339 - Starting and Scaling a Web Design Business Today (my interview from the Agency Growth Podcast)

Like , jake , you're following people , probably out of just curiosity , who you don't agree with or don't fit with , but for people who are new into the game , they probably don't have the wisdom to separate . You know , like what I take in and what I make practice out of .

So I think , especially for new entrepreneurs and agency owners , like just be really careful .

I mean , I I like a lot of what Alex Ramosi says , but if I were a new entrepreneur today , I would be very , very careful in saying like , well , do I want to live that kind of life or do I want to have a family and work 20 hours a week and , um , yeah , have more freedom and work hustle in seasons ? You know , like that's that's .

I think that's all that to say , that's my big passion right now . That message to get out .

Thank goodness I do these intros for the audio podcast just audio , because I'm shirtless right now in my office . My office it's above the garage and it's like afternoon on a hot 93 degree day so it's toasty . So at least this is just audio . So our views don't go down , or would they go up ? All right .

Anywho , this conversation is a recent interview that I was fortunate to be on for the Everbros Agency Growth Podcast .

I actually had one of their co-founders , jake , on recently back in episode 327 about relationship first approach to getting web design clients , and they were kind enough to invite me on their show , which is super casual , really fun , really chill , and we just had an open-ended conversation about essentially what I've learned and kind of fumbling and accidentally starting

and then eventually scaling my web design agency and we're repurposing that for you . We really get into some . I mean it's kind of wide-ranging , I didn't quite know what to call this , but really dive into as an agency owner , how to avoid comparing yourself to other agencies .

One of the most important topics that I've thought about , especially more recently , is to be a student and not a follower For the folks that you're following as far as influencers . We get into strategies and proven layouts over creative custom client design requests .

Something that we both get into well , all of us get into in this conversation , because they are Divi users themselves is how ironic it is that Divi gets bashed for being SEO like a problem with SEO . However , both of us seem to be doing just fine . Hmm , interesting , and do not let the name in their title fool you .

These guys are not the typical bro-printer type , so we have actually a little segment on whether or not bro-pr printer culture is thriving or dying . All of that and so much more in this one . Check their podcast out . If you enjoy both Jake and Cody , it's the ever bros podcastcom . They may or may not be revamping that to the agency growth podcast .

I would probably recommend it , gents . And uh , they got some other good resources for you as well . If you want to see their agency site , to see how they are serving their niche of landscaping web designers , you can check them out at evergrowmarketingcom . All those links will be over at the show notes at joshhallco slash 339 .

All right , I'm gonna go get some water because I'm burning up . Enjoy my conversation with Jake and Jody from the Agency Growth Podcast , formerly known as the Everbros .

Now High Level is going really hard after those agencies and wix is producing a platform that I think is going to crush them that's interesting .

I think that's what's changing a big shift .

So , like before , like website , a website development , to have one professionally produced easily ten thousand dollars , and now you can find things that are like of decent quality . It might not be seo optimized , but you can find things of decent quality for a couple thousand , even less than that .

I mean you can find really good quality websites for 500 bucks for somebody who's like trying to cut their teeth .

I say that I , I like I use the word and I'm like I'm defaulting to how I know Wix to be , which , after we just talked to Kobe over at Wix , but you know it's , it's the DIY solution that's affordable and that's why they have the YouTube videos with the celebrities saying , hey , check out the site . It built on Wix , right , um it .

It is that that part is accessible . But , depending on what you're asking you to do , I think is the big thing . You start getting complicated . You want these different integrations and that sort of stuff and you want to be reliable . That's where you got to start spending money . I think that's my take .

We had a mutual , uh listener who was like hey guys , should you , guys should do a podcast together . So I wanted to bring you on here . But you don't know , cody , you've only heard you've only heard the rumors of Cody .

But um , we're talking about diy solutions and how it's becoming more and more available for everybody out there . But I still feel like there is a gap between a lot of like the newer agencies in the space and even established ones who are realizing that you can't just run successful in a lot of cases . You can't just run successful in a lot of cases .

You can't just run successful social campaigns or Google Ads campaigns . You can't perform SEO without having some kind of stake in the landing page or the website or something , and I explained this in multiple episodes that we've done . Cody and I never wanted to be a web design agency . We never . I don't think neither of us have a creative bone in our body .

So the fact that we had to start building websites and the reason why we did it , is we were just going to offer SEO , google ads , but then the more clients that came to us that like they just didn't have websites .

So I was , um , wondering what we were going to do , like , we can't just like say sorry , we can't work with you because we're a new agency and , um , we had to create , we had to find a website solution . So we ended up going with WordPress , cause that's what Cody and I are both both familiar with in our in our past .

And then , um , I was a , I was an advocate of wb bakery , which is formerly , visually , a visual composer , because that's what I experienced with . But cody threw a curveball out there and he found divvy .

So I liked you , josh , because I've I realized I had read a lot of your stuff without actually knowing who you are , because you , well , you , you're a writer for , for elegant themes , aren't you ?

And once you made that combo , the list was not very big , and Divi ended up being one of them , so that's cool . I didn't know that you had written for them , though .

And this was back in the day when you would post on Facebook and sometimes it would show your location , and so we were in a Divi Facebook group and I was like holy crap , he lives in Columbus .

So I just reached out and asked him to lunch and we grabbed lunch together and then I told him about what I was up to with my agency at the time was just a solo printer agency and I was knocking on the door at that point this was back in 2016 at Six Figures with my agency , and he was like , dude , that's incredible .

And he was like dude , that's incredible . And he was like you actually have a lot of cool things that you do . Would you be interested in writing for the Ugget Themes blog ? And I was like , holy crap , just threw me in deep end , head hurts .

I just was sharing what I knew at that time with using Divi and growing my agency and , just like a lot of people who I've found that create content , you don't think you're that valuable or you don't have too much to share until people start saying like , oh my gosh , I would love to be where you are .

And , yeah , that's what made me realize like , wow , I do have something to share and to teach and a lot I've learned in this time to give back . But you're right , at that time the market was so different .

Divi was maybe the only , or one of a few solutions that kind of married , not getting too technical with WordPress , but a nice pleasing visual builder that was semi-DIY . I wouldn't say it's in the DIY market now , but back then it was Back in 2015 , 16 , and 17 , it certainly was .

I know you've got this on your website , but I'd like to hear it from you personally , because then you start throwing in some minor details and we throw in some questions . But yeah , tell us your story . How are you where you're at right now ?

I got laid off from my job in 2009 when that industry got hit in the economy and I had to kind of decide what I wanted to do , and the day after that I had always had an interest in Photoshop and design , so I just dove in to learning Photoshop and since I was also a metal drummer in a band , it just naturally kind of fell on my lap that I started

doing t-shirt designs and CD artwork . And then we were playing at a festival one time and somebody asked who did our artwork and I said I did . And then the light bulb moment for me was when they asked how much would you charge to do ours ?

And I was like , wow , I could make money doing something I actually freaking love to do and it was like a big time change in my life . So , yeah , I started designing t-shirts for a band and graphic design and then I was also helping out with a local church at the time and they were like hey , would you like to take our website over ?

No one knows how to do our website . It was on Dreamweaver at that time , so early days of WordPress , dreamweaver , and that's what got me kickstarted into web design . And then web design took over for me and then I started just getting clients on the side and grew a freelance business and that's how it all got started for me .

But once I made I think it was about $30,000 on the side , I was taking night school classes to learn Illustrator and InDesign and graphic design programs and some CSS and HTML and Dreamweaver .

I was getting clients on the side just by doing freelance work and then I made like 30 grand and I was like , wow , if I could do that on the side , what could I do ? I went full time into this and really made it a business , because my whole goal at that time was just to get a job as a web and graphic designer .

But yeah , the entrepreneurial bug just hit me and I realized I might as well go for this . I didn't have a family at the time , low expenses , so I became a solopreneur effectively and started building my business and then eventually started subcontracting , took it to six figures .

