289 - Top 10 Lessons from Making 1 Million in Revenue with JoshHall.co

If you're listening to this , when it comes out this week , I'm going to do two solo episodes diving into what was going to be one big episode , but I decided to split these two episodes into different ones because it's kind of two different parts .

One part of this which we're going to cover in this one is that I just crossed $1 million in revenue with JoshHallco and I've learned a lot in this six-year journey , with hitting seven figures that I wanted to share with you to help you , whether you have a million-dollar target in mind or whether you just want to know what it looks like to grow a seven-figure

business over the period of any amount of time . I did it in six years and I've learned a heck of a lot that I want to share with you in this one . But what's interesting about this is , despite the joy and elation of hitting seven figures , which is a huge milestone because I never hit seven figures as a web designer .

Total , I think I got to 800 in my time designing websites , which is still pretty awesome , but I never hit seven figures . But I have now as a course creator and community builder . But what's interesting is I've also had the most challenging year in business by far .

So I told a couple of my friends here recently who are entrepreneurs I'm like I feel like I'm bipolar because at any given moment I'm just pumped and just like amazed that I did seven figures and crossed a million dollars with this business .

But at the same time I'm having some of the or really have had some of the hardest times as an entrepreneur in struggles this year . But I actually feel I'm really coming out of a lot of those struggles and the tides have turned in some ways . So I'm going to share that in part two . So this is kind of part one , this episode .

I'm going to share with you actually 10 of the top lessons I've learned to help you in what I've learned in making $1 million with joshallco that also apply completely to web design .

So it's not just you don't have to be a course creator or a community builder , these are just general principles that apply to any business , and then in the next episode here in a couple of days , I'm going to release kind of part two , which is thoughts and reflections off of a really challenging year in particular , but I'm going to give you some advice and

some things that I've learned in this past year that have really helped me tremendously . So , yeah , but I have a different couple of episodes here for the podcast , so we're going to kick off here with my list of top 10 lessons from making $1 million with joshallco . Now , I did it in a period of six years .

What's interesting is the idea of a million dollars . So I can't say I'm a millionaire . I can't say I have a seven figure annual business , because I do not do it annually , but I have made it in a period of six years .

What's interesting , though , is some people depending on , I guess , what your goals are and what your aspirations are that might seem like holy cow . I can't imagine , but some of you may be like , okay , yeah , I would think in six years I'd want to be at least at a million dollars .

So , those of you who have the aspirations of seven figures quicker than me , I'm hoping these 10 lessons will help you and , again , even if you don't care about hitting a million dollars , these will help you make six figures or multi six figures . So let's start with lesson number one .

This is something I've talked about recently on the podcast and a few other places , and I've just found this to be so , so important when it comes to marketing , and that is to have one channel for discovery and one for relationship building .

And we actually just recently talked about marketing on the podcast and where I talked about what marketing channel to choose for you that suits you and your business , and that is let me scroll back here that is episode . Where are we at here ? That is episode 274 . What's the right web design marketing channel for you ?

So go back to that one If you haven't listened to that episode , because we dive into this deeper .

But the idea of having one channel for discovery meaning you're getting leads , new people are finding you and then one channel for nurturing those leads , so we're not actually necessarily talking about paying clients , yet these are just leads that is key and this is something that I wish I would have .

I guess I was unintentionally doing this even when I started Josh Hallco , but even more so now . What I've realized is is I started with a lot of discovery platforms . I started my YouTube channel , I was a blog offer author for elegant themes .

I was really active in a lot of Facebook groups and in the beginning , the first year of my brand , it was all discovery , and it was the same thing when I started doing web design . You're probably experiencing this too , depending on where you are in your journey . When you start out , it's all discovery because no one knows what you do .

So you get out there with networking groups , social media , you talk to people you know and your personal and professional circles . That's some of the ways you can get out there and have a discovery channel .

But then the question becomes how the people who are following you , the people who are on your email list , who are subscribed to you , that are in your networking group , that are in meetups that you go to , that maybe hear about you but haven't worked with you yet the question is , how can you serve them to then eventually become a paying client if they are a

good fit , and that is why it's so important to have a relationship channel . So for me personally , my biggest discovery channel was , and is still , my YouTube channel and my relationship channel is mostly right here my podcast . Now I talk about this in episode 274 .

My podcast is actually both A lot of people are searching web design , I found out , but because podcasting by nature is a bit of more of a intimate style medium , it's , you know , not like there aren't like thousands of people finding the podcast every week .

