Elevate Your Business: Expert Website Essentials from JennyB Designs

In this episode, host Christine interviews Jenny, the founder of JennyB Designs, to uncover the origins of her business and her journey from the nonprofit world to entrepreneurship. And discuss the importance of having a website and podcast. 

Jenny details her background as a marketing director for a horseback riding farm
for kids and adults with special needs and how learning website design led her to start her own business. She highlights the challenges and rewards of working from home to spend more time with her family, the importance of wearing multiple hats as a small business owner, and her effective strategies for finding clients through networking, referrals, and her podcast, Website Design Made Simple.

Jenny also shares her methods for repurposing podcast content, her approach to SEO, and how she manages her remote team effectively.

00:00 Introduction and Background
02:06 Transition to Entrepreneurship
02:48 Building JennyB Designs
04:14 Marketing Strategies and Podcasting
06:52 Content Creation and Repurposing
10:07 SEO and Website Optimization
16:55 Team Management and Operations

Find out more:

Website: https://jennyb-designs.com
Website Design Made Simple Podcast: https://jennyb-designs.com/pod
LinkedIn: Jenny Belanger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtaggers

Transcript

Christine Santos:I would love to dive in and hear more about you, why you started your business, Jenny B. Designs, and share with the audience, what was that moment or that point of time when you said, you know what, I'm going to move on from what I'm currently doing and start my own business.

My story begins in the non profit world. About 20 years ago, I was involved with a horseback riding farm for kids and adults with special needs. I was their marketing director for many years. So we're talking about the early 2000s when WordPress first started and the non profit needed a website.

Jenny Belanger: So that's when I really started to learn how to build websites. And when you work in a non profit, you have to wear a lot of hats. And I liken that to being a small business owner. I find that when you start a business, you have to wear all the hats and do all the things yourself. So after being in the non profit world for a while, When I had my first child, I decided that I didn't want to work full time I wanted to work at home and have more time with my kids and family.

So that's when I decided to make the leap and start Jenny Bee Designs about 11 years ago. So that was really what pushed me to make it happen is that I really wanted to spend time with my family. And I knew that being in the nonprofit world, having to wear all those hats and do all those things, and then jumping into the business world, there were others out there that really needed help to really show up online as their true selves and have their websites really make them money because their time is valuable and your website needs to work.

And so I worked with a lot of small local businesses. And then as time went on, there was that rise of the online business provider. And that's where most of my clients are now and in my passion for working with those online service providers. 

Christine Santos: How did you come into that role? 

Jenny Belanger: I grew up riding and volunteering there as a child. It was just an organization I was involved with throughout my whole life. I went to college and they never had anyone in that marketing role before. They didn't do marketing.

I feel nonprofits sometimes don't put the emphasis on getting out there and marketing their good work. And so I was the person to fill that role. And it was, Such a joy to build that whole department and get the word out. That's how I fell into that position and I learned so much on 

Christine Santos: the job.

I bet. And going into the entrepreneurial space, did you have anyone in your life that had already done it? How scary was it for you to jump into that space? 

Jenny Belanger: No one had ever done it before in my family. I didn't know any other small independent business owners, but I knew that I didn't want to work for someone else and I had to figure it out.

And I decided, I'm going to start my business. I built the website and I got out there and I just focused day by day. Building it up because when you start a business, there's a lot of stuff that you have to do and you have to just spend a lot of time at first with outseeing and return.

But I knew that it would come and I just kept at it and eventually it did come and I'm so happy that I did it 11 years later. 

Christine Santos: That is amazing. How do you currently find clients for your business? 

Jenny Belanger: A lot of clients find me from my podcast, Website Design Made Simple. Prior to that, I attended in person and virtual networking meetings. When you find someone you get along with, that's a great relationship to have. I would spend time talking to people who would then share my information with someone else and connect me to someone else.

And I spent a lot of time making those one on one connections. That's the first step for how I got clients. And then from there, referrals started to come in from my current clients. And you build your branch of network and that's really how clients find me now is networking referrals and then the podcast.