When I got connected with Elegant Themes I had just hit the six-figure mark and that's when I really started growing and scaling my agency . And at the time of selling my agency and at the time of scaling it . I only had a handful of subcontractors , so I was never like a big agency owner . I never even liked the term agency .

I was more of just a shop , a web studio , just me as front and center , the lead guy , with a few subcontractors , with some really lean and mean systems around WordPress and Divi and our processes , and then I ended up selling it .

Actually , at that time I started doing courses and then one of my students who just took off with his business , he ended up taking over my business so I actually sold it to him .

So it was about a period of a decade from going from freelancer to serious solopreneur , to web business owner and then to what I've dubbed nowadays of nowadays as a webpreneur , web design entrepreneur .

I would rather knock out $5,000 to $10,000 projects for small businesses and then get them on hosting and maintenance and growth plans and grow it from there . So the cool thing is , too , being in Columbus , ohio . This area of the states is one of the top real estate markets and it's just booming here .

So I kind of came in at a good time with being a web designer here . I mean , there were just so many businesses I was able to connect with through networking groups and events . I know , jake we talked about that on your episode how valuable it is to go to conferences and in-person meetups .

So it's kind of how I built my network and , yeah , I just served anyone and everyone who was a small to medium-sized established business .

So like what were some of the things initially that , like that , were foundational for you to to crank out these websites ?

But the reality was , as long as you stick with your tool stack and you just stop having the shiny nickel syndrome where you're just going all over the place , you can actually create some incredible processes . For me , it was just WordPress , divi and my project management processes that really kind of were the core of my business and how I streamlined stuff .

Yeah , projects would differ in scope and shape and size and certain tools , but I never built outside of WordPress or Divi . That was my hard and fast rule . That was the only way I stayed profitable and was able to get sites out pretty quickly and to build a team .

It was a lot easier to build a team with just some subcontractors because they only had a few requirements . You got to know WordPress . You got to know Divi . Here's some other tools we use . Yeah , we can add in new plugins if and when needed , but we do not use Elementor or other themes or tools . These are . This is the tool stack .

So that's essentially how I did . It was just knowing my tool stack really really well .

But I learned I read a book recently called Free Time by Jenny Blake . It's something I recommend and a course that I have about scaling , and there's a quote in there that really resonated with what I went through , which is that the only reward for doing everything in your business is burnout .

And I did not burn out myself , but I got close at times because I was just doing absolutely everything . So I definitely realized at some point I needed to get some help . I started getting help on the technical side of things just because I'm a pretty good designer . I'm a pretty good marketer , pretty good with copy and messaging .

The coding side of things was not my strong suit , and I'm pretty darn good with CSS . Pretty good with copy and messaging . The coding side of things was not my strong suit . I'm pretty darn good with CSS , but that's about it . I don't know anything about PHP or really anything apart from that .

So I started getting help in that area from Facebook groups that I was a part of and I had actually started a Divi Facebook group , and that's how I started getting help on the technical side of things . And then , shortly before my first daughter was born , I had met who eventually became my lead designer . He just sent me a message .

He sent me this email saying he was new but he loved the industry and was really into design and really liked working with Divi and WordPress and he'd love a shot at kind of a mentor role .

So I started giving him some kind of small projects , just some low risk , low pressure projects , and he killed it and then , like in no time , he was a better designer than I was . So I brought him on essentially as the lead designer and then it just kind of expanded from there .

I just realized what I wanted to focus on and I got to the point where once work was being done while I was sleeping and projects were getting done faster , I'm like , well , I'm never , ever going back , I'm never not hiring and subcontracting when you can just get stuff out the door and you can free time up .

I don't know if you guys have experienced this , but when you hire out a little bit . There is something about the mental bandwidth and the load on your shoulders that just releases a little bit when it's not all on you . I'm probably preaching to the choir with you guys .

You know , being co-founders and running this together Like when it's not all on your shoulders , it's a good feeling . I mean , there's , of course , complexities with hiring and partnerships , but yeah , it wasn't something I intentionally set out to do . I just kind of dabbled into it and then I was like , okay , I'm never going back that out to do .

It was a spring , so we were struggling with the amount of work that we had and we've got a team of five , including myself and cody , so really three other people and they're all , um , we call internal . But one is a .

One is technically a contractor because he is in tanzania , but the rule that we have with our agency is we pay for the , for the position and not for the location . So if you're in tanzania , you make the evergrow wages which are , which is a lot of money in tanzania . So , um , same thing with like . We had , like , colombian contractors .

We have one from venezuela who actually moved to atlanta and now she's w2 . So , um , having them on our team and was huge help for me because a lot of that stuff got offloaded from an SEO perspective , because that's more so , my role was designing the websites and doing a lot of the actual SEO on the sites .

And then Cody's role was doing the paid media and the technical side of setting up websites , and then also the administrative stuff like billing and invoicing . And right now , one of those things , one of those team members that we have , we literally hired her just just to do documentation and processes . That was it .

She even had like a degree in technical documentation , which I don't even think was a thing like . But she's like no , no , like she's the kind of person that wants to write like ge , like user guide manuals .

Oh , I'm like , I'm like that that's so I know and so I was just like that's wild and so like the kind of people we need too right we would never dream of wanting to do that are the great , like the best people to hire or partner up with it's crazy because we wrote that job description and then we put it out to one of our resources , our subcontractor

handling agency , and they're like yeah , yeah , we got someone in mind and so they sent her over and we had a homework thing where it was like this is a video of Cody doing something . I need you to document it Also . Here's our documentation . I need you to document it also . Here's our documented documentation outline on how to document something .

And then she's she like sent it within like an hour and it was like 2 am and , um , we , we got him . Like this is like flawless . How did I don't know ? This is wild . So , um , the fact that someone like that exists is is wild and I think we hit the lottery with that .

But , um , we started having her do more administrative stuff , like billing and invoicing , and I think the load that came off of cody's shoulders is just like , literally , an elephant came off .

So we just brought it up and we said , hey , um , look , we need help with this , um , and if you're open to it , cool , that'd be great . If not , we're going to have to go look for somebody . And she said she was open to it . She's top tier , she's great .

We were just talking about it yesterday , about when she's very good at the step-by-step right , like when it's bulleted and numbered and stuff .

And then I told her , her I'm like there are also parts of of writing your procedures and stuff where it deviates from that , and now you have to like explain something , um , and when you're in that , like I think these are things that I just need to sit with you on to work through , because I I can't expect you to know this sort of stuff .

And she said like , yeah , it's , it's that part's less fun because it's extremely difficult . You can imagine if I can't imagine doing it for multiple tech stacks . That would be a nightmare .

Um , but just to explain a concept to just so people understand what the goal is before you start reading the bulleted steps um , is something that we've been working through lately and yeah , no , I did want to ask that originally . Just because people choose to approach it different ways , right ? Some people .

For us , we put it out there and we don't really care where people are at . It is what it is and we find the talent where it is . Some people will do it , for , I mean , you can outsource contracting specifically for and with the goal of increasing profitability or something , right , and some people will do that sometimes .

It's just I don't want to handle the logistics of having them be internal on the team and taking care of the benefits and um , payroll and everything that comes with that . Again , that's more administrative headaches , right , so it's almost like you want to outsource that . Somebody does that to take care of the people that um .

So , yeah , I was just really just wondering what the motivations were and if it was just something that fell into your lap and uh , um , but I can definitely relate to it . It feels good . It feels good when you can get those things off your plate and have somebody help . And it feels amazing , especially when it's the right person .

I literally could not have done that if I had not scaled my agency just with a few subcontractors to help get the projects out . I essentially looked at my role chart , my org chart which I would encourage everybody to do , even if you're a solopreneur like literally list out the main roles in your business and you'll realize , oh , this is why I'm fried .

