6 – Our Best (and Worst) Decisions in Building a Web Design Business

[00:00:00] What’s up y’all? Welcome to the Web Design Empire where we share stories and strategies to help you build your web design empire from a side gig to multiple six gigs. I’m John. This is Kelly. We’re full-time freelance web designers. We have escaped the real world, broke up with our jobs, our bosses, our cubicles, our commutes over 15 years ago, and we have not looked back.
We’re also course creators, web design store owners. Kelly owns Airbnbs and I’m a touring professional musician. All that to say, we are building our empires, aren’t we? Kelly? I. Yeah. All. Yep. And you know what, you know what I found out this week? Thanks to a comment from you. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, officially, officially, according to the state of Nebraska.
A couple years longer than that, unofficially, but but yeah, I hit my 20 year anniversary this [00:01:00] week, which is crazy, crazy. This is how OCDI am every day in the morning. Usually before I even check my email, I have to go to Instagram and gosh, I have to make sure all the notifications I’ve seen, everything.
Mm-hmm. And same with Facebook. I gotta go there. I gotta tell people happy birthday. Like I’m pretty good at You’re one of those pretty good. I’m pretty. Is it a genuine one? ’cause I swear there’s bots that do that too. I have the same, I have a little text snippet that does it. I don’t pick the ones that Facebook’s, you know, now they give you like four or five options that you could pick and try to mix it up.
I don’t do that, but part of that is also I don’t check LinkedIn every day, but when I get a notification, my email from LinkedIn, like some, some I. Or someone, some big anniversary, left you a message. So then I was in there and I went to clear out this message, delete it. ’cause I just have to have a clean message inbox.
, My email, I’m going on 183 weeks of inbox zero every day. Like it’s, oh my God, you’re my hero. It’s just a thing. It’s just a thing. [00:02:00] So then I saw in the, I was like, I better click out these notifications. They click on it and I saw congratulate Kelly for 20 years and 20 years. I was like, wow.
So yeah, that’s how that happened. And I got a couple others too, and I usually just ignore, I’m the opposite. I ignore all notifications from social media, but yeah, I saw a couple others come through and I’m like, really? Is that right? But yeah, I looked it up. I just went in my files because I was like, I need to make sure that I put the right date in there.
But it is, I know it’s right because it was a couple months after I got married and we just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. So there you go. It’s offish twenty years. A freelance web designer. Anyhow, so which one’s more living that dream? Hmm. 20 years of web design or wedding or, I was, I was honestly trying to figure out which one’s more impressive.
I think they’re both quite impressive. How many, I don’t know what the stats on how many startups fail, you know? Well, right. Is it more than I know? Is it more than 52% or whatever the divorce rate is? I think so. [00:03:00] Definitely. Definitely. So the freelance web designer might be more impressive, I don’t know.
Regardless, good milestones to have. Well, that’s a great, that’s a great segue. You’ve been doing this for 20 years now. I don’t know. I think mine was 2006, so I’ll get one here in two more years. Nice. Uh, from link from LinkedIn, but 20 years of doing this, 18 years of doing this for me. Today we’re talking about the biggest mistakes and the best decisions.
Yeah. We’ve made as. Web designers and I think there’s a few. We’ll start with the juicy. We’ll start with the juicy, the big mistakes. Oh boy. I think I probably have more than you.
When we were, we were chatting before this episode and making our lists a lot of mm-hmm. A lot of mine were the opposite of, yes. This was, you know, this was a mistake, but then I fixed it and now blah, blah, blah. So, and now it’s one of the best decisions ever.
Yeah. I feel like a lot of my mistakes opened other doors for not the [00:04:00] opposite of that decision necessarily, but just opened other doors eventually. So it’s almost still hard to call it a mistake just because it’s such a huge learning opportunity and all of these are giant learning opportunities, with my point being.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Otherwise you’re not gonna learn, you’re not gonna grow. If all we have is great success, there’s no learning moments. There’s no lessons in there. The mistakes , are what keep you, evolving and making better decisions.
So all of these mistakes, they suck. They’re painful, but, they were very, very important to getting to that, 20 year anniversary. So, oh my gosh. Alright. Do you wanna hear my worst? My success is not a straight line. Oh, for sure. Yeah. No, healing is not a straight line. Success is not a straight line.
