Web Design Business with Josh Hall

360 - From 125k Down to Best Year Yet...My Business Rebound

• Josh Hall

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Happy New Year friends! I wanted to kick off 2025 with a special episode of the podcast to share what I learned from having two down revenue years (125k down from 2022-2023) to having the best revenue year yet in 2024!

This episode is broken down into 2 main parts:

  1. What caused my business to have two down revenue years
  2. How I rebounded to having the best year yet in 2024

As I and many other entrepreneurs have learned, business is not always up and to the right. There are hard months, quarters and even years. But there are a handful of things you can do in any situation to keep things going and growing.

In this one, I’m sharing:

  • What led to my business going 125k down in 2 years
  • What I did at my lowest point to keep going
  • The beautiful aspect of compounding recurring revenue
  • How meeting members of my community in person changed everything
  • A look at my actual revenue growth chart (and when things turned around)

And much more.

I hope what I learned through my business rebound helps you whether you’re in that season now or if you eventually hit a rough patch.

In short, here’s the checklist from my business rebound:

  • Didn’t stop
  • Committed to WDP being the main thing
  • Used courses at a lead in to Pro
  • Met members in person at WCUS
  • Doubled down on marketing Pro (in podcast, socials, YT, etc)
  • Did some lives on YT
  • Consistently shared member wins on socials and newsletter
  • Started bringing more members on the podcast
  • Worked on better retention for members
  • Let go of my “course creator” identity

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/360

Big thanks to the sponsors for our upcoming Web Designer Pro CON 2025 event! We couldn't make such a top-notch event for my community without their support 🙏

17hats (for proposals, invoicing, contracts and automation)

SiteGround (for website hosting)

Termageddon (for auto-updating privacy po

Josh Hall:

Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast, with your host, josh Hall, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love. Hello, friends, and happy new year 2025. Here we are. I wanted to sprinkle in an extra episode of the podcast here for you. Just me with you here in this one. I know I've been doing quite a few solo episodes recently, but I wanted to intentionally do one as we kick off the year here, specifically to share what I've learned about getting through a bit of a business rebound. And I'm sharing this now because last year 2024, was the best year to date, both in revenue, both in sustainability all the things 2024 was awesome.

Josh Hall:

Now, the couple years leading up to that were down years for me. In fact, between those two years, based off of averages from the prior year to that, my business was actually down over $125,000 between those two years and I learned a lot through that experience. And what I want to do in this one is share with you what I think kind of led to that and what happened there. There's a lot of factors involved, but I definitely have pinpointed, I think, the main causes for that. But, most importantly, this is a happy ending here I want to share what I did to rebound and practically what I did in the lowest moments of going through that bit of down years in business. So really excited to share this one with you here. Again, two parts here I want to share what I've pinpointed that kind of caused the down years there, and then, most importantly, part two here I'll share what I did, pinpointed that kind of caused the down years there, and then, most importantly, part two here I'll share what I did to rebound. Now there's a couple things that led to the initial numbers going down in the way of sales and course sales, and then even my membership. So the most important thing to know, I think, if you didn't know, is that in 2023, I changed my business model. I went from selling courses one-off between prices that ranged from a hundred bucks to a thousand bucks, which was my business course, which is where it was originally priced at and I went all in on a membership model. I moved all my courses into Web Designer Pro and rebranded my membership to Web Designer Pro. That was a big factor, but there were factors that preceded that that started a bit of a I don't want to say a downward spiral, but it did start the down revenue trend for a little while.

Josh Hall:

And I do want to say offhand $125,000,. Some businesses that's not the biggest deal depending on their revenue range, but some businesses they would have to close their doors. I was kind of in the middle. Luckily, my business is profitable enough and we're at a revenue range now to where we were able to keep going. We were able to stay in our new house. I was able to pay our bills, but we did have to cut down on expenses. We had to be very, very careful with what my family was spending. During a series of several months, I had to cut down on the hours for my team and I had to get really serious about getting my revenue back up, at least to the range it was leading up to 2022. 2021 was a good year, but last year was the best year. So essentially, I had to do a lot of things that we're going to get into. But all that to say what really started the downward trend here that I've pinpointed was in the summer of 2022, I've talked about this in detail on a couple of prior episodes, so I'm not going to cover all this in extreme detail because I have covered this.