I'm doing like 20 jobs as one person . And then I realized these are things I'm not good at that I want to get help with . I was still like creative director and I enjoyed doing the initial design , but things like building out the rest of the pages and all that I hired out and then , yeah , that's what freed me to do what I do now .

There's no way I would be here if I was still a proud solopreneur who did absolutely everything and , as we all know , the real big reason you want to look into doing . That is , what if something happens Like what if ? What if ? You're ? You can't work ? For a couple months when I just started scaling I think I've got this on my story page .

But when I just started scaling , my first daughter was born and we spent over two months in the NICU the newborn intensive care unit and I was understandably fried Like I . Just I had creativity zapped . Stress was so high with what we were going through with her .

We were literally living at the children's hospital , going back and forth to our home , I was working at a Panera across the street . Thank God , I had a couple subcontractors at that time who helped me keep projects going , and also , thank goodness , I had my maintenance and hosting plan for recurring income which covered our living expenses at that time .

Those two things combined are what got us through a really tough season where , if it was all on me , I didn't have recurring income and I didn't have any help on the side . That would have been a really , really , really challenging few months . So yeah for all those reasons and more , I'm a fan of scaling .

So the easiest thing for us to hire in is like execution , like marketing execution , website development , because when we have a new client on board , well , we , we immediately have website work and then we immediately have marketing work after that , so we can offload that and push that aside .

But then it's like one thing like I really want to do is we we , when I say we , mostly Cody created our website templates that we basically pump and dump and like change the content , change the images , change the branding , seo and everything but the structure . But structurally they're all relatively the same and , um , I want we .

We only have like two and both of those almost look identical , aside from like some discrepancies , uh , between like a project-based company and like more like a reoccurring treatment , because we're landscaping and lawn care . So more like landscaping versus like lawn care . There's's two different types of companies , but both that we serve .

What I want to do is hire someone who's like a more of like a creative person with Divi and then have them create more templates , but under our kind of SEO and lean supervision , because we also have really strict plugin requirements where , like all of our sites only have three plugins .

Some might have more based on form capabilities that they need , but overall , we had to look into SMTP recently and we're like , well , can we do this within cPanel ? And ultimately , yes , but it still requires a plugin . There's no way around it . So , um , that was like our biggest struggle .

It was like god , we have to add another plugin and like I don't know if you've been seeing it in like search engine journal and land lately where it's like wordpress plugins have been like crazy under attack lately , um , and that's just not something we want to deal with , because we're not a dev agency and we don't want to deal with things that are breaking

or conflicting with each other . So , um , that's kind of our biggest hurdle right now . Um , but I think , um , I was detracting for a second .

So I think the whole purpose of this episode is that we do have a lot of listeners who want to get into the marketing aspect and want to do like web development , and a lot of them , the first thing that they'll think about is just outsourcing the web development .

But then it's like when you do that , you don't really have control of the hosting because someone else is building it .

And if you do have control over the hosting , because someone else is building it , and if you do have a control over the hosting , then you just have to be aware that you have to find a solution that works for you , whether it's a shared reseller on , like you know , wp engine or like another WordPress hoster , or maybe you use something like Wix or high level

or whatever , but you have somebody else build the website . Um , the other option is just taking it in-house and controlling it from where you're at . And I think when I usually recommend that because Cody and I are control freaks everything that we do we do in-house . We don't subcontract anything except for legal and accounting .

And I think it's just because we are like SEO and process freaks , so like we don't want some contractors changing the process . If we do , if we do use a subcontractor , we want them to follow our process , and in that case they're pretty . They need some kind of website solution and they're not a designer , wordpress or Wix or whatever .

How confident are you when somebody who doesn't have a single design bone in their body , are you in someone's ability to still go to one of these platforms and build a decent website and then be able to scale that and create their own web design agency , even though they don't really have experience in it ? That was a loaded question .

So I think all those aspects you talked about with SEO , the technical side of things , email deliverability , so many other aspects are included in building a website and then a web presence .

That is a bit different than designing a site that you could do with ai , because ai will design a site and , yes , it'll technically build like a super foundational framework , but it's not building a successful online presence , and I think that's the big hurdle for more like digital marketing agencies .

What's interesting about this is you guys probably see a lot more of that end of the market . I see much more of the web design side of things . So I'm mainly helping people who do websites first and then we'll do some marketing , depending on what area they have interest in or any sort of experience in .

You guys are probably seeing much more of the market where you're doing more PPC , seo , ads , marketing and then , like you rightly said earlier , it's like well , we can't really do that successfully if the website sucks or if they don't have a website . So we got to figure out the website part .

I think for digital marketers , for anyone doing any sort of marketing with websites , I would also recommend doing what you can to take it in-house , mainly because even if you have a trusted referral web design partner , that's great , but what happens if they stop , or what happens if they disappear or they move on ?

You may be in okay hands if you transfer to somebody else , but this is a vulnerable place to be in and I'm sure you guys know this . Companies will turn on and off and scale up and down their marketing .

But what I've found and one reason I love being on the web design side of things is if you can be the web person for a company or a dozen or two dozen companies , you can have a solid foundation for years and years and years to come just by being kind of the webmaster for them .

So they can turn on and off SEO and PPC and anything they want , but the website . We don't turn the website on and off . That stays there , and so if you can be the webmaster , there's kind of a solid base there that you could build off of .

And or they might shut it off for a year because they can't grow faster than they're currently growing , faster than they're currently growing .

And then , but just by being their website guys and constantly being in their ear and having our name and their footer um and that bottom bar , they come back and it's like , well , if we weren't the web master , if we didn't own the website or put our branding on it or , you know , weren't emailing them any kind of reports or anything like that , um , would

they have come back to us for the actual marketing uh portion of it and just kind of reports or anything like that ? Um , would they have come back to us for the actual marketing uh portion of it , just kind of having that control uh as well .

But even on the marketing side , like if they don't pay their marketing bill , which if you for us , if you bundle hosting in it , like their website being shut down , is not threatened , so like I don't like using it as a vice , but it kind of is as well . It's's another point to making sure that agencies get paid .

So what if we came up with a content plan to build content over the next few months , did case studies , did reviews , got really far into customer reviews and results for you guys like customer reviews and results for you guys , and then springtime we'll ramp up the marketing .

All this hard work that we've done over the last few months will be even more powerful on top of the marketing . So I think you're totally right , Jake , to have the foundation of web design . Then you could kind of proactively and preemptively work on the marketing side of things , whether it's more content , on-site related stuff , versus growth and marketing services .

So so if I were , you know , in that kind of business model that's what I would try to do is like , how could I proactively either keep them on the same recurring revenue stream or , if it's if it's lower , just change the work , getting ready to ramp up , you know , when we know things are going to , uh , be hot in the spring .

But for people who have no design experience and , let's say , wanted to tackle WordPress and then they got the lifetime membership of Divi , um , where would you , what would be your advice to creating , um , not just a website for clients , but a scalable design that they can feel confident in . That you know , they're not just like .

I think the biggest thing for me is , sorry , you'll see my add kick in and I'll start just being like parenthetical sentences . Um , but like I , when we , when we first started building websites , I had huge imposter syndrome . I'm just like building this , and the more and more you stare at your own design , the uglier and uglier it gets .

So like I don't know . I don't know where to take the question , but like how , and you can even feel free to like pitch yourself here too . But like what is ? What's your advice for someone just getting started in web design or needs to design a website and where should they go and what are the resources they should look at ?

Whether it's my course or YouTube tutorials , something that you go start to finish build a website even if it doesn't look great yet , the process and the understanding of learning the tool and knowing how to start to finish build a website is like I can't tell you how important that is for folks who are brand spanking new early on .

After that , then , the focus should be design . And still to this day , what I recommend is just look at a design you like and rip it off completely , like , literally , take a screenshot or like literally , like side by side .