So YouTube is the biggie , because YouTube is a search engine , it is putting my videos out there for people who don't know me and might say , oh yeah , this is helpful . That's my discovery channel , and podcast is mostly my relationship . I'm actually going to be launching a newsletter soon .

It was just kind of a weekly hit of web design , business goodness and some updates and some tips and cool things that I'm finding and tools and helpful things . So that's going to be a little bit of both , but mostly relationship builder for me as well .

So for you really quickly think about what channel works best for you to find new , new leads and then what would you like to do to continue to serve them .

It could be social media , could be a newsletter , could be YouTube channel , could be any sort of channel where you are offering free value and giving people advice , and this could be in person too and networking . Again , I don't want to rehash the entire episode from 274 .

So go back to that one if you haven't heard it , but the idea of one channel for leads to discover you , one channel to have a nurturing approach with those leads to them become clients Absolutely huge A key in bringing me to $1 million in the six year journey so far . So that's number one .

Number two is something that I've heard more recently Actually , we talked about this on the podcast .

My colleague , ann Capuzza , who is my resident web designer attorney , interviewed me for six my six year anniversary and some lessons learned and she said that you seem to be really good at listening to your customers and providing something for them with what they're looking for and unintentionally , that's something that I've learned has been a huge difference maker in

this business and any business . Listening to your customers and , as long as it fits in your scope of service and your skill set and something that you would want to do , make it a solution , make it a thing , make it a service , make it like , productize it , make it , make it whatever it is . So it's funny .

As web designers , the cool thing about web design is websites is really where all the roads lead to websites . So you want to make that my .

My recommendation is that you make that your primary service , because websites encapsulate SEO , conversion , copywriting , messaging , design , so many different things and then you can offer any amount of services that you want outside of that , even when you want to lead back to the website and help grow an online presence .

But what's interesting is , a lot of clients will tell you exactly what they're willing to pay you for . They just won't say hey , will you do this for me and can I pay you ? Now ? Some will . Some will be like hey , jim , can you set up my Facebook page and do my social media ?

And if you're down with setting up social media and you're down with creating graphics , then awesome . But if you're not down with being a digital marketer and actually posting for clients , then that's fine too , and just tell them I can help you get it set up . We'll tie it in with the website , we'll integrate everything , but I don't do the actual posting .

But that is a great way to listen to your customers and get paid for it , because your customers even if you have two customers right now they are the ones who are going to let you know what they're interested in .

So my tip for you here number two when it comes to listening to your customers is keep an eye on what your current customers and maybe new customers and potential like really good leads are asking for .

If they keep on talking about SEO , or if they're talking about AI and how to use it in some way , or they're talking about content creation or lead generators , or they're talking about what to put on your website to book or schedule a calendar event , listen for the common denominators and provide it as a solution .

You don't need to do it one off for every client . You could literally say okay , all of my clients now are asking about AI and content creation .

Can I roll this into something in my growth category for my clients and package up in a way even if it's a retainer of ours , with expected outcomes , could I package this up and offer it as an add-on or an upsell or a value add for my customers ? Listen to what your customers are asking for and provide that solution for them .

Case in point before we move on to number three A lot of my members in Web Designer Pro , coincidentally , are thriving in their businesses and are growing so fast that they need help .

So a lot of the questions I'm getting right now are involved with scaling and being able to manage a lot of different projects at different levels and potentially hiring and delegating to get some help . But , as of right now , I don't have too much resource too many resources on that .

So that led me to start working on my next course , which is going to be called Scale your Way , and it's really gonna help you scale the way that you choose in your business to grow and delegate without being a full agency with overhead and stuff like that .

So that's just an example of how I'm personally listening to my students and my customers to provide something that they're asking about . So , side note , that's what I'm working on . Next right now is my next course . So Scale your Way is coming soon . Let me know if you're excited about that . Number three here .

We'll come back to that because that's gonna get into another point here . Number three is to really , really , really if you haven't done already , put an emphasis on recurring income .

It is not coincidence that my first course was my WordPress maintenance plan course , because when I discovered the beauty of those two words recurring income you could call it recurring revenue too .

Some older generations might call it residual income , but other residuals different from recurring , but any who payments and subscriptions , clients that are paying you over and over , month after month after month , for something that is the lifeblood and can be at least a lifeblood of your business . For web design it starts with hosting and maintenance .