So when you hear us get to the best decision, just imagine the opposite of those were also mistakes, but most of my mistakes are, are one-offs. But yes, I would love kick it off. Biggest mistakes. Let’s go. Okay. I think my biggest mistake. Was not [00:05:00] having a business plan. I call, I call my, freelance business.
I call it my hobby. Gone outta control often. And I kind of say that lovingly, but at the same time, it’s extremely true. It was a hobby gone outta control. I didn’t really choose freelance web design. I’m not sure if anyone does. It’s a path that I think most of us kind of stumble into, but, a calling.
It’s a calling a co. There you go. It found us, right? Is that it? , I did not have a business plan. I was just winging everything from, left to right up, down, just winging it every single day. And it wasn’t until I. Was raising babies from home that it hit me like, holy moly, I’ve got to put some systems in place, and start treating it like a business.
So I think that’s my number one mistake. Obviously that was a huge learning opportunity. I learned a lot from that and our course kind of came from blowing that up, in the first place. But yeah, that was a huge mistake and I feel like if I would’ve done that much, much, much sooner. Things would’ve you, especially like in place before kiddos came, it would’ve been a much easier [00:06:00] path.
Yeah. What’s your biggest intention? Intentionality, you know? Yes. That was, uh, I think we’re gonna hear each other’s list and be like, oh yeah, I forgot that one. Oh, yeah, me too. Oh, okay. Because I didn’t have a business plan either. I wasn’t intentional about, about it. Yes. It just, it just happened. It was just happening to me.
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. That’s definitely. A biggest mistake. That’s why that’s module one of the, the business side of our course is all about business plans anyway, so, Hmm. The biggest mistake, okay, well my biggest mistake probably was, trying to partner with someone who was just like me or more creative than me.
If being creative was all the way on the right and being an organized development kind of brain Yeah. Is all the way on the left. I’m like, center. Right. A tiny bit. Right. You know, me too.
And I think that’s why we’re good for, for web design. Like we got both sides of the brain. But yes, carry on. I mean, there are no folders or anything [00:07:00] on my desktop. It’s just an empty, computer desktop. Like, I just love organizing. You’re email zero.
That’s all you need to say. Box. Got it. Box in, box zero. So initially when I started artillery, there was three of us and it was two illustrators. And me and these two illustrators were very, very creative. Yes. I’m not good enough on the process side to, yeah. Corral all these creatives and get them moving.
And then another time I tried to partner up with another designer, and so I was like, let’s work on a project together. Let’s get this going. And he was, man, he was such a good designer, so creative. But he would not communicate back with me. I’d send him an email, ask him something or text him.
It’d be days. And it was just like, this is not going to work there. And I didn’t do the test project first before saying we should maybe partner up, think of the future that we could have. Like I, I didn’t, didn’t like you went straight to partner. I went straight to engagement.
Like I went, yeah. Date number one. I was like, we could get married. Like, you know that, that’s, [00:08:00] you’re that guy. And I don’t like people, I don’t, I don’t like letting people down. Not only was it like, Hey, this project’s not gonna work, but we’re not gonna work together.
Awkwardness. Yeah. That was a mistake to, for me , to be like I could work with Now I know. Like I, if they’re more creative than me, Nope. Not a good fit. Right. I had a similar experience like that too, where I partnered up with someone
who, I mean, and this was when I had kids at home. And so the plan was that she would go out and get the business and have the meetings and do the calls and everything, and I would just do the work from home. And I was like, this is great. And , in my head, I was like, this is a great matchup. But honestly, what ha Like she had some hidden agendas I didn’t know about that.
Ended up being. Like me building sites in a totally different platform that I wasn’t comfortable with. And then the main thing was my existing clients that she started communicating with, they didn’t like her. I’m like a extremely honest, straightforward, no bs. Like that’s how I deal with clients.
And she was the opposite. She was very salesy, very fluffy, very small talky. And, once I realized that was going on, I was like. , This [00:09:00] is not a good fit. So yeah, it was interesting. It was a different type of bad fit, but, I think like foundationally, how you, communicate with clients I think is a really big I.
Important piece of working well together and being on the same page. ’cause yeah, it’s honesty, it’s straightforwardness. I know that now is my number one thing in my business and if I bring on anyone, they have to have that same hat to wear. Yeah. Culture. It’s a, your brand culture, you pretty much, yeah.
Your brand. Okay. What else you got? Yeah. The other like really big one, was just not getting helpers on board sooner and by helper, you know, contractors an assistant, whatever.
