354 - Solo Web Design Agency Model with Payton Smith

Like you said some people , the full-fledged agency is the best route for them because they're great team builders and great trainers and they enjoy kind of being in the mix of things all day long .

And for those of you that some days just wake up and stay in your pajamas and check a few Slack messages , you can also find a solution for that and there's no good or bad .

All right , we're going to dive into probably the challenge that every web designer gets to or is currently facing , which is you don't want to be a burned out agency owner , but you also don't want to be a burned out freelancer doing everything themselves . So where's the happy medium in between the two ?

Well , there's a lot of different ways to go about it , but I'm really excited to bring on somebody who has perhaps coined the best term for this .

The term is a solo web design agency model and for this topic , I'm pumped to bring on fellow web design business educator , peyton Smith , who has a lot of experience being an agency owner but actually pivoted his business model for many reasons to become more of a solo style agency .

So that's what we're going to get into in this one many reasons to become more of a solo style agency . So that's what we're going to get into in this one .

Getting into things such as the pros and cons of being an agency today , how a life changing medical diagnosis really caused him to rethink his day to day and his sustainability and his agency and the model he chose for the long haul , how he pivoted this agency into more of a solo model , what he's learned about what actually leads to profit and less overhead .

And then again the uh . The underlying theme here is sustainability , which I'm so excited to help you out with . So we're going to dive in here all that Payton . Uh , payton , take it away before we do .

You can check out the show notes for this episode because we're going to have a lot of links for you that we mentioned here over at joshhallco slash three , five , four . You can find Peyton If you want to check out his agency . It's peytdigitalcom .

He's got a bunch of resources at his personal online education site , peytonclarksmithcom , and then he also has a web design membership called peytprocom . All of those will be linked in the show notes at this one , which , again , are going to be found at joshhallco slash 354 . Here's Peyton .

We're going to dive into this really well termed and well labeled model of the solo web design agency . Peyton , good to have you on board here on the Web Design Business Podcast . Man , we were just chatting four-way live . We're dads . I still have sprinkler on me from moving some sprinklers around before this . You're just getting over a cold , but we made it .

It is so good to finally connect with you , man .

Or what were you using when you got going ?

But I think it was still early on enough that it kind of felt new and exciting and a little bit of like uncharted territory . So you know , I slowly kind of phased out of those other platforms , but still , you know I I think they're both great platforms .

But in one of my classes I was introduced to WordPress and it was like man , something clicked for me and it was kind of funny that that degree kind of basically pushed me into something completely different that I never anticipated .

And then once I found or was introduced to WordPress in that one class , I didn't care about school anymore . I was like I didn't focus on my classes . I didn't care about school anymore . I was like I didn't focus on my classes .

I just was , you know , spending all my free time , uh , just messing around in WordPress and , uh , like all the Adobe products and designing and development , and so , yeah , it kind of pushed me into this .

You know , like I started as like a part-time freelancer and then by the time I graduated , I was like no way I'm getting a job , I'm just going to stick with this and see where it takes me .

But I come to find out there was a period of about 5 or 10 years between 2010 and 2020 , where we were all living very similar journeys . So it's really cool to see you on this side of things where you're giving back and sharing what you know .

But going back to that bug that hit you , did you have an immediate interest in being like an agency and building an agency , or did you just want to be kind of a freelancer ?

And then , especially if you want to explore other things , whether that's , you know , education or building products or all these things like you just naturally start thinking how can I bring people in to help take some of this workload off so I can explore these other things that I want to do ?

It was a pretty like ever changing team , but at the height of it it was certainly a lot more full time people and and I didn't keep that forever , in fact that that changed for me as I kind of learned how better to or at least how better I wanted to run my agency Excuse me , my agency .

And you kind of walk this fine line of if you don't pay enough , you typically end up having to step in and do it yourself , and if you pay too much , you do great work for your clients but you end up with little to no margins . And that was a difficult thing for me to learn , especially as I brought in full-time people .

I went through all different types of agreements with my designers , especially where we went like per project and then we went hourly and then we went like monthly salary , and each of those comes with its different struggles , but I think that was the most difficult for me . Back in like the end of 2021 .

I had some pretty significant life changes that really require me to like nail down the right model , because if you don't and you're overpaying or underpaying your people , it's really hard to sustain an agency .