That is the biggest for recurring income and even if you have modestly priced plans at 50 to 100 and $150 plans , when those add up depending on what you need to take home right now in the season of your business those can add up pretty dang quick . Let's say your maintenance plans and hosting plans are an average of $100 for clients .

Let's say you get 20 on there . That's two grand a month recurring month after month after month after month after month . And when you start to circle back around with those clients they will continue to upsell and redo their websites .

And this gets to the point where if you can get 20 or 30 clients on your maintenance plan you really do not need to circle back around to new clients . That much you can . But at a certain point in your business this is kind of a sub point . Under this is that your focus shifts from acquisition and it turns to retention .

Actually just had a call on web designer pro my coaching community with one of my students , lisa Lisa Williams , with Jolie Design Solutions . Actually , we're gonna see we might repurpose that little hot seat chat that we had in our weekly call for the podcast , because it was so good .

But what she's the reason I mentioned that is what we talked about is that she got to a place in her business where the focus was completely on hosting and maintenance and recurring services for her current clients , and she doesn't even have that many .

I think she's in the 30 to 40 range right now , but that is enough for her and her husband to run their business and her marketing is not really towards new clients near as much as it is to just retain those current clients .

So it's a beautiful , beautiful thing when you have recurring income as a base and then you can build services off of that and around that . There's a lot more services for recurring income that I dive into in my business course , by the way , and one of them is like subscription web design , which you could do as an add-on or an option as a fallback .

There's also tons of different recurring services you could do with strategy consulting , ongoing retainer packages , upsells , like I just mentioned with new solutions that clients are asking about . You could productize those and add them as recurring income . Tons of things you can do .

But the idea is a focus on recurring income because that really is your bottom line in your business and that will end the feast and famine of your business because even if you get no new clients that month , maybe you still have $5 , $10,000 in recurring income . That covers the bottom line for your business . That's crucial .

So , as I think about my journey with recurring income , I did have the idea of recurring income early on when I started joshallco , but I actually didn't have it until I started my membership , which is now Web Designer Pro . It was formerly called the Web Design Club , but that was really at the place in my business .

That helped me be more stable because I finally had recurring income as a course creator and as a coach and educator . And you know my YouTube . It's interesting because YouTube for me and anyone who does videos , where you're monetizing videos , that is recurring income in a way , but you really do not control that .

What's really interesting about that is this will come into play in the next episode on as one of the points with kind of having a challenging year is my recurring income . My AdSense money on YouTube has dropped by like and like last month , like 90% from what it was a year ago . It's wild . I'll just tell you right now . It was you .

I was making at least 1500 bucks a month just coming in from my YouTube videos . Last month was like 200 . I'm like what in the flying freaking hell is going on here . So thank God that is not my sole source of income .

It's nice , it's a nice little recurring stream , but I don't have any control over that and some of that is because I haven't nurtured my YouTube channel as much as I have some other channels . But I'm working on that right now and I expect that to change .

But that's where , like , if you're and this is something you can tell your clients if you put your home and you put your revenue in the hands of another platform , good luck , especially when it comes to something like that , because you don't own that or control that . It's kind of at the whim of whatever they wanna pay you .

So an emphasis on recurring income for web designers , starting with hosting and maintenance . That is key and , just remember , really start to think about retention and serving those 10 , 20 clients over and over , better and better , more high value services , then just finding new clients all the time because you wanna get out of that new client rat race .

So that's number three . Number four is to have a higher tier product and a lot of cases you'll hear this term like a 10X product , where , let's say , you're charging God forbid , you're charging $1,000 for websites . On average offer a $10,000 website package . This is something that I teach in my business course , which is to have three different tiers .

Now I recommend that you start at 2,500 and that your average featured tiers are 5,000 and then you go 10K plus from there . But you could adjust this if you're providing a more full web design service to where you're starting at 5K . 10k would be your average and then 20K plus would be your top ones .

Those would be the price points to start out for those of you who are getting into the multi six figures . But even if you're starting out , you can still have a higher tier product that just includes a little more in that top tier . Now the question would be who would ever choose that product ? Well , probably not that many of your clients .

But for the one who does want that . What a shame if they were to go to your website and they've got 10 grand that they're willing to spend on a website and a nice online presence and your packages are $2,000 .

But if you offer a high tier for those who need it or want it , that is the way you can have huge months in your business and really , really boost your revenue . This is what I like to call a needle mover type of move . There was a few things in your business that I've learned you could do to kind of quote unquote move the needle .