In my defense, I did try a couple of times kinda like you with people that were just really bad fits. That was separate from the story I just told, like just with contractors even. And the first thing I tried to do is just outsource design. But then I very quickly found myself in this like.
Project management role where I was just this go-between, between the client and the designer. I’m [00:10:00] like, this sucks. I hated my life. Yeah. And so I knew I needed at least some design. And if I was going to outsource something, it would be the project manager type stuff as opposed to the design stuff.
So yeah, bringing on helpers. In the right, spot, sooner would’ve, like now I have a really good, system set up, that makes my life so much easier and I still get to do the stuff that I enjoy and I’m outsourcing the stuff I don’t, so it’s a much better fit. Having that in place before kids would’ve been, oh my gosh, so much better.
I could listen to you talk about mistakes all day. No, I’m just kidding. Okay, thanks. I got a lot more. I’ll throw one, I’ll throw one in here. Taking on large projects, this has happened that four times that I know of. Oh, uh, that I can remember taking on large projects that are beyond my capabilities, pretty much not listening to my gut.
They’re big budgets, but they’re just, man, they’re terrible. So for a while there was like a, Hey, I’m not even gonna do a site for [00:11:00] over this amount because I just know this red tape’s gonna come with it. Yep. So yeah, I’ve definitely learned that one a few times.
Yeah. And it’s been pretty brutal. There’s been a couple that have been, like refunds involved, so, yep. Yeah. Yep. I’ve had that as well. And to go along with that, another one of mistakes I’ve listed was ignoring red flags and taking on clients that I knew was gonna be a disaster. And I took ’em on anyway.
And I, why do I, why? I feel like our generation, I hope people pleasers, the people pleasers, and I feel like the, like even the half generation below us, like the millennials or whatever you wanna call ’em, I feel like they’re much better at that and setting boundaries and saying no. So hopefully that dies with, US 40 somethings.
But, the ignoring red. Flag client. Like I just, why? I know it’s gonna end up bad and I do it anyway. What the heck? Well, yeah. Yeah. They’re better at it than us because they don’t text people back for three days. You know, like where I, I text people back [00:12:00] that day, I’m just like, they have 90,000 emails in their inbox.
I don’t want them to be mad at me. Ah, hey, I saw this. I’ll respond tomorrow. Like, you know, and, and whereas, you know that’s true, some folks are just fine with like, nah, I’ll get to that. Yeah. We’ll get to it later next week. Yeah. Okay. I know what else you got. Another big one was when I moved states, well, not moving states.
I mean, moving Colorado was a great decision. It opened all kinds of doors, but when I did move, I did not see the problem. That would blow up for my business, which was. You know, I was just thinking, oh, I’m a freelance web designer. I can work anywhere, whenever, wherever I want.
And I just had in my head it’s a remote business, it’s fine. Everything will be fine. And my target at the time was local, small businesses. And all of my business was coming from referrals from those local small businesses. And when I moved, the referrals still came.
But those people who were still in Nebraska really wanted to work with [00:13:00] someone local. And so I won a lot less new business from, those referrals. And this is pre covid, so it was a different time. I don’t think that would be as big of a factor as it was then. Now, true. Yeah. But I did have to basically go out and find new business for the first time ever in my freelance career.
So the mistake. There was just not seeing that coming. Like looking back, it’s like, duh, of course that’s gonna be a problem. But at the time I was like, oh, this is, this will be fine. No problem at all. Well, I get it. It’s still Midwest too. It’s still the Midwest, like in Nebraska. That’s where my business is outta too.
It thrives on word of mouth, you know? Yes. So who would’ve thought, , moving. Nine hours away or eight hours away, would drastically change that? Yeah. You know what was funny was I saw a renewal notice the other day for webdesignnebraska.com. Oh, you gave me that. You probably regret that.
I did. You’re like, dang it. Why did I give that to John? No, it was screwing up my SEO forever here. So I had to let it go. I only have two more mistakes because All right. I don’t make [00:14:00] that. No. ’cause so many of them, it’s a little, i’ll save my controversial one for last.
This one’s kind of maybe a tiny bit in the weeds, but using too many, WordPress themes to build sites. So we use Oh, I gotcha. We use WordPress as the main framework to build sites with, so does Kelly. And then when you’re in this WordPress system, you have all these prebuilt themes that you can use.
