305 - Personal Update from Josh and a Look at What's in Store for 2024

I also wanted to take a minute to just kind of share with you what's on my mind and give you a personal update on me and the family and everything that's going on . So we're going to kind of have a two in one bonus style episode , which is why there's no fancy intro or anything on this one , just me popping in with you .

First off , I hope you and your family had an awesome Christmas , happy holidays , all the things I hope you're enjoying a probably much needed step away and maybe a break . Over the past week or so or a couple of weeks , I have a lot of students who have taken two full weeks off .

I've kind of had two very , very light weeks , so I hope you've been able to do the same , so that we hit the new year hot and fresh . Because I will say one thing about web design heading into 2024 . And I mean this in all sincerity and all genuineness . Is that a word Genuineness . It is here , baby .

I am so excited about the landscape for web designers , particularly in 2024 , even with everything that's gone on , with AI and all the technology changes and everything else going on .

There is so much opportunity for web designers , particularly with where things are headed , and mainly because , as I've been saying all year , all roads lead to websites and the really cool thing is you can be just a web designer and just do design development and make a healthy six figure income for as a solopreneur or as a small studio or even as a white

labeler working for other designers and agencies . But , more importantly , you can focus in on what other avenues that you're interested in and around web design , and that's really , really exciting .

Whether it's copywriting , whether it's social media , whether it's graphic design , whether it's video , there's a ton of ancillary services , whether it's SEO , whether it's things directly related to websites or ancillary like marketing and business strategy .

All these other avenues you can apply to your web design business , but what's at the core is web design , or at least what's one of the main services and products that you offer is web design . Because , as we all know , if somebody wants to market their business online with social media and everything else . Well , where are the social media posts going to go ?

Where's the content going to live ? It's on your website . So that's the main reason just to kick this off of why I'm so excited for web design in 2024 and beyond is it's because websites even though there's so many options out there for people to build their online presence their home is the website .

It's not on social media , it's not on a self-hosted platform , it is your website . That is where all traffic leads to . So I wanted to kick this off by saying that's why I'm so excited for you and be able to serve you better and better moving forward here in 2024 .

So I'm going to share with you what is on tap and what's ahead here for 2024 and the way of courses I have in mind , plans for revamping some courses and some other stuff I want to let you in on . First off , though , I want to share our little personal update and , just for well , just to kick this off to say thank you .

I want to thank you personally as a listener of this podcast , to say thank you for your support this year . A lot of you are students of mine and my courses and members of my coaching community . Web designer pro . Maybe you're following me on Facebook or Instagram , where I'm currently active .

I just want to say thank you , because I cannot do what I do in producing what is still largely a free amount of content between my podcasts and my videos and workshops and everything else I'm doing . I can't do this without you , so I want to thank you for listening , for subscribing .

Whether you know it or not , everyone who is on my email list is listening and downloading the show , watching my YouTube videos . You are helping me build this brand and helping my mission of helping web designers all over the world build a life of freedom and lifestyle that they love . So I want to say thank you personally , me and my family . Thank you .

Speaking of my family , I wanted to give you a quick update . So , as you know , as many of you know , we have three littles now . My little guy , drexton , is now one and he is darling and cute , as ever . He is the sweetest little wild man . He is 100% boy . I actually posted recently on my Instagram and Facebook a little Christmas update .

So if you're not yet following me , if you're active on Facebook or Instagram , just go to joshallco Facebook or slash Instagram . You can follow me over there , but I did post a recent Christmas update . Little guy's doing awesome Drexton . My middle daughter , annie , is now four and she is such a big girl , super helpful Sweetheart .

And then I'll give you an update on Bria , my oldest , with where she's at as well . And then my wife , emily , is doing awesome . Our two golden retrievers , daisy Lou and Lily . They are keeping us busy sweeping the floors . For anyone who has two golden retrievers , or even one golden retriever , it's a lot of sweeping , but it's worth it . They're so cute .

They're on the other side of me in my office right now , so I just want to share a little bit of a personal update on that .

Everyone in the family is doing well and again I just want to thank you for supporting me and my business , because you're also supporting me and my family , and we're able to get into some homeschooling now and we're able to spend all day at home with our littles , and I want to thank you for that because I personally couldn't do what I do without you .

Now , I did want to give you a quick update on Bria . If you didn't know , bria , my oldest , had a traumatic experience last year , so the fall of 2022 , in October , and , for those who don't know , you can go .

I don't want to rehash the whole story because you can go back and hear a little bit more about that , but , in short , just the quick summary of what happened and what has led to 2023 being a very , very interesting and challenging year is in the fall of 2022 . On October 10th , we found Bria in the morning . She looked fine on the monitor .

We found her in a state that has haunted me since the day we found her , like this , me and my wife . She was having what we found out was a focal subclinical seizure . She basically just had this like staring look and we could tell something was not right . Again , she looked fine on our monitor .

