How to Quickly Scale Your Web Design Business to 6 Figures

[00:00:00] Chris: This week's guest is teaching you how to quickly scale your web design business to six figures. Are you ready? Let's go.

What is up Self-Maders and welcome to another episode of the self-made web designer podcast. This week's guest has become a good friend of mine and his name is Josh Hall.

Josh runs the Josh hall web design show podcast. And he also teaches folks how to become a successful web designers with his community and courses.

And thankfully, we've got Josh for not just one but four, two back to back. Episodes this week and then next. So you're going to get him again with some great insight. And, you know, Josh told me that it took him six years to reach the six figure mark as a web designer, and it's made it his mission to help you.

So you can do it in half the time. One quarter of. Dare. I say one sixth of the time that it took him. There's lots of nuggets of wisdom in this episode. But before we dive in, I want to encourage you to subscribe to the self-made web designer podcast. So you can get every episode. Downloaded right to your pocket each week.

It's 20 to 30 minutes of goodness, fresh and, and amazing. And, and hopefully a little bit funny every single Wednesday. And all you have to do is hit that subscribe button. All right. Are you ready to hear from Josh about how to quickly scale your web design business to six figures? Okay, let's do it. Well, Mr.

Joshua Hall. Thank you again. Number two, coming on self-made web designer podcast. So good to have you again.

[00:01:43] Josh: Awesome. Um, to be back, Chris, I feel like it's been a little while, but a pleasure, pleasure to be back on the show and really excited. Help your listeners with, I guess we're going to talk about scaling and hopefully I can give some assistance with processes and profitability and all the, uh, the real fun things in web design.

[00:02:00] Chris: We're going to split this episode up into a two-parter, but the first one, I wanted to talk just a little bit about how to scale uh, web design business, two to six figures. And I know there are a lot of people out there. That's, that's kind of like the first goal, you know, outside of, let me figure out how to build websites and find clients.

But then after a little bit of time, you say, okay, how can I make this? Something that is, is really profitable and gets to the six figure level? I think one of the first questions that people have is trying to figure out what a reasonable amount of time. They need to scale a design agency or freelance business to that six figure level.

So maybe talk about your experience with helping other folks. If you've seen some people do it in a matter of months or if it's taken years and what the difference between those two timelines might look like.

[00:02:51] Josh: Yeah, I think, um, well, first of all, I back you up. That preface, that statement saying, you start out wanting to get clients, you start getting some clients, generally folks get to the 15, 20, 30 K range.

And it's like, okay, if I'm here, I could definitely double or triple this. And then before, you know, it you're at six figures. So that does seem to be really common. That was definitely the case for me now, as far as how realistically, like the timeframe, how long that can take it really is all dependent on.

I would say a couple things. Number one mindset, because really, if you're going to scale your business, it's all about mindset. It's all about what you believe, where, because your confidence will come when you believe in yourself and believe in your services and how you come across when you sell and how you come across in your copy on your website.

So mindset is big. And then I think, additionally, Any sort like what training are you going to take to get to six figures? And I know you are a course creator, Chris, this is why you have your podcast. And I love what you're up to. It's why I do what I do as a web design coach to help people fast track their journey.

So those are the two big things that I've found because it took me. Six years to get more or less six years, just about six years to get to six figures. But I never went through a course. I never went through a training. I kind of fumbled my way into business. As you know, I just kind of, you know, was flying by the seat of my pants and eventually got serious about business and got to six figures, but I've helped a lot of my students get to six figures and under a year, um, sometimes it takes a little less than that.

Sometimes it takes more than that. Of course, sometimes it takes 2, 3, 4 years depending, but. A lot of it is about mindset and, and training and where you're going to get your ideas and your tactics and your methods that are proven and best practices, because a lot of. I think that apart from the mindset, when it comes to actually tactically doing this stuff, a lot of people think that, well, if I'm in an area where my great clients aren't nearby, you know, maybe I'm in a place in the world where I can't get clients that are going to pay me, you know, two, three, $4,000 for websites that may be the case locally, but now there are so many options for building your business online remotely.