Josh Hall:

There's a couple episodes I'm going to recommend that you listen to, whether you want to pause this and go back to these, or whether you want to go back to those episodes. In episode 290, I shared how I survived a tough year in business, which leads into this. But what's interesting about that is episode 290, I actually recorded and produced in October of 2023. So it was just after I started sensing a better trend. Um, so I was kind of freshly off of you know, getting some good momentum. Now I'm much more confident, even sharing what I did to rebound. But that goes into a lot more detail of this. I'll skim the surface here, but I would recommend that you go back to episode 290. If you want to hear in depth how I survived that tough year, right as I just got through it. And then I also did an episode in episode 328, which has an update about my daughter's recovery, which I'll share a little more about here and gets into some of what we'll talk about here as well. So both episode 290 and 328 are likely going to be ones I recommend you go back to, because I'm not going to rehash everything that's in those episodes.

Josh Hall:

All that to say, in short, the highlights are that in the summer of 2022, my family moved. We had built a new home. We moved into that. Anybody who has moved with kids knows that is no small feat. There was a lot of time and effort into that. My wife was also extremely pregnant at that time and my daughter, bria, had a surgery that summer to repair part of her cleft palate. So that all happened in the summer of 2022. So I kind of took my foot off the accelerator. I took a well-deserved rest through that time period. I basically just did what I had to survive to keep the membership going and do my normal stuff keep the podcast running, keep my courses updated but I just didn't do any big marketing pushes or promotions or any proactive selling. I was planning on doing that in the fall of 22.

Josh Hall:

But, as many of you know and the reason I mentioned the couple episodes is because in those I share in detail what happened to my daughter in the fall of 2022 in October, where she, in short, had a prolonged seizure throughout the night and that left her with a traumatic brain injury and we found her in the morning and subsequently after that, the very long and short of it is that we spent eight days at Children's Hospital with her as she was recovering. She essentially was paralyzed completely on her left side. We didn't know what the future would hold for her and what that would look like, and because my wife was so far along in pregnancy at that point, she actually had my son Drexton at the same time, just a few days after my daughter had this traumatic injury. So I'm at Children's Hospital with my daughter. My wife is at the other hospital across town having my son Drexen. We all had COVID that week as well, and so we were managing all that. My middle daughter, annie, was at home with relatives trying to make sense of what the heck was going on.

Josh Hall:

And shortly after we all got home and after Bria was discharged from Children's Hospital, my wife had a very serious incident with, or a serious issue with, preeclampsia. Those who don't know what that is, it is a very serious issue. I don't know what the correct term is, but it's a very serious situation that commonly occurs after pregnancy for some women, and she was very close's it's she was very close to like it being very, very serious. She was rushed back to the ER, which anyone knows. If you go to the ER and they rush you back. It's serious. So um just about lost her just the week after that. So it was a lifetime script, movie script that we went through in the fall of 22.

Josh Hall:

So that all happened and, as you can imagine, I really didn't. I wasn't in the headspace to do anything new in 22. We were basically just chugging along trying to deal with what happened to my daughter, bria getting my wife home, you know, getting our newborn in the mix and then settling into kind of our new normal as my daughter worked to recover from her seizure, traumatic injury and all the things. So, needless to say, I gave myself some grace for 22 being a down year. I was about, let's see. I think in that year I was about $50,000 down from the year previously, so it was about a 20, 25% decrease. So not the end of the world. And my family on the personal side had made some money from selling our previous home, so we did have a decent amount of savings, so that kind of helped cushion us as well. So 22 was very reasonable that it was a down year between me taking the foot off the gas and then everything that happened on the personal side Heading into 2023, things were starting to improve with Bria To this day.

Josh Hall:

This is why I did the update in episode 328. So I really recommend that you go listen to that if you're curious about where she is today. I don't want to rehash all that right now, but she's doing very, very well. In short, she has not made 100% recovery from that, but she is able to walk again, she's able to utilize her left side more and more and she is just an absolute rock star. So we did start to see positive. She actually started walking in the beginning of 2023. And again, she started walking again because she lost her whole left side, basically, and had to relearn how to crawl and how to walk. But we started getting some good momentum on the personal side, we were adjusting to our new normal and my thought was 2022 was going to be the boom year and the big change here.

Josh Hall:

The reason, going back to what I mentioned earlier with the pivot in my business model, is that, as I mentioned, I was selling courses one-off and then I had what was formerly my web design club, which was my membership, and that was community and coaching. So you could purchase courses one-off and then you could buy the membership for those who wanted community and coaching directly with me. Well, circle, the platform that I power, web Designer Pro, through my membership came out with the courses feature finally came out with the courses feature finally, and I just recognized a huge need that the folks in my membership were asking about courses and I was wanting to link to lessons and I was like man, it'd be wonderful if I could just have this all inside of this community. So I decided that I would add all of my courses inside of my membership and that's when I rebranded from the Web Design Club to what is now Web Designer Pro. Now I knew that was a big decision, but what I did not realize was that it made two huge different purchasing decisions for customers. They now had the option to get lifetime access to one-off courses that range between $ hundred bucks and a thousand bucks over at joshhallco, or they could get everything in Web Designer Pro.