Design a site , even if it's just to play around with , but design a site that looks exactly like that Same font choices , same colors , same typography , same layout . You will be shocked and I'm speaking to everyone who's starting out you will be shocked at how much you learn when you rip somebody's design off .

Now I'm not saying publish that and rip somebody's design off completely , but you take that , you change colors , you put your own spin on it and the next thing you know , just like with your guys' templates , one site that's based off a template can look very different pretty quickly , with different colors , typography , headings , hierarchy , different sections , etc .

So that's really where I would start , and then I would tackle messaging and copy , and then SEO and then optimization , stuff like that . I have a suite of courses in full transparency that guide folks through the entire process with different courses .

And then you get into the business side of things , because I do see people rush into starting their business thinking they could just do an AI site or a template site .

But then you realize , well , if your websites are shit , I wouldn't try to build a six-figure business yet , and the reality is it doesn't take that long to make a decent site that's built pretty well , that has a strong foundation , and then you can build from there .

So that's the path that my students follow through my courses and that I recommend for everybody is . You got to know the builder . Start to finish , feel good about building a site . Everybody is . You got to know the builder .

Start to finish , feel good about building a site design , then copy messaging seo optimization , speed , accessibility , privacy , everything else can .

You're like great , great , I got this beautiful website , it's working , my client loves it , but then functionality-wise , you're going to run into some challenges . Cody and I we were talking to Wix about how functionality emails aren't delivering for the forms , so now we have to look into that and look into SMTP and SPF records and DKIM records .

What were some of the challenges that you had from a functionality perspective after the design ?

I realized every client virtually I talked to inevitably said I want to be on the first page of Google . So I realized , well , shoot , now I really got to look into SEO and how to get good SEO principles here on the websites as well . So those are the big ones .

I mean , that was really as far as like functionality goes , unless it was something that was a separate type of thing If somebody wanted a calendar feature or eCommerce or more advanced functionality for the business . The core aspects were mainly email deliverability . Security was a bigger issue , honestly , 10 years ago than it is now .

As long as you have good hosting Like I created a maintenance and security plan specifically highlighting security , like we were doing advanced security . Luckily , if you have really good hosting now , whether it's SiteGround or WP Engine , most of them are pretty good security measures , as long as you're doing things right and keeping plugins updated .

But that was a big one at the time for me was having sites get hacked . So yeah , email deliverability , SEO security at that time , which still comes into play today with WordPress , and then ongoing like update and care for the plugins and the tools those were kind of the big things that made the job not fun after getting a nice design built and launched .

And then they just started mowing and they're right there and I'm like come on .

I had even when I became a blog author for Elegant Themes and I got into the Divi community . I started the Facebook group . I started my YouTube channel . I had no idea where it was going to go . It was actually extremely costly on the books at that time because I was creating content . I was spending a lot of time .

I did get paid for my Elegant Themes blog , but it was like $200 , $300 a blog . It wasn't that much , so not enough to live off of . But I didn't quite know what I was going to do with that . Originally I thought I might build child themes no-transcript . That's a good option for everyone who wants a proven template to base your business off of .

But yeah , I was going to do child themes . And then more and more questions after I started doing my YouTube tutorials were about courses . They were like do you have a Divi course ? Do you have a Divi course and then when I started talking about business stuff , they were like do you have a business course ? How do you get clients ?

Where do you price , how do you build recurring income ? And then I was like maybe I should do a course . I never in my wildest dreams thought I would do a course . I have always enjoyed teaching , but it's not something I had planned on at all . So I was like , what the heck , I'll go for it .

When I started , about a year after I started my personal brand with joshhallco and my YouTube channel , I was like I'll build a course and initially I was going to do a Divi course .

But then I was just so dang passionate about maintenance plans and hosting plans and recurring income because it is literally one of the things that got me and my family through that time in the NICU with my daughter that I was like I'm just going to do a course about that and we'll see where that goes .

So I did a course that literally unpacks my maintenance plan from start to finish how I build it , the tools I use , how I sell it , how to sell it to new clients versus previous clients , the whole process and I launched that in August of 18 of 2018 . And I think I had 80 some students come the first wave and I made like almost $10,000 .

And I was like , all right , let's keep on doing this because I loved it . And then the really cool thing happened , which is I started getting results in student testimonials and people saying , holy crap , dude , I have recurring income .

Eric , who now runs my agency in Transit Studios , was one in the first wave of students and what got us connected is he said that the money he made with his maintenance plan with recurring income is what helped his family adopt two kids .

They were stuck in adoption and needed financially to get ahead and they built recurring income that allowed them to adopt two children . And that was still to this day . I get chills thinking about that . That's how we got connected and so close and eventually I saw him blow his agency up and then I was like okay , you're the guy to take over mine .

So that's kind of how it all started . I just tried it out based off of a lot of people requesting it . I loved it , I loved the entire process , I love teaching , I love creating it , I love seeing the results .

And then it was like , head down , I did have a vision for a suite of courses outlining the entire process we just covered , from learning Divi process of web design , design aspects , basics of SEO , dns and cPanel and I created a suite of courses over the next six months and that became my initial suite of web design courses and that's what set me in a whole

different career path .

It's like it's like um course creators crypto .

Course creators crypto and it's you know , it's like it's it's constantly doing this wave and it's one of the reasons we started this , like our podcast , and it was like I was just so sick of kind of like the fake youtube gurus providing just awful advice and um , advice that sounds good but then , like , when you're an actual agency owner , you start to realize ,

like that that doesn't work , that doesn't apply , you can't scale that um , you can't charge five thousand dollars a month for organic social posting . There's no roi in that and any doctor is smart enough to know that that's a waste of money .

Um and uh , but it's , it's been a weird experience for us because we have listeners that are , uh , I don't want to say begging , but like , constantly asking for us to release courses and do courses on kind of like the , the reoccurring agency agency model , the productized service model that we have , um and more of the business aspect and not necessarily like I

don't want to do an seo course , I want to do an seo course from an agency's perspective on um , on like how to scale that , or like , when you like , setting up and uh , google ads , mcc , managing multiple google ads accounts , uh , and , and those are the types of courses doing things from an agency's perspective top down , because even when , like cody says this

all the time , like we set up an mcc for google ads . But could could cody walk through right now how to do that ? No , we'd have to . We'd have to like relearn it because it's been so . We had to do that . No , we'd have to . We'd have to like relearn it Cause it's been so . We had to do it one time .

Jake , I think we're all immune to the bropreneur kind of Lamborghini lifestyle stuff now . I think everyone's well past that . I mean , maybe there are a few people who want that and achieved it .

So I didn't even have any aversion to it because I just , quite honestly , didn't really know about it . Like I've been in a nice little ignorant bubble . That has actually safeguarded me from too much imposter syndrome .

And that because I was so in ingrained , like ingrained in specifically WordPress and Divi to where I didn't even think about other builders , Like I didn't think about Wix people .

I didn't think about Squarespace people or Webflow I don't even think it was out at that time or maybe it was in its infancy Like I just helped WordPress people using Divi who wanted to build maintenance plans .

So it was like hyper niche and , to your guys's point , if you ever do that , the more niche you can get , like SEO and marketing plans for landscaping agencies , like uh , I don't know what the competition would be there , but the more niche you get with a course in particular , especially nowadays , the better .

So I was like , yeah , I was pretty safeguarded from that and it and it did help that I already had an audience with with my YouTube channel and with with , uh , my elegant themes blogging . So I was kind of known as somebody who was trustworthy and for over a year I gave out all my information for free .

So , uh , in a weird way I actually I recommend doing that Like just share everything you know for free and then , once you have some sort of sizable audience , then you could monetize it as douchey as that sounds .

And so , like , we're still talking with , like first preliminary sponsors , but they we can't , we refuse to let anybody sponsor the podcast who we , we can't personally vouch for , cause it's like we've done this work of building our audience to cause we're like we're like the no bullshitters , like the agency thatters , like the the agency that doesn't do that , and

the minute we have some white label agency guru pay us to be on the podcast , like the minute our credibility goes out the window that's the hard thing , too , though , is everybody everybody and their mom is like yeah , we're the no bullshitters .

