3 – Web Design Wins & Lessons: 2024 Recap + Big Plans for 2025

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 fakes. I’m John. This is Kelly. We’re full time freelance web designers who’ve escaped the real world, broke up with our jobs, our bosses, our cubicles, and our commutes over 15 years ago, and we haven’t looked back.

We’re also course creators, web design business coaches, so fun, web design store owners, Kelly owns Airbnbs, I’m a professional musician, all that to say we are always constantly building our empires year over year. And that’s what today’s episode is all about. We are reviewing 2024 and looking ahead.

Setting our sights to 2025 and BEYOND! But first, how are you doing, Kelly? What’s up? What’s new in your world? Oh, let’s see. It’s the last [00:01:00] week of school before winter break. I know that doesn’t apply to you. It is a very big deal in this house. And yeah, we’re actually heading to Disneyland on Friday, the first day of break.

So that’ll be awesome. And we get back a couple days before, well, we get back the 23rd, so we’ll be back for Christmas Eve and Christmas. My 11 year old. She just, she can’t stop yapping about how excited she is. But every time she opens her mouth, she’s so excited. For christmas for disney for whatever.

But she’s also terrified of flying So it’s kind of a balance for her. But yeah, we’re pumped. It’ll be a good time How about you is disney gonna be slammed? Which disney are we talking about? Oh Disneyland, so this is the california one. We’ve been to the florida one. It’s like way bigger we prefer disneyland just because it’s nice and compact and we stay in the You What’s it called?

The Grand Californian something like that. Which is right on the resort, so you can just whip back in for a nap or a break or whatever and then whip back out. Whereas Disney World, like, you gotta [00:02:00] plan everything days, hours in advance. So it’s a little more, I don’t know, I feel like it’s a little more chill.

Our park days are Saturday, Sunday. So it’ll be, I’m sure it’ll be slammed. I mean, it’s Disney. It’s just always slammed. I’m not sure if there’s a downtime at Disney.

Probably, but I don’t know. I’m like, I’m a fan, but I’m not one of the super duper fans. And so there’s a big discrepancy between my level of Disney knowledge and the super duper fans. We’re just still enjoying it and winging it It’s like i’m staring into my future. I have my yes, you are one three right now and That’s a very magical time to take them.

But yeah, they won’t remember it. No, we are going to florida in february. Awesome But not to disney. Oh not to disney world. Not yet. Although they’re fully immersed in the disney Yeah, I would again like that’s that’s like a that’s a whole like controversy, right? Do you take your kids when [00:03:00] they’re so little that they won’t remember but you’ll remember That’s right the magicalness that they’re going through.

And like it’s funny I have the first time I went to disney world my middle child was two And she swears up and down that she remembers it even though I highly doubt it, but it’s because we have a thousand photos and show so and I even ask her specifically what do you remember in everything’s a photo, but yeah, but still, it was, she still remembers it as being very magical.

So I, I would say. Go for it, but there’s a balance there because then you’re just stuck on the Dumbo ride because they can’t do anything. That’s true That’s true. I remember when I was younger. I we would go to worlds of fun And there was this ride called like the scrambler or something. It was like one of those one things The whole thing spins and then the individual pots spin as well.

It’s just a spin on a spin on a spin. And I made my parents ride that thing like 8 times. Now I’m just like, oh man. My husband can’t do the spinny stuff. I’m okay with [00:04:00] it. But yeah like the coasters at Disney, like it doesn’t work. You can’t get better than that. They’re great. We have I don’t even know what we’re doing for Christmas yet. I think we’re still in plan like, family still trying to get their act together and figure out what’s going on. Are you ho maybe you’re hosting. You don’t know yet. I think we are, partially. Oh. Nice. But I got this cool new stocking that I can’t use this year.

My wife got me one, but I might use this one for next year. It’s a dope stocking. That’s sweet. It’s an Air Jordan 1. Yeah, a shoe for everyone. It’s a big bag that’s got a print on there. Some shoe cleaning company was like, buy our shoe cleaning kit and get this stocking. That is hilarious. And I’m like, I’m a fan.

Three fifths of my family would really appreciate that. My two oldest are diehard Nike fans, and my husband has all the Nikes. So yeah, that’s cute. I like it. I, if I ever meet Casey, we’ll have to talk shoes. I can’t believe y’all haven’t met. It’s just the way it [00:05:00] is.

 Let’s dive in. Let’s dive in. Let’s do it. 2024. And this is what we’re going to do. This is called the Web Design Empire. We were each just going to talk a little bit about the different ventures that we have for what they did in 2024.

Maybe what we liked, what we didn’t like. And then some hopes and dreams for 2025. How do you want to do this? Do you want to trade? You want to, you want to go back and forth or you want to do? Yeah, let’s go back and forth. Okay. No, that’s weird. Well we share quite a few, we share it. Well, so I’ll start with, I’ll start with KDesign, which is my web design business.

And then you go to artillery. How about, and then we’ll go through. The other two that we own together. Okay. So for KDesign 2024 I just wrote down some like milestones whether they were good or not hit multi six figures again, woohoo. Um, I, I lost. amount [00:06:00] of recurring clients this year, which is wild.

I don’t think I’ve ever lost more than two or three in a year before mate maybe four, but this year I lost nine. I had to go back and count it. Cause I wanted to be sure. And it felt like more than that, honestly, but but lost nine sites, which is kind of crazy. And they were all like, none of them were.