You're a big fan of getting. Upwork and stuff there. I have tons of students getting to six figures who are doing white label and remote work. So it is definitely possible. So, um, all that to say those are some of the factors that can, can help you or hinder you with getting to six figures and timeline.

It's just all. It's how smart and how hard do you want to work in that time period to get to that six-figure range? Yeah. I love that

[00:05:28] Chris: idea. And at the same time, mindset is always something that people kind of kick against. Right. You know, they, they, when, when I talk to people, it's all about, well, tell me the, tell me the practical.

Tell me how do I build websites? Tell me, you know, how do I talk to, um, potential clients and all that kind of stuff. And I always go back to, okay, well, you know, first of all, you've got to fix your mindset. You've got to believe that it's possible. Um, and they always say, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Thanks for that.

Like I, you know, that's guru talk now tell me what what's the real secret, but I think a lot of it comes down to. You know, you, you understanding that this is solvable, like you getting to that place of six figures is, is possible. And if you're constantly working with the assumption that this probably isn't going to work out, then it's almost like you're kicking your legs out from underneath you before you even get started.

[00:06:23] Josh: And that will feed into everything you do. As far as, like, if you think a hundred thousand dollars for a year, it's just outrageous, that's going to affect how you price your services. It's going to affect how you value your services. It's going to affect what trainings and what type of things that you invest in for yourself.

Because you may think like I'm never going to get to that range. I can't afford a $500 course or a thousand dollar program. It will affect everything. So that's why it is. And I know it's cliche and I know a lot of people don't want to hear. Here's something to remember and consider everyone who has got to six figures says you've got to work on your mindset first.

So the proof is in the pudding. Like you need to listen to people who have done it and who have been there. So if somebody tells you to work on your mindset, work on your mindset, and then that will feed into everything else. So a lot of it is believing in yourself and believing that it is possible. And I'm here to tell everybody listening.

And I know you are too Chris, that it is by. Clients are willing to pay good money for their web design projects. And you can get to six figures, even as a solopreneur, I got to six figures as a solopreneur, and then I scaled eventually kind of a small team. I never had a huge, a huge agency, but I did have a small team that I scaled to, but I still got to six figures, a hundred thousand plus as a solopreneur, so it can be done.

So those are, those are two limiting things there. And the last thing I'll say there too, is what is expensive to you? Is not going to be expensive to a lot of companies. Meaning when I was coming up in business, I thought $2,000 for a website sounded ridiculous. Like I would never personally pay two grand because I was just happy making like $30,000.

Like that was, you know, it was wild, but companies that are doing multiple six figures, maybe even in the seven figures, that doesn't sound like a lot of money to them. So that's the other thing you have to remember too, as far as. The amount of time that this might take in order to fast track your journey, you have to remember your thoughts and your mindset of money is not the same as your clients and real business owners.

So that's where that confidence comes from when saying like this is a $5,000 projects. Here's, you know, here's the value that's way different than like, okay. I think. You know, going back to the mindset, if you don't, if you feel like six figures is impossible, you're going to come across like, okay, I think it's going to be about 5,000, like that's way different than saying, okay.

So, you know, this project range is about the 5k range and this is what it includes. So, um, I hope that there's some good practical examples to fill in the gaps for this mindset aspect of getting the six

[00:08:56] Chris: figures. Yeah. It reminds me of a friend who was a regional manager, um, for a company. A retail company and she was helping one of the stores that wasn't performing so well.

And what she found was that the, um, that the staff was doing something called selling out of their own pockets. So when people. Would come to the counter and they would try to buy something rather than try to upsell them. They would say, oh yeah, this is great. You probably don't want to buy anything else because they were assuming I can't afford to buy that.

And you're already buying something expensive. So certainly you won't want to buy something else. So this was went from one of the lowest performing stores to one of the highest performing stores, because. Essentially, she said, you got to get out of the mindset of selling from your own pocket and what makes sense for you and realize that everybody else is in a different position

[00:09:48] Josh: than you are.