I think it's cool what you said , too and I think more people should listen to that about not living in that world , not living in the world of influencers and and bropreneurs and that sort of thing . The problem nowadays isn't a lack of information there's plenty of it out there .

It's that you have too much , and it's pulling you in different places , and more likely , you'd be better off just really zoning in on a few key places and listening to what's happening there .

And I just I knew and I could tell them , like , these aren't real , this isn't real business , right ? This isn't how business is actually conducted . These are gypsies and grifters , right ? I mean it's , it's , it's the word . We're fighting for a dollar because we'd never want to crack down hard enough and actually do the hard work .

We just keep continually going one after the other for the easy dollar . And through doing that , you're always doing more work than if you would just stop and crack down and do the hard work the first time .

And if you do that still over the relative short term , right , I'm not talking months , you're still measuring in years , maybe five years , maybe even 10 years , but we're not talking 40 years , we're not talking about a full lifetime of your career . You can accomplish crazy things as long as you're willing to do that , and then you do still win .

So I think that's what people need to get to mentally is recognizing that and realizing that and do real business . That's okay , it's scary , but you can do it , and if you do that you'll still come out ahead .

Things are changing every year , every month . So I think when it comes to attracting the right audience for for courses and creator and programs and stuff like that , the sweet spot that I've landed on and this is more recently , I've really solidified my viewpoint on this is that I do not like helping people getting into web design as much .

I will help early stagers , for sure , but you'll notice if you see any of my marketing or any of my posts , I'm never encouraging people to leave their nine to five that , like you , have so much work to do mentally before you even start making money . I do think a lot of .

I think everyone can make money with a side hobby , with anything , but making a living and being a business owner and entrepreneur is a whole other ballgame . So where my stuff ? What I've tended to really push out now is that I'm helping web designers who are already started in their business , even if they're still working full-time .

They're side hustlers but I help them make an actual profitable six-figure business , but not seven-figure . I don't teach seven-figure people , that's a whole different business model . I really love the sweet spot of like 100,000 to 000 to 500 000 . That is like my sweet spot of web design student .

And then it's like I just there's another , uh , there's a I . I get these ads because I'm in this space . I get these like ads on facebook all the time . But there's like there's one guy that I follow and I follow all these guys that I think are absolute jokes . Um , just because I like to just be in the space . It's .

It's like a weird sick , I don't know like hobby of mine , but like he is pitching um , how to , how to grow a 500 K per month agency from nothing and like a year . I'm like dude , you know yeah , you know like . I just you feel bad for people who buy into that .

He's like all about local SEO and he just what's funny is like he got into Web Designer Pro brand spanking new , and I did tell that he was pretty entrepreneurial and I thought he had a good head on his shoulders and I could tell he had a good work ethic . But I'm , like you know , cautiously optimistic . We'll see if he sticks with it .

A year later he's closing and he's on the track to do six figures . Now that's rare . That is not all of the students . He also just he's in a place in life where he didn't have a mortgage or family . He had a little more wiggle room .

He was able to have six months of barely anything and in the back half of six months he kind of went like this up and to the right . That's how it goes , though , like most people , I think the whole like 500 K months in a year . It's like there's just so many dang variables .

So I really I mean as much as I do help people get into web design and and build it . Um , my personal , my community , actually helps all three stages of people starting , getting to six figures and going to multi six figures but what I'm trying to do better at is meet them where they are . And then it's funny .

I love that we're talking about this because I almost named my podcast web design business made easy . I love that we're talking about this because I almost named my podcast Web Design Business Made Easy . I actually was creating the graphics . I was like you know what ? I felt ? Icky , I felt like the bro-preneur , because I'm like it's not , it's not easy .

It's not easy . I don't want to say web design business will kick your ass , but I want to be realistic , guys , it's not easy . If you're expecting this to be easy , I don't know . You know I like , I want to be realistic , like guys , it's not easy . If you're expecting this to be easy , I don't know . Go to college or follow a proven path , not easy .

I told Cody I didn't want this to be the podcast name , because there was a podcast a while back that I listened to and I was like marketing bros or something like that and it was just the douchiest . These guys are all roided out , wearing like chains and super tight T-shirts with like their Jersey Shore spiky hair and like that's just what they sounded like .

I'm like that's what we're going to be known as and we're also going to alienate our female demographic . And like Cody was like no , it's fine . So we did it .

And then I appended , I was like , well , I have a better idea , why don't we do Everbros colon Agency Growth Podcast ? And so we changed to that . And then I'm like , as soon as we rank for Agency Growth Podcast as number one , everbros comes off .

That's just where the Agency Growth Podcast and bros is just like the moniker , uh , but not part of the brand name . Um , we can actually do that now .

Okay , well , I don't want people to get confused now on , like you know , just because we both rank , which one is it ?

Once I remember hearing it , they were hiring for a web dev right . They needed a new developer , and something about the topic had come up of proactive hiring for , you know , racial inclusion and or gender inclusion . Look , one out of 10 , or , in Iowa , one out of 10 applicants that we get is not a white dude and that's it .

So , like we could try , and we are trying to be inclusive and we just don't receive that many applicants , and we talked about that too . Then about our listener demographic and what is the demographic of agency owners right ? How many are women versus how many could be listeners that are women , right ?

Um , there could be just that this is the the existing demographic of agency ownership period right , where it has a stronger male demographic and whether or not . That's a good or bad thing can be debated , right , but just that .

Maybe that's what the actual makeup is of the audience and not because people are seeing bro , oh yeah , okay , bro , I'm a bro , I'll listen . You know what I mean .

I just don't think they they resonate with that as much , and it may be because traditionally agency owners have been douchey bro , white guys , so president , company excluded . That's what's so fascinating . Web Designer Pro .

My community has actually been a really interesting psycho-demographic experiment Because we actually have and there's no terminology I've ever put out about diversity and inclusion or anything , but we are . It's incredible . We have people of all different race and color and gender I think we're nearly 50-50 , guys and girls and pro , which is incredible .

But one thing that I've learned and one thing that I've proactively done with that is particularly for my podcast . I try to stagger my podcast episodes .

If you guys look at my podcast , it is guy girl , guy , girl , guy , girl , guy , girl for interviews and I think that simple process has really helped out and I do try to get people with different backgrounds and , as much as I can , showcase testimonials of people who are not your typical web design agency owner . So it is interesting .

It's like you don't need to say owner , so it is interesting . It's like you don't need to say that nowadays , but just do it Like talk to people who are a different color or who have a different background or have more girls on the podcast .

If you reach out to women who are in marketing , especially in in any sort of like ads or SEO or brand and strategy like that does help with help with the demographic type of split . So it has been really interesting . Where Pro is at right now is like it is funny .

I've had new members be like this is the most diverse web design community I've ever been in and they weren't expecting that . They were a little nervous . I'm like I probably should . I don't even want to say it now because I don't want to ruin it . It's going so well but yeah it's true , it's .

I think it's just kind of going back to like , don't say it , just do it , Like just , yeah , just . And that goes for clientele too . If somebody is wanting different types of clients or wanting to grow a certain audience , like just reach out to those people , get them on your show and just do it .

Or or if you do have a a one success student , like a success story , and you can do a case study out of that , who is somebody a little bit different than you would expect to be in that industry , Ride that wave , really promote their story out there . So that's one thing I'm trying to do better at over the rest of 2024 as well .

But you know , I don't , maybe maybe it's because we haven't done a lot of intentional outreach to get certain people on podcasts . It's mostly been what comes in and we just haven't seen as much of that . But there are definitely . I guess the other thing too is just locally right .

I'm not involved locally in this industry Usually , honestly , I don't like a lot of local people . That .