And what I found really quickly is I was not charging clients enough and I was paying my people too much , and then I wasn't bringing in as many clients during that time as we needed to .

I wasn't bringing in as many clients during that time as we needed to , and the balance was all out of whack , and so I had to figure that out really quickly in order to kind of keep things running .

It wasn't as profitable as I wanted it to be , but at the end of 2021 , I , just out of nowhere , I was diagnosed with cancer and all of a sudden , it was like , you know , business no longer mattered , like my work it was , it was last priority for me and , with me kind of stepping away , things unraveled pretty quickly , right , because I wasn't actively finding

clients . I was still paying my employees salaries and I had to pay , you know , like my project manager , even more because I was too sick to play my part in it .

And so all of a sudden , like I was basically breaking even on these projects just to keep clients off my back so I could focus on , you know , my health and family , and so that really , you know , like lit a fire under me to like figure out the best sustainable way to run it .

And certainly , looking back , I'm sure there are things that I could have done to prepare my team better , but you know you never expect things like that to happen to you . You know I was , I think , 28 .

And but when I look back on it , I'm really grateful for that because , like I said , it really accelerated my decisions and and it helped me make some hard decisions , whether that was letting people go or switching from , like , full-time salary people to per project , and then also finding ways to implement systems and automations and things .

So it didn't rely on people , because I wanted to make sure that I set this up in a way that , if anything happened to me or any of my people , that I'd be in a good situation to take care of myself and my people and also continue to do good work for our clients and not let things kind of fall apart like they did back in 2021 .

I've found this has been really common with business owners and creatives alike . But how long was the period between getting that diagnosis and then ? I'm sure all focus was on your health and recovery and treatments and everything . So what was Before your agency version 2.0 , what was the timeline there for you ?

I spent most of my time passing everything off and dodging calls and avoiding , you know , needing to get on Zoom calls or sales calls , and so it was during that time that I would say probably the first four months of chemo . I was just trying to keep my head above water .

I was like I said I got to a point where I was paying my people so much to get the work done that I wasn't making any money off my clients . It was like we were breaking even and I was just trying to get these client projects done and out the door so I didn't have to field the constant emails .

And so it was probably at that point maybe month four , month five where I just made a few hard decisions and I said I'm not bringing on a ton of new clients right now , and so I spoke with my designer , my developer , and I said , hey , we're going to have to cut back and I'm going to have to just use you on a per project basis .

I'm going to have to restructure what my pricing looks like , what I'm going to be paying you . And I think at that time it didn't work for one of my designers and so he left , which was totally fine . He did an awesome job and still does awesome work . But that was hard to let him go .

But I knew that I really didn't have a choice and so as I neared the end of chemo we were getting closer to having like that structure I'd let a few people go . I had put a few people on like a per project . I had a few people doing just like hourly stuff for me .

Um , once chemo was over , it still took several months for me to recover and then I , you know , once I started feeling better , that was the first thing that I did is I really buckled down and I laid everything out .

I restructured pricing , I set up all these like automations and onboarding , and my at the time project manager he's been with me for probably four years now and I just said , hey , like I need you to play a bigger role , and so he kind of stepped up into more of an executive assistant role dealing with clients , making bigger decisions , and uh and yeah , I

would say probably about a year after I was diagnosed , I felt really good about where things were . I would say that it was kind of that solo agency where I didn't have any full-time employees . For the agency specifically , I had just this ever-changing team of different developers and designers that I could bring in at a moment's notice to do a project .

My margins were good and also with the SEO work , we were able to do the same where I could pass it off . It was in a good place , it didn't rely so much on me and at that point I felt like we were rolling .

What's interesting , though , is I feel like there's probably a couple common directions people would go . I feel like there's probably a couple common directions people would go .

I feel like there's people who would try to make things more lean and mean , kind of like what you did with raising your rates , figuring out your offers , your automations , all those kind of catchy keywords there , which are super important , especially for a solo agency , but then I would imagine there's probably a camp of people who would go the opposite way in

wanting to maybe bring on more people to make sure that they're not even involved with it , and they could still move forward . So it is kind of interesting , and I've kind of seen that play out both ways .

