Business
Copy These 10 Tips (They'll Blow Up Your Web Design Biz)
In this episode, discover 10 essential tips for skyrocketing your web design business, drawn from a decade of real-world experience. Learn why taking action, avoiding specialization, and prioritizing ...
Copy These 10 Tips (They'll Blow Up Your Web Design Biz)
Business •
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Interactive Transcript
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In this video, I'm going to give you 10 lessons that took me 10 years to learn from building
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a web design business.
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And if you copy these tips, your business just might blow up.
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Listen, I've lived in the extremes of being cussed out by clients to landing dream projects
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that I never thought I'd get.
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So this isn't theory.
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This is what has worked and what hasn't through a decade of trial and error.
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And I'm sharing all of my notes with you in this video.
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Are you ready?
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Let's go.
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Lesson number one, niches are optional.
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But you know what isn't?
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Action.
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A lot of people are going to tell you that you have to pick a niche if you want to make
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a lot of money.
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Now listen, I know some people might push back on this advice.
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Heck, that might have even been something that I said a while back.
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But here's the deal.
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I've never really picked a niche and I still make a lot of money from web design.
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I've worked with web design clients from all sorts of industries, from non-profit to
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wedding venues, right?
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And guess what?
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I still get plenty of business.
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Could a niche help you?
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Sure.
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But here's what's more important.
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You just have to start.
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Go out there, get some clients, try to build momentum.
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And then maybe after a little while you pick a niche, but it's not necessary.
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And by the way, make sure that you like and subscribe so you don't miss any other
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episodes coming out in the future.
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And if you want the slides that I use for this video, there's going to be a link in the
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description to get them.
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Lesson number two, don't be a specialist.
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A lot of people are going to tell you that if you want to get paid the big bucks, you
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have to specialize.
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So you got to get really good at maybe just one thing, like just UX designer, just web
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development.
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But in the new era of web design, only the generalists are going to survive.
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Why do I say that?
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Because even companies like Shopify are dropping the UX from all their UX roles.
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So now everyone's just called a designer.
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And if that's not clear enough, the Nielsen Norman Group just published an article called
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the Return of the UX Generalist.
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I used to get so much flack for doing projects that mixed UX development and visual design.
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But with AI on the rise, hyper specialized roles are going to get automated more and
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more.
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So clients and businesses aren't going to want to hire three separate people for one
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website, though want a full package and just one person.
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And that person should be you.
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Lesson number three, make your own blueprint.
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Some people are going to tell you that real web designers don't use templates or maybe
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you don't know what you're doing unless you can code it by hand.
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I've seen web designers build six figure businesses simply by customizing templates.
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And those same designers couldn't write a line of code if their life depended upon it.
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Your path isn't wrong just because it doesn't look like someone else's highlights real.
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There's really a mix of three things that can guarantee that you're building something
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that's going to work for you specifically.
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Finding something that interacts with your skills, your passion and your opportunity.
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So that sweet spot right in the middle there, that's what you want to look for.
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So stop trying to copy someone else's blueprint.
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Build a business that actually fits you.
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But while you're doing that, make sure that you do a little bit of marketing every single
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day.
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It's easy to try and fill every hour of your week with paid work.
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After all, if I'm not getting paid for the work, it's not real work, right?
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So a lot of web designers think that they've made it when they spend 99% of their time
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buried in client projects and that other 1% just kind of crashing out from being burnt out.
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But if you want to last, you've got to carve out space for marketing and for growth.
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Because most web designers live in one of two extremes, right?
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You're either slammed with too much work because you were afraid to turn anything down.
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You didn't know when the next project was coming or you're panicking because your inbox
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has been empty for days.
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That cycle doesn't break on its own.
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You break it by protecting your time for the work that sets up future work.
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Lesson number five, the website isn't the product.
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I used to call businesses in the early days and I would only call people that had rough
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looking websites and see if they needed help.
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One day I called the business with one of those really rough looking websites and they said,
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oh no, we just had our website redone.
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That's when I realized that good design is only a small part of why you get paid.