Yeah. And your clients, you want to try to get an, a client, a really good client, and you want to try to get them to buy from you repeatedly. I had the bad mindset in the early days of like, okay, this client just spent like $4,000 with me on this website. I don't want to try to sell more to them because I kind of feel bad that they already spent 4k.

This was before I realized my value. And so interestingly enough is we are often limiting our own businesses and profitability to get to six figures because we're afraid to sell. To our current clients, but that is one of the quickest ways to get to six figures is to take your really good clients and just sell to them more and more and more.

Yeah. Well,

[00:10:29] Chris: why don't we dive into that just real quick, because I think a lot of people are thinking, okay, I've, I've, I'm selling them a website. What else do I have to offer outside of me? Maybe doing a little bit of branding or maybe some logo stuff? Like how, what are some other things that you can throw on top of the services that you have as a web.

Well,

[00:10:49] Josh: I knew the last episode you had beyond, we talked about maintenance plans and building recurring revenue through that. So that's the biggie that I can't recommend if folks are not having their own hosting and maintenance plans, if you don't have that set up, build that first, have that to offer to all of your clients, whether they are a clients like really good clients or the B's and the C's who were like, yeah, they're okay clients.

But if they had to leave one day, it's not the end of the. Either way you want to sell your hosting and maintenance plan services because it's recurring income. It'll build that stability month after month. And as you get more clients, your revenue goes up and that's kind of the foundation. So website projects as a whole bigger website projects, that's where you're going to get bigger one-time payments or fixed project style payments.

Those are the 3000 for a website or four or 5,000 for a website. When it comes to getting even bigger websites than that and bigger web design projects, that might be $7,000, 8,000 up to 10 K plus, you can definitely get to that range without having a big agency. The trick is to just add more value.

Within what is involved with a web design project. And a lot of people are scared by that because some people are terrified of being an all-in-one marketing agency where you're basically doing everything. And I understand that you don't necessarily want to be the person who does web design, SEO logo, branding, video, digital marketing, social media, email marketing.

If you're going to go that route, it's very hard to do that as a solar printer. That's where you have like legit digital marketing agencies. So what I would say, and what I did is focus on the things that you know, and that you have interest in and you feel confident with and offer those. For me, it was three main things, webdesign, which includes.

Website builds from the ground up website, redesigns maintenance and hosting, and then SEO and, and some content services. Those were the three biggies for me. I had previously done logo, design and print work, and those helped get me to a six-figure mark. But once I continued to stay at six figures, it was honing in on the main services that I knew I was really good at.

And then the other stuff, I either partner with people or. So that that's the trick to get those bigger projects you need to figure out how can I offer more value than just a quote unquote website design? And what am I good at? If you hate SEO, then don't touch SEO. I would definitely do the basics, the foundational aspects of SEO on-site stuff.

But if you don't want to do recurring SEO, hire somebody, partner, somebody who does that. Oodles of options for that now, but if you really good at like copywriting and you like helping people create content, then focus on that. Or if you are really good at branding and you have an amazing background in branding and strategy, then add that in, add that in as one of your primary services, that's the way to take those projects from, from 3000 up to seven or 10 K.

And the last thing I'll say on that is just. At $10,000 website project may not be too different from a typical like two or $3,000 project is just how you position it. And then sometimes it is the complexity or the functionality of the website. So when I was doing 2000 to 3000 on average, the way I got to the higher end projects was I knew more.

E-commerce I knew more about kind of more complex type of setups membership sites and stuff like that. And that's how I got those bigger projects. That's how I got the 75 hundreds, the 10 Ks, the top project that I ever did the most expensive was a 15,000. And. I honestly would have done that project for like five, but I knew that the client had a big budget and I knew that they were into the seven figure range with their type of clients.

So I just, I did, what's called a value based pricing approach and I, I knew they can afford it. This website is really important to this brand. So I went for it and charged 15,000 and they went for it. Um, yeah, just some ideas and thoughts on how to take those typical 1000, $2,000 projects and bring it up.

It's adding more value focusing on what you are really good at and what maybe you have interest in and what you feel like you can, you know, what kind of solutions you can provide for your.