So I guess there's not really a right or wrong way , but I'm kind of curious with this idea of restructuring your team , I imagine cutting down on costs because you're not bringing people on . This solo agency idea did you worry about especially after going through treatment in that year that you had ?

Did you worry about you being even more involved just for your health and everything ? Or did you feel like your automations and everything you set up ? I guess the question is , were you more busy as a solo agency owner or do you feel like you were more busy managing way more people ?

So the idea of like a solo agency the thing that I love is it is it can look completely different for different people , right , and it really just depends on what role you want to play and how big of a role you want to play and the things that you do and don't like to do .

And so , for me , bringing in the right people I I basically eliminated all of the worst parts of it and because of that , like , I found that right balance where I was making as much as I wanted to , my margins were great , but I kind of pushed that limit where I knew if I scaled any bigger , I would need more people and there would be more costs and it

would probably rely on me to do more .

And so I just made the personal decision that , hey , I like where this is at right now I'm going to look for a way to optimize this structure rather than just bringing on more people , because I do think that sometimes that can be a bit of like a vanity metric for us as business owners is saying like , oh , I've got a team of five people or of 25 people ,

but at the end of the day , like it really only matters your like , how much work and time you need to put in and then your margins .

And , outside of that , like why do I want to grow a team of 25 people when I can do the same thing with a team of three or four contractors and my schedule is completely open to create content and to do the education stuff that I like and to build products , and so for me that worked great .

For other people I know , like they , you know they build a full-fledged agency with a massive team and some people just want to do it all by themselves and and I think that's the cool thing is there's really no wrong way to do .

But I had colleagues who had a building downtown and like 20 employees and I remember feeling like wow , like that is so cool , they're doing it , they have an agency , and that's the only thing that I saw back then .

But now as I look at that model , all I see is dollar signs of like a building downtown with payroll and overhead and you know insurance expenses and then medical benefit expenses . Like I see all these things when it comes to full time employees that you don't see . They're hidden under the vanity metrics .

I actually I wanted to ask you this so do Do you get a sense that we are in a almost like an anti-agency revolution ? Do you sense that at all ? Is that a harsh term ? From what you see , I feel that there's a big time shift from the agency model , that type of agency model . What do you see from your end of things ?

The first thing that comes to my mind is , with all of like , the , the tools , especially these no code tools and AI and automations , it's pretty insane how much one person can do , and so the tasks and the projects that used to require a full agency can now be done by one or two people , and I think that's really cool , because there are so many talented

designers and developers out there that for me as a business owner , I would probably rather work with just one specialist than try to hire an overpriced agency that I'm dealing with a different person on every call , and so I think , in a lot of ways , it's more attractive to like clients if I was to hire somebody .

But also for me as a designer , a developer , I'm looking for every way I can to fill roles and responsibilities and tasks with tools rather than hiring a person , because tools are in a lot of senses they're easier to train , they're more consistent and they're certainly more affordable .

I do believe there are certain things that just can't be replaced Definitely creative work , but yeah , I think that is leading to more people kind of taking these projects on just by themselves or with small lean teams , and I think that's really cool .

I like that terminology of like looking for a tool first , seeing what could be automated , versus looking for additional hands , depending on , obviously , like I said , creative or depending on the situation , particularly like there are a lot of tools in the automation world that I actually feel like have popped up more and more over the last three to four years .

So I feel like the timing of your life change and then you're also that new lens that you had about your agency and restructuring . It was probably pretty well-timed with the amount of tools like Zapier and things that have really come along here in the world of automation .

I mean I think it's easy to take for granted that we did not have that even back in 2016 , 17 and 18 . Those tools , I mean , maybe there are some automated stuff , but it was very , very different back then .

So I do almost wonder if the automated tools are , yeah , like almost one of the agencies are getting wise to how much you can automate as a , as a solopreneur , a solo agency owner , which is pretty cool yeah , yeah , I think that that has changed the landscape entirely .

But , you know , the majority of my clients like they just figured out how to use Facebook , like the chances of them trying to figure out how to , you know , build a website with AI and set up all these automation , like automations and sequences and funnels and things like it's it's not likely , at least not anytime soon , and so I think that those tools only

benefit us as the creators and , uh , it really empowers us to do a lot more by ourselves . And so I , you know , I'm always just thinking how grateful I am that I'm doing what I'm doing right at this moment , because there are more possibilities and opportunities than probably ever before .