We check our babies on the monitors and stuff and we went in , picked her up and something was not right . So we called the squad immediately . They rushed her to children's on the morning of October 10th last fall , and what they discovered was that she was having a seizure , which was not a typical seizure .

When I think of seizures , I think of like somebody flailing or shaking . This was not the case , but they gave her some medicine and fortunately , it stopped the seizure . The big problem that we had that we discovered and I could tell when we found her that morning is she had been likely having that seizure potentially through the entire night .

I mean it really completely wiped her out . She slept for almost 48 hours in the hospital . When she started coming to , we realized that her left side was completely paralyzed , that she was not moving at all . She did start to become more herself and her facial muscles started to snap back into kind of the way she normally acted and everything .

But we found out that she had a lot of stiffness and weakness on primarily her left side and her core and her left arm and leg Initially . We're not moving at all . She was completely dependent on her right side . So while that was all going I'm just giving you the quick summary my little man , drexton , was born four days later .

So Brea went into the children's that Monday . Following Friday , drexton was born , which he wasn't too far off from being born , but I think the stress of that , as you can imagine , my wife gave birth a little earlier than we were thinking with Drexton , so he was born .

Luckily everything went great there , it went all fine and then a week later after all this Brea was discharged from the hospital . They knew that she was well taken care of . And , by the way , I'm just laying the , I'm just giving you the summary of all this .

This could be a 10 hour talk , but I just wanted to give you the summary because it lays the foundation of why this year has been really tricky in a lot of ways . But we were able to go home . We got Brea home and started therapies and recovery as she started to get more strength , and then got Drexton home .

And then my wife had a really serious incident with preclampsia , which those who don't know is a very , very serious thing . That can happen . That I found out shortly after birth . Can also happen several days after birth , which in Emily's case , my wife's case that's exactly what happened .

So and I'm talking like they rushed her back , they put her in , they were giving her the works to make sure she was stable and I've never seen her look the way she did . So it was really scary . I had to leave the room . Baby was screaming . We didn't have any breath .

We had one half of a bottle of breast milk to hold him over until she was well enough to where he could breastfeed later that day . So it was on top of everything that had just happened with Brea and birth and everything . That's what happened with all that so wild fall in 2022 , which kind of set the stage for 2023 .

Now I will say a quick update with where Brea is now , if you're curious . She's doing awesome . The girl is such a rock star she is . Honestly , I'm definitely I'm going to write a book on lessons I've learned from Brea , because nothing holds that girl back . We are still in a very challenging season with everything that she went through .

She went through that seizure again , potentially all night . It really . What happened , in short , was we've done several MRIs and we're doing a lot of intensive therapy . Still , she has recovered to the point where she is walking and even running again and she's doing more and more with her left arm , but she still .

She still deals with a lot of stiffness and what we're finding out is , I guess , essentially neuro splasticity . So we're actually starting swimming therapy to try to help her through that and the reality is we don't know if she's going to get back to 100% .

She did suffer a brain injury by going through what she did with that seizure , so we are just continuing to support her as well as possible . She's able to do a lot and she's very functional .

I'd say she's probably back to like 80% of where she was , but she's dealing with stiffness and she has these little sweet leg braces that she has to wear to help keep her foot straight as she's working on regaining her strength and muscle and stuff . So we're dealing with a lot , and we have been , and it's getting better and better .

But 2023 was a week of weekly therapies . Actually , in most cases I was taking her up to one to two appointments or therapies a week for most of the year , throughout this year in 2023 . My wife was super busy with Jackson and my middle daughter , annie , at home .

So , on top of a traumatic experience that we went through together as a family last fall , this year has been challenging on the personal front for all those reasons .

Not only are we dealing with becoming a family with three kids under five , but everything that happened with Brea and then continuing to support her intensely has made for a trying personal challenge for us , and that , of course , affects business , as you can imagine .

I think I'm going to cap it there If you want to find out a little bit more about what happened in that experience , I did do a podcast episode . It's kind of a bonus episode . It's not an official number , but if you go back through the podcast on Apple or on Spotify , you'll find it in between episodes 221 and 222 . There's a couple bonus episodes there .

One that my CEO , eric , did to let everyone know what was going on when that happened , and then I stopped in with a personal update to share a little bit more about that . So I covered the summary here , but that's a little bit more info about what happened with Brea and kind of what happened in the fall last year . If you want to check that out .

The cool thing is , again things are on the upswing and family's doing awesome . Brea is killing it . She's continuing to do more and more . Little guy's awesome . We are doing well on the personal front . So thank you for all those who have reached out and expressed your concerns and thoughts and prayers and support through all that .