Josh Hall:

I launched Web Designer Pro with the price points of $5.99 quarterly or $1.99 annually, so $2k annually or $600 quarterly. And I did all those things and essentially what I realized looking back is I really had two high-end offers because, as I mentioned, my business course at the time was $1,000 one time or you could get it in the membership, but that was still 600 a quarter or annual. I had absolutely no low-ticket offers for those who are getting started in web design or are not yet making several thousand or even up to six figures. Even six figure web designers, a $2,000 membership is still 2% of your revenue if you're six figures. So I really essentially didn't realize that I narrowed my purchase path to only a certain segment of my customers and I also didn't think about what a big decision that was, all those things combined to having a massive drop in revenue.

Josh Hall:

Now, for anyone who has a recurring revenue membership model or service, you know, know it's awesome for the long game when you start to build your MRR, your monthly recurring revenue, whether it's a hosting plan or a support plan or a growth or marketing plan. They are awesome in the long run. But they do take time to get going and it is a slow burn sometimes. That's exactly what I experienced. My membership prior to revamping it to Web Designer Pro was a decent amount of recurring revenue, but it wasn't my main model. My main source of revenue at that point was my one-time courses. But when I moved my courses into Web Designer Pro, my one-off course sales nearly dropped completely and I was not expecting that. I was expecting them to drop into some more memberships. But I wasn't quite expecting what a massive drop that would be, almost overnight.

Josh Hall:

But I had committed to doing Web Designer Pro because you might think, well, why didn't you just turn the courses back on and take them out of the membership? But what I realized was it was working. The folks who did have all the courses have access to all the courses and the community and my coaching in Web Designer Pro it was working. Those were where people were getting the results and I knew, even through those tough times, I knew if I could just keep this going and let more people know about this and make it more accessible. It's going to work for more people and with recurring revenue. Even if you get a decent amount of people signing up in the beginning at price points of a couple hundred or less, it still takes a while to get that going up to a healthy MRR range, depending on what I needed at that time. So, all that to say, I had two big offers that were fairly high ticket and really only ideal for a segment of my market. As I look back at it now.

Josh Hall:

I went with a quarterly pricing strategy, or annual at first. I eventually moved to monthly because once quarterly started to renew, I found that a lot of people that $600 charge was a lot different than paying $200 per month. So I realized like, yeah, I think quarterly works for some people, but monthly just works better for this model. And, as I mentioned, there were a lot of personal things that led to that and I kind of lost some momentum through 2022 with the personal side of things, both just taking the foot off the accelerator. And then life just happened and hit us really hard.

Josh Hall:

And then 2023 came, thinking that this was going to be the boom year. But that pivot ended up being a big time pivot. That was painful at first but, as I, as you already know cause I already said in the beginning, this is a happy ending because 2024 was the best year yet. Yet, and what I'm going to do because now I want to share some of what I did in the rebound here is I'm actually going to post my chart, my revenue chart from 2023 into 2024, because I want you to see where things started to turn and where things started to turn as far as my revenue and once the recurring revenue started to catch on, was the fall of 2023.

Josh Hall:

So, as I mentioned in episode 290, in October of 2023, I released that episode because I had just sensed that things were turning around and the momentum had started building really nicely, but I was still not out of the water at that point. It was still kind of precarious as far as our revenue. Again, our revenue was not at the point where we needed to sell our house and I needed to close up shop, but it was definitely at a place where, like this cannot continue. I was probably about three months away from needing to do some drastic changes. I mean, it was going down. You never want to have your numbers go down and down and down, going down. You never want to have your numbers go down and down and down.

Josh Hall:

And, quite frankly, it was kind of a pride hit on this for me personally, because up to this point, every year I've been in business, both within Transit Studios and with Josh Hallco, I had only ever gone up into the right. Now, some years were higher up into the right and some years were a little more modest up into the right, but I had never even stayed stagnant Every year in business I've always gone up and to the right until 2022, but I gave myself some grace with that, thinking that 2023 was going to be big. And it actually went down, largely because of what we just talked about with my pivot in the business model, largely because we were still going through a lot with my daughter and on the personal front. I don't like to blame external factors. I think inflation and economic uncertainty certainly had a part to that as well but I think the biggest problem was my offer was two big offers that were more high ticket and I also didn't feel confident with selling either one. I kind of didn't know what to sell at that point.

