonna do this better than that? Like a billboard on the interstate. I mean, it's like, what's better than that? And so you need to show up with that degree of confidence, with with the, with the way that you meet with the clients you like, when you show up at the meeting, and they sit down and say, Hey, Chris, let's talk about this business. You should be believing that when they say yes to work with you, you're saving them from throwing away their money and something that's not going to work and it's gonna be the best decision ever. And the reason you can do that with the way that we kind of structure in this whole double stack thing is because of all the steps you've put in place before you sit down with the client. Most of the time, web designers can't show up with that kind of authority. And with that kind of confidence, because they have no idea what the person across from the table is gonna ask them to do. Like, they might say, oh, I've got this Shopify site. You know, can you kind of fix that? And it could be a WordPress developer, though I had never worked a Shopify before. I can't do that. I'm not the best person. But they'll say, Yeah, I can't do it just because they want the job. And they know that they're not as good as some other person would be, who was a Shopify expert, but they say yes, anyway, they'll figure it out. But instead of that, wouldn't it be great if you said, Hey, this is the stuff I'm the best at doing. These are the people that need that stuff. Now, let's go talk to specifically those people. And then when you finally sit down with those people, you've got the best thing that they've ever asked you to do. It's like it's better than anything they could have ever thought of before. 100 times better because of all The steps that have led up to it. And when you show up with that level of confidence, you can say that 850 per month, what are you gonna do with it that's better than this. And then, of course, that's it, that's $10,000 just on a retainer. So that and then you get yourself 10 of those people. All you need is 10 people at your basic level service, and you're making $100,000 a year consistently with recurring revenue that doesn't even count the build-out phase of the websites.

Chris Misterek 19:24
Yeah, mindset is so important. And I've experienced that myself when I've come into a call. And I felt confident about what I was saying. It always goes well, but if I'm stumbling over my words, and I'm like, Hi, this could be good. I don't know, and I never get the sale. And that's obvious. But I think even somebody who might have those skills, probably struggles with some self-doubt. So So what do you say to encourage people who they've reached that level where they are the best solution? For a business, they just don't have the confidence to communicate that to people that are sitting across from them wondering whether or not they should hire them.

Lee Blue 20:11
Yeah, that's a really good question too. A lot of people struggle. I think everybody struggles with self doubt everyone you can be, you know, the best at whatever it is that you do. And in fact, I've got, I've got children and we were talking about, you know, I've got a son who's like 14, and my daughter's like, 16. And then we were just kind of talking about just confidence because they do ballroom dancing. Like my daughter is a ballroom dancing teacher. And she somehow convinced my son to come and take her course and everything. So, you know, you have to, you know, meeting girls and for the first time and you know, all the confidence and stuff. And he doesn't like that. He's kind of introspective, you know, he doesn't like to, he's not conversational. But he's fun to talk to, like once you start talking to him. He's like, really funny, and it's just a cool guy to be around. But that initial kind of a thing. He's like, you Dad, I just I don't know, I don't, I don't really like, you know, I just if somebody wants to talk to me, they'll say hi. And I was like, well, you should go say hi to you just start going. And it's hard. And I think it's like, even if you're like the captain of the football team, or whatever, it's like, even if you're the prom king or something, if you're that person, you probably still think I don't have anything anybody wants to know. I mean, it's like, I don't know how I got to be the prom king. What a lucky stroke a fortune that was. It's like I think everybody sort of has that, that kind of imposter syndrome or whatever, no matter how good it is, you are at it, but whatever. And so the way that you tend to overcome that, especially in the context of this, this web design business concept, is to convince yourself that you are in fact, the best person for the job. And the way that you do that is you'd like to make a list. And it should be like a big list like 20 reasons why that someone should hire you instead of somebody else. And like literally write it down and below and there's a couple of categories of reasons like one reason being just your ethics like you're not going to You take advantage of people, you have their best interests at heart, you're not gonna overbill people, you know, you're saving them from all the people that are just trying to cram down all this technical stuff, and just get the money out of it and move on. Like, I remember, I was talking to one guy.