Now that transition to the business side of things , which has been interesting this year , because 2023 was a very bipolar year for me , and I'm just giving you this personal update to lay the foundation for what's ahead , because I'm going to share with you what's ahead in 2024 . But just wanted to say one reason .

I want to thank you is because this year was a challenging year , very challenging year . I don't know if I've had a year of so many highs and so many low lows that I've had in this year . It's really tested me as an entrepreneur and I'm still here , still standing . In fact , I did an episode not long ago , episode 290 .

I shared a little bit more about how I survived this tough year in business . So go back to that If you haven't heard that one . It shares a little bit more about the business side of things and why this year was so challenging . Because we've had a very challenging year . But the last half of the year has been awesome and it's been much , much better .

The first half of the year , on top of everything that we were going through , personally , course , sales , in short , just started dropping like crazy . And whether that was a mix of me just not promoting well and not having the time to promote with everything we were going on or to do my usual stuff , I don't know .

I mean , it's not like the business was terribly different . I've kept up with the podcast and my coaching and content as best as I could , but for whatever reason , course , sales really started dropping . I did do a bit of a business pivot when I officially launched Web Designer Pro .

Originally , my business model was courses first and then you could get like one off , lifetime access courses and you could get my coaching community , which was formerly called the Web Design Club , on the back of that if you wanted it . And then I found out and I share this and how I survived a tough year .

But what I found out was the students who I was serving , who were doing the best and getting the best results , had all my courses and were also in my coaching community and it just worked so well . I was like this has to be a package deal .

I really , if I'm going to serve my students to the best of their ability and to get them the results of building a six and multi-six figure Web Design business that suits them and their lifestyle , you need to have all the courses , or at least all the courses , even when you need them .

You need to have support in a community and people to partner up with and support you and fill the gaps that you don't want to do or don't know in your business . And you need coaching .

You need somebody who's been there and who is on the up enough of what's going on and what's working in Web Design , and that's exactly why I put all of those together the big three courses , coaching and community inside of Web Designer Pro , and that's what I officially launched in late February of this year , in 2023 .

Now , that was a pretty good launch , but what I found out was there's a big shift when you go membership first and my courses , by the way , are still available One off at JoshHallco .

You can still currently purchase courses one off if you want , if you just want to get into my world and test the waters , and I still have my student support community that helps students , and I go live there once a month for Q&As .

But what I'm finding is the results are in Web Designer Pro through and through , and so that's what the big focus is on and that's what's going to come into play here as I'm about to share some plans for 2024 .

But because I had a bit of a different business model , as you may or may not know , memberships are typically slow to grow , and that's what I found out .

The cool thing is , we're at a completely different place right now , which I'm happy to share some numbers with you , but at the start it was very difficult and I was building , I was revamping my business course , which is my big course . That's the signature course I offer .

That has everything with building and running your Web Design business , and when I launched that it was a through and through I would consider a failure of a launch , almost a bust of a launch . I was taken back by how low the launch did , being that I was working harder than ever .

I created this new version of the business course , which was by far the best course I've ever created , bar none .

And I was completely taken back in the summer this year when I launched that , and I think a lot of that was because I had launched it first in Web Designer Pro to current members , so there was no additional income there aside from the membership subscriptions but because I think I'd offered both a membership option or a one-off option .

I think it may have been an extra choice for people . As far as why that launch didn't do as well as I thought , and it may have been timing too . I launched that in July , so summertime now , I know , probably not the best time to launch . Maybe late August or September would be the best time to launch that . So , anyway .

That all led to what was a very challenging first half of 2023 for me personally . Our sales were down by nearly 50% this year in the first half . Now the back half after that has gone extremely well so much much better . That has made all things better .

There's still a long way to go and my business is still if I'm gonna be completely honest with you , we're still about a hundred thousand dollars Down from what we had been on average through 21 and 22 , which is a lot , and it's why I've had to cut my team costs back .

It's why I've had to be really thrift and really smart with expenses and budgeting and what we're taking . Personally , I'm still making enough to Provide for my family and to have enough to keep the team going and all of our marketing efforts .

And what I've learned on the personal front is I know the the rule of thumb is that you always want to have your Personal expenses to be about 30% of your income as far as your Morgan and fixed , expensive and stuff like that Expenses , and I think we're pretty close to that .

So even the like the fact that my business has been down about a hundred thousand dollars over the last year , but we're still doing . Okay , we're still getting by tells me that okay we're , we have a long ways to go and that's we can't stay here for long , but at least I know that .

What I've learned as an entrepreneur Is that , getting to this place , you do want to get to the point where , if you do have fluctuations in your business , like I have , that are even fairly drastic , you can still get by with your setup . You may not have the profit it's not where you want to be for long .

You may not have the extra money to go on vacations and to go out to eat as much , and we still have a lot of work we want to do . We're in a new house , so our mortgage had went up . There's a lot of things we want to do that we did not do this past year , but we were able to make ends meet and cover everything .