[00:15:08] Chris: Okay. So let, let's take some of those things that you're saying, and let's maybe break it down a little bit for folks who are just getting started.

Like they haven't even reached that level of like, let me figure out how to diversify my skillset. How does somebody go from. Saying. Okay. I know one thing I know, I want to build websites for clients to going, okay. I know I want to build websites for clients. I want to add some copy. I want to maybe do some photography and some headshots and things like that.

Like walk, walk us through how somebody might figure out those additional skillsets that they want to add to their portfolio, to their offerings, to their.

[00:15:46] Josh: That's the most simplistic way to go about figuring out what to offer is really figuring out what you have experienced in now and what you feel like you can help clients get a good result in.

So like if you've never done logo design, but you want to add logo design, I, I wouldn't do that because now you have to learn logo design, and you're going to have to learn about branding packages and style guides and stuff like that. So I would do what you know, and what you feel. And then I would also, I would see what your clients have needs for and what they're interested in.

Now, this can come about by what you offer, like in your services page, if you have nine different things, your clients are probably going to choose what they're interested in, but you can also just talk to your clients and have them tell you about their business, because they will likely tell you what needs they have.

If they just have no idea how to set up Google my business and how to basically. Just generic SEO rankings, then that's something that you might think, okay. All of my clients are questioning about this and asking about this, maybe this is something I should consider an ad in. That was something I did was I just found that a lot of my clients repeatedly.

The same thing over and over. And that's how eventually I got into more SEO because every client didn't want to just have a nice, pretty website. They wanted to be found online. So that was the impetus for me getting involved with SEO. So find out what you're good at. Find out what the need is for the clients who you do have, and you're talking to, and then I would make sure the services you offer, you want to offer, like you have interest in because there's nothing worse.

I mean, You and I are, we are balanced lifestyle type entrepreneurs. We want to do work that lights us up and fires us up. And same thing should apply to all web designers. You don't want to do work that you hate. There's nothing worse than creating your own business and then hating the work that you've created for yourself.

So again, like I said, a little bit ago, if you don't want to do SEO, don't do. At least, you know, the advanced SEO had passed that on have partners, or if you don't even want to touch SEO at all, there are so many web design networks now where you can have somebody basically partner up on every project.

And there is not a people who are complimentary to you. So maybe they love SEO, but they hate design, but you love design. There's a win-win right there. So, uh, that's the other thing is focused on what type of services you actually want to do. And you're never going to nail it right away. If you're just starting out, you're never going to have the perfect amount of services it's going to evolve and it's going to change over time.

And that's okay. When I started, like I said, I did graphic design and logo design, and web design. Uh, part of what I did. And then five years later, it was all about web design and I eventually phased graphic design.

[00:18:31] Chris: You said something that I kind of want to backtrack to a little bit, um, because I think that this might be a mindset thing that some people have a little bit of a tough time, too.

You said that you charged a class. You know, $15,000 for a website that you know, is really the same as one that you would do for $5,000. So I think some people have a hard time with that because they're thinking, okay, I don't want to just be charging them more just because I can write, you know, like how much is this really worth?

How much should I actually be charging them? You know, am I, am I price gouging them kind of thing. So, so talk a little bit about how somebody might get over. That fear of like taking advantage of somebody when it comes to just raising your

[00:19:14] Josh: rates. And this is why we talked about mindset at first, because we couldn't even talk about raising your rates to this level.

If you hadn't worked on your mindset and you're comfortable with charging them. So for me, it is going back to this idea of value based pricing versus like here's a standard web design package. That's, you know, $2,000 or $5,000, which you can have those. And my pricing was always, this is the biggie starting with.

You never want to have a package for web design. That is an exact price because every web design project is going to be a little bit different. Even you can templatize stuff as much as you want. And a lot of people just say, have your packages, that's fine, but have them starting at that way in a case where it, you do get a chance to use value-based pricing, or if a project is going to be a little more complex, you have the room to be able to, to do, you know, to do that type of pricing.