Josh Hall:

In the summer of 2023, once the membership started going as Web Designer Pro and I still had my courses, I was still mainly selling my courses and mainly selling my membership. So you may have been around when I was doing that. It may have been confusing for you and if you would like to share that it was, or if you have insight, I would love to hear from you. You can leave a comment on the show notes at this episode, which is going to be at joshhallco slash 360. But, in short, what I want to share with you now is the rebound, because I learned some very, very valuable lessons to this, and I am going to post that revenue chart not out of pride, but just to say this happens and this can happen when you do what I learned in my business rebound.

Josh Hall:

The biggest thing I learned is that I did not stop. There is something to be said for commitment, and I committed early on that I'm going to make this work. Whether I do it to make this work, whether I do it in a membership form, whether I do it in courses, whether I do it in consulting, whether I do it at scale with just YouTube videos, whatever I do, I'm very, very passionate as you very well know probably about helping web designers build their business and, regardless of whether the numbers are going down or whatever, I knew what I have done has helped so many people and that was really the basis of helping me keep going. But regardless of any of that, I just didn't stop. I will never stop. I do never stop. That's a key trait to a lot of successful entrepreneurs and business owners that I've noticed over the years is regardless, even if they miss mortgage payments, even if they have to sell their house, even if they do whatever, they just don't stop. And I think sometimes that's just in your blood as an entrepreneur. You just you're going to keep on going, whether you have to make sacrifices or not, you're going to keep going and more often than not, it turns around, especially if you're proactive and smart about it, which is what I had to learn, because I I also, quite frankly, I got really down in 2023, about six months after my daughter's incident.

Josh Hall:

We had hoped that she would be at 100% by then, but she just wasn't. We didn't know what that would look like. So I've never been someone who's struggled with anxiety or depression, but that summer of 2023 was the first time I ever felt that people call it like a cloud. It just feels like a kind of dark haze around you. It was the first time I ever felt that people call it like a cloud, like it just feels like a kind of dark haze around you. It's the first time I ever actually felt that and I was like, oh my gosh, I now, I I'm empathetic. I understand that a little more now, because our numbers were going down.

Josh Hall:

I had relaunched my business course, I had done version 2.0. I thought I was going to have a huge $50,000 or $60,000 launch, but because I had this confusion on what to sell I didn't know whether to sell the course or the membership I launched that course both high-ticket offers. I don't think people really knew what to purchase. I don't think I sold it well and that launch was only $6,000, and that launch was only $6,000, like almost negative 10x of what I thought I would make. So I had a few months that were super down in revenue, on top of everything that was going with my daughter.

Josh Hall:

It was a very dark time. Quite frankly, I had to just keep on going and keep chugging along through that and lean on my members who were getting results and lean on testimonials and leaning on my mastermind group with Jason Gracia and Shannon Mattern and some colleagues who I was able to talk with, and those were huge parts to this rebound. But summer 2023 was very, very, very tough but, as I mentioned, I just kept on going and then, in the fall, a few short months later, I started to notice a trend. The recurring revenue that I was building in Web Designer Pro started ticking up and then it started getting closer to being stable and then I realized I almost had to go through an identity shift. I was like I'm not Josh the course creator anymore, I'm Josh the community builder in Web Designer Pro is my thing. I took ownership of that being the main thing.

Josh Hall:

That was a key component to this rebound is that I committed to Web Designer Pro being the main thing that I sell. Yes, I have my courses, an entire suite of courses that help web designers build their business and be able to be a well-rounded web designer. And then where all those go, they go to Web Designer Pro. Now, I still kept my courses for a long time able to be sold one-off if people wanted lifetime access. But here's the key thing that I did that really helped me is I started using my courses as lead-ins to Pro not lead generators that were freebies, but lead-ins to Web Designer Pro.

Josh Hall:

So when I started speaking at summits and when I did lives and workshops and when I was promoting on social media and the podcasts and stuff, you may have remembered this at some point, or maybe you're in Web Designer Pro right now and you actually came through one of my courses and that led you to pro. That was exactly the reason for that. I realized suddenly the information that is gated in these courses. That's not the ending point. The ending point is all of it in web designer pro. The ending point for my customer base now is to have courses, to have community and to have coaching. And, as many of you know, now we even have more tiers, which we'll get to in a little bit, but still to that point there was only one tier for pro. It was all of it 200 a month courses, community and coaching the big three C's.