So that's the good news , and that's why I want to thank you as well , particularly those of you who are in web designer pro , as I continue to serve you and make it better and better . You guys , really the life that this community has taken on is is what has kept me going this year and is literally what kept the lights on for me and my family .

So thank you , first and foremost , to everyone who joined a course this year and members of web designer pro in particular . So , on that note , though , web designer pro is where it's at and what is really , really exciting , because now , as we lead into what's ahead for 2024 , here I just want to share this quick business lesson .

Then I've got a few points I'll share with you on what's ahead . I Learned , and what I learned with this year , with my business model , is that when you go from selling courses or a digital product , you're really living off launches and promotions and sales and Webinars and one-off things .

You'll get stragglers buying courses and stuff , but primarily , it's like it's launch mode . You'll have months that are really good and then really down , but they tend to even out .

With the membership model , it is much more stable , much more secure and much more reliable , but , as I mentioned a little bit ago , it is slow to grow and , quite frankly , with a membership , mine is a community , so I almost I thought about this recently , it's like , even though I was disappointed in some ways at the growth of web designer Pro this year , I

would have liked to have had , you know , hit our cap of 250 by now . In a way , I'm like it's actually really good , because if you grow too fast and you get a hundred people who don't know each other yet , it's really hard to build a community of a hundred people who don't know each other yet .

But when you get waves of five to ten to fifteen people joining in waves , they get acclimated much easier and there's much more people to welcome five people than to welcome a hundred people . So I'm saying this out loud and this is something I wasn't sure about wanted to share .

But For those of you who are considering a membership , or even for your clients , if you're doing training and coaching for them , just know that it's almost easier , if you're building any sort of community , to go slow and enjoy the the slow growth process , because it really does foster a stronger foundation for you and your members .

So that's what I found with web designer Pro is we have a rock solid Foundation between everything we have going on and all the members who are the most like-minded , amazing , helpful , supportive people in the world . Actually , we had a last week . We had our little Christmas call .

Every year we do a Christmas hangout virtually and Alexis , one of our members said Josh , you just have such a way of Attracting such amazing people inside a web designer Pro and it just meant the world to her and so many people , and I can't tell you how Meaningful that is to me . So , alexis , if you're listening , thank you for that . That .

No , I mean , it really means the world to me . Your vibe attracts your tribe and I've really tried to To do my part in fostering a community of people who were not all on the same path and everyone's there's .

There's people who are starting their business there , there's people who are Becoming more established and there's people who are doing several six figures and have established agencies and studios . But we're all together , we're all like-minded as web designers .

Like I mentioned earlier in the beginning , all roads to lead to web design that we do what we want after that and help each other and fill the gaps from there . So it's just amazing . So that leads us to 2024 . So let's look ahead . I've got eight actually nine things real quick that we're gonna bust through here .

Some of these will be really short , but , as I've mentioned , web designer Pro , that's what's on fire right now . All focus number one here in 2024 is on web designer Pro .

Now I'm going to continue to keep my courses , lifetime access , one-off sales if you want to just dive into one course or two courses , but , honestly , if you're gonna do more than a course or two , you might as well join Pro , because you're gonna get access to all the courses , my coaching , the community , so that will be available and I'll keep my student

center going to support current students . But the goal is to get you over to web designer Pro , because that's where the results are happening . That's where the magic is happening . Even even if you're fairly new , I do want to make sure everyone knows it is for newbies too .

If you're , if you're able and if you're very serious to to consider it , because I feel like Sam this year Went full-time in his business last month I shared this in my weekly newsletter . He had an $8,000 plus month . He just went full-time in his business this summer . Let me say that again he went full time in his web design business this summer .

He just started this year , in 2023 . And last month , in October or in November , he had over $8,000 in one month .

That is the kind of results that's going on web designer pro , which is why I'm going to be ferociously shouting this from the mountain tops in the new year because it's working and I'm so pumped that it's working and we've really , as a community , we crafted something amazing here , so I want to get you in on it .

And on that note , well , I'm still holding to our cap of 250 members . Right now we're at 167 . So there's under 100 spots . What is that ? 80 , 83 , is that right ? 83 spots left right now .

So if you've been considering web designer pro and you want access to all my current courses , my upcoming courses , my upcoming resources that I'm about to share with you here , coaching with me directly and the amazing community like we talked about , now is the time to lock in your spot .

You can do that by going to joshallco Slash pro and you can be one of the last 83 members before we hit our cap of 250 . The reason , real quick , why I'm capping it is because I personally coach every member of web designer pro . You get a direct DM line with me for coaching .

Now , this doesn't mean that 250 people are emailing me and DMing me every day .