Where that came from my end is like I said, I mean, yeah, I may have done that for more 5,000. Thank goodness. I didn't do it at that point because I would've made a lot less. It was, it was definitely worse worth at least 10. Um, and I'm glad I charged 15 because it just gave me that extra buffer during that time period to really invest in that.

I mean, we made an awesome website for that client and I think they got every, every worth of, of the penny they invested, but. Again, it was value-based pricing because I looked at this business and I knew the value of this website could potentially, and will likely make them tenfold a hundred fold maybe.

And I think one area that can help practically with this. If, if you can talk to your potential client and ask them, how much does your customer, like, what's an average customer value for about a year for, for this business, let's say it's a photography business, or trying to think of the best example, whatever example you could choose the industry, let's say their average customer spends about 500 bucks a year.

Well, if you wanted to do a website for 5,000, for them, you could basically say that it's only gonna take, you know, what's what's 5,000. Divided by five 10, it's going to take 10 customers at 500 bucks a year to get to that 5,000 mark for the cost of the website and then everything over that is profit.

So that's a practical way to kind of give you some confidence with pricing this out, because if that client is like, whoa, $5,000, that's, that's a lot of money. We were thinking more like 2000. Well, again, if you can just say, well, if your, if your average customer is spending on average 500. Bucks a year.

It's only gonna take 10 customers that the website will convert to get, you know, to that break even point. And it's all profit from there. And then now you've got a website that's going to serve you years. And what if you get to that 10 customers in two weeks that, you know, that's, that's where clients will understand the value.

So that. The most simplistic way that I found to explain the value to customers because you can use hypotheticals, but at the end of the day, a business owner wants something. That's going to make them more money and then want a website that is actually going to, you know, re get a return on investment.

So I don't know, that was the best way that I found to make that investment tangible for clients was just talking about their clients. And then just say, look, if this website even just converts 10 people. That's it, and now it's all profit, right? Cause

[00:22:42] Chris: value-based pricing is not about the nuts and bolts of it.

It's not about knowing how to set up WordPress, knowing how to import a theme, knowing how to make pages and organize a layout and all that kind of stuff. Value-based pricing is all about. The end result for the client, you know, so if you're looking at what it takes to do, you know, being a monkey turn on a wrench versus what it takes to create something that is actually going to help a company move forward, then the guilt goes way, right?

Because you realize I have way more to offer

[00:23:18] Josh: exactly that you said it right there. The guilt goes away because I did not feel bad for charging that client $15,000. I knew. That one of their clients was probably worth at least that amount that they would profit from in this particular case. So I knew even if this website converts one client, they just made their money back and it's all profit from there.

So it takes the guilt away. And this is really important when it comes to scaling, because you can scale to six figures with a more templatized approach with, you know, hard website package pricing, but you're going to have to have one heck of a system in place to be able to. You know, essentially it's kind of a commodity at that point.

And the danger of web designers nowadays is being a commodity. You don't want to just be a web designer who can, who can build a pretty site or just know some of the tech stuff. It is all about how is the website. Your clients and their businesses. That's where adding a little more value inside. Just the tech side of things really comes into play.

And we can talk about that too, but yeah, that is a biggie because you ideally want to have a mix of both. Do you want to have some standard packages that are going to weed out some of the tire kickers and going to weed out some of the cheap clients, but you also don't want to limit yourself. You don't want.

Client that is down with $15,000, seeing a $2,000 website package and wondering why is there such a big difference here? So you want to kind of have a mix of both and you want to be able to have the freedom to utilize value based pricing because now that's going to help you get to six figures much more practically.

I wonder

[00:24:50] Chris: just in this final question before we wrap up, if, if you could talk a little bit about, say somebody. Man, I, I want to go for it. I want to get to a six figure business as a web designer within, you know, seven months, you know, something crazy, maybe half a year, six months you've mentioned mindset.

What are some other important things that you've gotta be sure to put into place in order to get there quickly?

[00:25:14] Josh: I think refining your services is a biggie, knowing what you do and getting really good with those. Based off of what we've talked about so far, that's probably one of the best pieces of advice I can give because I found that my most profitable service by far was web design.

