hey everyone I'm super excited to have a special guest here today Paige Brunton is one of my biz BFFs and she is also an expert at helping you grow a web design business so we are going to be breaking down the six steps to becoming a successful website designer stay tuned these tips are going to be awesome so I started my online business as a virtual assistant which then turned into doing web design as well so Paige and I both have similar origin stories in online business that's how we started and then since then we've become online course creators but it was a really fantastic way to break into the online space and Paige I know that you had built a super successful web design business can you talk a little bit about that yeah so I started a business for an odd reason I moved abroad and then I needed a job I moved abroad for a guy and then married said guy oh my God same story for me seriously that's so funny okay logical reason you start a business anyway so I moved abroad for this guy um moved to Germany didn't speak any German I was like cool I need a job on the internet because I don't have any job options here um and so I had built a travel blog before so that was like my extent of professional web designer education um but I figured that was like the best skill I was working with and so I decided to like just figure out how to build a web design business and get clients and manage projects and everything um and so it took obviously a good bit of trial and error to do that um which I now enjoy like streamlining that process for other people so it's not as painful as it was for me to start um but yeah so I ran my website business from abroad pretty much always served clients in Like Us Canada UK um but was actually living and also like did a fair bit of travel as well Louis and I met and Bali um in that time too so yeah amazing so long ago now too I know okay cool so you had been doing this web design business fulltime how long did you run that business a few years um I even actually started side hustling it I was doing a master's degree before I moved to Germany and I actually started doing projects like for paid clients low paid but still like paid clients um in my Master's Degree and then I was just building websites for like a good few years just that before I ever got into the actual reason I started creating a course I never intended to teach anyone how to be a website designer I just got so client inquiries that I realized it was like an inquiry a day and I was like okay one person there like 365 inquiries a year I could not manage that so I thought about do I become a web design agency do I sell website templates do I teach people how to build their websites and so I decided for me I most wanted to just teach my idea at the time was like I'll just people who would come to me for a website project I'll just give them this course and then they can like learn how to build a really amazing unique website um at sort of like a designer level for obviously like a fraction of that price so that was my first course which I created was on like how to build your own website on my platform of Squarespace um so that is kind of how I got into it and later on down the road people kept asking me like Hey how do you run the business side of your web design business that's when I eventually got into teaching people how to be website designers but it actually just started off with like me doing client work for quite a while amazing I too did some web design projects and I loved it because it was just like a very clearly defined project it's very clear when your website is complete and done and you can hand that over but obviously there are a lot of little pieces so I love that you have just taken that entire process streamlined it and now that's what you show other people how to do so that is brilliant because I was definitely totally confused I don't think my client process was was very good at the beginning so I know that you have that down and totally mastered so for some someone that is considering this or I I think a lot of people start out and they are maybe doing something else technical but they're considering adding web design to their business what are the biggest benefits in your eyes of why someone should add web design oh my gosh one and the Very simplest reason is it is the highest paid online job that you're going to get so if you look at virtual Assistance or brand design or copy writing or those like typical online jobs they don't pay nearly as much as web design does the other thing which I loved about website design was the amount of freedom in your life that you had from it because it's like you start a project you finish a project and then you move on to the next client I did one client at a time and I would do the projects in twoe periods and so that meant that when I wanted to go travel I was in Europe so I wanted to like make good use of that I could really like schedule my projects and then know with certainty that I was going to have like a week off or a couple weeks off and I would not have any client that needed me and to me that felt a lot more lifegiving than being say a virtual assistant where it was like you're constantly on call and needed or like an online business manager or something which again is like kind of like a whole year round job um so I really like web design both I mean the income was again really good compared to other online jobs and two the like freedom of it I thought was also really nice yeah I couldn't agree more it's like you want something that in between the those projects you can really you can be free and you can be traveling the world and doing whatever you want to do what sort of you know and speaking of income what sort of price point would you say now people could be selling a Squarespace web design project for what are you seeing across the board there so all my students I do not allow them to charge peanuts like when they go to take on projects um if they want to do one or two websites as like like portfolio websites for free fine but