And so for several years we would use different themes. Well, every theme has a little bit of a different backend and setup and all this stuff. But the worst thing was, is that a lot of these themes were sold, at a one-time price. So you’d pay. 69 bucks. You get this theme. Well, guess what?
So eventually the theme stops selling, right. Uh, other web designers and you buy the thing, everyone stops buying it because it was a one-time fee and then the theme author eventually decides to retire that theme or not support it anymore. [00:15:00] Yeah. And I hated telling clients, yeah, this theme, we gotta start over.
It could last two months or two years. I have no idea. Yeah. At the time, it was beyond my ability to code PHP and make my own themes, whatever. Yeah. And that, that problem’s really hard to articulate to a client too. ’cause they’re not gonna understand like, well, what do you mean it’s going away?
Well, they don’t like that. It’s, that’s not great. It’s hard to, I mean, you know, it’s like, well, could last two months, or especially when I’m not offering them an alternative, yeah. So I hated that. I hated that feeling. And that happened a couple times where a site would get hacked because the theme was outta date and they weren’t gonna fix it.
And now you’re like, great, now what do I that was definitely a mistake for me. Yeah. You probably have the opposite on your best decisions, but that was a mistake for me. Yes, I do. I’ve definitely run into that , or I’ve run into it actually, it’s turned into an opportunity because, that makes an easy sell on a new site when it’s like, well, this theme is no longer supported, so therefore you’re getting a new website.
. A couple others that I had were, . I’ve talked about this in a previous episode, but I switched [00:16:00] billing systems once because I got really greedy and I wanted to be able to pass on my credit card fees to the clients. And it was this whole ordeal. I didn’t get paid for like two months.
I ended up going back to my other system. I feel like that was a karma thing. Like, oh, Kelly’s getting greedy. Watch this Schmack and two, two, yeah. Two months of not getting paid. And then communicating with them. Did they have to resign up or no? Yeah. You, you? No. Well, on the new one they did, but then I ended up going back to the old system, which thank God saved everything.
Even though I deleted all those recurring invoices, they were all archived as opposed to saved and so I could bring them all back. Otherwise, ah, I’d probably still be dealing with that. It was so bad. Don’t get greedy. My Don’t get greedy. My last mistake has to do with billing and it’s, this might be controversial, but I I we don’t allow this anymore.
Letting a client do a 12 month payment plan. Nope. Never again. Oh, interesting. How come? Never again. ’cause they never paid, they never paid past six months. Oh, [00:17:00] I got you. I got you. So for the project, not for recurring. Yes, correct. Yeah. Letting a client do a 12 month payment plan for their website.
For the building of the website. You know, it was a like a $3,500 website. It was a guy who, so at what point did you , so it was already launched and he just stopped paying. Well, then you just take it down. Yeah, yeah. Well, he went out of business. Oh, gotcha. It was like, well. That’s why we don’t do that.
That sucks. Because I like, it’s rare. It’s, I like that concept. Concept in theory, but, I know I said it was controversial. That’s, that’s the worst case. That’s the worst case scenario right there. Yeah. That’s the, but I was like, that’s it. That’s a con. Let’s just, we’re done. So, all right. Fair. Do you have any more mistakes?
I just have a couple more. One is, yes. Working with family? Oh, the, the most, well, for a couple reasons, and I know you do your dad’s site, but, if you do work with family, my theory is you do it for free, period, the end. But I did a paid project with, it [00:18:00] was a brother-in-law at the time, and it’s still, to this day, the most screwed over I’ve got.
I paid 2000 out of pocket to a developer that never got paid to be, and this was. 15 years ago. So it was a bigger deal back then to me. So that, that was bad. And then , it just got awkward forever. He’s no longer my brother-in-law, so it wasn’t because of that . , I wonder if it’s more specific, like, don’t do work for your siblings or your siblings in-laws ’cause would you, ’cause you, have you done anything for your parents? Course, but free always free all the freeness. Oh, free. Got you. Okay. Got you.
And I give them, I give them hosting at cost. Like I don don’t, no, I charge my dad. I charge him. I know you do. And that’s fine. But again, it’s just, that’s just a personal thing. And then I do Okay. I think this is what you’re getting at. I do do work for my brother’s business. But the way we’ve gotten around that is I never work directly with him, him talk with him.