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Most clients don't even know what a good website looks like.
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But they'll know exactly how you communicated with them.
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If your process felt good, if there was strategy involved and the things that you were doing
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for them.
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Now listen, design matters, right?
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But it's not the only thing that does.
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Sometimes those soft skills are the difference between getting overlooked and getting paid.
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Lesson number six, your business isn't a piggy bank.
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When the first big check started coming in, I made the classic mistake of taking all of
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the money that I got from clients and putting it straight into my bank account.
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There was no savings, there was no buffered, and when work slowed down, I panicked.
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So here's what I do now.
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I figure out my average monthly income.
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I take a percentage of that and that's what I give myself.
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Everything else is being put aside either to grow the business or for rainy days.
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And the best part is when your average goes up, your pay can go up as well.
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So you don't always have to take the same amount every single year.
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You can give yourself a raise if the last year was looking really good.
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But treat your business like a business, not your personal innmo.
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Number seven, do things that don't scale.
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Everyone's talking about automating everything, right?
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You can do outreach and research and follow up all without opening your laptop with tools like
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NAN.
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And listen, that's cool.
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Efficiency matters.
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But if you want to get clients that you've never gotten before, you have to do things that
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you've never done before.
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I went sent a handwritten thank you letter to a client.
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It was a small project, but I still wanted to show some gratitude.
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And a few days later, he called me and said, in all his years of doing business, no one
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had ever sent him a thank you note.
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Then he said something even better.
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I've got another project I want you to work on.
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That letter probably took me five minutes, but it made a huge difference.
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Don't be afraid to do things that might take a little extra time that have a personal touch.
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Lesson number eight, big clients are great, but they're dangerous.
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Because one big client does not equal a business.
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That's just a full time job without the benefits.
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And I've talked to so many web designers who got that one big client and they were so
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excited.
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But pretty soon that client monopolized all their time.
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They didn't have room to take on anyone else.
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And then you can guess what happens?
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The client pulls out and nearly all of their income is left or gone overnight.
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Big clients are great, but never let them become your entire business.
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Keep space for things like marketing and other clients, other opportunities so
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that you don't run into that scenario as well.
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Lesson number nine, don't say yes if you feel hesitant.
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Every time I felt a little hesitation about working with a client, it turned into a bad project.
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And I get it.
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You're excited.
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You might be desperate for work.
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So you tell yourself, it'll be fine.
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But there's a very big price to pay for bad projects.
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They could cost you your piece, other good projects that you don't have time for it
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because you said yes to this one.
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Or maybe you burn out because of how tough it was.
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And listen, there are always red flags to watch out for.
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So you just have to pay attention to things like vague or shifting scope.
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So if you get on a call with a client and they say one thing one day and then they follow
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up and say, oh, we changed a little bit, that's a red flag.
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Maybe they've got unrealistic expectations.
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Here's a big one.
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They badmouth other designers.
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Those are all signs that you should pause.
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Whatever you do, don't ignore your gut just because there's a dollar sign attached.
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Lesson number 10, the beginning is the absolute hardest.
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The very beginning of building my web design business felt like I was spinning my wheels.
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It was late nights.
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It was pitches that didn't go anywhere.
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It was little to no money.
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But here's what I didn't know back then.
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A rocket uses 75% of its fuel just to lift off the ground.
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That's not because the rocket is broken.
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It's because breaking gravity takes energy.
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So if you're in the early days and everything feels harder than it should, that's not failure.
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That's lift off.
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Hey, I hope this video was helpful.
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If it was, make sure to like and subscribe so that you don't miss another episode coming
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out.
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And hey, we have a membership here on the self-made web designer YouTube channel.
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There's going to be a link in the description to check out more about that.
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So go out there, put some of these business tips into action and don't forget if you don't
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quit, you win.
Topics Covered
web design business
lessons learned
niches are optional
generalist vs specialist
building a business blueprint
marketing for web designers
client communication
big clients risks
personal touch in business
avoiding bad projects
starting a web design career
business financial management
growth strategies for designers
soft skills in web design
importance of action