You know, Kelly, you suck. We’re quitting you. It was all like one lady retired. Another one just went out of business. They were all legit, but what’s the word mutual. It wasn’t, it wasn’t any, anything terrible. It was just business. You didn’t fire anyone. I didn’t fire anyone.

I don’t think I did but yeah, it was all, it’s just business stuff. And I do think there was a little, I know that 2024 was a really difficult year for businesses in general across the board.

I think that’s still a little bit of fallout from like COVID and all this like weird interest rate stuff and inflation stuff, like it’s just all kind of shaken out. So I think it was a little bit of that as well. And something John and I have talked about is our businesses are [00:07:00] going to do great as long as our clients businesses are doing great.

Right. So I think it was impacted by that a little bit. I’d be curious if you. If you guys lost some as well. I added more than I lost, which is great. I had quite a few redesigns this year so it wasn’t as much as I typically add since they were already on my plans and then Oh, my big milestone that sucked was, I guess milestones, maybe not the right word.

Was moving hosts that, that was a big, big deal. , but it will actually have a significant impact on my bottom line because my expenses will actually go down significantly. So that’ll be good moving forward. That’ll look great in 25, but it was a humongous headache.

It’s still a headache. There’s still a couple that are actually, I officially got them all transferred, but now I’m dealing with like weird moving hosts issues, like, Email notifications and just really random stuff that I didn’t see coming. So still shaking that out, but all for the best. I’ve had a helper.

[00:08:00] I call her my helper. I probably shouldn’t. That’s the wrong word. I have a contractor who assistant isn’t the right word. I don’t know what to call her. She’s basically my support person. Maybe I’ll call her that. All of the maintenance updates I send to her. And that’s been going great. That will continue in 25.

And my hope for 2025 is to add on an additional helper for the server side and maintenance, like maintenance specific stuff with servers and plugins and themes, like all that nonsense that I really don’t want to deal with, but someone needs to. So my clients are well taken care of. So that’s KDesign for me.

I have questions though. I have a couple of questions. Oh, okay. Yes. Bring it. I mean, if you’re comfortable. I don’t know if you’re comfortable or not, but what, like you’re a current part time person what do they cost you roughly like a grand a month or what?

Uh, 500. Uh, I basically pay her 40 an hour and I have her on retainer for 12 hours a month. So we don’t, she doesn’t always hit the 12 hours, but I always pay her the 500 at least. And if she goes over, I’ll pay her additional [00:09:00] 40 an hour. Got you. And then the server person, what are you thinking? I honestly don’t know how to set that up.

I’ve been going back and forth on if that should just be like a retainer or if that should be hourly or, or even like a person. I don’t, I don’t know how to set it up. Um, I’ve thought, I’ve thought lots of different ways, but I’m thinking Retainer. But yeah, I don’t know. I haven’t got, I haven’t gotten that far, but I do know that will be my next hire.

If you will, it will be a contractor. These are all, none of these will be employees. It should be a podcast topic. We should, uh, do a podcast on on, on who this person is. Yeah. Who, yeah. Who this person is. Are they client facing? Are they not? Are they more developer? Are they more like all back ends?

Yeah. Yeah. You know? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Good episode. Artillery. Yes. We just had our, we just had our Christmas holiday dinner. Aww, where’d you guys go? [00:10:00] We went to this place called Fleetwood. It’s the new restaurant downtown Lincoln called Fleetwood. It’s really good and it’s like, it’s the team, there’s six of us, and then everyone gets a plus one. And at a fancy restaurant it’s like, there’s your Christmas, there’s your Christmas bonus. There it is. You’re done. Oh, man. And then we went to Ivana Cone afterward, of course.

Oh, I love it. We were gonna go out for drinks afterward. But a couple of the people aren’t 21 yet. And so we were like, Oh, okay, well, let’s go get ice cream instead. You got, you got babies working for you. Well, one was a plus one. And then Liam, who’s my bandmate’s son, he’s 20 still.

So he’s almost 21. So soon we won’t have to. So ice cream it is. We’ll, we’ll take them to drinks and hear their real opinions of Artillery. So we measure we measure site launches and stuff by points and traditionally we try to get, we try to get 80 points a year. Usually a site [00:11:00] launched as one point because they get on our lowest maintenance plan hosting.

But now our middle plan, we give two points out for that. And this year we’ve seen a big we started pushing that middle plan more. And because of that, I want to say almost half the folks that signed up this year are on that middle plan. That’s huge. Which and then we also bought about 25 sites from someone.

So right now, yeah. So right now our point total is like 120. So we got a minus the 25 that we bought from some, it’s probably like 95. So we need to adjust and 80 can’t be the goal next year now, especially with selling folks that, that middle hosting. Which is the two points. So I bet next year, the goal should be a hundred.

Sounds so there’s that as far as the team size, we’re going to keep it, we’re going to hold where we are. Our next hire will be like a. Probably a part time project manager to take off some weight from our current project manager. What else? [00:12:00] Oh, I’m probably I’m, I may, I bet I do, I bet I work on less than 10 sites next year.