after that I'm like okay we're going for a few grand here like minimum so I'd say like $3 to $6,000 is where I would say that would be like your average size Squarespace website no branding no copyrighting or anything just the website design 3 to six grand would be for like a beginner designer granted when you get more experience when you get better at the website designs when you maybe start taking on like bigger projects and stuff um with like more pages to the website or maybe some like e-commerce added in my students are doing anywhere from like $9,000 to like $115,000 per project I think the most one of my students Freya Rose she's doing like I think it's like $112,000 just the website she makes the most gorgeous websites you've ever seen your entire life but that's like just a website project of course if you want to also down the line get into like oh cool I'm going to do like custom coding on this website or I'm going to do a brand and a website or I'm going to do copyrighting on the website then obviously your product prices can go higher than that um but yeah so really like getting beyond the 10K once you've been in it for a little while or gotten really good at it it's possible to go beyond 10K for like just the website project and again typically those are being done in like couple weeks two weeks is on average brilliant yeah I love the shortened timeline and think everyone should do that or else it can it can just drag on for so long so I've seen behind the scenes of your process and I love the fact that you can get it done in that shorter time period but yeah obviously the income opportunity is fantastic for this now me and you both love Squarespace because also from the designer's perspective it is pretty easy to work with so what about people who are worried about coding abilities and how much is required there I'm guessing that you're going to tell me that it's not required at all yep so I'm the world's worst coder and I've tried on multiple occasions to teach myself like how to code in CSS and every time I do it I literally just fall asleep on top of my laptop like for some reason my brain is not set up in that way like the information comes at me and it just does not it does not go into my brain so I can tell you that myself and my students like the vast majority do not do any coding on the website and I think that the way that I sort of set that expectation with the client is like I'm going to do everything it's also key because like you're kind of setting the scope of a project so I would say to my clients like what I'm going to be doing what like included in this is everything which can be done with like the native features inside of Squarespace and of course I've been at this for a while so it's like I know how to do some incredible things with just like the built-in features of Squarespace plus it's a super flexible platform um and especially with the latest update it's making CSS a lot less needed which is amazing um whereas if they wanted something like custom coded or developed or whatever then that would be obviously like I could Outsource that or I could buy a plugin for that or whatever but that's sort of like in addition to the project price but to be honest most of the time I don't even even if they asked if one of my clients asked for something that was going to need me to custom code something and I sometimes I also could do it I could buy a plugin for it or I could hire a developer for an hour to do it or whatever um I would also let them know like hey if we do this like this is it's going to make it a bit harder for you to manage and update and maintain this website yourself so like here's an alternative which I can offer you which is not going to require any custom coding but gets you like 90% of the way to the thing you had in your mind and oftentimes they were like oh yeah no I want to be able to like manage this website myself later so like I actually don't want you to do anything custom coded on it and I've seen a few times it kind of annoys me in the industry is sometimes developers and everything they'll just really go cray on the website and add in a bunch of stuff but then it completely makes their client like incapable later on I feel like that's not really a great service to the client so anyways um yeah I can tell you that myself my students build incredible websites without needing to custom code anything um or or maybe a plugin here or there that you can buy online for like 20 bucks but for the most part we aren't doing any coding on the websites and it actually is again if your client is coming to you for you to build a website they're probably a little bit nervous on the tech side of things and so it's not really great service to them to custom develop something on their website that they can't maintain themselves later yeah that's such a good point I love how flexible Squarespace is now I mean now it is super flexible and guys I uh I know lot of them paig knows them hacks of how you can get whatever look you want like literally it is possible I mean using the combination of the Native Squarespace features using a graphic design tool like canva you can create some incredible designs that look really custom but actually didn't require any custom cating on the back end so yeah you are good there so we've talked about the income potential we've talked about the lifestyle benefits of having set projects what would you say so what are the steps then that are required we've gotten someone on board they are excited about becoming a web designer or adding this service to their existing business what is the first step that they should take yes love that okay so I have six steps for you and I've cut this down to like the fastest easiest way to get started into web design business I find oftentimes people they complicate the whole process and they think like oh there's these 57 things which I need to do and get perfect beforehand and I'm like no we're just like adding stones in our own way and making this harder on ourselves so I've cut it down to six