And having a high tier product or option for your service is key . If you keep your pricing low and those are your only packages , because your mindset is that you're not worth it or you don't think your current clients are gonna pay that much , you are just going to either hold yourself back or keep yourself stagnant . For as long as you do that .

Now , the cool thing about a higher tier product is it's not changing your business model , it's not gonna blow up your business , it's not even gonna deter your clients . It's just an option for those who wanna pay that . So it is a win , win , win .

I can't recommend enough that you have an option for a higher tier package and even if you're not sure what to offer in that , keep it open , keep it more of a custom package and just say that will include projects like e-commerce , bills , memberships , complex sites , really large sites that have a lot of moving parts and complexities to them .

Just keep it open and customize it from there , but have a high tier package that starts at like $10,000 . And then when that client comes through and they're like yeah , I was thinking like 1,500 , and they're like whoa , josh has like a $10,000 package . Yeah , maybe I could swing that two or three K starting package . There you go , my friends .

That was a key for me as a web designer and if you're wondering , you're probably just dying to know well , josh , what's your 10X offer ? For me , one of the biggest things that literally move the needle and by move the needle I mean like boosted my income dramatically was when I put all of my courses into a bundle option .

That was the first high tier product for me . My one right now is the annual membership to web designer pro . That is my high ticket offer right now for those who come into my membership Web designer pro .

You can go month to month or you can go annual and those will give me generally the biggest influxes and revenue because it's a $2,000 annual like one time deal . That is 12 months . But for me I had all my courses that I finally created and then naturally I was like I had these questions .

Going back to the list of your customers , I had a lot of questions from students who were like I kind of want to just all the courses . They would ask me do you have a deal , do you have a discount if I buy them all ? And I'm like you know what , I will give you a discount for buying them all . That sounds right to me .

I would want that if I were to buy like 10 courses . So absolutely made it a bundle , big discount , which is still available , by the way . If you're new to my brand , you can buy all of my courses one off and separately and get lifetime access to them , and my bundle was still available .

If you just want all the courses and lifetime access to the curriculums , that's over at joshallco , just click on courses and then those are also available in web designer pro . So it's kind of two options . Do you want coaching with them and community and deep support with me to assist you as you make your way through the courses . Come on in and pro .

If you just want the courses and I do still do monthly Q and as for all of my students then just head over and buy the courses individually or the bundle , which will give you lifetime access . But the idea is a high tier product , a 10X product , that is , a needle needle mover . Needle mover needle God . Sorry , it's getting bad .

Needle mover woo had to get past that one , thank God , talking well , isn't what got me to seven , eight years ? All right , number six , no , no , we're on number five here , delegating another needle mover . I learned as a web designer that you can only get so far by yourself .

You really can , and I know a lot of you might want to be a soloist , as long as you can . You're a control freak . You can't imagine delegating and trusting somebody else with the designs of your websites . I get it . I went through all those feelings .

But the reality is the only way to grow at some point just yourself is to have extremely high rates , be very , very selective on clients and to basically just narrow down your scope of services to only do a few things if you're gonna work less than 40 hours a week .

The cool thing is and this is where my new course , scale your Way , is gonna come into play , when I released that later this year in 23 , is you can scale 100% in a way that works for you .

That is actually quite fun and I found this out when I started scaling and that is you don't feel alone when you have someone else to talk about your business stuff with , and it's not just a mastermind group or friends . It's like they know your business because they're in it and they have a .

You know they want you to grow because their income is partially depending on it . So we're not gonna go too far into delegating . But I do have an episode of the podcast that you're welcome to go back to until I have my scaling course ready . It's 154 , joshallcoone-five-four those are my top tips for hiring subcontractors .

It's actually one of the most popular episodes of the podcast here . So joshallco-one-five-four 10 tips for hiring subcontractors head over there to help you with just some preliminary ideas on delegating to get you from doing everything and get you out of the low level tasks , the small level tasks , the repeatable stuff .

Just get that off your plate to work on needle moving aspects in your business . That really is the key . If you have a goal of $1 million to get to or beyond , or even just building your business in any way , if you wanna take it to that quote unquote next level , you've gotta focus on the high end stuff .

You have to get yourself out of the weeds of the business . So that's number five . We'll go through some of these other ones here pretty quick here . Number six this is kind of an interesting one , but I have found it to be actually .

The next couple of ones are things that you might not think would really help that much with a $1 million business , but I've found that they really do .

Number six here is to do things that other people don't do , and this is kind of vague but as a practical example , I send personal videos to every new member who joins Web Designer Pro and every new student who joins any one of my courses , and I've been doing that consistently for four years now .