Christine Santos: So tell us about your podcast and how clients find you through your podcast because a lot of our listeners do have podcasts or are looking to start a podcast and I always say podcasting is the long game. If somebody comes to me as a podcast producer And they're like I want an influx of revenue in my business.

Jenny Belanger: I say, this might not be the thing for you because it is the long game. I agree. I think it is the long game for me. I knew as part of my marketing strategy, I needed long form content. I thought long form content could come from a blog post, YouTube video. And I actually started a YouTube channel a year and a half ago, and I gave that a six month shot.

And I did not enjoy YouTube. I found that there was a lot of pressure there to show up, to look a certain way, to be really perfect in my scripting. And that's when I decided to switch to podcasting. And I've been podcasting for almost a year and it is a long game, but I enjoy creating that long form content, sharing it out with my listeners and then being able to repurpose that on my blog and in social and emails.

And I think that being consistent and constantly working to optimize my titles and making sure that I'm found in search and sharing the information about my podcast to everyone I meet through networking. It's been a slow burn, but I will say I'm coming up to my year of podcasting. I get people who email me all the time, sharing that they listened or asking questions or requesting an audit or inquiring about website design projects.

From the podcast. So it's been a great way to have this long form content to get marketing for my services, but also be something that I enjoy and podcasting. I do enjoy it. It pays off in the end. 

Christine Santos: So you said it is a lot of work and you agreed it is the long game. What is that? work look like? You mentioned people being able to find you.

What is the work that you're doing within the podcast to bring people to Gen A, B designs for websites? 

Jenny Belanger: I feel like I'm a teacher at heart. When I think about my episodes, I think about the topic that I want to share. And there's that time outlining what I want to share and doing some research and really understanding the goal of that episode.

Beyond that, understanding the overall strategy. What am I talking about in my offer suite that relates to the podcast? Am I sharing a podcast episode on tips to make your homepage work better for you that could relate to my website audit offer that I have? Thinking about how it relates to how I can help that person listening and making sure there's alignment there and making sure I remember to share that I have ways to work with me.

On the podcast episode, because that is the goal, right? To bring in the clients to educate and share, but also to bring in clients. 

Christine Santos: Yeah. And so what I hear you saying is you network, you have referrals, you use your podcast. Do you still blog? 

Jenny Belanger: I do, but I mostly repurpose my podcast content as blogs.

Christine Santos: Anything else that you're doing as your marker? I send 

Jenny Belanger: a weekly email every Thursday with one tip. That is something that I'm very consistent on for the past almost three years.

 Social media, I have a love hate relationship there. I find you put so much work in and the return isn't always what you hoped. I love Instagram because it's so much fun. It's beautiful and it makes me happy, but no one finds me on Instagram. And so for clients, typically I try to spend time on LinkedIn.

Most recently threads is a place that I've been on. 

Christine Santos: Thank you. And so going back to the repurpose, One of the amazing benefits of podcasting is the repurpose aspect. You've already created this episode,

 and the ability to take that and repurpose it is so powerful. And it's like I used to say in my corporate days. It's like low hanging fruit. I don't see people do that a lot. so I'm always trying to remind people So if people are on social media, let's say, Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever Oh, what am I going to post today?

You already did it in your podcast episode. You probably have a month's worth of Instagram content. My audience knows I'm biased. I'd like to hear your perspective on that. How do you feel about repurposing and what have you found to be the best way to do that for you? 

Jenny Belanger: A hundred percent. That's why I started the podcast.

I need a long form piece of content. I don't like writing blogs. Start with your podcast and then you can do amazing things with it. For me, I also like integrations. I have a lot of Zaps set up using Airtable and my podcast. I record into DESCRIPT my podcast and get the transcript. I have a system where I put it into my Airtable.

Things happen on the back end and it goes to chat GPT. I have a bunch of different prompts and I have chat GPT. Give me the first draft of a bunch of different pieces of content that I repurpose for many different areas. I have it give me a bunch of different Instagram posts, LinkedIn posts, a blog outline.