steps so the first thing that you need to do when you want to become a website designer is to pick one web design platform to learn so there's a variety of different website building platforms Louise and I both love Squarespace but there's other things out there there things like Wix show it Shopify WordPress those are all other typical website Builders um the key is to pick which one you would want to learn because they are different enough it's like if you say you want to like learn how to play music and then you try to teach yourself guitar and piano and singing at the same time it's like those are three actually completely different things like there's some overlap maybe reading music is like the one overlap between those things but they're different enough that it's really hard to learn all three at once so I would suggest like pick one website building platform to learn and not seven because it's going to make it again so much faster and easier for for you to do that and on every single website building platform there are tens of thousands of clients out there for you so it doesn't really matter which one you pick the key to like you getting your business up and running quickly though is that you pick one as opposed to five awesome and yeah we can tell you that we love Squarespace and think it's really easy to work with I've seen behind the scenes of other ones I'm like this just looks too complicated while the website is beautiful I think you can make your life easy as the designer and your client's life easy if you go with Squarespace totally I 100% agree I have we can link it Down Below on like the different website building platforms the common ones and like how to pick which one to learn as a website designer so we can put that link below if that is helpful for anyone oh perfect okay absolutely helpful okay on to step two so step number two is to learn the skill of website design so you can do this a variety of different ways you can build yourself a website you can build a friend a website you could build what we call a concept project website so basically the thing is like you just need to get into the program and start actually using the thing there's tutorials there's courses there's a variety of different options but the key is like in order for you to actually sell yourself as a website designer or really have the confidence to say that you're a website designer you need to build the confidence and the way you're going to build the confidence is by actually doing the thing so I would really encourage you I can also talk about like how we learn to build websites um I learned it without even intending to learn it so I'd kind of done this step even before I intended to be a website designer but I built my own travel blog because I wanted to draw blog about travel um and I just had so much fun I went into Squarespace I compared a bunch of different website building platforms found scores space was the one I like the most went in and just started designing this web this blog and then I would blog about travel and I realized you know what kind of want to give this thing a facelift and I was constantly redesigning my travel blog which led me to the thought of like you know what it's not very useful if my blog has a new look every month but if I did this for other people then I could get paid for that and that would be a lot more efficient use of my time basically um but anyway so truly like learning how to do it you can talk to friends and family if they need a website you can go ahead and build what we call Concept projects so that's where like say you see a coffee shop or a yoga studio or something and you're like cool if I built them a website like what would I what would I create what would I build and so then go ahead and actually like build out that thing just to again teach yourself like you're going to learn the most by actually doing it you can watch all the tutorials online but if you don't actually go into the website builder and start playing around with it it's going to be a problem good thing about scores space they have twoe free trial so you can go in start a twoe free trial play around with the website start another free trial after that if you want to um or get the trial extended and basically you can go in and learn how to do it I'd be curious Louise how did you actually like learn for the first time yeah exact similar thing I needed a website for my own virtual assistant business so it was like okay I'm going to go in discovered Squarespace at the time everyone was recommending WordPress and I went in and yep similar to how your brain felt with coating I was like this is awful like surely there's another way to do this discovered squar space and then I was able to like drag and drop everything and quite easily get it looking how I wanted so that really opened my eyes into what was possible even without coding experience so yeah it was I needed it for myself and then just by chance all of my clients that I was working with were using Squarespace so then I was able to to get more comfortable yeah yeah yeah and I find honestly a lot of my students have done that too probably a bunch of people watching like they might have even been like oh yeah at my work or at school or my church or whatever I got like given the job of like maintaining this website or something then they realize like oh I actually enjoy doing it and so like that can be like it you don't go to college anymore to like learn how to build Squarespace websites like that's not what's happening here so it's like mostly people are learning how to do that just from like their own life experience or whatever and that is how people get started as website designers these days it's not from going to taking like a fouryear computer science degree or anything absolutely completely not required anymore and guys honestly so many of the people in your family or close friends will need a website so I would do a little call out to just your personal Network and guaranteed you'll get like five websites that you need to