That’s what I bet. That’s what I’m betting. Next year, you said? 2025. Yeah. I bet I’ll work on less than 10 sites. Nice. And I’m still doing, I’m still doing billing. Yeah, I think I only, I haven’t added it up specifically, but I think I only worked on, I think I only worked on 12 this year, but we had other stuff going on, obviously.

Excellent. So, I want to tell it might be even less than five, but I bet I work on more than five. I shouldn’t, and you’ll see why here later in the episode, but I bet I’ll sneak them in. But yeah, artillery it’s humming, multi six figs as well. Yep my partner Jake is stoked.

He’s all about it. He’s diving into social media posts and everything I hate doing, he’s doing. Amazing. I need to get me one of those. Yeah, you gotta get one of those. Well, maybe your part time gal like social, I don’t know, they just do such a good job with, The graphics and then Jake does these like site launch recap little videos.

I know, I watch them and I’m [00:13:00] captivated. I don’t know if I’m like one of three people but I love them. You might be, you might be. So, but that’s, that’s pretty much artillery. It’s, you know, like KDesign for you, artillery is the fuel that, that allows us to do everything else. Now here’s the thing.

10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was like all artillery, probably all KDesign, right? That was it. That was the thing. And so it wasn’t all the rest of this that we’re about to talk about. Is because of KDesign and artillery. And there’s a reason like that John saying we’re holding, there’s a reason that I don’t have humongous plans for two to 2025 it’s because we have a lot of other stuff going on.

Yeah. Okay. So let’s dive into that. John and I own two businesses together. We have, um,

Geez. We have a web store web design templates, if you will Divi child themes for those who, um, [00:14:00] Speak the lingo. We have that store that we actually purchased in 2023. And the big milestone, I guess, for 2024 was we earned our money back officially. I think it was about, about 15 months in we were fully paid up on our investment in, which is awesome.

And I think that was, I don’t know, I think it was both surprising and not surprising because it’s, yeah. Yeah, it just seemed like a really short turnaround, but that’s impressive to others, but at the same time it’s like, well, that’s why we bought it. And most of the revenue comes from memberships.

And I feel like 2020, maybe it was 2023, but I felt like in 2024 we had and I don’t know if it’s still the case or not, but at one point when we bought it, it was losing more members than it was gaining every month. And we were trying to stop the bleeding. And I feel like at some point we did, um, yes.

And it might be bleeding again. I don’t know, but we’ll see. Well, let’s talk about that. [00:15:00] Like for, for 2025, I think some of what John’s talking about is. Yeah, we’ll stop. We stopped the bleeding. We think we successfully did that. However, we made a lot of changes in there as well. We used to be offering monthly memberships, which is wild for the product and the setup that we have, and we’ve changed that to annual memberships only because.

Otherwise people can get in, buy a monthly membership, download everything and then quit. Granted they would not know, they would no longer get support on those items once they quit, but still it’s just kind of a weird setup for the products that we’re selling and the type of membership that we’re selling.

So anyway, now it’s just the annual membership. So obviously our monthlies have really dropped off, but our annuals have gone up. So comparing the is kind of hard. Um, but yeah, I think we’re, I think we’re in a good place. I think the other major factor with that business, especially for 2025 is, is Divi 5.

0 and what’s going to happen. Obviously that business completely relies on Divi which was my [00:16:00] main reason for like my main con for not purchasing the business. Cause I don’t want to, I don’t want to be a part of a business that completely 100 percent relies on another business. However my KDesign business and artillery 100 percent run off of this.

So if there is a business we’re going to invest in, it made sense for it to be Divi. Anyway, that was probably TMI but yeah, for 2025, it’s, I think, a lot hinges on Divi 5. 0. And I think honestly, a lot of Divi users or like people who use Divi amongst other things are kind of waiting for this humongous release.

And so they’re not necessarily doing much with investing in Divi products. Right. And so that’s also been a factor. So it’ll be really interesting once Divi 5. 0. comes out if it’s 2025, how that impacts that business. I think it’s kind of in a holding spot, right? Kind of a purgatory. We’re still putting out we just had a huge release with [00:17:00] our most popular plugin.

We have another plugin getting released in the next couple of weeks. So we’re still doing things and there’s still a response. So that’s great. But I think there’s definitely kind of a I don’t know, a waiting for Divi 5. 0 thing. I don’t know. That’s my analysis. What do you think? Yeah. I think Divi 5 will come out in 2025.

Oh God, I hope so. And Divi 5, unlike previous versions, is a complete rebuild of Divi. Right. It’s a complete structural rebuild. It’s kind of a big deal. It’s kind of a big deal. And so normally if we were going from Divi you could use the same plugin. It’s fine. It’s okay. You can’t do that.

It’s all these plugins have to be kind of refactored a little bit. And so everyone’s, I’m sure every store owner is like, okay what plugins do I still sell? That’s even worth paying to get divi five ready. After the dust settles what plugins are what opportunities are there going to be?

Because some stores, I think some stores might not even make the jump. Right. I agree. I [00:18:00] think we’re gonna, this’ll make or break some Divi stores. So it’ll be, yeah, it’ll be an interesting, well, like, okay, here’s the fun little exercise. So like she said we became profitable. We became profitable a few months ago.

Right. Yeah. Now let’s imagine that we’ve been profitable for the last three years. And so we made our money back from the business and let’s say we made, another 300, 400 percent on top of that. Now Divi five’s coming down. I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know if we would sell it or if that’s true.