Generally once a week , every Friday , I will send videos to new students and new members of Web Designer Pro , and it's a part of my routine , and there are plenty of weeks where I'm like , oh , I just don't feel like doing that , like I got other stuff I wanna work on .

I don't even know for sure if this student is even gonna see this video , and that's the case a lot of times . I'll send a video and I never hear back , or I don't even get the notification from Loom that they watched it . But most cases they do watch it and I'll tell you right now .

And those of you who are in Pro or have been one of my students , who are a student and you got a video from me , let me know personally what impact did that make on you ? I have a feeling it was a remarkable remembrance of joining something because most course creators barely any do that .

Excuse me , it's something that no one else does and I get why they don't do it and I'm at a level where I can practically do that . If you're somebody who I mean really even the top course creators I don't know how many students they're getting on average , like some of the top creators .

If they're getting like thousands of students , then yeah , that's gonna be hard to send personal videos , but if you're getting like a hundred students , you could 100% go through and send one minute videos within a day or two to a hundred people . It is not that hard . I've done some hard work in my day , including masonry and some of the cabinetry work I did .

Like you can sit down and do a hundred videos Little welcome videos that are personal . Most people don't do it and the really cool thing is for you as web designers . You're not gonna get a hundred clients in a week or a month Like you might get one or two in a month . So a personal video to say hey , welcome in , I'm so excited .

This is why I teach you my business course , by the way . So rip it off , do this , use Loom or any tool that you could use . There's another tool called Magnify that I use as well joshallco Magnify . If you wanna check that out . Either one of those work Send a personal video and says hey , I just wanted to say I'm so excited to get started with you .

I'll be in touch with the next steps . We'll get down to business , but I just wanna say personally welcome in . I'm really , really excited to help Like , make it personal . I'm really excited to help you grow your business through the new website we're gonna create . So I hope you're pumped Like .

This is literally what I teach in my business course an onboarding . It's an in the onboarding lesson . You get them pumped , you set the stage for a successful project and it's right there . It starts with a personal video . No one else will do that , except for students in my business course and members of Web Designer Pro . No one else will do it , though .

I guarantee you could talk to 10 of your clients and , if they've all worked with other web designers , ask them how many web designers sent you a personal video when you got started . I guarantee you'll get a big old fat goose egg Again , unless they happen to work with a designer in my business course . So that's you . You do that .

Those little things will separate you from everybody else , and that is key to what I've learned in growing this business is I stayed consistent doing that , and I still have students today who joined my courses years ago that were like gosh . That , just that , like that made me not wanna leave you .

I've heard that said quite a few times and that statement is always stuck with me . That made me stick with you and showed me that you're different from a lot of other course creators . So highly recommend that you do that as well for your clients . Personal videos the next one is kind of a sub point to this .

So number seven and then we'll get ready to wrap this up here is that honestly , it sounds cliche , but it really is the small things that make the biggest difference when this comes into habits . For sure this comes into the boring stuff that you just get through .

It comes into delegating all the things that we've covered so far , but I've also found by small things . It's things like comments on YouTube videos , social media posts , instagram posts . It's customer support how do you treat leads and potential customers or current customers or even past customers ?

And , speaking of past customers , how do you go about following up with somebody who leaves you or cancels their plan with you ?

Something that I've done more recently is because when I started my membership with memberships it's a subscription , so people come in and people go for all sorts of reasons , and I told myself from the get go I hope this is helpful for you if you ever , or if you're currently building any sort of community or membership that's paid and that people are gonna churn

from I told myself I would not take it personally , and I've done plenty of memberships that I've been in for a while and I'm not in anymore and I'm actually just about to leave one , and it's not personal . I just kind of what got you here won't get you there .

That's kind of how I feel with a couple I've been a part of recently is like I'm kind of at a I'm moving to a different place . Now that I'm seven figure club , I gotta go to a different place . But no , like seriously , there's just it's not personal .

So what I've done and what I've had to remind myself of is , when somebody leaves Web Designer Pro not gonna be mad , it'll be a little bit sad , especially if they've been a really active member and I've helped them grow their business I'm like , oh , I'm so bummed to lose you here . I wanna continue to DM you and hang out and see your business grow .

But there's times where that happens and what I've started to do is , instead of just , I do have an automated message that kicks out once somebody cancels , but what I've done is personally followed up and just said hey , I just wanted to personally , you know , say I hope you enjoyed your time here .