He's like, Yeah, he builds websites in the medical world, for startup doctors that, you know, get their practice together. And he offers like, help with actual, like leasing of buildings and stuff, as well as a website. And so that's what we were talking. He's like, hey, maybe I can outsource the websites to Lee and he can just focus on like, the no online stuff. And he's like, hey, what kind of stuff can you do is like, at one point, during the conversation, he said, we're just trying to squeeze the doctors for as much money as we can get. That's like, Oh, good. You know, this isn't gonna work out. You know, it's like, I'm happy to be paid for what I do. As long as it's beneficial to people like I don't want to, I don't want the doctor or the client at the end of the day to be like, well, I just dropped $10,000. Now, what am I supposed to do, especially if you're going to have an ongoing long term relationship with them? Like we just talked about. And so you know, so there's this kind of, you know, I'm looking out for you, I'm bringing leadership, I'm bringing integrity, you know, I'm bringing a good experience. So those are some things that would make it onto your list. And that doesn't have anything to do with your skill sets. And then you think through the skill set part and be like, well, these are the things that I'm going to do. And here's why it's good from a technical perspective. But then you think through the actual business aspect of it, and be like, Okay, well, I've got the ethical kind of integrity thing covered, I've got the technical skillset covered. And now look, because of the combination of these things, this is a solution that they'd never be able to put together if they just bought a Squarespace site, because we're adding sales funnels and drip campaigns and landing pages and all these other things that they don't know how to do. And like this is gonna get some results for people. And so you kind of come to come at it from those three angles like that. The tech specs aspect, the integrity aspect, the business development aspect, and they kind of lay it out and be like, is this a good idea? Like if I were the person who was gonna hire someone to do this stuff, Would I be like, yeah, that's awesome. And then if the answer's no, keep working on it until you're like, yeah, that's awesome. And then you've got it there. He's like, this is nice. And no one can get this from anywhere else, like, who else is going to put all this time upfront before you even talk to somebody to figure out how you can best serve them. And that's the thing. So the last thing I wanted to say about it is this serving versus selling thing. So instead of just trying to so sell to me, the way I define those terms is like, kind of like a buffet, or like you're sitting out with like at a booth, and you have all these things on the table. And like the things and Web Designs like logo design, branding, graphic design, websites, SEO hosting, and you're like, it's all out on the table and somebody walks by and they're like, yeah, I could use a better logo. And you're like, Okay, great. And then you sold them a logo, and maybe you do the best you can to build the best logo you've ever done. But you just sold them a logo. What if you've never really thought through? Well, what are they going to do with it? Is it worth the money for them? Are they at a point where they need to spend, you know, $5,000 on a logo, or what a cheap, you know, $50 logo do, for now, nobody thinks that that next step, they just think, Oh, I just sold a $5,000 logo, I'm gonna build a great logo now. And that's selling. And there's I don't believe there's anything wrong with it. But I don't think that it serves clients at the level that they need to be served. Like, I don't think anyone's doing that as a bad person. You know, they're trying to do the best they can they just bought a $5,000 logo, you know, but it's like, is that what they even really need? And a lot of times people don't take that next step with serving, what it is what the way I kind of define that is, what can you do to get somebody to a higher level of success than they're currently experiencing? And sometimes you're gonna say, hey, it's not gonna be a good fit for us. Like, you know, I don't know how to do what you're trying to do. You know you would probably want to say that or maybe it's not even going to be a good relationship. Like one of the things you want to do is put standards in place where who you work with who you don't, and you want, you want people that are committed to their own business and then or at least some decisive, so they can either tell you yes or no because the worst is yes. And then they change it to No, you gotta go and unwind everything. So you'll have standards in place for yourself. But ultimately, what you want is the serving component. Like, for example, if you're dangling off the side of a cliff, and someone says, Hey, you need a rope, if you like, Yeah, I need a rope. And there's a Well, I've got the best rope there ever was. And you're like, Okay, we'll send it to me. And so you kind of drop the rope down to them, and now they've got a rope. But then they leave and you walk away, but and he's told him a rope. What you need is the plan. It's like, Okay, I'm gonna drop this, this line of the rope to you, I'm gonna tie the other end to a pulley, the pulley to a tree and you know, the whole thing, we've got a situation to get you off the side of the cliff. And they couldn't do that by themselves. They required you to get the outcome of getting off the cliff. Right? That's what you want to be positioning yourself as someone who can do that serving, as opposed to just telling someone a cool climbing rope, even if they're dangling on the side of the cliff. And then so when you want to move into that serving component. Like a lot of people say I'm not a salesman, I don't like selling, I hate doing all of that. It's like you don't even have to sell anything ever again. You just tell people how you can serve them. And their mindset has now changed. So it used to be, you would have this cool basket of cool stuff. And they'd be like, yeah, Chris, I want to buy all that cool. You've got a great portfolio, you can build awesome logos. You know, I want all that. And then you'd be like, cool. And so you're trying to sell your services. But now what you're doing is you're saying, Hey, I recognize that you don't have the clients you need coming in like you don't have the revenue you need. You might not make payroll next month. Here's a pattern that I think is going to fix that. You agree. I agree. This is a cool pattern. And now inside of there, their thought process is okay, yeah, I don't have the revenue I need or the clients I need. Chris just told me exactly what I need to do to fix that. And now the decision is, do I want to fix that today? Or do I want to go next month without having any clients as well? And that's a very different mindset than can I afford all the cool shiny stuff in that basket over there. And that's ultimately the shift from selling to serving.

Chris Misterek 28:10
Yeah, I love that, you know, because I do think people feel so, like, they're creepy when they try to sell people, but when you just look at yourself as a servant to someone else, like, of course, you know, like, of course, I'm going to go and try to serve other people and, and help them get ahead in life. You know, and, and there's that mutual benefit of by me helping you get further in life, I'm helping myself, you know. And so I think it's such a good mentality to come at it from, I'm not selling you something, I'm serving you something in the midst of what I'm doing for your company or your business.