do totally I thought at the beginning I was like no one who I know is like a business owner or an entrepreneur or a blogger or anything like I don't know anyone who would need a website and then over time and so I like didn't go to my friends and family first cuz I just thought no one needs a website and then after a little while IED after I had gotten a bit more loud online like I'd built a few websites I'd actually done a few client projects and everything then I went and sort of started talking about the fact that I was being a website designer now and then all of these people came out of the woodwork like my uncle friends from high school friends from University all came out and we like oh my God you built websites I really need help or like one of my best friends from University is like I'm creating a Blog I have no idea how to do the website I just have an Instagram following and that's when I realized like oh if I had been a bit louder about this in the beginning I could have made my life so much easier because I actually do know people who need websites it is a very common thing for people to need these days um but I just didn't think about that at the time but I mean all these other people they were also being quiet about this thing they were building because it was kind of new to them and everything so I realized the importance of a little bit like stating what it is I was getting into yeah absolutely I think people will be surprised how many how many people in their in their family need techn technical help like this I literally just got a message from my cousin being like hi can you help me purchase a domain I was like okay we can we can do this um all right okay so after they've done some test projects for themselves um taking advantage of that two week Squarespace trial just you know play around with it have fun try different design Styles after this what should they do next thing to do is to find a way to take a payment so there are multiple different ways you can take payments you could do PayPal you could set up yourself a stripe account you could get a CRM system a lot of the crms have like free trials to start and everything I would just find a way to take payments that is like simplistic and online that's the key thing so like in order to be a website designer people think they need these like 27 zillion things and I'm like no you literally just need someone who needs a website and then you need a way to take a payment from them like that is the most simplistic part of like getting a client is like finding a person who needs a website being able to take a payment so I would just find yourself some sort of payment process that could take a payment on the internet and that is Step number three it is literally so simple you could finish that in like 2 hours or something like do some research find your favorite free CRM system or like um trial of a CRM system I can say dubo is one that does have I know right from the beginning has like you could take on I don't know a couple free clients or a couple clients on their free plan or their free trial um and that's a really like easy thing so there you go I've literally given it to you you could start on dbso like create yourself a dbso account get it set up get it connected to a stripe account where you can actually take the payments and that is Step number three it's super simple brilliant what I did was I just used PayPal you guys I invoiced directly from PayPal it couldn't be more simple again we're talking about how to do this in the fastest and easiest way possible and I think whenever we're doing something new we over complicate it in our minds we think that there's going to be a million steps before we can get started and that's why so often we get caught in procrastination and we get caught in the details whereas literally we're saying put this out there find someone who needs website and get paid for it okay awesome what would the step be after this so they've gotten paid them what yes okay so this comes back to your friends and family bed so let me tell you a story one of my past students Cari she was a Brad's maid in a wedding and she was about to walk down the aisle with her like groomsmen that she'd been paired up with who she'd never met before and just before they went to go walk down the aisle um the groomsman asked her like oh so what are you doing and K's like oh I like just started a web design business and he's like oh I just started an electrician business like I need a website and she was like perfect let's walk down this aisle and then we could talk after this and so literally like that's what I mean by like just start saying your website designer or that you build websites and just to people in your life on social media just like in all opportunities just start saying that this is what you do and you build websites and the number of people that are going to come out of the woodwork and be like oh I actually need that like literally in the most random of places walking down an aisle at a wedding can be a place you get a client so start there's many ways you can do marketing and we're going to talk about that in Step six but the fastest way to get a client is again just through humans in your life so again just start putting it out there just start talking about that and honestly it can lead to some incredible things in your life so kly for example she literally like started off she she got it was in the pandemic she got of her job because they just like eliminated her whole department she decided she was going to become a website designer started doing a few things here or there went to this wedding got a client and then is now doing like nine times her corporate salary so that is just like a short example and when I talk to myself and other students and everything just the ways that we have gotten clients is so exceptionally random just through some sort of like random personal connection or other people it's like they just post on their Facebook being like hey friends and family doing this thing now now and