I really would appreciate your feedback and advice and your feedback and input from your experience how we can make it better . Like learning from your current clients who leave you is actually a hidden gem . That really should be point number seven Learn from the clients who leave you .

There we go , because you can learn so much from people who give you honest , transparent thoughts and they might tell you something that's like oh my gosh , I didn't even think about that . It totally makes sense . It may not be the reason they left , but it's just something that could be better for you .

So I highly , highly , highly , highly recommend really paying attention to those small things , things like how you're responding on social media People do look at those , by the way .

How you're dealing with customer support , because customer support is usually like an afterthought , but if you make customer support a priority , that's a big , big , big thing when it comes to growing a successful business . And then those people , when they leave your clients , ask them if they're willing to share some feedback .

Same thing can be said for proposals , too . I've got some of the best feedback on my proposals that a client didn't move forward , or I should say a lead didn't move forward , and I just asked them like , hey , would you be open to sharing why you didn't move forward ? I'm not gonna take it personally .

I really appreciate helps me grow my business and helps us make this better for future clients . Some of the best feedback ever , ever , ever , ever . I've got that way . So same to you . Those little things like we just covered . It's kind of like five points in one , but those will all help . All right , the last few here as we get ready to wrap this up .

Again , 10 lessons that I've learned from making a million dollars in six years with joshallco . Number eight is to write your quarterly goals in pen , meaning you've got goals in a three-month period that you are gonna hit very rarely . Are you gonna pivot from those or move those ?

These are like okay , I've got a three-month runway , this is what I wanna get done . This is what I wanna do in my business this quarter Write those in pen . Those cannot be erased . But your annual goals , those might be in pencil , meaning what you have planned for a year may change .

Like if you're writing your goals out in January , you know what you wanna hit revenue-wise . You know what you wanna do with your clients If you have a certain number of clients , the services you wanna offer .

But , as we talked about early on , if your customers are asking and pleading for you to do something else , maybe in Q2 , you're like you know what I was gonna do this big launch and this big service . But I'm actually getting a lot of requests for this and , like in my cases , I didn't really plan on doing a scaling course for sure this time .

I thought I might do it eventually , but right now . Early in the year I had different goals . But my goals have completely changed by the end of the year and I'm glad that I took this approach of having quarterly goals . That are most cases in pen .

I'm gonna hit those , but I reevaluate and the annual goals are likely gonna change depending on what's happening with your customers , with the market , with the questions you're getting . So don't feel like you need to stick to your annual goals . Whether it's services , price points , revenue , whatever it is . You may wanna change those .

So write those in pencil and then come back around to them and pin , if there's still a good fit , every quarter . That's my recommendation . Number nine last couple of big ones here number 10 may be the most important , by the way , but number nine here this is like one .

That's so easy to do and you would think it would be common sense , but I think we're all guilty of this and that is if something works , keep doing it One more time . If something is working , keep doing it . Every entrepreneur needs to hear this . I don't know why . I've fallen victim to this a lot .

It's like you do something that works and it just feels like you're done . It's like , okay , I got something working , cool , now let me go do something else . I don't know why that is . I know I'm not alone in feeling like that , but this is a good reminder , I think , for those of you who have something that's going well , double down on it .

If it's going really well , if you put more energy and emphasis and focus on that , it will continue to get better . This leads into the next episode that's going to be coming up here . But I've been in a situation this year where , quite transparently , my core sales have dropped pretty dramatically my one-off core sales .

I think a lot of that is because I do have them inside of Web Designer Pro now , but it's also a shift in the market for sure . I've talked to a lot of course creators , especially on Web Design , who are saying a lot of similar things and just course creation large .

What I've learned is that I was really not freaking out , but I'm like , okay , this is still a big chunk of my income . I got to figure something out here . My mind immediately went to well , do I need to have cheaper courses ? Do I need to have free courses that get people to the door ? Do I need to do a new discovery channel ? Do I need to do this ?

Do I need to have a bunch of new lead generators ? Do I need to start another Facebook group ? What do I need to do ? Actually , I got to give shout out to Jason Grasio , one of my close friends , who's an amazing entrepreneur . He wore a mastermind together and he was like what's working in your business right now ? I was like pro .

Pro is the best thing right now . And he's like double down on that . He's like whatever's working , do more of that . I was like you're right .

The emphasis for me was , I felt like because I had one area in my business that was slipping , I needed to catch that and do all these other things around it to make that work , when , in reality , I've got this other thing here that is now the core of my business and is going really well . Students are getting amazing results .