That’s true. I don’t know. I don’t know what we would do. But the one thing I do like about a lot of these businesses that we’re going to talk about is a lot of them are connected, like you said. So what we’re doing now, Is we’re building products to sell in the store that we’re going to use in our web design business, And so it doesn’t feel like a complete waste of time or anything, right So one thing we did speaking of retainers in 2024 is we brought on board a Divi developer as part of The Superfly Squad.

The Superly. [00:19:00] Yep. Superly Squad and . And we’re trying that out and we’re seeing if what if he can help us turn things around. So yeah, we’re in a weird spot where. We don’t want to start development on any new major plugins because we don’t want them By the time they were they’re released for Divi is going to be out.

We got to refactor it. So anyway It’s an interesting spot, But yeah we’ll have to do this recap again next year and, and let everyone know what, what Tibby 5. 0 did to be Superfly. But I’ll say this if this, if Superfly did not have members and it was just like a byproducts one time and no renewals, I wouldn’t have bought it at all.

Like no way. No way. So if you’re thinking of starting some kind of business that you want to sell someday, check The recurring piece, whether it’s hosting in your website business or in a store, it’s monthly members that are paying X amount to access all these products. That’s the way to go. Okay.

That’s [00:20:00] super fly. Yeah. Be super fly. com. Check it out. Yeah. And then our other business that we own together is break into web, which is our ever evolving training. We have a course, a couple of courses, lots of courses. If you include all of our advanced, advanced, so many courses it’s just this passion project, that’s hogged up so much of our time, but we love it and we keep pouring energy into it because we think it’s fun and we think it’s needed. We firmly stand by that web design is the best freelance business plan on the planet. And we want to help others do the same. Gosh, I was just talking with one of my clients yesterday and she asked me some questions and did the math in her head and figured out like how I’m, my business plan that I have with hosting and maintenance and sites.

And she was like, Oh my. Gosh, you mean to tell me you’re making this each month without even like getting new. And I was like, yeah, I was like, that’s why, [00:21:00] that’s why we teach it because it’s that good. Anyway, so for sure. But yeah, and this year with break into web we launched we’re still trying to figure out what to call it, but a mastermind for lack of a better word where we have kind of shifted gears.

Well, kind of shifted. We still have our course and our like training that’s always existed. But now we have this coaching piece outside of the training. We used to have live monthly calls and now we’re moving to this like Literally two on one coaching piece that’s done over Voxer.

So it’s high touch access to both of us each day with questions. And so instead of waiting for a monthly call with, your list of questions, it’s just, you get on the, you get on the Voxer thing right away and just, and talk, and then we can provide feedback immediately. And that’s been so much fun.

So much fun. And yeah, so the, I would say the plans for 2025 are to continue that and try to, but the challenge with big breaking web [00:22:00] is, has always been we must suck at marketing. I don’t know but just finding the right people and and getting it out there. And so we will continue to do that.

That’s. The whole point OPS and this podcast is launching for break into web. That’s a P we consider this podcast, a piece of that business amongst our others, but mostly for break into web. And so that’s, our next marketing effort we’ve talked about podcasts forever and ever and ever.

And it’s just like, we need to just do it where it’s podcasts aren’t cool anymore. So, yeah. Continuing with coaching. I don’t know. Anything else? We’re having big shifts in how we handle the course as well. Like it’s a shift. We’re focusing less on what we still have our course, but that’s not like the main thing.

Now we’re trying to focus on the coaching again, cause it’s been so much fun and been quite successful. And we’re trying to shift the focus to that. Just following trends and seeing how other coaches are doing things. Yeah, I’m hoping it’s well you sent you sent an email the other day You said you [00:23:00] forwarded me an email the other day from someone that you follow.

Oh, yeah they were hinting at like the web guru thing. I think, uh, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s not just web guru. It’s like online. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think what we’re trying to figure out with break into web is, is we know that we know the courses are good because we’ve had people go through and they’re full time web designers working from home now.

So it’s like, okay, we know the content’s great. We know, uh, we know that we’re great. Uh, but the, we, and we’ve tried several. Competing with just crappy salesy gurus is just really hard. I don’t, people who started in web design last week and have their own course this week.

It’s like, how can you trust this guy? But it’s just, it is what it is. Or, or, uh, people’s expectations are through the roof like, I, I want to be making 50 grand in [00:24:00] monthly return revenue in six months, and someone planted that possibility in their brain, even though it’d be like me saying, Oh, I want to play in the NBA by the end of this year, like, no, you’re just never going to happen.

Okay. Never. Never gonna happen. Never say never John. You could grow a foot still. Or two. I mean So anyway with break into web I feel like we’re making a if we actually follow through we’ll be making a big Pricing change and I think once we make that change we can’t go back. I you know It’s a little scary But what we have right now isn’t quite it.

You know what it is. It’s the warm market It’s easy to sell to the warm market and it was right when we launched We had all these folks come in from our warm market because they trusted us and whatever and now that you That what now that that warm market is we’re past that and now it’s literally like folks who just you know We’re just coming then you’re like, okay, how can we still [00:25:00] help these folks with the course?

You Get them in there at an easy access point, like pricing. And then for those who want it to really take it seriously, they can do our mastermind coaching. Which has been, which, yeah, we have, so we launched the, well, we haven’t really rolled it out because We’ve had a beta tester be our coachee our mentee, if you will.