Lee Blue 28:50
You ever talk to anybody or maybe feel this way yourself where you're like, I don't want to go to that networking event because I don't feel like saying what I do and giving that same silly elevator pitch and I don't want to join any sort of a Chamber of Commerce, I'm sick of doing that I hate going to all that stuff, I don't want to do it. And so then what you do is sometimes you just make yourself busy doing other stuff, like, you know, more blog posts or more social media posts or redoing your website or something like that, which doesn't mean anything. Like it's, you're just stalling. Because you don't want to go out there and do this the selling right? But like when you make the shift like you were just talking about, about serving somebody, then you feel like you have to go out it's like if I don't go out and tell someone how they can have a better business and save their business lives. Then it's like, I feel like I have to kind of like if you saw somebody you know, dangling off of a tree or whatever, you got to run over and catch them. You got to help them that changes your mindset. And when you can go there and instead of saying yeah, I build websites, I do social media management. If you can go out there and be like, you know, I can help web designers make six figures working out of their house. That's what I do or like or if you're a web designer, you can say hey, I can help a portrait photographer You know, make six figures with a camera. You know, that's awesome, right? Like, like, that's so much more fun to say than it is or like I can help a family on landscaping business, double their clientele in as little as one season. Or I help local restaurants fill their seats even on Tuesday nights. And like say something like that. Don't say I do WordPress development.

Chris Misterek 30:21
Well, it's been so great having you on the show. Can you tell us just one more time how someone might be able to connect with you?

Lee Blue 30:29
Oh, awesome. Yeah, man. Thanks so much, Chris. I've appreciated this. I tend to get so passionate.

Chris Misterek 30:34
It's been great. I love hearing everything you have to say so beneficial.

Lee Blue 30:38
Well, thanks. So yeah, so if you want to hook up with me, doublestack.net is the place to go. And from there. I've got a Facebook group. It's called Building high-value WordPress sites. And so it's a free group, anybody can join. The other thing is doublestack.net, which is the website and from there, there's a YouTube channel and stuff like that. But the pattern is once you're in the Facebook group, then every Tuesday, I do a live workshop at 2 pm. Eastern. And then if you feel like you want to figure out how to like, you know, kind of do those things we were talking about, like, ramp up your tech skills so that you're driving results for people, or you know, dial in your marketing. So you don't just sound like everybody else. But you can tell people how you can serve them. And then you know, build that business structure. So you don't have to constantly go find clients all the time, then you can book a call to talk to me and see if Double Stack is going to be a good fit for you. Double Stack is an invitation-only program. So you can't just sign up for it, we have to talk first. But, but for that very reason to make sure it's a good fit for both of us. Like, you can't be a beginner, you have to be able to do good stuff for your clients. But you don't have to be a coding genius or anything like that. You just have to be serious about really wanting to serve your clients at a higher level. And then we'll get on the phone and we'll have a free 45-minute conversation. And even if it's not a good fit, you know, at least you'll come away with that kind of some new insight on what your pricing should be and how to get recurring revenue coming in and you know how to set yourself Apart from people that think they just need, like a Wix or a Squarespace site, and you can do that at doublestack.net/call. So um, so yeah, so if you just head over to doublestack.net you'll find pretty much everything.

Chris Misterek 32:11
Yeah, I highly encourage you to go check outdoublestack.net and everything else that Lee's doing because it's all super quality. Again, Lee, thank you so much. I'm gonna have to have you on again because I feel like there's more that we can talk about and help serve other people trying to do web design and everything else when the online world.

Lee Blue 32:28
Well, awesome, Chris, I love coming on. I didn't say too much stuff. But it's great here. You're an awesome host. This is really fun. Very relaxed, great conversation. You have got a skill for this.

Chris Misterek 32:38
Yeah. Thank you so much. It's a virtual High Five. Well if you're not watching on YouTube, then we just high fived our cameras. So cool. So we'll talk to you soon and thanks again, Lee. Man what great insight from Mr. Lee blue on how to find high paying web design clients. I hope this episode has encouraged you. I hope through it you've seen it's not just possible, but it is probable to find the types of clients that you love and are willing to pay you what you're worth. As a web designer, all it takes is having the right mindset and offering the right types of things that you're not just building websites for clients, you are helping their business succeed online. Next week, we've got another episode that's going to be fantastic. Mark it on your calendars, set a reminder, Tuesday night at midnight, it is going to drop. Hey, so excited that you're here with me on this journey. And don't forget, if you don't quit, you win.

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Hi, I'm Chris and I'm super glad you're here. 7 years ago I taught my self-web design and freelancing. Now, I do my best to teach others what I've learned so they don't have to struggle as much as I did.

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