It gives me the basis for my email newsletter, which I then edit heavily, but it just gets you somewhere to get started. And if you're doing all that work, why not? Use it as much as you can repurpose it as much as possible because people don't see everything we put out and you spend so much time making this content.

Use it as many times as you can and make some small tweaks here and there. 

Christine Santos: And one last question is SEO. How do you approach SEO for your podcast and website designs? 

Jenny Belanger: For my podcast, I have keywords I use in the titles, and then when I repurpose it onto my blog, For my website design projects, I do SEO research for sites, understanding your keywords, implementing those in the copy and backend, and making sure we're getting you as much bang for your buck with search. And then for ongoing, SEO, I have referral partners I send people to, but I do the basic setup for my website design.

 As you build a website and as you start populating your blog with this content, with these blog posts, your repurposed podcast episodes, or things that you like to write, you need to make sure that you are optimizing it for search engines, understanding which keywords to use, And how everything aligns in the back end, there are different ways to add to your current website to be found in search better.

So ongoing SEO would just be in, your content work as you go. Forward, but ensuring everything that you do is rooted in that keyword research so that you are optimizing everything you do. 

Christine Santos: Is there a favorite tool that you use at the beginning? Not the constant maintenance, but something that you can share with the audience, if they're looking to, let's say, populate their podcast, show notes, title, is there a tool you recommend?

Jenny Belanger: the co schedule headline analyzer. That's a great one for podcast titles. It lets you know, it gives you like a score, how readable, how search friendly it is. And it also has AI recommendations. That's a great tool for if you're, Thinking solely about your podcast for doing a little bit of research, 

 The free version of Semrush gives you a few free searches every day that you can do some digging on. 

Christine Santos: Thank you. Thank you so much for that. 

Jenny Belanger: How do you structure your day as a small business owner? I've always. Works during school hours in the afternoons. I'm with my kids. I pick my kids up from school and I'm with them for the rest of the day.

I do have a small team that works with me on specific projects with their specific tasks. But for myself, I find myself in the office when they go to school until I pick them up. I like to have design days.

So creative days, there'll be maybe two days a week where I do designing. And then the rest of the daysI'll say Monday through Thursday, cause I don't work on Fridays the rest of the days are for calls and then for my own content creation, when I like to do a lot of my, I do bulk recording for the podcast, think about blog posts and work on my business, so usually two admin content call days, and then two design days every week.

Christine Santos: You sound very structured and organized. 

Jenny Belanger: I am very type A. I do design creative work, but my strength lies in project organization and management. I like to guide my clients through everything. My projects take about four weeks from start to finish. Always hit that deadline, usually earlier. I can tell.

do you design websites for? I work mostly with small service based businesses. both locally and online as well as non profits because of my non profit background. Those would be the three buckets. I love, my passion is working for those boring businesses.

I, I have quotations up. Boring businesses that don't want to be boring. Like your bookkeepers, your accountants, your lawyers, I want to bring out your personality, your work, your imagery, your branding, your visual identity online, and have fun and be playful with it.

Those are the clients I really enjoy working with. 

You mentioned four weeks. Is that from scratch? Yeah, my typical engagement is about six weeks. We start the project and if they are writing their copy or need imagery collected for me, there's about a two week time frame in there where they'll be doing the work or I will be creating the branding component and writing the copy for them.

So there's that two week buffer there. And then four weeks is how long it takes me to build the website from start to finish. I build it in three weeks, leaving the last week for edits and revisions. So when someone comes to me, we start their engagement. Usually six weeks later, we are launching their website out into the world.

It's a quick turnaround. 

Christine Santos: Do you do maintenance for people? The plugins, The performance, all of those things. 

Jenny Belanger: Yes, I do. Ongoing care If they don't want to do updates themselves, I'll do it.

Or we'll have a strategy call six months later to check in, see how everything's doing. What changes do we need to make? I love to have an ongoing relationship with my clients. Once we launched their site out into the world. 