I'm having my best time ever doing that . That's what I need to focus on . So , in short , what I've been done more recently and this will kind of we'll probably uncover this a little more in the next episode as far as things that are all have turned around for me in a good way is .

I'm doubling down on what's working For me right now Web Designer Pro , that is , my coaching community . It's working really well for both me and my business .

For me personally , with my bandwidth and giving me life to do what I do , and it's sure as heck working for all the members inside of Pro , because we're getting nothing but awesome results and people are loving it . So , whatever's working , keep doing it .

So for you , I wanna ask you if you have services that just aren't filling you up , they're draining , they're not really worth it on the books , they're sucking your time , bringing in clients that aren't great , or it's taking good clients and you're just offering something that might be a little half-ass .

Cut it out , stop it , start to pivot from it , start to weed it out from your services . Whatever is working well for you , you double down on that , my friend , because that is also another needle mover in your business . You double down on what's working well . So that's number nine , all right .

Lastly , number 10 , maybe the most important of them all , specifically from getting to this place now , where I've crossed seven figures , $1 million in revenue , is to do not expect to stay at a certain level just because you got there .

And I do feel like I've fallen prey to this a little bit over the last year or two , and that is , I got to the place in my business where we did 300 annually and I kind of felt like I got to that place not that I didn't , I mean , I've still been doing content , podcast , everything else but I did stop doing a lot of the things that got me there and

I felt like I was at a place where I probably don't need to do a lot of the stuff that I was doing early on to stay here In 2022, . Revenue went down a little bit , but it was kind of expected because of a lot of stuff that my family was going through , which we'll uncover in the next episode , and I just wasn't doing as much like launching .

I didn't really launch anything new or push anything . I was just kind of refining and continuing to do what I do , but I didn't do any of the some of the other needle mover things like launches , webinars and stuff like that . So I was fine with a little bit of drop .

And then this year , for all the reasons we'll cover in the next episode , I really felt like we should at least hit that level . But it wasn't the case , especially the first six months . So I learned a painful lesson that just because you arrive at a level doesn't mean you're gonna stay there . You have to be proactive .

You have got to continue to innovate , to market and do all the things that you've done early on to get you to that level and to stay at that level and even further from that , go to the next level . And I guess it probably is a lot like sports Like you become a professional athlete , you don't stop working out .

The athletes who do that are not gonna be on the team the next year , like no matter what sport it is . It's a good reminder . If we take it practically , you continue to do the things that got you there with training , diet regiments , et cetera . So , yeah , I hope that lesson is good for you too .

It sure is a reminder that I needed myself , and that is to continue to do the things that got me here as long as they are the important things that got me here , not to say that you need to do all the low level stuff that you did in the beginning . And , yeah , sometimes strategies are gonna be more high level .

But what's interesting is I'm actually starting to like go back to the basics of what I did in the early days because I've , in short , done a lot more on the nurturing and relationship side of those of you who are in my sphere , but I haven't done as much from a discovery standpoint .

So there's not near as many new people finding me now as there were six years ago and five years ago . So I'm actually starting to like reverse engineer that a little bit , and I've never been like overly cocky about it or to say like , well , I don't need to do videos on YouTube anymore , they're beyond me . That's not the case .

But I certainly put way more emphasis on deepening relationships with customers and people who are following and those of you who are listening , who maybe you're listening and you have yet to buy a course , you've yet to join pro . You're still someone I'm building a relationship with and I hope to see it in specifically pro so I can coach you .

But it did remind me that , like because there's been a drop in sales that it is important to do both of those things deepen the relationship with those in your like those leads in your circle and at the same time continue to get new leads in there .

Now there is a point in your business where , like we talked about earlier , you focus on acquisition more than retention .

But I also have a very , very different business model now than I did as a web designer Because , as you probably know , if you've listened to the show for a while , you don't need that many clients to make a nice healthy six figure business but you do not wanna turn your lead sprinkler off your lead pipeline . There we go . You don't wanna turn that off .

Like that's what happens a lot with web designers who get busy and they are doing a good job with retaining their clients . But if you're still at a place where maybe you've got 20 clients but that's not gonna necessarily cut it for multi six figure business , then you can't turn your lead system off and your sales system off .

You still need to do those things and you could seasonally reactivate them . That's kind of what I'm doing now is reactivating a little more of the discovery stuff along with the relationship building . But I did learn that and sure the lesson was I really did feel like , okay , I hit 300K per year .

