Do you provide high ticket offers? As a coach or consultant, you know that you need to get people on the phone (or a video call) in order to turn that lead into a sale. Filling up your calendar with discovery calls can be the key to exploding your online business. It’s the best way to introduce someone to your business, build a relationship with your leads, and make sure you’re the right fit to help them. And yet your calendar stays pretty empty. How do you turn that around? You can book more di...
May 24, 2022•20 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Does your ideal customer visit your website and yet do nothing once they’ve landed there? I’m talking - don't fill out a single form, schedule a call, or even make it off of your homepage. If you feel like your website does nothing for your business, it’s because you’re not actually telling the people who visit your website how to work with you. Today, we’re going to learn the strategies that keep customers on your website and actually get them to take action. Hint: it’s all about clear communic...
May 22, 2022•17 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Has your business run comfortably on referrals but now those leads are starting to dry up? You can’t capture leads when they don’t have anywhere to go and learn more about you and your business - in a single easy place. They don’t want to hunt for that information through your Instagram feed. When you run your business online, your business needs a home online. This week, I’m going to teach you exactly how you can capture those leads and not miss out on a huge revenue stream with your own market...
May 22, 2022•8 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Have you been banging your head against your desk wondering how to charge for a website? After all, customers don't see the value, right? In our world, we're often feeling like we're fighting for the lowest bid and yet we know that that is not the way to build a profitable business. You know the customer, you understand what they need, and you know you can help them, but we often get caught up in price. "We should charge this, but will they pay it?" In this episode, we're going to talk about how...
Apr 20, 2022•13 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Have you been wanting to add new habits to your daily routine and you're just absolutely struggling? I've always been a routine person. I've been taking daily asthma medications since I was 16 and if I don't follow the same basic routine every day, I might forget to take that medication. But even though I like routines, adding new habits that I know will help me can be hard. Creating healthy daily habits can aid in growing your business, getting your mindset right, and even improving that little...
Apr 13, 2022•15 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Have you been running your web design business for a while, but you don't know why your customers don't stick with you for years after years? A lot of businesses seek out a new company when it's time to redo their website right? It doesn't have to be that way! You can delight your customers to a point that they'll be unable to imagine going anywhere else. When they need that redo, you can be the first one they talk to. While you can do a lot to keep your customers happy after you launch their we...
Apr 06, 2022•16 min•Season 1Ep. 49
Ready to make creating your marketing content feel like a breeze? There is a way to make it all easier, I swear! Last week, we broke down your other options for digital marketing beyond social media . In today’s episode, I’m going to walk you through how to put that plan into action the easiest way possible by batching your content and breaking it up into multiple pieces. There’s no reason for you to be asking yourself on a daily basis what you’re going to talk about. In fact, if you follow this...
Mar 30, 2022•11 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Don't miss the freebie! Today, we're going to step away from talking about helping clients and focus on building your own website agency. You do your own marketing right? You're working hard to find new clients, attract people to you, and land those high-dollar clients. While you might be going to job boards or answering RFPs, I know a lot of agency owners will work on building up their own digital marketing. When that's not your area of expertise, I find that a lot of people default to social m...
Mar 23, 2022•14 min•Season 1Ep. 47
Growing a business is hard. Growing a web design and development business can be a special kind of difficult. Want to know a shortcut to improving your marketing's effectiveness, increasing your leads, and getting a better connection up front with your prospects? Inject some humanity into your marketing! I know, this sounds a bit crazy. You're selling a service to a business, right? Yes, but behind every decision is at least one decision maker who is, well, human. In today's episode, I'm going t...
Mar 16, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be a woman in tech? It was International Women's Day yesterday, March 8, so I thought it would be the perfect time to share my experiences. When I first started to learn to code, it was 2000, I was 13, and most people were still using Yahoo instead of Google. I've always been self-taught, so my experiences in tech don't come from classes like some might, but I've also been working as a web developer since I was 18. Let me preface this all by saying...