Christine Santos: Thank you for that. And then can you tell us about, you mentioned an audit. So I imagine that's different than what we just talked about.

Can you tell us about the audit? 

Jenny Belanger: The audit is for the people who have a website. Maybe they built it themselves. Maybe they have a company that built it for them, but they're not getting inquiries. It's not working for them. They're not making money with their website or the inquiries they're getting are not aligned with who they want to work with.

And so I offer the website audit. Where I will review your website and give you specific recommendations that you can implement yourself or have whoever is taking care of your website implement so that you can change that and see more conversions and make more money. 

Christine Santos: So the audit is you'll take a look holistically and then you make recommendations, but you don't actually do.

Is that right? Correct. 

Jenny Belanger: I will look at, for example, your website before you scroll down above the fold. That needs to be clear. You have less than one second to catch the tension. It needs to say. Who you are, how you help and have a call to action. Where are we sending that person to take the next step? I will review all your pages and share with you.

Maybe you didn't have a call to action in that top hero. Add a button directing people to take the next step and things like that throughout your site, as well as looking at your aesthetics, your colors, your fonts, and making sure that everything is working together in harmony to ensure that your visitors are going to take that next step with you.

Christine Santos: And so there are so many different tools out there from Kajabi, Wix, WordPress, so many, What do you work with? 

Jenny Belanger: I design on WordPress and I use Elementor. That's what I work with myself when building for a client. If someone is in that DIY room and looking to get started, I tell people square space or show it. Is a great place to start wonderful templates, especially show it. There are some beautiful strategic templates that you can use, and it's easy to set up and get started.

If it's something that you're going to do yourself. 

Christine Santos: So if I were to come to you or someone were to come and say I'd like an audit, does it matter which tool they're using? 

Jenny Belanger: Doesn't matter what platform you're on. I'm going to look at your website and give you an idea of what needs to happen. And then you would be the person responsible to make that happen on the back end.

Christine Santos: it's exciting and it's fun. And it brings you to that next level that your business needs to be at. 

 Thank you.

Jenny Belanger: I love that. How many team members did you have? I have three and depending on the project we'll bring in a few others depending on the needs of the sites that we're building. 

Christine Santos: I see, yeah. And so do they work physically with you or remotely? 

Jenny Belanger: Yeah, we're all remote and only work on the pieces we're responsible for.

Christine Santos: so that's another thing that comes up is team members. So for example, I've just hired a new team member who I'm teaching how to edit podcasts. And she's actually local. She actually worked With me in corporate, we sit side by side and enjoy it. And that's why we do that. So how did you find team members?

Cause I know for myself, I have another team member that's fading out right now in Australia. 

Jenny Belanger: I have a junior designer, a marketing assistant and a VA who help me day to day. All live in different parts of the country and I met online in Facebook groups. And then I have other partners who help me with the copywriting and the branding and any specific integrations that I need.

And those I've met through networking and some are local, some are not. That's how I found my team members. 

Christine Santos: How do you keep all those team members organized? Do you have best practices, weekly check ins? How do you manage all of that? 

Jenny Belanger: I use Notion as my central hub. That's where I manage all my projects.

I have my tasks that I assign to team members and we stay on track there, essentially assigning tasks. communicating there and if we need to have calls to catch up, but all of us are pretty well oiled machine. We know what we need to work on. We know what needs to get done. Then we just, we do it.

Christine Santos: That's great. I'm so impressed. You're so organized, you have so much knowledge and it sounds like you really enjoy what you do. 

Jenny Belanger: Tell us where people can find you and how they can reach out for an audit or a new website design.

 They can find me at JennyBDesigns. com. I have my own podcast, Website Design Made Simple. I have a free download for how to prepare your website for 2025. And some of my trends that I predict for the upcoming year. You can grab that JennyBDesigns. com backslash 2025.

It's a free list and I have a podcast that accompanies that. So that's how people can get in 

Christine Santos: touch. Great. Thank you, Jenny 

Jenny Belanger: Thank you, Christine.