And I was doing graphic design work and print design work, and those were great. Those were great ancillary services. But what I've learned is this really, really important quote. And that is what got me here. Won't get me there. So what you're doing right now, It has probably had a lot of value, but all web designers, even if you're early in your journey, you're likely to a place where, you know, this is not super profitable and you might be making like five bucks an hour on this one service.

Whereas there's this other service where you're making 50 bucks an hour hone in on that solidify your like top three main services. You can have some ancillary services in there, but start to phase those out, focus on what you're really good at and get more and more valuable with those. Three services ideally.

And that's how you can scale those. That's how you can become more valuable. That's the most important thing when it comes to having all of these ideas about what you can offer and what you can do, but then practically honing in on the top three that are most profitable that your clients need and that you enjoy.

That's that's really like, that was the. That was the turning point for me when I really got to six figures consistently and started, you know, honing in on, on, on my web design business was I realized this is exactly what I do. It also makes it a lot easier to sell. It's it's really hard to sell a high end service and get to projects that are five, 10,000 and up.

You're like, well, I do this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. You've got to solidify. This is what I do. We can do some other things, maybe in a different phase of the project, but this is what I do. And this is where the value is that that's how you get the, the higher end projects.

And again, you can get to six figures with lower end type of products. You have to really scale that. And you have to have such a refined system that is really hard to do in web design. Not many clients just want a, a thousand dollar template style website and word of warning. If you're charging a thousand bucks for a website, guess how many you're going to have to do those per year to get to a hundred.

A hundred, a hundred websites. Do you really want to do on our websites in a year? Probably not. So, uh, yeah. Look at your services, refine those. Get really good at those. Add more value within your main services, which again, for most web designers are going to be web design. It might be SEO should definitely be maintenance and hosting and it might be content.

It might be, um, strategy-based like marketing type services. It may be conversion. A lot of those ancillary services that can fit in and around web design, or it could be logo and branding, if you're really good at that. And you can charge premium. Yeah. I love that.

[00:28:11] Chris: What got you here? Won't get you there.

Great advice and a great book if you haven't read it. So, uh, thanks Josh so much for coming on. We got another episode coming up, but I wonder if you could tell people where to, uh, connect with you online.

[00:28:24] Josh: If they're looking for you, I have to ask, I did not know that. You did check that out? No, no. I just heard the quote.

I just didn't really realize it was a

[00:28:31] Chris: book. Yeah, no, it's fantastic. I highly recommend

[00:28:33] Josh: it. Well, I said the quote now I have to read the book, so I'll check that out. Yeah. Uh, w you do now, since we're talking about scaling, I would love to help anybody out listening with just a practical guide for how to scale.

So you can actually go to my website joshhall.co/scale, and you can get access to a 10 step proven path that I put together for you. It's a free guide. It'll just give you a little more. You know, practical, informed information and visuals on how to scale. I would love to help anybody with that if they're interested in.

[00:29:04] Chris: Awesome. And I definitely recommend that as well. Go check it out right now and we're going to be back for another episode coming up really shortly. So we'll see you soon, Josh. Thanks, Chris. I'm going to say it again, just because it's. Good. What got you here? Won't get you there. And where is there? There is the place that you're trying to get to the place that you're trying to grow to as a freelancer or a web designer, a web developer, a person, whatever.

So if you're trying to grow. And around this time of the year, we're all thinking about growing because we've got new year's resolutions coming up. So we're thinking about business goals. We're thinking about personal goals and all that stuff has just kind of creeping up on us. So if you're trying to do that, then there's some things.

That you're going to have to do that you probably haven't done before. And they might even be really small little tweaks that don't take a ton of time or effort, but making those small little adjustments can lead to big outcomes and growth in the next season of your life. So this week think about some different things that you can do to get to that next level.

Well, Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode with Josh hall and guess what? He's coming. Next week, we're going to be talking about systems and procedures and everything that you need to put in place to get your business to a six figure level. It's going to be really good. And as always, it's going to be a lot of fun.

So until then keep working hard and don't forget if you don't quit, you win.