I still want to come up with a better name. But we’ve already learned so much in working with her. And she’s really helped shape the offering. And I think we’ve really How to impact on her business. I really, I think we really have, I think so. It sure seems like it things are, or, or, or we just, or she just signed up.

Right. We just overwhelmed the crap out of her. Well, that’s who we do that too. But her business is going so well, like she went from like, so well, She went from making 50. No, just kidding. Uh, she went from herself being the only person doing everything, running around, trying to [00:26:00] solve everything to, to now her, oh and to now we’ve had, we’ve helped her make more money.

We’ve helped her find that sweet spot on where she should be charging and how to figure that out. I don’t want to, I’m not give all the answers right here. We, and we’ve helped her. Hey, here’s how to bring in help. Here’s how to start bringing in extra help, like Kelly mentioned earlier with the folks that she’s bringing in, and here’s how you can do it in more websites.

Why do more websites? Because it’s more people on the recurring hosting plan. That’s why. That’s why. So that’s, so I’m excited. I am excited to offer break into web at a super affordable level that requires none of our time because all the material is recorded. And then for folks who want to dive in.

Okay. You’re diving in and you get access to us Monday to Friday, every day, you can send a question, and we’re there, we answer same day, it’s been a ton of fun, so I’m, It’s been so fun. I’m gonna like, I’m gonna like this way better than the monthly live call. I [00:27:00] know.

The monthly live call, you schedule it, and then there’s something else that always wants to be, wants to happen on that same day. There’s always something, yeah. It’s like when I was in the military when I would drill that one weekend like that was the weekend that everyone had events And you’re like, of course, of course you do.

Of course you do. So this has been this has been This has been great So I’m hopeful at the end of January or sometime in the first quarter We’ll roll out this new pricing for break into web and and break into web has well, okay fine. You’re Your subcontract you have right now. Where’d you get her from?

Reagan and Webb. Reagan and Webb. I mean, yeah, it’s selfishly a great tool for John and I to find helpers. Yep. And and training for our helpers. Yeah, it’s, again all of everything we’ve talked about so far is is connected very intentionally. Yeah. Except for these next ones. All right.

All right. So my, my other business so [00:28:00] far, just the one, just the, just the four total is my husband and I have a real estate business. I mean, that’s what we call it. But what it really means is we have rental properties. And so for 2024, what happened, I’ll keep it short. We sold one of our properties long story long.

It was a disaster nightmare. It was brand new construction, but everything went wrong. I mean, you think new construction, it wouldn’t, but we put the down payment. For this down like in 2020 and it didn’t close until 2023. That’s how much of a disaster it’s been. When the interest rates were as high as they ever got.

So that was super cool. So we had this garbage interest rate on this massive, not massive property, but massive mortgage because it was in the mountains in Summit County. And For whatever reason, this two bedroom, two bath, again, super cool townhome had a rooftop deck. It’s so cool. I will treasure the photos of this place for the rest of my life because it was [00:29:00] so rad.

I decorated the crap out of it. I decorated every corner, every inch, every nook and cranny. It was so cool. For whatever reason, it’s, it would do less in revenue than our one bedroom, one bath across the street that was under 700 square feet. Like this plate, this one bedroom was crushing. This two bedroom was struggling.

I almost listed this as a one bedroom just to see if that would make a difference. Ah, interesting. Yeah. It was crazy. So anyway, it just never, I mean, in theory it should have done twice. revenue and it did about half. So it wasn’t paying for itself at all. However, the equity went through the roof. So as soon as we hit that year of capital gains where the capital gains drops we put it up.

We actually put it up before the year was up knowing that it would take a couple months because the industry had slowed down by then. Anyway, we ended up selling it in April of 2024 for a nice enough profit that my husband was able to quit his job. So he took the entire year off. 2024, no W 2 for [00:30:00] him.

However, looking forward to 2025 banks don’t like to loan people loans, when you don’t have W 2s, and mine just, doesn’t count in their eyes for whatever reason. That’s true. I’ve been a freelancer for 20 years. So yeah, he will likely be getting a job here in 2025 for the sole purpose of furthering the real estate business because our plans are, once the interest rates are under control and there’s going to be a huge Shift here once Presidents change and all that stuff.

We’ll pay close attention to that. Yeah, it will but anyway, the plans for 2025 are to definitely do more with real estate. We’ve definitely not done squat. Purchasing wise because the rates have just been out of control. So, and I think we’re going to look closer to home. Summit County has basically maxed out several cities.

I’ve put like short term rental moratoriums on, so like we can’t even have a short term rental anymore in certain cities. Anyway it’s been an interesting year. So [00:31:00] dumb for cities to do that. It’s like, hey, you know what, you know what people Well, I see both sides of it, but yeah. Okay, fine, but like, hey, people who come and they stay at an Airbnb for a week, guess what they do?

They eat out a lot. And they inject a lot of money into your local economy. That’s what they do. They do that quite a lot. The people who live there got nowhere to stay. Oh, I get it. They don’t like it. They don’t like it. They don’t like all the cars and they don’t have too many cars parked out front. Like I, I understand that part of it.