So every week it was like 5 to 10 hours . And then I started using ManageWP just to update all of our WordPress plugins together in one dashboard and it probably shaved off 90% of our time running the maintenance plan . And that was my first glimpse of like . There are a lot of options .

I just need to intentionally be proactive about automating as much as possible . Or , to your point , looking at your systems and looking at like there's got to be a better way to do this . Or maybe even more importantly , I'd love to dig into like how you discovered the things that you didn't want to do and then how you got those off your plate .

Honestly , I have a course now called Scale your Way , and it's really intentionally titled that , because I found you really can scale a web design studio or agency the way you want to . You can scale parts of it . You can scale the whole thing .

It doesn't mean you have to be a big agency , but you can literally just take yourself out of so much with automation or delegation . But I think the first step and what I recommend is to identify the tasks that do wear you down or that are super unprofitable . So what were those tasks for you ?

What were the things that you found were just like the killers for ?

burned me out .

Um , I I think that what you said is exactly right like things that sometimes they might not even take a lot of time , but they just burn through like your creative energy , and I found that that's like a very limited resource , and when I wake up in the morning , you know , like that , that starts to burn away , and so if I'm spending my entire morning doing

all this busy work , by the time I'm ready to dive in and build a website or create content or do any of that . I'm just tapped out .

And so that's kind of how I first identified those things , and I was fortunate enough that early on I found my project manager and then I brought on my SEO team , which was really small at the time , because SEO is very technical and a lot of you know , like repetitive type stuff .

So those were the first things that I replaced , and this is something that I constantly battle with and I think anyone has even like slightly that like creative brain is we are perfectionists and it's really hard for us to let go of things Like I had this mindset that unless I can find somebody that can replace me and do it 100% or even better , it's not

worth hiring .

But I had to let go of that like perfectionism and just tell myself if I can find somebody that can do it 75% as good as me , that's a great hire and I'm going to bring them on and then the rest I can train and help and give direction , and so that was a big part of my learning to hire things , pass them off and then trust those people and not let

that continue to burn through my creative energy . And then trust those people and not let that continue to burn through my creative energy , worrying about it and double checking their work .

I know one thing that I've learned in hiring over the years is , instead of trying to just find a new person to do a new job , I've learned to always check with the team I have in place first and see if anyone is interested in doing this project or this role or taking on something different , especially if I think they may be getting a little stale in their

work and they do want a new challenge . Did you do that as well ? When it came to reducing the amount of staff that you had and restructuring that agency Like ? Did you utilize your current team , or even your current full-time people better , instead of just looking for new people to take something on all the time ?

But as I would talk to him , I'm like man , you've got so much more to give .

He has a great mind for strategy and he does a great job working with clients and you know so many other things where I just thought , man , rather than like hire a new person to fill more of like an executive decision-making role , I'm just going to move you into that right , like I'm going to start taking the smaller busy work off of your plate with a

virtual assistant and then I'm going to help you do more .

And so , absolutely , I think if you find people that you trust you've got good contractors look for ways to like leverage their skills and also to give them good motivation to do more right , don't limit their pay but give them opportunities to say , hey , if you find more ways to bring value to the team , I'm totally open to discuss a new partnership or , you

know , a new payment agreement .

But again , that's what's so cool about like this solo agency is , even though you're the hub , you're really the only like full-time employee you can constantly , you know , leverage these different people's skills and you can ramp it up , and you can ramp different people's skills and and you can ramp it up and you can ramp it down based on your needs and the type

of clients you have , and it just makes you so flexible , which is kind of what you need in this world , where some months you might have 10 clients and some months you might not have any new ones . That flexibility is super key .

Or did you kind of refine your agency first and then start teaching ?

I didn't really start actively doing the education type stuff until probably around that time and , to be quite honest , i'm't really start actively doing the education type stuff until probably around that time and , to be quite honest , I'm not really sure what my goal with that was .

I think I enjoyed making content and it was fun to connect with other people like me .