That's not the way it works where they need coaching program or subscription , but I am having conversations within a week with generally 15 to 20 to 30 people maybe so , and what I've found is a lot of members will need quite a bit of coaching initially and then they're off for a month or two .

We'll do check-ins , but then usually about a few months later is when we reconnect and look at things and then go from there . So that is why we're capping web designer pro at 250 members . There's no way I'll have the personal bandwidth to serve you above that .

I just will not literally will not have the time to be able to do that and have a podcast and my YouTube channel and create content , keep my business going . So that's why that's gonna be capped at 250 and I imagine the price is probably gonna go up once we hit our cap because that will move to a weightless model .

Now I am gonna figure out some sort of either lower tier or offer for once we hit our cap . I am gonna make sure there's something in place for everyone to get my courses and access to a community , if it's not a lower tier and pro .

I'm not sure that's all a little bit fuzzy right now that I'm working through , but for right now I'll keep you posted on that , but for right now all focus is on pro 100% until we hit our cap of 250 , because it's working and I've actually what's kind of cool .

What I've learned with a membership is , now that I'm coaching members , I'm seeing their journeys progress and I've got some of my students from back in like 2018 who I've seen , who are pro members now and I've seen their journey progress .

I think about , like April April Ray , who is doing aproraycom , who is doing absolutely amazing stuff with her business , with email marketing my gosh . I think of Sandy Burns , who was recently on the podcast , who just hit 10 years and who is scaling . I mentioned Sam .

My goodness , I just met up with Steve , one of our pro members , who has an incredible web design business . He's an older gentleman but has an absolutely rock solid business and his old school . I say that because he's kind of old school .

He likes to do things on paper and do things and I wouldn't say like , so you could say there's like a modern way to do it , but all that to say the old school stuff can work , like he has his services and a notebook on paper and it works for him and his clients and that's awesome . It all works .

So all these members , I'm able to really see what's going on and what's working well . I'm actually putting like case studies and success stories together . I could never do that as a course creator that just had courses , unless somebody was giving me a testimonial or randomly checked in with me .

I really had no idea what kind of results were happening up until I've been able to coach people through this coaching community , which is now web designer pro , so I'm so excited about it . All focuses on pro until we hit our cap of 250 . Now , speaking of pro , my next course , scale your way , is dropping exclusively in pro in January .

January 24th is when I'm going to release the first module of scale your way . It's the course that's going to help you well scale your way . Scaling is not something to be feared . And see what we're going to cover in the first model . We're really going to get into the mindset of scaling , because you got to do that first before you scale effectively .

You don't need a big team . You don't need overhead , you don't need even full-time employees . You don't need an office building downtown . You don't need any of that . You can truly scale in a manner that works for you and your web design business , with one other person helping you out , or with 10 .

If you want a small team , you can do whatever works for you , and I'm really really excited about getting this course out to everybody , particularly members in pro who are swamped , which has been the recurring theme this year .

It's no coincidence that the majority of messages I'm getting now are people who are so swamped with work and projects in pro that they're like , hey , josh , what's next ? I don't know what to do . I got like 20 projects . Do you know anyone who can do this ? And I've really been .

What's kind of funny is the outline of this course has already been laid out through coaching messages in pro . I'm like , yeah , I'd start with this . I'd figure out what you're good at do .

A task inventory list , look at your flow and friction , what type of tasks that you should do and don't wanna do , where's your energy at with this , and then a job description . Then here's recommendations on how to hire , what to look for . Here's how to figure out your project , profit margins and everything with a team .

Here's the deals for like how to pay , when to pay all that stuff . It's covered in the new scaling course , which is going to be exclusive to web designer pro initially . I may open it up completely publicly eventually . But version one of the course is exclusive to pro and that's largely because it's gonna require a little bit of coaching with that .

You're probably gonna have some questions at some point about who to hire , where to hire , and there's gonna be a ton of resources there in the course . But one cool thing about your membership and web designer pro is you get access to me and my network .

So because I know hundreds of members who are currently active in pro and who are even past members who I know are doing really well and who might be a good partner fit , and I have a network of podcasts people who have been on the podcasts , other agencies my network is so extensive that I'm literally partnering people up left and right in pro .

It's kind of one thing I need to put that on the sales page because I'm doing that and not really promoting it . But that's all gonna be included with the scaling course . So version one drops January 24th .

We're gonna do one module per week inside of web designer pro and kind of go through it together and then I'll probably open it up publicly once it's complete and maybe like a late Q1 or Q2 , but for now and with scaling , you really need the other resources that I offer .

If you're gonna scale , you need to have my business course , you need to have my maintenance plan course . So don't quote me on that being public , because that may be a pro exclusive course . I'm just sharing this with you because it's all about results .

I've realized more and more with my business if I can't get you the results that I'm promising and putting out there , then it's not worth it . And what's worth it right now is everything that's going on in pro and that's why it's working for so many people .