Yeah. What is cool is though, is that well, number one, sounds like your husband needs a W2. Sounds like he needs to learn some like little surfer side you know. Server side maintenance and stuff, maybe he could be that W2O for KDesign. Okay, I’ve had this business for 20 years. Um, he hasn’t shown interest yet.

That would be a really weird shift, shift of directions there. No he, he doesn’t really want anything to do. He technically is my secretary. Does he want to go? Yeah, yeah, I’d be curious, like, why don’t you just give him a job at KDesign and then problem solved, pay [00:32:00] him 150k a year and, you know. And then boom, you each got a W too but whatever.

Anyway, I hope the IRS isn’t listening to this. Oh, that’s totally legal. The he’s looking for other, like he’s, he was at a hospital. And so it was a big deal to retire from the hospital. He does not want to go back to a hospital. It was. Too hard. COVID wrecked the hospital industry. So he’ll probably still be in something pharmacy related.

But maybe with one foot in the business side, so maybe more sales or, for the devil, big pharma, something like that. We’ll see. He’s got a sealers out right now. It’ll be interesting. Yes, but the whole point of him getting that and we’ve had this conversation is just get this so that we can grow the real estate side until it’s at a point where you can get rid of it again.

That’s the goal of course, but it’s you gotta play the game. It’s a game. And you, and you had some property with partners and you guys were like, [00:33:00] nevermind that, let’s do our own stuff. Yep. But that was another huge equity when that allowed us. Yeah, he has really good real estate instincts and again like in 2020 when everyone got scared that’s when he got into it and it paid off for sure.

Yeah. No, that’s when I mean we Yeah, we bought our house in 2020 and it was great. The rate is amazing and it’s great It was before the pop happened, right? Yeah There was a pop that Equity pop that happened for sure. The following year and same thing when you’re looking at a. M and a mergers and acquisitions like for companies and tech startups and all that stuff.

Like 2021 people went to town, people were getting 20 X their businesses and stuff. And now that’s like down to six, seven in the tech startup world. Anyway not. Not the web design world, but now it’s starting to climb back up again, because people are they’re sensing, the incoming administration might be a little more friendlier to mergers and acquisitions and [00:34:00] whatnot, and who knows what, but I think we’ll both be keeping an eye On mortgage rates and yes and stuff like stuff like that It’ll be an interesting year for a lot of reasons.

But yeah a new administration always brings stuff to watch And just so happens about what two months ago our coaching student was like so i’m thinking of Keeping our current house as a rental and getting his other house What do you guys think? And Kelly had all kinds of advice for her because you’ve been down that road.

Oh man. Okay. All right. Okay. Are there any other side hustles you’re about to launch that you know of? Oh God, I hope not. I don’t know. My husband’s been talking about like, maybe I should just buy a business and I’m like, okay, but that’s all on you because I got enough business. You know what? I’ll sell you my, I’ll sell you my half a super fly.

How dare you? All right. But not break into web. I want to keep that one. [00:35:00] Uh, Oh man. One of the, one of the businesses I have that’s, I don’t really have much control over how it grows or not is the band. But we do make money. We do make money in the band. We, usually it’s probably around 50 K a year.

I’d say that we make with a band playing shows cool things with the band. It happened in 2024. Our singer was on The Voice. He finished third place. Kind of a big deal. Yeah. And then he I can’t say too much, but he’ll be making some appearances on the next season in 2025. I think that’ll help us out too.

And some stuff. We have a new album coming out next year. Did him being on the show have a big impact on The band’s like growth revenue. And I would say it probably had a 15, 20 percent bump. Okay. Not like a not a huge one, but it’s allows us to charge more. It has allowed us to be like, Hey, we want X amount for this now and whatever.

And I think that’ll only go up with what’s going to [00:36:00] happen this next year. And then with our new album and Stuff like that. I think that’ll, I think that will help. But we’re mostly excited about the new album because it’s going back to our roots and making music. We didn’t make it with any other objective than, let’s just make music that we want to hear.

And in the last four albums it’s been, okay, what’s going to get on radio? On Christian radio specifically. And, What you know, I even had this avatar gal. Her name is Vicky Vota. She’s a 45 year old christian soccer mom She goes to a mega church. Like what does she want to hear? Uh, because that’s where the money’s at So you don’t care about Vicky anymore?

I still care about Vicky, but we’re not worried We’re not worrying about it for the way christian bands really slay and make money is if their songs are sung in churches on sunday morning because all these churches pay a license to sing these songs and so You that’s why back in the 90s you had you had Christian bands that you didn’t even know were Christian But they unless you really dug in and they had amazing [00:37:00] music.

Well, the incentives changed now It’s yeah, those things are gone. The Christian rock scene is gone, and it’s all just worship music now which is fine. That’s fine but we were like, you know what, we don’t need labels anymore. Let’s just make music that we like.

And if it just ends up being a little side gig that never turns into six figs and it might not, that’s, then so be it. But it’s just a fun deal. And then alongside of Vota, the band, alongside the band, and doing all these, since 2020, doing all these private house shows, we were touring around with a well known Christian artist, doing lots of these VIP type events, it sprung a whole circle.

Tech startup idea that my bandmate and I are doing. It’s all about VIP ticketing and there’s an auction element to it. And there’s a risk free element for folks putting on events. It’s kind of an eBay meets Kickstarter smash together. And it’s done really well as far as the events that we’ve done and got an excitement behind it.