So when I do find um , specifically women entrepreneurs , where I'm like , man , they're crushing it , they're're there's , I want to like talk to them , and they have nothing to do with our industry , though , like this is not , it's not tech , it's not dev , it's just man , they're doing a really cool thing .

But , um , I , we jay on our team , he listens to our podcast too and he's like he was actually . He was like do you guys not have women on the podcast ? And like it was kind of like the soul crushing thing that he said and I was like , no , like that's , that's not what we intend .

And then , um , we had , uh , actually the legal team from our contractor , uh hiring agency , on top . Uh , they were both women , so we had them on the podcast .

But the challenge with having guests on our podcast and we've said this in our own openings on our episodes is that the majority of people who reach out to us are those kind of like um I , they're not necessarily course , they are their course creators and white labelers , but their course creators because they took an online course to become a course creator and

and it's very easy to see through that and especially like agencies who who are white label ones .

It's hard for me to tell them I don't believe you , I don't believe you're as successful as you say you are , and if we're using success as a metric to get on our podcast , I need to see your books , Because it doesn't sound cool of me to do that , but we have a brand .

This podcast has a brand identity and a lot of the people who listen to us listen to us because of that , because we're not just going to have those people on the podcast to show their stuff . Yeah , um , and unfortunately , we don't know very many women in the space , let alone women , who are at that success level to bring them on .

There is something that we are playing with and it's it's people who are reaching out to us for help and just having them on for free and just being like using them as a case study and like , okay , I will talk through your problems .

When it comes to , specifically , agencies and , like I said , there's some other ones too that I don't know it's cool Once you get into entrepreneurship and then you just see somebody crushing it and you're like man , I want people to just know about you and how you're doing such a good job , but also I don't have the platform that's most appropriate for it .

But I want people to know how cool you are because you're doing so well that if nobody's like , if you don't have people you know in your cheer box , I want to be there behind you just to tell you the things that your dad should have said if , if he hasn't by now , cause you're just crushing it . Right , but maybe that's just me .

But I've started this other thing too , internally within the agency recently , where I'm just telling people that they're capable of anything , just out of nowhere , just throughout the day . I'll be like , hey , did you know that you can do anything ?

While back , I stored this in my cerebral cortex when you mentioned this , but you said when you started you didn't worry about any other builder out there , any other CMS , any other platform , it was WordPress Divi , that's it . Everything didn't matter . It was WordPress Divi , that's it . Everything didn't matter .

With the rise of a ton of agencies and just information overload , a lot of people have A lot of agency owners and I know you're really not in the space , but a lot of them have started resorting to other tactics to stand themselves up and make them taller . So there's always there's two ways to build the biggest building .

You can either build the biggest building or knock all the other ones down , and there's like this . There's this thing that people are doing where they're like , attacking things that aren't part of their tech stack .

So if somebody uses elemental or oxygen or beaver builder , first thing they do is they could dump on Divi or WB Bakery or bloated visual builders , and frankly , I don't think the visual builder really matters that much in terms of site load speed and things like that , because ultimately , anybody who's complaining about that ?

I go to their website and their images are just super big and they have tons of javascript above the fold and everything .

So my question to you is um , do you , how do you , do you ever have to combat this and and kind of defend divi as a builder from an seo and kind of loading perspective versus other builders and yeah , I'm just like how did you find me ?

What's interesting now is over the past few years , mainly because of my podcast . My podcast is what has opened up my world into different builders and Web Designer Pro is an agnostic community . We're not all WordPress diviers . We actually have like chat spaces and certain places in pro for their own builders .

So we have like a Divi chat space , we have Elementor , we have Squarespace chat , like Webflow , we have a Wix space , so like there are these other builders . What I've come to realize is and this is very different from the Josh of a decade ago is that a lot of these tools will get the job done .

I think there's WordPress is still the place where you're going to be able to be most customizable and you can get a lot of good results . But I've seen some of my students do a lot with Squarespace , with SEO , and you can do a lot of other things with other builders .

So more recently I've been less worried about being just WordPress and just Divi and choosing the right platform that feels good to you , as long as it is going to suit the needs for you and your business and if it is , then use that , but don't deviate from that Like uh , yes , I have my Divi and WordPress beginners course .

But I make it very clear to members of pro when they join If you use Wix studio , then you can . You don't have to worry about this course . Start at the design course , which is more agnostic .

So I've really taken that approach more recently and what I've found is , as long as I get results and I'm enjoying my tool stack and Divi is increased , like Divi is going to change dramatically when 5.0 comes out . It's going to be a whole new ballgame .

Do you have insider knowledge on 5.0 ? Yeah , it's completely different .

It looks a lot like this standard , like left panel is where you see your layers and everything , the middle is your canvas and on the right is where you see your modules and it looks like bricks , it looks like breakdance . It looks like element or some of these other ones , yeah .

So stylistically they've kind of morphed it into what is a little more standard nowadays . But from what I know and I'm not too technical on this , but from what I know of , the core of of divvy is it is completely rewritten , like they have cut out a lot of the bloat that was previously and well , currently in Divi .

So I think speed is going to be an absolutely huge different ballgame once 5.0 comes out . Of course , if you're using big images and bad practices and you're on a bad host , it's not going to matter . But what it takes to make a Divi site load super fast now is not going to be much of an issue . Uh , when ? When 5.0 comes out so what ?

Yeah , they did a video on speed improvement , so it's going to be very different . Yeah , it's funny because divi takes so much heat . But I'm just like I'm just kind of waiting in the corner and then , once 5.0 comes out , I'm just gonna go freaking nuts on divvy .

And when I started teaching and coaching on web design , I started feeling a little bit of imposter syndrome , not because of the fact that I don't think my designs are good or copy converts or my business teachings are good , but like my site needs to be improved . But when I realized speed is important but it's not the end , all it really is not .

Now , when it comes to SEO ranking , it's important . But I had a colleague of mine who they have an agency in Nebraska and their site loads it like an E because they have a video background and some other stuff and I was on the podcast . I was like what do you say to somebody who says your site loads really slow ?

And they're like dude , we're not worried about speed optimization , we're worried about conversions and our agency is killing it . We can't even keep up with the amount of work because when people go to our site , most of them are local businesses , which is another big differentiator .

They're not really focused on UK businesses that need a Cloudflare CDN to load faster halfway across the world . They just work with businesses in their area , so it loads a lot faster being hosted in that area . So it made me feel better when it comes to speed , because it's like at what cost ?

Like if you speed up your website super fast but conversion like it just doesn't look as great . Or maybe you did have some video background that was really engaging and actually kept people on the page , but you take that off and then your conversions go down . You have to kind of weigh conversions and speed .

Sometimes they can marry together really nicely , but sometimes it's tricky off and then your conversions go down . You have to kind of weigh conversions and speed . Um , sometimes they can marry together really nicely , but sometimes it's tricky . So that's kind of my viewpoint on that .

As as far as current divvy in its current form , um , quite honestly , as long as my bank account keeps on going up and the revenue goes up , I don't give a shit what anyone godi says this all the time , it's like whenever anybody like shits on our processes .

And um , we get dogged on it , like like on Reddit and podcasts , and I just Cody goes , this isn't changing the numbers that are coming into our Stripe account .

But all those things , I found come a lot easier when your numbers are growing , because if your numbers are growing , then you can work on balance , then you can work on freedom , then you can work on tweaking your schedule and as long as you have good clients , good relationships , you enjoy the people you work with , you've won . That's it . There's nothing else .

I mean , yeah , you can make the numbers go up , but what else do we really ? What else are we striving for ? Like there's no reason to blow up a business or change your business model or change how you build if it works . I can't .

But then he got into mlms and I'm like I'm out , I'm out man and uh , but he , he does talk about how , like I think it's , I think it's him Every problem is virtually solvable at money , and it's like you want more time with your family , guess what . You need money in order to not have a job .