that's the way you can get clients so again start talking about it with your friends and family um and that can be the way that you get your first or second or fifth paid project as well yeah we always underestimate our personal Network I do that now still you know I'll be like me too who who needs help creating a course and like literally so many people in my direct personal Network want to do that so yeah let's let's not underestimate it and be a bit louder than maybe we we want to be okay great we to step number five what is that step number five is the one which is going to make your life 27 times easier in the long run it is also going to ensure that you don't start a business that you end up hating and that is defining your web designer process so if you don't have a web designer process what tends to happen is the opposite of what we've been talking about your projects drag on for forever it's a huge hassle you get annoyed with your clients and that is not a good thing and so well I do want you to do do this quickly and easily I also do think that taking like 10 minutes to figure out your web designer process will save you 12,000 headaches in the long run um and really just be such a like key aspect of you enjoying running this business is feeling like it's organized is feeling like you're guiding your client through the project as opposed to your client like dragging you through the project I remember my first few projects I didn't have a process I didn't really know what that was exactly and I felt like my clients literally were running the show instead of me and it one didn't lead to a great experience for them because obviously that's like you don't have a lot of confidence when the person who's supposed to be doing somebody like doesn't seem to know what they're doing um or like isn't sort of like guiding the process whereas I don't know not even years later just like a couple months in I was like okay cool figured out my process and so when I would get on a call with client um I would be like okay cool and this is what's happening and this is like the timeline that's going to happen on and this is when your website's going to be live and like how much better is that so I would say take some time to to figure out what your web designer process is there's a zillion different processes and you don't need to do a certain one I did it in 2 weeks I granted I'm not like I'm not saying everyone needs to do that by any means there's so many processes people are doing like one day website builds they're doing one week two weeks one month um like there's a variety of different ways that you could do this but I think the key thing is figuring out like what works for you and your life situation maybe you're going to be side hustling this like I side hustled this on the side of a master's degree at the beginning some people they you have might have kids or you might have a full-time job or whatever it is and so it's fine no matter what's happening in your life it's possible to do this but it's important that you figure out the timeline which is realistically going to work for you to actually get this project done and that's why it's important that in like the previous times have talked about okay like just start building a website or just find a friend or family to build a website for because it can give you an idea of like how long does this realistically take me to build this website so that I can start to like put that into like a timeline for example and that's really key so I do have to say when it comes to figuring out your process and everything um I am hosting a boot camp coming up in a couple weeks and it's all about a variety of things for getting started as a website designer but one day we're just talking about figuring out and like showing you examples of different client processes and then helping you define your own so it's called the profitable and productive web designer boot camp it's coming up October 17th 18th and 19th it is live so if you're watching this video before that date then click the link below and you can register and then then um in one of the three days we're talking about the process so definitely come to that um if you're watching this later um I do have some res sources on my YouTube channel about defining the process and everything so we can link that for you again below but again if you're watching this before the 17th 18th 19th um then do click the link below to get registered for that boot camp yeah yeah amazing Pages boot camps are so good you guys so absolutely click the link in the description below to sign up for that awesome okay so that brings us to our very final step very curious to see what this is because I also have some ideas for people on how they can get some clients speaking from personal experience here in pan okay so dive into step six and then I'm going to add that on okay good so step number six is also yeah it's about finding clients but like beyond your family and friends so step number six is to pick a marketing strategy which would actually fit to you and which you would actually enjoy so there when I started as website designer everyone was talking about Instagram and they're like Instagram is this like amazing visual medium and it's the way I get all my clients and like if you're a web designer you have to be on Instagram and I tried forcing myself into Instagram and I was like I just don't like it I just don't want to show up on this platform every day like I don't really like this um and so I was not a fan and I felt really stuck because that's what everyone was saying is like that's the way that all the successful designers got their clients and it wasn't really for me so I decided instead to blog and blogging was what led me to getting the like inquiry a day and everything and it was super successful for getting clients but I think the moral of the story here is like if you don't want to blog you don't need to blog if you don't like Instagram you don't need to do Instagram there are zil literally a zillion different marketing