You know , we talked about this at the very start of this where it's hard to connect with people like us and sometimes this can be a pretty isolating job , and so that was my primary reason is hey , I'll create content , I'll maybe help people and also get help and support that I need , but then that just kind of quickly grew into , you know , it's it's fun to

teach and , while I don't know everything , it's kind of fun to be this hub where you know like , hey , I don't know this , but I know somebody that does , and so I can bring them into the group and and so that was actually a really fulfilling part of my job that I didn't anticipate and in a lot of ways I enjoyed it even more than some of the agency or

solo agency stuff that I was doing . And so you know again that flexibility kind of allowed me to ramp that part of my business up the education and the content . And then now we're building products , we're building Webflow apps and Framer plugins , and it's kind of the same thing .

My agency team all of a sudden has some app developers and people that can help with analytics for our software and it looks different all the time and I think that's really fun and exciting . I like the change , I like new challenges , and so it's been a great fit for me .

There are agencies who just do SEO for a reason taxing on time and can be fair . I mean , there are agencies who just do SEO for a reason . But yeah , I was wondering , was a passion project also a part of that , or was it just having more time ? I mean , you have young kids six , four and what ? Four months now .

So I imagine , especially after your journey , I would imagine you probably didn't want to work 90 hours a week with young kids and stuff . So yeah , I kind of wondered .

And the reality is , when you have a lean and mean setup with a solo agency , for example , while that could be daunting for some people , thinking about doing more , if you have the right automations in place , I've found there's actually a lot less stress if it's structured correctly and you have your systems and processes dialed in , than being a full stack agency

with a ton of people , because I don't know many , if any , people who have a full-blown agency that are also able to teach , unless it's just like maybe they give back to their local community or speak at a college a couple times a year or something .

There's not really entrepreneurs or webpreneurs or web design or speak at a college a couple times a year or something Like . There's not really like entrepreneurs or webpreneurs or web design , business coaches or folks like us who are also running a full-time agency . And that's I personally really warred with this .

I don't know if you did as well , but part of me felt like in order to teach on this , I need to be running a full-time agency . But kind of similarly , I had a young family . I'm like there's no way I could do a full time agency and do this . There's just literally no way I could do . I mean , what I do is beyond a full job right now .

So I'm like there's no way . There's no way you could do this and that .

So I think all that to say , I think that's the benefit of having a lean and mean solo agency , as long as it is providing enough for you in the way of profit , is you do have more time but also mental bandwidth to be able to dedicate to passion projects or a side business , if you wanted to go that route , yeah , that's my thoughts on that I totally agree

with you .

You know , I remember I used to have like daily , like every morning , team calls and then I would be like training and then I'd be like double checking people's work and then , like I'd have to be in these client calls and it was like it was really structured and I had to show up every morning full energy .

I had to kind of be , you know , full leader mode . And you know , I know a lot of people that I really look up to . That . That's like that's their , their strength , like they're just so good at that and they enjoy that .

For me , like my schedule to like now is I wake up and I'll shoot a couple Slack messages and I'll just make sure we're on track with things , and then , you know , I'll go jump on the tramp with my four-year-old and then I'll , you know , pick up my other son from school and then I'll come like make some content and check in on projects and and it kind of

opens my day to do what I want to do , which for me is , you know like I love to do my very best and never say no to my kids when they want to hang out , but then also , yeah , to do the education stuff , to do like chase more of those passion projects , and you certainly like owe a lot less of your time to the solo agency and a lot less attention ,

and it almost just feels like this unofficial business that you don't have to show up every morning all buttoned up and for me I really enjoyed that and it's again for somebody that enjoys something a little bit different every day . I like waking up , having a different challenge and working on a different project .

And you know , running that full scale agency it just would make it too hard to do the education and have the membership and and hang with your family and all the things you want to do , and so sometimes you have to cut parts of that out to be able to do it all .

I think it's an important thing to remember just love it or if it's absolutely necessary , I think it's an important thing to remember . If somebody does want to scale with a big team every person you work with think about how much communication goes back and forth .

If you double that , if you times two that you also times two the amount of communication , you get three more people . It's three times the amount of communication . It might be three times the amount of calls . Even if you group them together , a call might go from 20 minutes to an hour . Those are the practical things that I don't know .

If agency-interested people are recognizing , you get to your point pretty quickly and this is only from people I've seen in this situation where they went from like yeah , I really enjoy building websites to I've got a nice process , to now I want an agency and overhead , and then suddenly websites to . I've got a nice process to now .