So , yeah , the scaling course , super excited about it , and it is gonna be exclusive to web designer pro dropping next month . So get on in joshallco Slash pro .

Speaking of pro , one really cool thing that I've learned as I've made this brand name is now that it's a community , and those of you who are listening , who are in pro I'm sure you feel this too it's like it's really taken a life of its own .

I mean , I love being the leader and I love being the one who is the coach and doing the weekly Q and A's and stuff . But you'll find , when you get in there and you do a post , not only will you be welcomed in and all the members are so helpful , but there's people who have expertise and stuff that I don't have expertise in .

There's accessibility people in there . There's copywriting people . There's our Ann , our website attorney my gosh . There's Michelle , our SEO and keyword research guru . There is development people like Christian , my lead developer , who does absolutely amazing stuff my gosh . There's Dan , who is like a security expert . There's Amur , who is my email guru .

There's literally not one piece of a web design business that you would need expertise in that's not in web designer pro and that's been intentionally crafted that way , so it's just taking a life of its own in the best way . And , to that note , one of the biggest requests I got was Pro Swag .

I had so many people this year in 2023 wondering about hey , when are you gonna do like pro t-shirts and mugs and stuff ?

So web designer pro members know this , but Pro Swag is available and , even if you're not in web designer pro right now , if you just wanna see it or if you wanna pick one up , by the way , it is a heck of a sales tip and a lead generator and a conversation starter . Can you imagine being at a coffee shop wearing a t-shirt that says Web Designer Pro .

Think about how many conversations that's gonna start when a business owner walks in and they see you and they're like , hey , you do website design because I have a website sucks . Our web designer disappeared . Just wait to see how many leads that's gonna start for you in conversations . That's gonna start All by wearing a pro swag , which is available now .

You can actually check it out . Go to joshallco excuse me , slash pro swag and that'll zip you over to the store . I have it hidden currently on my site , but I'll make it more publicly available . Right now it's mainly I just opened it up to pro members , but I'm telling you as a podcast listener that you can check it out as well .

Just go to joshallco slash pro swag . We have t-shirts that are premium . They're really good quality . Size up , by the way , if you get something . They are they're all unisex fits , so they run a little on the smaller side of each size . So , like I , I'm kind of a big , medium or a small large and I got a large shirt and it fits great .

So I would size up if you buy anything joshallco slash pro swag t-shirts , hoodies , zip ups , sweatshirts , and then we have stickers and mugs currently , and then I'm gonna continue to do more swag through 2024 here . All right , so that's number three . Number four the newsletters . I hope you've been enjoying my weekly newsletter .

I've been really enjoying writing something every week . I'll probably start to bulk write these up a little bit , but right now I'm currently writing them like week to week and it's kind of fun because it's a bit timely , like this next newsletter that's coming out on Sunday . They always come out on Sunday mornings .

I'm kind of bouncing in between 10 and 11 am depending on what time MailChimp tells me the best time is , so I'll solidify that to make sure they're coming down the exact same time every week moving forward .

But this next newsletter is gonna be sharing my personal plan and vision for goal setting , because I've had some different thoughts on goals and how to set them and how to cast a vision , but also how to do it that's in line with your goals personally and your lifestyle goals . So I'm gonna share a little bit more about that this Sunday through my newsletter .

So if you have not signed up for my newsletter and you're not on my email list yet , go to joshallco . Weekly . My newsletter is called Web Biz Weekly , focusing primarily on the business side of web design and you can get it for free .

Every Sunday I'll send you a little newsletter and it also kind of has a recap of what was posted the week before a look ahead , and I usually share a student win or a favorite tool or something cool that might help you in your business . So joshallco weekly to get that .

And speaking of newsletters , if you're wondering how can I look at the past ones , well , that is now available exclusively to web designer pro members , so it's just another value add and a perk for you .

As a pro member , you are gonna get the entire archive of every one of my weekly newsletters , so you can sign up for my email and get the new newsletters every week and then they will be archived inside of Web Designer Pro and they are now , by the way , if you haven't seen that , I just did that last week .

So Web Designer Pro members , head into pro , go under coaching and you'll see the Web Biz Weekly archive there for you . Those will be really great to be able to link in . And the courses and upcoming resources too . Speaking of upcoming resources , a couple of courses . I'm gonna revamp my SEO course .

My SEO course is due for revamp , not because it's outdated , necessarily . There are some new things . I wanna touch on Google search engine result pages , cert pages . They look a little bit different now and they're gonna look really different once the new Google AI experience comes out .

If you don't know about this , there is I don't know when it's gonna come out officially but it's called generative search experience and it's essentially Google AI , but it really changes the look of a search and results page . Now I think you're gonna be able to enable this if you want to , but it will be optional for quite a while .