Um , you know , you want to feed the poor Guess what Money and like , so , like that's like all the whole premise of like the things that he does is getting people to be able to , you know , experience the better parts of life . But in order to do that , you kind of do have to develop that kind of that foundation .

So , um , yeah , it just speaks to , um , what you're just saying there , but this is actually really .

Those aren't the people I tend to attract , which is great , but inevitably a few months in we talk about money because to be a lifestyle entrepreneur , you gotta , you gotta make some money . So , um , it is interesting marrying those two ideas , like being money focused and freedom focused .

And , yeah , you don't want to destroy yourself to make money , but you do want to do things smart and have a focus on at least what you need to take home .

And I think that's where , like we talked about earlier about the bropreneur kind of stuff , it's interesting because I can't imagine being attracted to a message of somebody saying have 100k months , when years ago I was excited about a $1,000 a month for folks who are like here's how to build like a six to low multi six figure business .

And I think this conversation is even more encouraged me to really hone in on that sweet spot of 100 to 500,000 , for example .

I'm like that's cool , like that will like cover my medical expenses for my family , so like I need to make like 300 , 400 . So yeah , it can work . But the cool thing is , if you have that freedom , that freedom focused , then it can translate to anyone , wherever they are in their business , as long as they're focused on freedom more than anything .

So I did want to ask you sold your agency right . You sold it to that other guy you had mentioned and I want to make sure you sold out . You sold out completely , but no , you sold the business completely right , and then you were done with the business and then you moved on from that one . Is that correct ?

But I just got to that place where my courses were doing so well and I was making way more with my courses , working way less than I was with my agency at the time , but keeping in mind that I was building an entire business on the side .

So if I had not built JoshHallco , I absolutely could have scaled my business and just worked probably 15 hours a week just doing some sales and running the team .

But I had this big passion project and this may come into play with someone's personality type Because I really did think I could just hire everything else out and scale and bring in a project manager and bring in even a CEO and just be more of the leader . But I'm like that's going to take so much work to do that .

Honestly , where I was that business and I had really struck a chord , I was building an audience . I had so much demand for my courses At that time . This was March of 2020 . I finished my suite of courses in March of 2020 .

And when the flood of COVID came online , that was when my courses really started to boom and I felt like , not that , it's now or never , but I'm like this is the real opportunity to really do this and make my course business a six-figure thing . So I just went all in on that and I was like I could always get back into web design .

Obviously , I was very smart about that . I didn't burn my clients . I made a really smooth transition . I did an entire month of work with creating SOPs that I hadn't done yet . I literally created videos off of every single one of my clients how I met them , who they were , how much they're paying for Eric .

And then I do have to say it was not a sexy sell . I didn't sell my agency and then buy a yacht . It was a fairly low six-figure sale . I essentially just sold my maintenance plan because that's all that was really worth . I did have a client roster , which was worth something too , but the recurring income is basically what I sold .

So and what I did , I worked . We basically worked out a 10 year deal for me to get that amount back , and I'm a kind of a consultant for the agency now . So Eric and I are still very close . Every quarter I send them an invoice based off of my percentage of the profit is basically what we worked out .

So as long as he keeps on growing it , I get paid more and more Awesome , and it still keeps me in the door . I'm still on the website of In Transit Studios . I'm still the founder , so I still see behind the scenes . I see what's working . I'm almost more of a consultant and advisor to them and I still stand by that decision .

I still feel good about doing that , because I don't think I've could have launched all my courses . I couldn't have launched my podcast . I couldn't do my community , I couldn't do everything I do if I was still heavily in the weeds of the agency .

But I'm also a Well , I prioritize family time and not working more than 30 to 35 hours a week on average at most . That's the priority . That's the priority . That kind of everything else revolves around and I was like I just can't . I can't do both . I just cannot do two businesses at the same time . I just can't do it . I just I don't .

Yeah , I'm not the guy who could . Uh , it's just not my style like I'm all in on one , I'm all in on one thing , so that's what ultimately led to me deciding to sell it , do you ?

So I was like if he could do that , I'm pretty sure he could do a web design business . I saw him take his web design business to six figures in a year and , most importantly , he was like over communicative , which heads up everybody . If you want to be a digital agency or a web designer , just communicate really well and then you'll be .

You could be full time Like most people just don't communicate well . So those things really made me feel like he's . He's the one who could do this . He's also the one who was able to adopt the two children with his maintenance plan . So like I felt like it was just really timed out amazingly , because he was actually wanting to get out of .

He was still part-time ministry at that time and he had built his web design business and when I , when I talked to him about this , I had a couple other people in mind , but he was the first and he was like , dude , this is crazy because , like , I literally just talked about going full-time with the business so they would leave me room to be able to do

this , and I was like , all right , let's do it , let's do it . Based on those things the wherewithal to be an entrepreneur , the professionalism he showed and the communication yeah , that's what led to him being the right fit .

What advice would you give to somebody creating their first template website that they're going to scale Because there's a ? There's a . There's a stark difference between a website that you build custom for one client versus another client .

So what are some of the elements or things that you consider when creating a template that you know you're going to swap out elements for other clients and then like the fastest way and the most efficient , lean ways to do that ?

Because if you do that you will have proven design chops like a proven layout , and then you can create a template and , most importantly , you can confidently sell it and you can confidently tell clients like this is what works , this is what's actually proven , and I have it because I have the numbers of clients who have worked .

So I know it's really easy to probably get into design and typography and layout and hype , you know , like theory and ideas . But if you just get a website designed to work for a client , there's your template and just go offer that . I have a colleague , jason . He has a site called Swift Sites . He builds websites for coaches exclusively and he uses Elementor .

The sites are not super fancy by any means . They look quote unquote , templatized . But anytime he gets push back on changing the layout and changing design elements , he's like no , he refuses because he's like this is what works , it's what works for hundreds of his clients . So we will not deviate from what works .

So , yeah , that's the way I would approach it is don't get your personal design preferences in the way , don't tinker around with theory . Get it to work for one client and then that's your foundation , that's your framework .

So we didn't have to change every single page , we just changed one element and it goes across everything . And then , um , it's actually recently that we I I had some serious pushback on a client literally wanted to change everything and I just wanted to be like , are you a web designer or do you do seo ? And I'm like we can't .

Like he wanted to have like a map of his service area underneath the the header banner on the home page . Oh , and , and we're like , first of all , that's above the fold , I'm not gonna put that there . Um , second , do you think people come to your site to see where you service first , or what you do ?

And um , then I uh , uh , I said that like there's the way that what works in our industry is your header and immediately under that the services you offer . Like , like , we're not deviating from that unless you don't want it to work . So I sent them some examples of websites and conversion rates .

And in the spring , our template websites get a 25% conversion rate and it's just astronomical . And when it's not in the spring , we're hovering right around 10% or like 7% to 10% . So I told them I was like here's a site we didn't build that we , that we took on , um , it was WordPress Elementor .

And then here's a site that we , um , that that we built based off this template that you're trying to modify . And I was like this site in the spring , a 10% conversion rate , this one got a 25% . The same year , same time period , in a relatively same market .

Then and the in the summer , which is like the , the , the low season for landscaping and lawn care , um , one site got 10 .

Yeah , so like the summer is like everyone's schedules are full , like they're really not selling as much , the more , maintaining doing projects , whereas like , the spring is like the rush , so spring or summer does a huge dip and less conversions .

But there's 10 conversion rates on our sites and then there's like a five , four to five percent conversion rate on other sites . So I'm like , if you don't want the higher conversion rate , we can make these changes for you . Ultimately it's your site .

You can do whatever you can tell us to do whatever we want , but we're telling you that your conversion rate is going to be lower . Then I even did the same example for one of our templates that our clients were .

One of our clients was adamant about modifying and the conversion rate was still lower than just sticking to the plan , and that was like the biggest factor for us . And now it not only like is it good to be able to push back and say I'm just doing my job .