I want an agency and overhead and then suddenly you're mostly just a team builder , a team project manager and you're just managing putting out fires and managing people all day . And that's the beauty about the option to be able to scale your way and have a solo agency is it does not need to be like that , thank God .

So , just as a forewarning for anyone who wants a big agency like you , better want to just work with a lot of people . Now , if you do , I mean , there's look , the world needs like full agencies too , and I'm all about giving opportunity and hiring different people .

But , man , I would try to do it as lean as possible and utilize two or three people that you know really well and then have some contractors .

And so how can I make as much as an agency but have margins like a freelancer ? And how can I have the schedule of a freelancer while also servicing big clients like an agency ?

And so when we started putting the it's called the solo agency blueprint , when we started putting that together , I just put like two columns and I'm like , okay , what are the pros and cons of both ?

And then how can you kind of structure this perfect agency that allows you to just do what you want and get rid of the stuff that you don't , and then , at the end , the only thing that matters is that you still do good work for your clients , and as long as you can fulfill that , everything else is completely up to you and there's no right or wrong way to

do it . Like you said , some people the full-fledged agency is the best route for them because they're great team builders and great trainers and they enjoy kind of being in the mix of things all day long . And for those of you that some days just wake up and stay in your pajamas and check a few Slack messages , you can also find a solution for that .

And , yeah , honestly , when I was a single guy , the idea of going downtown and working with an agency was really interesting to me because I'm like that's my social time . I'm an extrovert , I like working with people and like doing that . Now that sounds like a nightmare .

If I had to leave my family all day to go downtown and sit in traffic and go to a bunch of meetings where I would get like two hours of actual work done and then just sit there all day . Like that . It sounds like a nightmare to me right now . So I think a lot of that has to do .

All that said , I think if a solo agency is very , very appealing to folks who either have a family or are about to , or , as we all know , the digital nomads of the world who want to be able to have more freedom with time and flexible travel and stuff like that .

Actually it's funny because I feel like if you can build a business to be a digital nomad , you can mimic that entire thing for being a family person Because , yeah , it's very similar You're going to be in the van a lot , you're going to be . You may not be traveling the world , but you will be traveling all around your town to events and stuff like that .

So it's like there's a different lifestyle , but it's about the same amount of time behind a screen as a digital nomad as it is as a family man or a family family mom .

Sometimes it feels like we maybe have too many options of how we want to , like structure our work and where we want to go and what we want to do , and it's it's fun to have so many different ways to structure your day and your business , um , but you know , I think that's what's so cool is , we're getting to this point where all you need is your laptop

and you don't have to be , like , tied down to anything . And for me , that means , like I can leverage that to be with my kids . More Like , I just want to do that as much as possible for other people , that's like , so they can travel the world Like I've . I've made good friends that are single and they have , you know , been to 50 countries this year .

It's just like they're , you know , they're just world travelers and they've got their laptop and they check in every once in a while . And so , man like , whatever it is that you want to do , you can fund it with this type of structure as long as you can , you know , keep feeding it with clients and find the right people to help you out .

Man like , what a cool life you can live and it can look however you want .

What is interesting is that you came to a solo agency model after building a full-blown agency . So I would imagine you already had a client list , you already had a big network , you already had a lot of partners and colleagues .

For folks who are starting out , or even if they're just a few years into their business and they don't have that expansive network , what are your recommendations , particularly for getting clients as a solo agency that's more lean and mean , Because in the early days you have to sell . You have to get yourself out there in one way or the other .

So I'd love to hear from you what do you advise for students on the newer side who go through this blueprint ? How do they get clients ? Yeah , how do you get clients as a freedom-based solo agency ?

Right , like all this structure and automation and hiring people is like it's cool , but if you don't have clients , none of it matters , and so that's what I would say is early on don't worry about your automations , don't worry about you know , the structure of your business or your onboarding flows or anything like that .

You just got to like get out there and scrap up some sales man , whether that is , you know , just opening your mouth . Like early on , for me , I , you know , I sold a website to my kid's dentist and to the gym that I went to . It was like the small warehouse gym .