I am. Correct. And so it’s me and his marketing team , just to remove that awkwardness or that weirdness. But again, his [00:19:00] business is so successful at this point that , I should charge him triple. I’m just kidding. Well, kind of back then. But even with like cousins or aunts and uncles, it’s, mm-hmm. I’ve been in the, at the family things before where they’re like, oh, I wanna do a website for this, this, and this. And I’m like, uh, , I don’t want to work with like, they feel like they’re doing you a favor or something by sending you a little bit of business, and then they’re expecting a huge break and , I just rather not deal with it.
It just gets off. Yeah. But what do you do if you refer ’em to somebody that does a bad job? Then you’re like. Ah, that’s true. That’s what I’m saying, like just don’t do it. Alright. Don’t even, don’t even take it. Or again, do it for free. May do that as a portfolio builder. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t have a great solution there, but family can make the worst.
The PB portfolio builder. Yeah. Okay. And then my last one was, not staying up to date on like industry news and trends. I just suck at that and I’ve learned to lean so hard on you for that, that I just don’t even, I don’t even try. So, yeah, no, I feel you. I [00:20:00] have an RSS reader and I, I, I know you’re good at it day too.
I, my OCDI just, once kids came, it just went out the window and I’m like, oh, John will tell me if anything’s important. It’s fine.
Alright, we’re gonna get into our best decisions, but first we have a sponsor and it’s a Superfly Kelly and I own this business. If you happen to use Divi like we do Divi WordPress theme, check out our beautiful themes and plugins specifically and lovingly made for Divi sites with besuperfly.com. besuperfly.com.
All right, let’s get into the best decisions that we have made. Yes, go for it. Well, I would pay good money to think that we have the same first number one top. Oh, snap. We probably, well, best decision. Okay. Oh, no, no. Well, um. I mean, is it, is it not? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Recurring revenue.
Should we say? All I was gonna say should say that, should we say, [00:21:00] this is gonna be easy because I’m just gonna let you say it and I’ll be like, yeah, me too.
Ditto. Yeah, me too. Oh, no, it was okay. We gotta bounce then. Okay. So yours, that your top one is maintenance plans, recurring revenue. I mean, that’s what’s allowed me to stay home with kids, explore other opportunities, buy other businesses, do investment. Like it’s all of it.
It’s the reason, , I’ve been doing it for 20 years. I don’t know what else to say. I think I just said a lot there. No. Correct. So offering hosting and maintenance plans, that was my number one. And then my number two was, requiring hosting and maintenance plans. Oh, nice. There’s, I Didn’t add that.
There’s a difference you can offer them, which we did for a while, and then you could say, you know what? You have to do it to build recurring revenue. I don’t know how long. I’m gonna keep that up probably. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I kind of, I’m inconsistent. , It’s okay. Let me knock that one off. Check.
Alright. , For me, it’s bringing Jake on board would be [00:22:00] next after that. Nice. Bringing Jake on board. I remember I was a freelancer solo. I had, I was in the middle of 28 projects. Uh, drowning in work as Kelly would say. And then I remember now, this time , I didn’t future cast right away.
Yeah. I learned my lesson like with the other partners, I was like, we gonna do this thing, we’re gonna build an empire. Um, with Jake, I was just like, Hey, help me with these few projects. Okay, here’s a $500 month retainer. He was in college still, and then we grew from there and now we’re partners and he runs the team.
So yeah, that’s, that kind of goes with that one. Building a team. Jake built the team and he pretty much runs the ship. It’s funny ’cause we’re doing a mastermind right now and yeah. I feel like all, a lot of the questions that, that our mastermind students will ask will be like, I. Specific questions on sales process stuff, and I’m like, I don’t know.
I don’t know. I haven’t done that. Don’t that. I haven’t done that in a long time. Yeah. So anyway, bringing Jake on board, he’s, he loves everything I hate doing. [00:23:00] He, yeah. When you said earlier that you were just, when you had that one partner, you ended up being the go-between admin.
Collecting content, stuff like that. That’s what he loves. And he’s a big process guy. So he’s still creative, but he’s definitely mid left on that, process versus creative. So he’s got a decent eye for design, but he’s a very good at process. So that’s my number two. What about you?
Nice. To go along with that. I will go to, oh wait, that was your number two. I’ll wait on my number two because I know it’s in yours somewhere. But, to align with that, what I would say is one of my best decisions was staying true to my why. Mm-hmm. When I decided to start this business, the whole point, the whole purpose was to do it while staying home, while raising my babies.