Got [00:38:00] some grant money behind it and then we’re wrapping up a fundraising round that should be closed here by the end of the year. And that’s why I think, yeah, I feel like with, with your different business models that you have personally, just with you, you’re hitting all the sides of all the different types of, like the fundraising and investors.

That’s a whole, that’s a whole different ball game. And and yeah, you guys are doing really well in it. Well, it’s, you know what the secret is, I think, to getting these investors has been? Schmoozing? Lying? No. It’s the same with getting clients. It’s like when you go into a sales meeting, and sure, you can have data, and you can have your PowerPoint ready, you can have all the same old stuff that every other salesperson’s gonna have, right?

But you need to but what we have now is we have Charisma, Which, say what you will, but when [00:39:00] you’re excited about what you’re selling The person you’re selling to feels that excitement and feeds off of it. When you believe in what you’re selling and you believe that it can go to the next level or help them take their business to the next level, like with our coaching student, what we’ve done with her, like the next coaching student we get that shows the same drive I know what we, well, I know what Hey, sign up for our coaching.

It’s going to work. It’s going to build your business. It’s going to way more than pay for itself. It’s going to be amazing. And five years from now, you’re gonna look back and be like, I’m so glad I did that because my life has changed. Maybe that’s me being a pastor’s kid, but the whole life being changed thing that, that, you know, but with these investors, relationship capital, let’s call it relationship capital is We just happen to know a main investor, a guy who himself has a lot of money.

And then he has a group of investors he works with that all trust him. And he really likes us. All that really is just networking, networking, different level. [00:40:00] It’s all, it’s all networking. It’s all network. Cause here’s the truth. If I went out and I took this startup idea and our lead investor knows this.

If he watches this podcast, he knows this. If. If I took the funnel pitch deck, or the tech startup pitch deck, and I went and met with regular traditional investors who don’t know who I am, who don’t know who Brian is, don’t know Brian was on The Voice, so there’s a little bit of a halo effect there, right, with Brian on The Voice, a little bit of stardust helps, and, and we would be getting Probably a quarter of the valuation that this guy is giving us and so at the end of the day You still got to have a good business got to have a good business plan got to solve a need got to solve a problem got to do it in a unique way Got to bring those in strappy got to bring that customer service You know that you know in I joke with people I say, you know in my web design business And I feel like with superfly we do this and break it to web.

We definitely do this people just don’t know yet Is that we under promise and [00:41:00] we over deliver. We really do. And I feel like with our coaching student, that’s what we’ve done. We’ve really said Hey, here’s what we’re, here’s what we’re going to do. But we’ve gone beyond that same thing with all our web design clients.

Right. Yes. And I’m, in fact I’m hesitant to offer. Things that I can’t stand behind like search engine optimization or who knows what else, or other types of marketing. I’m like, Hey, I know we can build you a kick ass website, right? I know we can do that. And that’s what we’re going to do.

And then we over deliver on that. Well, when you’re fundraising, you don’t want to over promise and over deliver. You got to do the opposite. You got to say, You got to say, Hey, you know what, if the stars and the planets align just right and all these other factors are happening just right, or like with you, it’s like if the interest rates get back down to 3 percent and banks loosen their lending to give 30 year mortgages on a 10 percent down payment or a 5 percent down payment, then we can grow to this.

And that’s what you’re doing with this. You’re saying, Hey, look, if these trends continue and people, people value this. And no other competition comes in, this could, this is what could happen. [00:42:00] Or, let’s say you’re going to sell KDesign to an investor that has gobs of money. You could say, Hey, here’s what I’ve done in Nebraska and Colorado.

But you could have a KDesign in every single state. And based on the population in Nebraska and Colorado, here’s what the New York KDesign’s gonna do. Right? Which would be like a hundred times bigger. So anyway that’s my whole, it’s all, it’s, it what’s crazy to me is that it all comes down.

To, to networking and just treating people right. Be well. Yeah. No, that’s, that’s it. We just did a, uh, we just, I should, I know. We just did we should call it. Podcast over. The other day we did a not usually our cup of tea But because Brian was on the show we got booked in and we got booked in an hour and a half away Grand Island for an all women’s worship night at this church And you’d think they would book a female, but they book us.

And so, and so I mean, that tracks. Hahaha. [00:43:00] So we show up, and we just, we’re self contained. We were out, we were really polite to the team that was there. We showed up on time. In fact, when we showed up, the sound guy said, Oh, a band that actually shows up on time. Ugh, bonus. So it’s like, okay, folks.

Thanks. Hey, Oh, a web designer that actually meets their deadlines. Like I’m guarantee you that’s being said by people. So anyway. That’s all businesses. I mean, it’s really that simple, at least good business. I’m sure there’s unethical business that does very, very amazing things, very different ways, but that’s true.

That’s not. Us. Well, it’s a spirit. How about personal? Do you have, do you have personal, do you ever set personal goals each year or no? Oh, I do. And I usually fail at them. Like they’re usually pretty shallow, like a certain weight goal. Uh. Lame. Usually I have a personal weight [00:44:00] goal, some kind of a workout metric goal, like hey get back into this or start doing this again or whatever. And then usually the business goals are in there. This is going to sound stupid then, but I was going to say my, personal goal for 2024. We went different ways there was to redo our backyard. You have though. Yeah. So that was a wild success. I think that was my goal for the last two years and we finally got it done.