That is plenty enough to cover for my family and everything that we have going on right now and my expectation was that was just gonna continue to grow .

But , as you'll find out in the next episode here , a lot of things both things that happen would be my family personally and just shifts in the market for sure , and maybe a lack of me doing any launches or pushing all of those things culminated into what has been a pretty dang challenging year . But again , I'm moving past that .

I really feel honestly like I'm past the big challenges because the numbers are increasing and I'm feeling better and better about things and the results there for students . So everything that I just covered is now coming into play as I go for the next million dollars in my business , which will definitely not be another six years .

My plan is to do that in like two years , so that my friends are the 10 lessons , the biggest lessons that I've learned from making a million dollars . Quick recap and then I'll see you in the next episode . Number one marketing with one channel for discovery , one channel for relationship and nurturing .

Number two listen to your customers and provide solutions that they're asking for , as long as it fits with you . Number three putting an emphasis on recurring income acquisition versus retention . Number four offer a high ticket product , a high tier product , like a 10X product , for the few customers who want it . Number five delegation .

Delegating is a needle mover for your business . Number six do things that no one else does , like a personal video easiest thing to do . Number seven that's the small things that really make the big difference customer support , following up when people cancel stuff like that .

Number eight what your annual goals or , excuse me , quarterly goals and pin those are for the sure things you're gonna get done , but your annual goals and pencil those may need to be erased and changed . Number nine if something works , keep freaking doing it . And number 10 , do not expect to stay at your level just because you got there .

So there we go , friends , I hope you enjoyed this episode . I would love , love , love , honestly love to hear your feedback on this one . You can do that by leaving a comment on the post for this episode at my website . Go to joshallco , slash two , eight , nine that's this episode's number , and you can leave me a comment .

I'd love to know your thoughts on this episode . Maybe if you had a favorite tip of these 10 , these will be listed out , by the way , on that post at joshallco Slash two , eight , nine . So head over there , I would love to hear your feedback on that .

And without it goes without saying , if you would be willing , my gosh , it would be the world to me to have some new podcast reviews come in . So go to joshallco slash podcast review . That'll link you out to where you can really leave a review on Spotify or iTunes or Apple . Is it through iTunes ? Well , you know what I mean the podcast app for Apple .

Anyway , a review would mean the world to me . Mention this episode if you want to . If something here really helped you , I would love to read that . And again , I want to know your thoughts . What from these 10 lessons are you going to apply to your business ?

Whether you want to go to $1 million plus , or whether you just want to get to a hundred thousand , or whether you just want to stop working so dang much and just do a little bit less . A lot of these things will actually help with that , so I'd love to hear from you . All right , friends , I hope you enjoyed this one .

Make sure you're subscribed , because the next episode , which is going to come out the same week that this one drops , I am going to open up a little more about this past year and share some of the challenges Because , like I said , this is a fun episode . $1 million , all right , amazing At the same time . Wow , it's been a challenging year .

It has tested me as an entrepreneur . I think a lot of people probably would have been working a full-time job , but these are the kind of things that make a good business owner , and a better entrepreneur is when you go through the tough stuff .

So what I'm going to do is share with you some of the lessons I've learned from a hard year , a challenging year , but also give you some of the advice , some of which we've already covered here in a little more detail . That will help you , too , if you're currently going through a challenging year or if a challenging year is ahead for you at some point .

Which business life ? It's a roller coaster Good days on the upswing , bad days you're going down . I want to help you for those of you who are heading down right now or in a challenging spot . So I will see you on the next episode in a few days here . We'll talk about that . Until then , cheers friends .

Seven figure club baby , come join me , take one of these tips , or all of them , and keep at it , and I hope to see you in Web Designer Pro . If you would like me to help you make a seven figure web design business , that sounds fun . Joshcoco Slash Pro is where you can join us . We are capping pro . Last thing pro is going to be capped at 250 members .

We're at 141 at the time of recording this and I really haven't even started marketing it like publicly yet . So I'm actually intentionally speaking of retention . I'm actually circling around to former pro members and to current students to nab up the first spot . So if you have not heard from me yet and that's you you will or you should .

I actually already sent stuff out to the students , so I'm circling back around to former members right now . So I'll be hitting your inbox with an offer to join us before I really start pushing it publicly , because I think these last 100 spots are gonna fill up pretty quick . So join us .

On Web Designer Pro , I'd love to help you be the next $1 million web design owner so you can have your own top lessons from it . So let's do it All right , friends , thanks for joining . I'll see you on the next one .