Obviously that Why has evolved since then because they’re all, in school and stuff, but, so I did it, but, . That was my why for a long [00:24:00] time. And I was approached by, others that wanted to, start agencies or they wanted to, Hey, partner with me and we’ll grow this. And I just had to say, no, because that’s going to take me outta the house and that just defeats the purpose of what I’m building.
And so that’s, I’m so proud that I did that. And just, hmm. Stuck with my why, until it was accomplished. Because yeah. That was the whole point. , That’s gotta be some fomo. Like when you, when someone comes to you and says, yes, no, yes and no, let, let’s start an agency. It sounds so sexy, right?
Like, let’s start an agency and we’re gonna have cool brick offices downtown with glass. Right? Right. Yeah. So this person that approached you, were they a another successful freelancer, or what was their deal? They had actually started another successful, agency in town. And, I don’t know why they split up or broke up or whatever, but he basically wanted to do it again.
, And so he was looking , for the creative, which was me, I suppose. , There was, I guess maybe a little bit of fomo, but at the same time I [00:25:00] was like, Nope, this is gonna defeat the purpose of why I even started this business. Like, again, had my kids already been in school, I would’ve definitely considered it.
But it just didn’t, it didn’t align. But you dodged a bullet. Yeah, I think I did. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I don’t believe, whatever he attempted to, . Create what was successful, or if it was, it was short-lived. ’cause I’ve never heard of it. So one of mine, one of mine goes along with that. It’s quitting cushy jobs.
So the, oh yeah, the, the three cushy jobs I had, one was the University of University of Nebraska. ’cause I was a student worker there and they hired me. I had my own office away , from my boss. My boss was two miles away. Not on e, not even on the main campus. And they came and saw it was the easiest job on the planet.
It was very easy. I was like 25 years old and my coworkers were all like 55, and I was just a whiz on the computer. It was helping teachers get their course materials online and it [00:26:00] was like, oh, easy. That one was one to do it in your sleep. That one. I quit to go on tour in a band that barely scraped by.
I was making $750 a month. From the band and then freelancing web design, and then the second job, I quit after that band disbanded. I worked at a nonprofit and just building their websites and I thought I would love it, thought I would retire in that job. Didn’t last but four months. Mm-hmm. And then the last cushy job I had was, I only lasted a week.
One week. That’s so funny. We’re still good. We’re still good friends. , It’s another company in town, they’re a development company and , they wanted to start. Oh, okay. Yeah. They wanted to start adding creative to their. Services and, that job also included a company car, profit sharing.
Mm-hmm. And a path to equity one week really? I lasted one week. I went on Friday morning. I said, don’t even pay me for, because all I did that week was trying to wrap up my freelance projects. That’s all I did that week. You know, they were like, [00:27:00] oh, gotcha. I said, Hey, don’t even pay me. And the bummer about the company car was, it was a company car leased.
The lease was in my name, but they would just reimburse me every month, which never happened, obviously. But that was how it was gonna work. And I actually still just have the same lease, just rolling it every three years. Oh my gosh. But anyway, when I quit, when I went on Friday morning and said, Hey guys, this is, I already know.
I can already tell this is not one of ’em said, this is the biggest mistake of your life.
Now granted, well, it didn’t end up in your mistake column grant granted. That’s true. Granted, at the time, I was gonna be employee number, I think five, and they have like 20 employees now. But I don’t feel like I missed out just the No, no. So anyway, that’s that one. I like it.
I also have on my best decisions list, quitting my first full-time job after six weeks, six weeks. That’s all I lasted. And that was the same year I [00:28:00] started. That was 2004. That was when I started KDesign. Um, six weeks in the real world. I just graduated with my master’s degree and I’m like, I am gonna dominate the universe.
I’m going to be the greatest executive that ever. Executive Power Corner office. Yep. All of it. C sweet. And, um, yeah, I lasted six freaking weeks in the real world. I was like, f this. What are people thinking? I just don’t, uhuh, I was falling asleep at my. Cubicle every day just doing data entry, the master’s degree.
Like what are you guys? Anyway, it was awful. Definitely on my best decision list. Never looked back. Yeah. We’ll have to do, we’ll have to do an episode same time on that transition and that I remember. Oh yeah. You know, I remember walking out of the one that was the short story. I remember walking outta my, one of my jobs.
It was. It was downtown and I remember walking across the street, cattycorner, and then I was, I just turned, took one last look and I was like, never again. [00:29:00] I have to do whatever it takes to not be there again, someplace like that, okay. Best decision choosing WordPress.