I sold websites to people in my neighborhood and in my church and and all like I just was like hustling to find those first clients and then , once you build up that momentum , the referrals come in and you've got more work out there for the world to see and to find you through , you know , through the link in the footer , and it really does start to pick up

some steam . But I think the biggest temptation for a new freelancer , solo agency owner is I'm going to create this beautiful , perfect business , I'm going to work on my portfolio , I'm going to work on my brand , I'm going to have this perfect , automated onboarding flow .

And then they look back and they're like , well , I haven't done anything to find clients and so maybe I'm going to set up a cold email campaign . And it just can't work that way .

You've got to get out there , You've got to be making calls , you've got to open your mouth , mouth , you've got to be putting out content , trying different ad strategies , like there . There's no right or wrong way to do it , um , but sometimes it's . It's going to be the hard way at first and uh .

And so that's why you know , in in , uh , inside my membership , we always talk about these as we call them scrappy sales , where everyone's early scrappy sales are going to be from a different place . There's no like routine process that you follow to get your first client . Everybody's is going to be different .

For some people , it's going to be your college roommate . For some people it's going to be , you know your , your mom cuts hair and you sell a hundred dollar website to your mom or like whatever it is . You've just got to get out there and get experience , get clients . And then , yeah , that's the hardest time to get clients .

Once you get a few under your belt , it gets easier and easier . And then you start to feel that pressure of hey , I've got a few clients coming in , maybe I better start working on my onboarding and my fulfillment and our project management . And then the team building comes after that .

I imagine you agree you could start with a solo agency model with these ideas in mind , but it doesn't make the initial work really any different when you're starting , whether you start as a full stack agency or as a freelancer or the happy little medium that I'm about as well , which is , I mean , you and I are very aligned with this idea of you and a few

supporters , basically contractors . But the reality is you got to work your ass off in the beginning . But I mean , who is not expecting that with any career ? I don't know . I just I am a little surprised that people have bought into the idea that anything is going to be easy . Any business , any business , multi-level marketing businesses are not easy .

That's why there's so many people who sell a protein shake for six months and they're gone . Like nothing is going to be easy . You know , like I'm just I don't know . I feel like this is a message that needs to get to the people who are young entrepreneurs or early entrepreneurs in their journey , not necessarily by age , but just as a business owner .

Like , heads up , it's going to be hard , it's not going to be easy , but you can make it a lot easier when you start to be proactive on all these refinements and systems and better pricing and have a community and yeah , all those things . I don't I'm trying to get worked up too much , but man , I just like , yeah , beware the easy .

Anybody who says like , yeah , just do something , it'll be super easy to make six figures a month . I'm like , show me realistically who has done this from the ground up and not somebody who's an advanced entrepreneur who just knows how to do this stuff but has , by the way , decades of experience before them .

I was like man , like I'm you know , I'm selling one website a month for a thousand bucks and like you know what am I doing here .

But I'm grateful that I put in those tough early years because the number of people that I've seen like burn out of the get rich quick type stuff and you know I'm still here just kind of grinding away and if it was easy , a lot more people would do it and it wouldn't be easy , right , it would be way more competitive .

And so , yeah , certainly like being ready to put in that work , especially early on , to find clients . It's going to be tough . There are certainly ways that you can make it easier on yourself . As we're talking about finding clients , I'm just thinking of the things that helped me Finding a niche .

For me it was just in my city Because if I'm just putting it out to the world like hey , I'm a web designer , come hire me . Yeah , there are millions of those , but if I'm the web designer in Idaho Falls , idaho , there's maybe 10 of us , and so I eliminate competition that way . Maybe I find other ways to niche down .

That was a big reason that I went into Webflow early on is there weren't a lot of Webflow designers and so I would get projects just from people looking for a Webflow website , and there weren't a lot of us .

And so , yeah , certainly like , look for ways to make it easier on yourself , but don't expect the clients just to flow in at first , because it's not going to be like that until you get several projects under your belt , and then , yeah , you start to pick up that momentum and and then you don't have to worry about finding clients quite so much yeah , yeah ,

interesting .

What does my calendar look like ? Starting with my calendar , let me structure , be proactive about structuring my calls and having boundaries , and then the work hard shifts from working to just get clients and figure all that out to working on the business itself . But , yeah , I feel like that's where you and I are coming in and helping people .