So yeah, I gotta be more specific. I gotta be, I gotta be, I gotta be more specific. Mine’s all related to my house. It’s almost always related to my house. It’s like, okay, now I want it. I want to redo my kitchen. I want to get cabinets that don’t slam because right now I got five different people just slamming them always and I know there’s just like cute little hardware you can put on that makes it soft Like makes it just not slam, but I just want new doors.

Anyway, so That’s, that’ll be my, we’ll see. Yours is very measurable and cheap. Mine, it just says, I [00:45:00] got, I have four personal goals. Self care. One was a wait number that I didn’t hit. Okay, so that’s just going to carry over to next year. Okay, great. . 8am wake up time. No, 8am wake up time is not happening.

When do you wake up? Right now it’s 9 o’clock. Right now it’s 9 o’clock. But I don’t go to bed till like 1. So, anyway. And then you’ll love this last one. You’ll love this last one, which, which I did. I did improve on this one. All it says is Conquer Food. Where are your kids? Babies. How are you sleeping till nine?

Okay, what was the last one? I heard nothing after that. It said, it said Conquer Food is all it said. Conquer Food? Does that mean you did it? Pretty specific. That is specific. I conquered parts of it, like soda. I conquered soda. I don’t drink soda [00:46:00] anymore. You don’t drink soda anymore? No.

Oh, man. Okay, so new kitchen for me, Conquer Food for you. Got it. Conquer Food. Conquer Food. Okay, all right. I think that’s a wrap on 2024. 2025 is going to be amazing. It’s going to be You know, I, I, Yeah, I am thankful. I am thankful. I will tell one little giving story. I was, the other night, I was this is this is how bougie John is, but I have a heart.

Um, it was Sunday night. Bougie with a heart. Two nights ago, I was like, I gotta clip my toenails, but I really don’t want to I wonder if anyone’s open right now for a pedicure So I get on Google Maps and I type in pedicure and out and usually they’re all closed Sunday night But there’s a spot two blocks from my house that’s open.

And and then while I’m there, two things happen. Number one, when I [00:47:00] showed up, someone else was getting a pedicure. And they asked their worker, the owner, Hey, when do, what day’s your, if you’re working Sunday, what day’s your day off? And she said I don’t take a day off. So then I’m like thankful that I get, that I get a day off.

I don’t have to work 9am to 8pm every day. That would suck to work at 9am. That’s right when I get out of bed, right? And so then, she leaves, I’m in there by myself, and then comes in a family where the mom’s getting a pedicure. She doesn’t speak English. He speaks Spanish. The husband doesn’t speak English.

There’s like a 15 year old son, and he’s bilingual. He speaks both. So he’s translating, and it kind of reminded me of my Days that I lived in Mexico and so I go to leave and I could you know, I could just tell that I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but just looking at them It’s like you don’t have a lot of money Like you don’t have a lot of money.

Okay, fine, whatever. And so then I go to pay and it’s like 40 bucks, which is cheap for a pedicure I feel like. Right? And so I Well, [00:48:00] out here, yeah. And so I give, I give I give the gal, and the gal who did my pedicure is checking me out. And I give her a hundred dollar bill and I’m like, hey, Merry Christmas, just keep it.

And she’s all really happy. Like, thank you so much, whatever. I get in my car. I start to drive off and I get like maybe, most of the way down the strip mall, past five other stores. And I just feel like this feeling like you need to go back and you need to pay for that lady’s pedicure. And I ignored it and I kept driving and it was like you need to go back and you need to pay for this lady’s pedicure And I was just like fine.

So then I turn around I go in and I they’re like something wrong I’m like no and then the lady came up the owner and I was like, hey, here’s 60 I just want to pay for that lady’s pedicure Merry Christmas. I get in my car. I don’t think she even knew. And I hope they apply it to her bill.

I didn’t even stick around to find out. I was embarrassed already. I wanted to get out of there. And then I’m driving home, and there’s this I’m getting a little emotional. There’s this, there’s this [00:49:00] Bible, there’s this, there’s this Bible verse that says, For what you do to the least of these, you’ve done it to me.

And it’s Jesus talking. And it’s and it was, it’s the whole spirit of Christmas and this time of year and thinking about 2024 and how blessed we are due to, our hard work, yes, and circumstances, but we live in the United States, we have the opportunity to do this, we have the opportunity to buy property, businesses, sell websites, and so that’s why it’s like every year I struggle writing goals, yeah.

For the next year because I feel like I already have it. You know what I’m saying? I know. No, I’m, I’m with you. There’s a lot of like, gosh the there was a time where my entire algorithm was like manifestors or whatever, and talking about like their manifest y ways or whatever.

 I don’t have that anymore, but But I remember the main gist was basically , think about whatever it is you want and think about that emotion , . But I struggled so hard with understanding and applying cause I’m like I already have everything I [00:50:00] want and everything I need.

And I think that is, God, what a hashtag blessed place to be. Word. But yeah, that’s very, very true. So all you listeners are like listening this probably in March and you’re like, uh, but from us here at break into web web design empire podcast, break into web super fly artillery KDesign, have a happy holidays, happy new year.

So with that, thanks for checking out 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 that empire you’ve been dreaming of. It’s possible. We will help you. All right. Cheers y’all.