Choosing. Yeah, that was WordPress. I think that was my number two. Yeah. Well for me, I put embracing WordPress ’cause I fought it for a long time. And I think you did too, didn’t you? Or was it just me? I had a former band manager who for like two years, brought it up several times. Like, you need to check out this WordPress thing.
Mm-hmm. And this is before it was like. There were no beautiful themes yet Really like it. It was like it wasn’t running half the internet. It was just, the sidebar was still a thing. A thing, you know? Yeah. It was just a blog. Yeah. Yeah. And what made you switch over? Just hearing about it enough?
Just hearing about it enough and being, well, for me it was clients and Flash died. Flash. Oh, God died. I blocked that out. That’s, that’s and, then before that, I was building either flash sites or I was building straight up HTML CSS. And I knew that was not scalable. That was [00:30:00] just like me making these edits is not scalable.
Yeah. I was doing straight H TM L actually. It was like S-H-T-M-L to like, oh yeah, that’s right. A template file. Anyway, I just aged myself a lot. Were you in Dreamweaver? The, the dot. Dw, of course. Dwt. Of course. The Dwt. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But yeah, my clients kept asking, they wanted a way to make simple edits themselves and I was like, all right.
And I did have a programmer that was doing . Custom, proprietary CMS systems , and then , things went south with that guy real fast. I left him off my list ’cause I didn’t even wanna talk about him, but, I knew I needed some sort of content management system and WordPress just kept coming up and up and up and up and up and I’m like, fine, let’s do this.
And then, ended up being one of the best business decisions ever. Yeah. And then also embracing Divi or just, I guess picking Divi. Mm-hmm. Like you said on your, mistakes list. Just focusing all your efficiency on one [00:31:00] theme. For economies of scale and efficiency and sanity, just all of that.
That made life so much better. And thank goodness they keep improving it. Do you know how mad we would be at like Divi 1.0 right now? It’s such a great tool now, we picked a good one. Yeah. ’cause back then I remember, one of the developers I would use would say, well, you should use this concrete five thing.
It was like a cm concrete, concrete five. Goodness. It was called Concrete five. It might even be a round still, but it was a content management system. But you had to pay per site for Oh. But now we’re dealing with the same thing with web flow. Right. Webflow, you’re gonna end up paying, however much.
Oh, it’s a lot of ’em. Yeah. And it’s hard to, you wanna talk about economies of scale? Mm-hmm. What’s your, per site cost on hosting right now? You know. Nine bucks mine. Yeah., Seven. Yeah, $7. So, that’s way cheaper than either of those options I just mentioned,.. Yeah, totally. And then Divi, most folks that use Divi pay the annual fee like 89 a year. Some of us have bought in Lifetime. I checked that out today ’cause I was like, [00:32:00] what did I buy Divi? It was 2012, unless that was just when they switched over their system. But yeah, the earliest date I see is 2012.
So, and it wouldn’t be the, end of the world if we had to switch to something else, but it’d still be, probably something that would, be disrupted way cheaper than Webflow or whatever. Would it be disruptive? Yeah, it would be like, I don’t know.
Changing payment processors? No. Oh, man. Well, yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. All right. What else you got for best decisions? Best decisions? Oh, purchasing Superfly was a great decision, for both of our web design empires. Mm-hmm. We have, I don’t know,, I don’t know how detailed we should get, but it’s just upped our recurring revenue.
Mm-hmm. , Because it’s a subscription based, , company and, it turns out to be a really good business decision. We will earn our investment back, is it next month? I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. We’ll have to do an episode on that. It’s been a great business and it’s only been, what, 15 months that we’ve had it, so pretty awesome.
Was that on your list? [00:33:00] No, but I like that it was on yours. Along that line, I have launching break into web slash partnering with Kelly. So we could include, yes, I did have meeting John at Jimmy John’s on my list as well. Now break into web. It’s not like a, huge income success, but as far as everyone on our team has gone through it.
And we found a couple people, even folks that you use through break into web. , Yeah. There’s a subcontract. You use Kyle? Yeah. I, I didn’t know him before. I met him through break into web and then, oh, I didn’t know that. Another, another gal, my buddy’s wife, Leah, was a, was not a web designer at all.