But the reason I say that is I do not wanna revamp the SEO course until that's live and until I have a good handle of that .

So once GSE goes live , the generative search experience , once that's live for Google , then I will revamp my SEO course and I have a lot of new things and some things I've learned from members in Pro who are doing SEO on a high level to help you with not only learning SEO as a web designer but selling SEO as a service for you and your business .

So that's gonna be a course I revamped in 2024 . My Divi course , my Divi beginner course , is also gonna be revamped . You may wonder why haven't you revamped it to this point , josh ? Well , it's because Divi 5.0 is coming out and the interface is going to look a little bit different from what I've seen .

So I do not wanna do a revamped course until that's live . That's also one reason I haven't done many Divi tutorials the past six months or so is because I have a bunch of tutorials that I had listed out and was gonna do .

But I was like I do not wanna do a bunch of Divi tutorials and then have the UI look different , like right after I get all these out , even within six months or a year . They're kind of irrelevant if it looks different . So it's one reason I haven't been doing any Divi tutorials yet . On my YouTube channel I've got a couple that I might do .

They're actually stimmed from Webdesigner Pro , some questions from pro members using Divi that I helped out with , and I was like these give me nice little tutorials . I might do a couple here in the new year . But 5.0 , once that comes out and once I have a really good feel for that , then I'm gonna update my Divi course .

So both my SEO course and Divi course will for sure be updated in 2024 . Can't give you exact dates , cause it all depends on when Google AI experience comes out and when 5.0 comes out for Divi .

Now , one thing I've been really thinking about that I'm gonna do for pro members as well are playbooks , and I kind of consider these like mini courses , almost a workshop , almost a boot camp , a challenge .

All these things are kind of the same term , and the reason is is because we're really diving into things like newsletters for web designers , and I have a lot of pro members who are doing really good at doing a newsletter and it's all leading to more work .

In fact , both Leanne and Liz , members of Web Designer Pro , recently shared about how their newsletters that they sent out to clients all led to more work . So I'm like , okay , we need to do a training on this . That's a little more than just like a YouTube video .

There needs to be like some examples , a little more thorough , but it doesn't necessarily need to be like a full course in my mind . So I know the term playbooks is pretty popular in coaching programs , so I think I'll probably roll with that .

Not for sure , but that's coming for all pro members and for all of you who are gonna join us in Pro in the new year here , before we hit our cap , playbooks are gonna be coming out .

The ones I have penciled in right now are for the newsletter , like I mentioned , how to do a monthly web designer newsletter , how to format it , what works , how to make it your own , how to simplify it and make it standard practice . Quarterly calls is something we're gonna be expanding on , which live on top of your website maintenance plan .

If you're doing that , my student , lisa , made over $15,000 this year in 2023 with just doing quarterly calls so current clients these are not new clients Every quarter she opened up calls for her maintenance plan clients strategy sessions , just catch up calls and they led to , for her and her business , over $15,000 of additional work just by offering quarterly calls .

So that's another one we're gonna do a playbook on . Lisa's actually gonna be sharing more about that as a guest expert training in Pro in February . So yet another reason to make sure you jump in , because I'm really excited for Lisa to come in and share what she's learned with her quarterly calls .

Also gonna do some playbooks for like video marketing for web designers and some other stuff that's working well , mainly from like marketing strategies . The playbooks are gonna be mostly marketing type strategies for web designers . Last couple of things here I wanted to share before we head off . I might I really might explore a new social media platform .

Can you believe it ? Linkedin has piqued my interest recently and I think it's because what I've found is some of the new members of Web Designer Pro have been established business owners , like web agency owners and studio owners , and I'm finding that a lot of them are active on LinkedIn , and I don't think there's a . I don't think there's a .

What's the word I'm looking for ? There is no coincidence that agency owners who have a big , good , high profit margin and good client lists are active on LinkedIn , because who's on LinkedIn ? Business owners ? In fact , it's not even a social media platform , as we all know . It's more of a referral business platform .

That's what LinkedIn is and that's what tells me . Hmm , I'm getting some members of Web Designer Pro who are more established and are looking to go to that next level into a six and multi-six figure business , and they're all really active on LinkedIn and they're getting clients through LinkedIn . I think we should explore LinkedIn more friends .

I really think we should . I mean , I'm enjoying Instagram . I'm still a Facebook guy as well , but the proof is in the pudding , as they say . And yes , you can get clients through Instagram , but Instagram is just so saturated it takes it can take a lot .

I've had a lot of students and members and podcast guests on the podcast over the past year or two and a lot of them have gotten a lot of clients through Instagram , but , as we all know , it's just very saturated .

It can take a lot more to cut through the noise , whereas LinkedIn for creators and any sort of creative service like Web Design , you can stand out very quickly . So , yeah , I'm really excited about that and I'm considering jumping into that ship as well . And then Mastery I've talked for the past couple of years about this idea of a mastery type program .