strategies and it's about finding one which you would enjoy doing and then like actually implementing that strategy and I should also clarify like you don't want to pick five marketing strategies I totally did that at the beginning I just tried every single day doing a new marketing strategy because I just had no clue what I was doing and I didn't get momentum in any of them and I think that's a real issue so picking one maybe to marketing strategies and then actually implementing those things would be really key and at boot camp we're also going to have a whole day where we talk about the different marketing strategies the different options and everything um so yeah but it's basically like pick picking one maybe two marketing strategies and really going hardcore and implementing that again if you don't want to be a Blog if you don't want to be Instagram no problem there's a zillion different other options but it's really you need to there at some point you will exhaust your family and friends and so that's and of course sometimes you get referrals from those people when someone else goes and visits their website but really doing something which like you actively pursue I think is really key because referrals can often feel like like if a referral isn't coming and you're like well I have a space open there's not much you can do to like really get that that's more like an in just a let's say an energetic strategy which like they just come to you whereas it's also important that we Implement something ourselves which can actually like when we are seeing like oh need more clients for a couple months from now I'm going to go implement this strategy yeah and something Paige and I talk about behind the scenes when we're having our Biz strategy sessions is that you have to give a strategy time to work so what happens often at the beginning is we're jumping from strategy to strategy thinking that it's not working when really you got to stick with one for a little bit of time I'm often seeing results like 3 months later from when I actually do the thing so yeah keep that in mind and just really try and follow through on the strategies Le pick I cannot describe how much I agree with that statement like if there's one thing I've learned in business from almost 10 years it's like literally sticking at one thing for a really long time is like what leads to insane growth and I know that that sounds so exceptionally boring but like there's a reason why every single business person ever is like consistency is important and it's like yes that sounds annoying but yes it's also true and we can both like fully vouch for the fact that that is true and that's why I'm saying like don't pick five marketing strategies and switch between them constantly like pick one and just keep going at it exactly see the strategy through give it time to actually work okay the one thing I wanted to add on the marketing front is that you would be surprised how many businesses do not have websites you would think it's 2023 like all the all the businesses around you all the local businesses around you will have effective websites and they do not so for example I live in Panama and there are all these businesses down here that do not have a web presence and I'm like whatsapping everybody trying to get things done in my life so I think you know looking at the businesses around you you can simply reach out to those businesses and be like hey I notice that you don't have a website here's my here's my solution oh man absolutely it's so true and so I actually was just reading a stat recently I think it's 25% of businesses in the us alone don't have a website at all yet that's 25% of businesses small businesses which need websites not to mention websites start looking at a date after like two to three years so you kind of need to like redesign them fairly frequently and so even people who do have websites right now but they're looking a little or they're like literally just like either visually not up to date or like technically not really with it like I can't tell you I'm in Switzerland now I was looking to book a massage you have to call all of them I'm like why is there no appointment Booker on your website like this drives me up a wall um so yeah definitely in the US there's plenty of small businesses that still need websites but even still you go outside of the US like unbelievable number of places with just like painfully awful websites or no website at all yeah exactly and as you said when they are outdated it's so obvious it looks so bad and then you're making judgments about the business business just because they have this updated website so I think it's yeah there's a lot of opportuni still in this space so hopefully this has opened your eyes to the possibility of website design and what that can do for you in your life absolutely go and sign up for paiges boot camp it's an amazing week um so yeah I want you to go there and you can get started and go down this journey of adding web design to your business yeah and at boot camp FYI you need to come live because we do the ultimate web designer starter kit giveaway for those who come live and basically it's like all the tech all the tools all the contracts that you need to get started as a website designer it's worth $1,000 and one lucky boot camper goes home with it so again click the link below we would love to see you at boot camp and it is live so if you're watching this right now go check if it's happened yet or not yeah yeah exactly amazing okay well Paige thank you so much for coming and sharing all your advice this is guys this is over years like and I have been friends for ages now this is a lot of our Year's experience and doing this and coming up with these processes so I'm excited for you to go to the boot camp see what those are figure out what your marketing strategy will be and just really yeah start your web design Journey so Paige thank you so much for being here I really appreciate it thank [Music] you [Music]

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