So , yeah , I'm completely aligned with what you have going on , peyton . This is really cool , man . I've really enjoyed getting a peek behind the curtain on your story and your agency or your journey with building an agency . I didn't even know about your journey with your diagnosis and stuff .

So , man , I'm happy to see you on the other side here and doing awesome with Young Family and , again , not everyone needs a moment like that . I feel like to look at their business . Hopefully this conversation helps some people look at what they're doing and just sit back and wonder like , yeah , I don't have to go on this way .

It's up to you to make some changes . So my hope is that this helps some folks take a step back and really think about their day-to-day in their business and what can be automated , what can be delegated , all that good stuff . So let me throw it over to you here .

Peyton , I got one final question for you , but I would love to know where would you like people to go , because you've got a lot of different irons in the works right now . Where should everyone go to ?

I you know I've put out a lot of templates and full trainings and courses and things there , and so , yeah , I'd love to have y'all come check me out on YouTube and then , if you are wanting a more like personalized you know , group coaching part of the community , I also do have a private community which is called payprocom and you know that's my education side

of my business , which is by far the most fulfilling thing I do Like I love meeting people there and it's also fun inside that group to watch people like making partnerships and friendships , and so I love it in that group . So , yeah , I'd love to have anybody come come join us there as well .

And so , yep , I put that out , we opened it . It was open for just a few weeks and filled that with a few hundred people and then we closed it because we're in the process of getting like feedback and basically redoing the whole thing . That's kind of how we like to do . It is just to make sure that it is as good as possible .

So if people want to go check that out , soloagencyblueprintcom , you can get on the wait list there . I don't know when we'll open it again , because I'm not going to open it until it's twice as good as it is right now , but that's also a great place to find us .

I have two separate courses , but I imagine this is kind of something that blends the two , kind of something that blends the two . But I mean cool thing about that . And the reason I love coopetition and I love talking with folks like yourself who are kind of like a direct competitor to me , is there's just so many dang ways to do the same thing .

So it's kind of fun to see different contracts and different processes . You can kind of pick and choose to see what works for you . You might do something on your onboarding that people really like , but they might prefer my offboarding .

You know , like there's there's really a cool , is a cool , happy , uh , a happy medium between like all this stuff that folks can make their own . And , as we've talked about , the whole theme on this is there's no right or wrong way to do this , it's just here's a bunch of ways to do it . Take what works for you and solo agency . Baby , let's go .

There are so many different ways to do it and I think the most important part of any of these courses or communities or anything else is just surrounding yourself with people that have the same goals as you . Um , that is going to make a bigger difference than anything else . So find the support , people to encourage you , give you confidence .

Um , that is going to help you in more ways than than you realize .

Do you want to lean more towards being an agency owner and a business owner , or do you want to lean towards being a freelancer and a solopreneur ? Again , there may be a time and place for this , like we talked about . Either way , I'm sure Peyton would love to hear from you .

I would love to hear from you as well , and the way you can do that is to leave a comment on the show notes for this episode , which is gonna be at joshhallco slash 354 . I personally read every single comment that comes through on the podcast episode , so please do that .

I would love to hear where you are in the spectrum here and I'll let Peyton know to check out the show notes for a little while to see your comments and maybe respond to you as well . Again , joshhallco slash 354 . That will also have all the links we talked about .

Peyton does have a few different places that you can connect with him online , including his agency peytdigitalcom . His him online , including his agency patedigitalcom , his online resources and education for web designers at peytonclarksmithcom and his own web design membership , paypro .

Speaking of a lot of members of Web Designer Pro actually a few I know have either gone through his membership or are currently a part of it . So co-opetition baby . There is no competition in my world , there is co-opetition . Peyton has incredible experience and while we have plenty of overlap , there's also plenty of things that we do differently .

So you may learn a lot from Peyton , just like you will me , and I hope you consider it . So all the resources we mentioned again are going to be linked at joshhallco , slash 354 . I hope to see you over there and best of luck , my friend , with creating the own version , your own version of the right solo web design agency model for you .

Cheers , friends , stay subscribed , or do subscribe , because we've got some more doozies on the way and doozies are good . For those who aren't English speaking as a native tongue . Doozy is good , but usually , usually All right . Stay subscribed , see you , friends .