Mar 09, 2022•16 min•Season 1Ep. 45
If you're helping clients create the content for their website, you have to do the necessary keyword research. After all, if no one is searching for the way you're talking about things, you won't get that organic traffic. Keyword research for on-page SEO can feel overwhelming, though. It's hard to know where to start and frankly, a lot of us get bogged down in trying to please Google. But that's not what keyword research is even about. Google isn't performing those searches - the customer is. In...
Mar 02, 2022•14 min•Season 1Ep. 44
The main goal of any website is to drive conversions of some kind. If you want to command the premium fees for the websites you're building, you have to be providing the value that matches those fees. About the only way that you can provide value with website design and development? Make it convert! For many of your customers, conversions can be direct product sales. But if you're working with service providers, coaches, or even local businesses, a conversion might be defined a little differentl...
Feb 23, 2022•18 min•Season 1Ep. 43
This episode is definitely geared more for the web developers, but it's certainly applicable to anyone who's building websites. There's a trend in our job market right now to stick to what's on our "responsibilities" list. With web developers, that means we think we code and we only code. We get told to specialize and not learn too much because we can't be a jack of all trades or we'll be a master of none. You know what, that's kind of bullshit. There's a lot to be said for specializing and this...
Feb 16, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 42
So you want to charge more money for the websites that you're building? Then you know that you have to provide the value to be able to charge more. Well, you should be anyway. We talked in episode 40 about adding value to the websites you're building and the first thing on that list was to improve your upfront planning. Yea, the super boring part of any web design process (and I love planning!). But, doing the upfront work does a lot to improve the websites you're building and helps you to have ...
Feb 09, 2022•16 min•Season 1Ep. 41
You're probably a web designer and web developer because you like the work, but isn't it nice when the work is actually profitable? There are a lot of web design business gurus on the market. I'm certainly not the only one trying to help website agencies make more money and provide a better product. But what I typically hear from those other "experts" is that you should simply charge more money for the websites you're building. That's how you become more profitable. That's it. Just raise your pr...
Feb 02, 2022•18 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Does social media and posting for your web design just utterly baffle you? One of the things I hear the most from students is that they're never sure how to talk about themselves. When you're working for a company and you have some emotional distance, social media management can be a lot easier. But how do you talk about a business that is 100% about you? Especially in the beginning when it is just you? After all, your web design business is your baby. And if you're a freelancer, a lot of it is ...
Jan 26, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Last week in episode 37, we talked about where you can find web design clients . The problem is, now that you've found them, how do you actually make those sales? I'm certainly no sales professional. I am, quite frankly, an awkward, stereotypical web developer who's never been the best an interpersonal communications. But my sales closure rate is ridiculously high. Want to know exactly what I do to improve my sales rates? In today's episode, I'm going to break down exactly how I run my sales com...
Jan 19, 2022•18 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Whether you’re new to freelancing as a web designer or web developer, or you’ve been doing this for a minute, you know that one of the toughest parts isn’t doing the job you love. It’s finding the clients to work with you and pay your rates. We’ve talked a lot in this podcast about how to take care of clients, but I bet a few of you have been asking back – “Yea, that’s great, but where do I find people to begin with?” In today’s episode, I’m going to take you through a few options in how to netw...
Jan 12, 2022•21 min•Season 1Ep. 37
It's the first week of 2022 and chances are you told yourself this is going to be "your" year. This is the year your business grows. This is the year you start to scale. This is the year you're going to get your shit together. Look, if you're a web designer or even a developer, chances are that you might be a bit on the creative side. And creatives, well, we're not so great with the whole organizational, processes thing. In the years I've been in business, not being great with the processes and ...
Jan 05, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Let's talk about building websites for other businesses. Chances are, you started building websites for one of two reasons - you either like to code and love creating a full project, or you're a designer who had clients asking for websites. The thing is, no matter if you're a web developer who turned to freelance or a graphic designer who creates websites for their clients, you're doing them a huge disservice if you're not taking care of this one big thing. The website copy. Your client doesn't ...