No. Took break into web and now she, I don’t even know if we can subcontract her anymore. We can’t make money off her anymore. She’s too busy. I don’t know what good problem for her. I mean, that’s a plug for breaking into web, you know? But it is, it is. And for me, break into web, as far as it being a good decision it’s such a passion project of ours and it comes straight from the heart and it’s [00:34:00] truly there to help people. We meet people all the time, we’re like, oh man, I’d love to have a lifestyle like yours. It’s like, well, you can, you just gotta, train yourself a little bit and go for it.
And, all of that training’s in there. So it’s. It’s been so cool seeing the people who have gone through it and come out the other end and quit their jobs and, that’s what it’s all about. But yeah, it’s, well, and training people, I trained Jake in person,.
Yeah. And so it was like, and I had also tried to train a couple others before Jake, all in person. And so it’s like this, this sucks. You know? Yeah. Like, is this, is this guy gonna stick around or not? Do I wanna, right. So when you approached me with, let’s make a course, it was like, yeah, I could, I don’t have to train anyone in person anymore.
I could just say, yeah, totally. Take this. Here it is. This is, here it is. Yeah. Dope. Totally. Dope. Yeah, that’s been just fun. I think the only other one I have on here that we haven’t really talked about was, was partnering and building relationships with other, businesses, like [00:35:00] agencies for overflow, digital marketers, copywriters, graphic designers,
’cause when people use you as a web designer, they also assume that you can write content and take photos and do videography and blah, blah, blah, blah. They just assume you can do everything else in ads and SEO and that’s typically not the case. So having some, extended team, of partnerships to send people to.
And then vice versa, they send me business as well. Has been. A really good move and it’s just one of those win-win win situations. . Hmm. I have two, I have two left. One’s thanks to you. One is, finding a great accountant, which Kelly referred me to. Yes. Oh my gosh.
I can’t believe I didn’t have an accountant on my list. And I, going back to him. You’re trying, after I moved to a Colorado accountant and I’m like, forget this guy. I want the other one. So yeah, I’m going back to him. That’s funny. No, he’s been great. And then my last one is, it’s gonna sound cheesy, but it’s so true.
It’s never giving up. [00:36:00] The best decision I made was never giving up, was to keep pushing forward. I was just talking with my band mate about this in the car yesterday. We had a nine hour drive. Oh boy. And he’s 50 years old. I’m 44. And we’ve played with a lot of people musician wise, and even in the web design space, right?
You see a lot of. I know some folks now who are working at agencies and it’s not fun work or they’re working for an app company, and I was just telling him, I was like, man, I’ve never thought about quitting.
I’ve never, no seriously thought about it, my life would be so boring, I know I’m putting anyone who’s quit. I’m putting him down right now. Fine. Fine. And I told him, ’cause he doesn’t look 50. I like to think I don’t look 44. You don’t.
And I think when I first met John, side note, I thought he was 10 years younger than me. He’s 10 days younger than me. Okay. Carry on. But I was telling him I wonder if somehow since we have to be on stage and we have to. Whatever, somehow our bodies are key. I know a lot of [00:37:00] musicians.
Yeah. If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. Obviously there’s, you guys are using it, there’s exceptions, but I just thought, man, I’ve just never thought about, and I know so many musicians who right, they get off the road and then they just, just life deteriorates or they’re not happy.
They’re bummed. They wish they could do something still. So anyway, my biggest. One of my better I don’t decide to not give up, I guess. Right, right. I don’t know. What do you think? I completely agree with you it’s just innately part of, I think who we are and that Midwestern grit, whatever.
But it’s, that’s huge. And it’s something I’ve never really considered either. I mean, as I get older, I think of, an exit plan someday, but. It’s never gonna be just that’s it, I’m done. Throw up the throw up my hands. It’s always been about just evolving and learning and helping clients and getting better.
And as a freelancer, you get to make all those big decisions. I mean, , that the pro and the con is you’re making all those decisions and whether it ends up being a mistake or the best decision of your life, you’re gonna learn something either way and keep making those [00:38:00] decisions.
Your why changes. And then you come up with a new why.
Because you know what? You know what’s never done Being built an empire, you know? That’s right. An empire is never, no empire has ever been like, okay, that’s enough. Like we’re done. Yeah. I’m always trying to, to expand. So Well with that in mind, thank you for joining us today on the Web Design Empire. Also check out break into web.com.
Learn how you can break away from your daily grind. Become a freelance web designer like us, and create the empire you’ve been dreaming of. Cheers y’all. We’ll see you next time.