Recurring revenue…the two most lovely words in web design (or any business for that matter.) Having enough recurring income to cover my family's bills is what changed the game for me, it’s what helped get us through a 56 day NICU journey and it’s what ultimately led to me creating my first course on how to launch and sell website maintenance plans. One of my students Marc Hyde went through that course back in 2021 and within three years, his maintenance plan is now over 30% of his business revenue. And he’s on track for well over 6-figures this year in 2024. Recurring revenue allowed him to ..read more

In the early days as a web designer, it’s common to say “yes” to any project that comes your way just to make some money and build a portfolio. But it doesn’t take many “bad client experiences” before you’re ready to weed out those bad-fit clients. But what makes a client bad-fit? Are they cheap? Do they not understand your value? Are they a bad personality fit? Are they super-intensive with communication and a drain on your mental bandwidth? All of the above? If you seem to attract a lot of these folks, it’s because you don’t have a weed-out funnel (or filter in place. And that’s exactly wh ..read more

Ah privacy policies…your favorite aspect of web design, right? Yeah me neither but day by day, it’s an aspect of websites that becomes more and more important with new privacy laws being passed in the states along with other countries, even outside the EU with regards to GDPR compliance.  So, to help us make sense of where things are at with website privacy policies, I’m excited to bring back on to the podcast, my friend and privacy policy expert Hans Skillrud of Termageddon. In this chat, we cover: How to better understand what we need to do as web designers for privacy How we can he ..read more

This is probably ignorance on my part but my eyebrow always went crooked when I heard digital agencies, hosting companies, saas products, or any online entrepreneur talking about how they’re a “green” company. It’s not like we’re a manufacturing company or chemical plant with waste and pollutants. We work on a computer at home…so how can we “go green?” Use less paper? Recycle old equipment?  What else can we do? Well, it turns out there are a lot of ways to contribute to sustainability and to do our part in protecting our environment even while working from home or in a coworking space ..read more

I recently did a live training on how to Scale Your Web Design Business for Brad Hussey’s web design community CreativeCrew. We did a live Q&A session afterward and had some amazing questions come in. Brad and I got to riff on scaling a web agency, the lessons learned from our experience, what we both may have done differently and what we felt worked really well. I’m pleased to share the entire Q&A portion with you here in this special edition episode of the podcast! We cover topics like: How to delegate sales or marketing in your web business Whether you should say “I” or “We” on ..read more

One of the benefits of being a web designer is your option to build recurring revenue. As a WordPress web designer, I learned that one of the best ways to do this was to offer a hosting and maintenance plan. Or “care plan” as it’s more commonly referred to these days. For years, it was my assumption that if you use self-hosted platforms like SquareSpace, WixStudio, Webflow, Showit, etc then you can't offer care plans because there's no plugins to update or advanced security to monitor.  But I was wrong...you CAN offer care plans (even if you're NOT using WordPress!!) A great example of ..read more

Description: I’ve met a lot of 6 and 7-figure agency owners over the years and there’s always often a recurring theme…many are completely burned out, disgruntled OR they’ve sold or left the agency altogether. It’s probably the main reason I personally prefer the “small shop or studio” route as a solopreneur web designer with a lean and mean contractor team but at the same time, there’s value in truly creating a “business” in the form of an agency. But…are ALL agency owners burned out? No - despite meeting many owners who fit that profile, there are the exceptions. One is Greg Merriless of ..read more

Hey friends, Josh here popping in with a bonus episode sharing a mid-year update for both personal and business side of things. Together we'll cover: An update on my daughter's recovery (thank you for the thoughts, prayers and support!) Updates on the business side of things including:  which courses I'll be revamping this Summer,  what projects I'm working on  thanking my VA Kam (who's moving on) after 3 1/2 years of awesome service and a look ahead at what I have planned for 2024 Hope you enjoy this personal mid-year check in. If you have any thoughts you'd like to share ..read more

Considering starting a podcast to help build your web design business and get clients? Podcasting is AMAZING for expanding your network, deepening your relationship with customers and building trust with potential clients but I'm not going to lie...it is hard work. And it's not for everyone. To make it work, you have to set yourself up for sustainability to do it consistently and in this special Q&A session, I'm answering many common questions from web designers who are interested in starting a podcast with the goal being to get clients and grow your business. I'm opening up about all t ..read more

Lisa has done 6 rounds of strategy calls with her hosting/maintenance plan clients (to this point) which has led to an additional $25,000+ boost of revenue for her. She has refined this strategy to be a well oiled, revenue boosting machine and she’s opening up about how she does it for you so that you can do the same! We dive into all of the questions above and more in this one but if you want more, Lisa recently did an entire guest expert training with visuals, templates and more inside of Web Designer Pro™! As a founding member, I’ve seen her take this from idea to slick revenue boosting s ..read more