My job is to tell you that that's not a good idea , but also it prevents our team from having to do any extra work and allows them to just continue working on the things that they have scheduled .

Now you do have a proven template , even if it's just one person . So always go back to that . Yes , because actually even I was just talking about Jason he told me on my podcast one time because I confronted him about this . I was like what do you tell coaching clients who want to change their site design and have a custom site ?

And he said that his sales line is there's custom works of art and there's proven systems and proven designs . We do the proven designs and once you have a business where it's proven , then you could experiment with a custom work of art .

But if you need money and you need revenue , then we need to stick with what works and then you could have the option to try something new out .

I mean you could always split test that for that particular client you could say let's go for a month with the map , and let's go for a month with our process , and in three months we'll look at all the data and we'll review it , and then that would be the ultimate test there . You don't want to make your clients feel bad .

If I go look at a new computer , I'm going to go to the website and check out the specs and stuff . But yeah , they're not Apple . Like your little business , your little mom Paul business . I don't mean that to be degrading , but it's . It's not an established brand like this . So you can't build your presence and your marketing like a , a a big brand .

It's just like , it's just the idea of like the common theme here has been the bro printer stuff . It's like don't model your business after the bro printer model . Like , if you want to have a family and you want to have a balanced lifestyle , then don't follow the entrepreneur who has six pack and Lamborghinis and travels all year Like that's .

You're not gonna have the same business because you have a different output , you have a different outcome . So I think that same method is really important to articulate to clients when it comes to design .

Don't look at a company that is a different business model or has different design because they've established brand if it's not what you have , so yeah , I couldn't agree more with that , for sure .

I mean , my , my community is only a couple hundred members right now . We're doing some things to expand it , but I don't want to be like a huge media web design empire . It's not my business model .

Um , the other thing is like , as much as I've been tempted to do that and this is , of course , translates to agency owners it's like , well , okay , let's say you want to have a 25 person agency . Well , do you really like , honestly , is that what you want ? If you look at your calendar , like , do you want to have more meetings ?

You have one more calls , one more payroll , one more overhead . Do you want to have more responsibility and weight on your shoulders ? Like , honestly , what do you want ? Um , and man , I just more so now than ever .

That's what I teach my students and that what I'm trying to to get out more to the world of entrepreneurs is like be very careful about who you're following . And I think , um you guys know jim roham . He was like talking to pop with mlm stuff , like the multi-level marketing .

He was kind of one of the kings in that yeah uh , but I actually like a lot of his his more motivational advice , because obviously something that stuck with me 10 years later . But he said be a follower or be a student . Don't be a follower . And I think that's more important advice today than ever .

Like , you can learn from different people and different perspectives , but don't just adopt everything everyone says . Like Jake , you're following people , probably out of just curiosity , who you don't agree with or don't fit with .

But for people who are new into the game , they probably don't have the wisdom to separate , you know , like what I take in and what I make practice out of . So I think , especially for new entrepreneurs and agency owners , like , just be really careful .

I mean , I , I like a lot of what Alex Hermosi says , but if I were a new entrepreneur today , I would be very , very careful in saying like , well , do I want to live that kind of life or do I want to have a family and work 20 hours a week ? And , yeah , have more freedom and work hustle in seasons , you know , like that's .

I think that's all that to say . That's my big passion right now . That message to get out . That's what I'm excited about , what you guys are up to having a very honest podcast and honest show about .

Yeah , just this sweet spot between , like you know , solopreneur , professional but not stressed out burnout agency owner who's on so many high depressants they don't even know what they're doing , you know like so biggie .

And like , nine times out of ten , it's because it started from a YouTube video . I'm like so you don't want to start an agency , you want to make money ? I can already guess where this is going and if that's the case , fine , good luck . But if you want a lifestyle One , if you like marketing , I accept that answer .

If you like , um , being able to work remote and you want to see if agent agency can get you there , okay , I'll accept that answer too .

Um , but usually when it comes down to like , oh , I just like , I saw this , I was able to make this much money , I'm like , if that got your gears turning , you're not going to like the amount of work that's going to come with that . Yeah .

But , um , so like I'm all about hustle and seasons and all about hard work and in the early days , yeah , you don't really need to worry about freedom as much because your sole focus is making money , to just make it . So I understand that too .

But I think the reason why this is so important as I look back , I think about this is because I had a lot of imposter syndrome with agency owners who are around the same level that I was when I was starting out and I saw them blow up their agencies and get an office downtown and I was like gosh , that's really cool and I felt like , should I do that ?

I feel like this draw , I should do that . But I liked working from home and I liked that . And now , first of all , a lot of them have flamed out by now . They've already sold their agencies or they've just abandoned it . And one case a company called the Media Captain in Columbus .

If anyone wants to search it , jason , the owner of that company a different Jason . I saw him blow up this big agency and then I realized he still loves what he does , but it's a different business model than I want does , but it's a different business model than I want .

So you , just you just have to be so careful about following people's advice and proven path of it . You know quote , unquote , proven path if it really doesn't line up with you . So you just you almost have to . You have to decide like what do you want ? What do you want your schedule to look like ? What type of clients do you want ?

What type of hard work are you willing to do ? Because any amount of success is going to take a lot of hard work . You are going to have to . What's the quote ? Choose your hard . You do have to choose . What am I willing to sacrifice ? What am I willing to work hard at ?

And as long as you can align most things with that in this season , you're going to be cut out for being a sustainable entrepreneur , and that's what I truly want for people is to not make a lot of money in web design for a year and then to get burned out and leave .

I want people to build something that they can build a life off of for a long time , and then we can decide what the heck to do , because web design is going to look different in five , 10 years , so then we're going to decide what we're going to take it from there .

But if you build the muscles of a business owner , an entrepreneur , and a strong business model and a good client list and good communication and everything else , you can experiment with different business models after that .

You gotta like reel them back and help them out , but uh we get .

There's your guys the same thing , though , is like the bropreneurs are still actively bropreneurs attack the podcast , um , so like we deal with both and it's kind of like every now we get a new review , or like 51 on spotify with 4.6 , and then it's like 52 4.5 .

I'm like you , son of a bitch , so yeah but if I won't last , yeah , that's barely last yeah , for sure . So , um , cody , do you got anything else ? Are you good ? No , this is fun . Thanks , josh man , josh , um , give , give yourself you know if you got any . Any final words to say ? Um , about any of the topics that we covered today ?

Um , and or um , go ahead and just plug yourself , or can people find you . What are some of the resources you have ?

Yeah , I mean , my , my big message is just kind of what I said Really , be honest about what you want and knowing that might change season to season , but if you can build a business around your lifestyle rather than building your lifestyle around a business , that's what's going to keep you sustainable .

So have that in mind , reminder , put that as a post-it on your wall or because it's very easy to deviate from that and forget that . So that's my big , that's my big takeaway from all this . Well , I hope you enjoyed that . One friends again , super fun convo .

Uh , thanks to the guys with Jake and Jody for letting me repurpose this for excuse me , jake and Cody , not Jody uh , for repurposing this for you guys . I hope you enjoyed this chat . I would love to hear any takeaways that you have .

I'll make sure that both jake and cody know to check out the show notes for this episode , which will be found at josh hallco , slash 339 . So go over there . We did cover some links and some other resources that will be over there as well . That's at josh hallco , slash 339 . Cheers , my friends .

I hope one or numerous things we talked about help you in your journey , whether you are an early stage web designer or whether you are a later stage web designer . And just to clarify something I said in this part of this conversation , I do like helping early web designers as well .

What I meant by that is just that I did not want to go randomly to people and try to pull them away from a 95 job to get into web design . No , I want to help people who are already committed to web design , but early in the journey . Just wanted to clarify that . If you're still with me , I probably should have put that in the intro .

But all good , all good stuff . All right , friends , see you later . Have a good one and be sure to subscribe to catch the next episodes . Doozies , doozies , doozies . Up ahead for warning . So I'll see you there , cheers .