What I'm looking at doing , which would be exclusive to Pro as well , because in order to step up to mastery level , you would have to have all of my courses , and my scaling course Doesn't mean that you'd have to go through all of them to join it , but , like you don't need to graduate from every course in their entirety , but you do need to have them

available , like the lessons , even when needed For this idea of mastery .

Because what I'm going to be doing in mastery , which is going to be what I'm looking at right now is more of a group coaching program which will be to start like a 90-day sprint , so it'll be like three months of a smaller group those who are close to or at a six and multi-six figure range .

We're really going to get into things like avoiding burnout , higher profit margins , advanced marketing tactics , team growth .

For those people who I just mentioned , who are more established and looking for the next level , I've realized that my current setup I don't have much of a way to support them other than personal coaching through Pro and my upcoming scaling course .

But this is going to be a way to really go deeper into these things to help folks who are at a six and multi-six figure range .

So my goal for 2024 is to help those of you who are starting and who are newbies in web design and getting your business going , and then helping those of you who are kind of in the intermediate and more established phase who are you might be anywhere between 25 , 50 , 75k and heading towards six figures , and then to have the higher type options for mastery

here for those who are at maybe a quarter million range or three to four hundred thousand , and we're really diving into some of the things that are going to help get you out of the weeds of the business and help focus on your superpower and do what you want to do and continue to be profitable and to continue to build lifestyle that you love .

And even those of you who want to sell your agency . That's where we're going to get into that kind of thing , because there's a lot that goes in , as I've found , to selling an agency that we could look in as mastery as well .

So that's ahead as well , likely late Q1 , early Q2 for the first wave for mastery , which again will be exclusive to Web Designer Pro . So , as you're finding out , there's a ton of reasons to jump into Web Designer Pro . Join us before we hit our cap of two hundred and fifty members . Joshallco We'll get you over there .

If you have any questions about any of this or anything that I mentioned with pro , you as a listener , I'm giving you permission to send me an email here in the new year . Email josh at joshallco I do manage my email there and just let me know that you listen to the podcast and if you have any questions , I will personally get back with you .

I may even send you like a little loom showing you some things that are going on in pro , just to make sure it's a good fit for you , because I do want it to be a good fit for you and I don't want it to be a burden on you . I mean , members are getting results really fast .

So even the investment of pro , which is only one nine and a month you could get , you could land a project for $10,000 in 30 days if you really really want to do that , with the resources and pro and my coaching . So you can do it if you want to . And if you have any questions , let me know josh at joshallco and I'll be happy to get back with you .

But yeah , that's a look at what's ahead for primarily the first couple quarters of 2024 .

Super excited to continue to serve you and to help you grow your business and build your business , moving forward here , not only through web designer pro , but also , yes , still through the podcast , through my YouTube channel and a lot , a lot of interesting and fun things ahead , guys , and I really am so fired up about 2024 for you guys as a web designer and

for me too . Like I said , this year has been challenging . 2023 is .

You know everything that happened personally really laid the foundation for making it hard for me to be creative and to get my head on straight and be able to manage time , and I was working with a lot less time and had some failed launches in a lot of ways and revenue was down and really had me worried in the half of the year .

I was like good God , what's going on here ? We're going to make some changes , but the growth of web designer pro is what has kept me going and we're actually at a point now where , now that pro is at the level it's at it's , we're really at the line where we're stable . We are stable as a business . Launches , sales promotions for courses .

All those things are kind of icing on the cake at this point for me personally , but that's what tells me like there's so much value in creating any sort of membership or subscription style web design business , which you'll learn about when you join pro , because I'll share with you all the different subscription and recurring income style set ups you can have in

your business as a whole business or even just parts of your business to build that bottom line , because I have never had this much monthly recurring income and it's awesome . It's freaking awesome , and I want to help you do the same . So , all right , friends , see you over on web designer pro . I hope you enjoyed this last episode of 2023 .

Leave me a comment . If you would , you can go to joshallco , slash 305 to leave me a comment . Share your thoughts on this one . Let me know what you're excited about in 2024 . And , of course , any questions , particularly about web designer pro , before you join us , if you're on the fence , email me , josh , josh Hallco , I'll personally get back with you .

All right , friends , I'll see you on the next episode the first episode of 2024 , which is actually going to be with a web designer pro member , jennifer , who will get ready for this one . She has really learned how to attract the type of clients that light her up and make her love her job , and that's what we're going to dive into in this next episode .

She has some gold gems of how to find and attract the right clients for you so that they're not draining you , and that's what's coming up in the next episode . So I'll see you Monday on that episode , but for now , see you in a pro . Any questions , let me know . Oh , I'm rhyming . That means it's time to go . Oh , there we go .

All right , friends , see you on the next one .