Dec 29, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 35
One of the most common questions that gets asked by new website freelancers are “What should I charge?” Especially if you’ve worked mostly for other companies or you’re just relatively new to the industry, it can be hard to know what your price points should be. After all, if you look on job boards like Upwork (where you’re competing against people from all over the world), customers want to pay as little as $500 and upwards of $10,000 for a website. Where exactly do you fit in? In today’s episo...
Dec 22, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Want to hear a secret that no customer will tell you? They really don't care how you do what you do. It's true! In fact, they really only care about what they actually understand - what they're going to get out of how you do what you do. Here's the somewhat sad truth about humanity - we really just care about ourselves. Our problems, our needs, our businesses. While yes, it can be great that you're using PHP to make their website, they don't care. They don't care if their website runs off the la...
Dec 15, 2021•15 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Do you ever feel like the content you're creating is falling on deaf ears? I think one of the hardest concepts in marketing to grasp is how to speak to an ideal customer, target audience, following a buyer persona - whatever you want to call it. It's literally the first thing I take my students through during our Digital Marketing class because if you're not speaking to the right people, all of your other marketing efforts are a bit moot. But where in the world do you even begin with creating a ...
Dec 08, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 32
As "user friendly" website builder programs like Wix and SquareSpace have grown in popularity, it probably feels like it's almost impossible to find someone willing to pay more than a few hundred dollars for you to build them a website. But that doesn't have to be the case. In fact, I consistently charge clients thousands of dollars to build them a website and I rarely get pushback on my prices. Want to know how I do it? Of course you do! I'm going to walk you through the common objections you'l...
Dec 01, 2021•20 min•Season 1Ep. 31
I believe so strongly in building websites following digital accessibility best practices that I literally made it the second episode of this podcast. But I taught digital accessibility to my MBA students just a couple of weeks ago, and I noticed some common misconceptions around the concept itself and why it's important. I also noticed that most of my students cared less about building an inclusive website and more about what building a website that way could do for them. That's not terribly su...
Nov 24, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 30
I’m going to go on a bit of a rant today, but I promise if you listen all the way to the end, you’re going to learn the number one way to improve your sales and repeat customers. Literally, the number one thing that has kept my clients coming back to me, referring me to their friends and contacts, and giving me great reviews. Want to know what that is? Of course you do! Listen to today's episode to find out.
Nov 17, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 29
When you’re building a website for a client, there’s a lot of things you need to think about. Their objectives and goals with the website, whether they need to make direct sales or get more calls, how they intend to earn an ROI for their investment – all things that you have to keep in mind before you build. But the cool thing about a website is that it can do more for a business than just be a sales and marketing tool. It can also help to automate processes in a business and make that small bus...
Nov 10, 2021•14 min•Season 1Ep. 28
There was a younger developer in one of my Facebook groups a few weeks ago. She was expressing frustration that her clients “didn’t understand” that they needed to provide her the copy and tell her exactly what they wanted her to build. She’s just the web developer who’s going to build it for them. Oh sweet honey child, if only that were true. In today's episode, I'm going to break down what your responsibility as "website builder" really is and what you can do to get there....
Nov 03, 2021•8 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Do you put a lot of care into your own projects for clients, but often find yourself neglecting those same processes when it comes to your own? I'll admit, I'm 100% guilty of that. I'm starting a new project for myself that I'm hoping to have live by the end of the year, and I decided that I needed to follow my standard process. But not only that, improve on it! That got me to thinking. As I work through this personal website redesign, what decisions need to be made or thought about before you w...
Oct 27, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 26
When someone comes to you to build a website, you're the expert. But what does that mean about more complex issues like privacy compliance laws? Are you in charge of that or is your client? There are multiple privacy laws in effect throughout the world, and most of them all boil down to one thing – being able to opt out of having our personal data and behavior being tracked across the internet. Consumers want to feel like they have some privacy left online. Honestly, while us marketers and websi...
Oct 20, 2021•15 min•Season 1Ep. 25