Josh Hall:

So I committed to that and there was an instant change in both revenue and confidence when I went from by my course or you could go into my membership to here's the course. This will help you with this. Now, when you join the course, you get a free trial of Web Designer Pro or, in some cases, a discount for a certain amount of time. That's how I started to use depending if they were like paid course, you know customers. That's how I started using my courses as a lead generator, because members would get quick results or, excuse me, students would get quick results, especially if those folks were learning and meeting me for the first time and then they had the option to get all the courses and our incredible pro, community and coaching with me directly in our weekly coaching calls. So I noticed an instant shift in the momentum for revenue and confidence. That's also why I'm going to share with you the graphic here of my revenue chart Again not out of pride, not to say like, look what I did, but just to show you like, when you commit to one offer and one product and one sales strategy, you can have multiple products often, but the most important thing is to make it clear what somebody should buy and when they should buy it. So I started using my courses as lead generators.

Josh Hall:

The next thing that happened was perhaps the biggest aspect to this, and that was meeting a lot of my members of Web Designer Pro in person. Meeting a lot of my members of Web Designer Pro in person In 2023, in the fall of 2023, right before a thing. This was actually right before things started turning around, because this was late August. At WordCamp US 2023, we did our first official pro meetup, which was at WordCamp US, and if I remember, I think that was late August. So I was just on the heels of having a really, really rough summer. It was the first time in years that I had under $10,000 in a couple months in revenue and I was like I literally can't continue on like this.

Josh Hall:

But I knew meeting in person was huge, our revenue was getting towards stable Um, and I was starting to get a little confidence. But I tell you in all honesty, it was meeting my members in person, hearing their stories, them sharing with me stuff that I never knew about, that we've never talked about in the, in the community or on podcasts or anything like that. But hearing how my resources and on my courses and how the community has helped them, helped them keep going in their journeys, how it's helped them raise their rates, how it's helped them make six figures, multi-six figures in some cases, and hearing those stories and meeting people in person and hanging out with them and just having a good time changed the game for me. It changed everything for me. So, those of you who were there, if you're listening to this, I just want to personally and publicly say thank you so much for what you mean to me and what you meant to me, especially at that point when I desperately needed to see the results in person. I can't recommend that enough, whether you are able to meet clients in person or whether you're able to just do case studies or capture testimonials. When you get your client testimonials and hear their results, it helps you get through these type of seasons and these situations. In that case, it really did. Everyone who got to meet in person my gosh, sandy, alexis, april, michelle, lauren, austin, lewis, cammie was there. Uh, who am I missing? I think I'm missing a few others, but, uh, a ton of web designer pros were there and I'm telling you right now your guys' impact on me at that point cannot be overstated Like it was huge.

Josh Hall:

I left that event fully buzzed, fully charged in realizing that, damn it, what I am doing works. I just need to double down on what's working. I need to make the sales more clear, I need to get these people's stories out into the world better and I need to market better. So that's exactly what I did. That's literally what I did to rebound all those things. Whatever I just said, I forget what I just said, but that's exactly what I did. That's literally what I did to rebound all those things. Whatever I just said, I forget what I just said, but that's exactly what I did. I did I really started making a point to promote their stories.

Josh Hall:

I've had a lot more pro members on the podcast. You probably noticed that sometimes they have areas of expertise. Sometimes they did something that worked really well and, instead of always having guest experts on who are unrelated to web design, a lot of what I'm doing now is like, hey, this member just made like $7,500. Ben holler, I'm going to have him on. Let's talk about what you did that worked. Alexia launched her business last year in an incredible way and made a launch plan out of it. I was like, let's do that, let's talk about that. She was on the podcast recently, so I really started to showcase members, which, in turn, downstream, led to people going, oh my gosh, I want this. I want, I want to know, like, well, what did they learn? They went through Josh's course, so I'm hoping that helps me too. That leads them to pro.

Josh Hall:

And I really just started double down. I doubled down on marketing web designer pro as a whole show, showcasing customer stories, really making everything a lot more visible about what is working and what's going on inside of Web Designer Pro. I did that across every platform. I did that here on the podcast. I did it on my social media, which I'm currently active on Facebook and Instagram. I started to do more and more on YouTube, including lives.

Josh Hall:

And then I started reaching out to folks who I knew who did summits and did some summit trainings, which then led into a course sale, which then led to the offer to check out Web Designer Pro. And I also reached out to a few colleagues of mine who have similar audiences, maybe a little bit different, but Lindsay Halsey with Pathfinder SEO, shannon Mattern, who has a coaching group for web designer women. So we, you know, we're good coopetition friends and I did trainings for them and that led to a lot of folks getting into web designer pro as well, because they were a great offshoots and additional resources and communities and coaching alongside what they're in there. So I did all the strategies I recommend partner webinars, podcasts, social media, youtube, workshops all the things I recommend to get clients. I did and that is what helped my rebound. It was a lot of work, but I'm condensing stuff I did over a year and a half into this quick chat. So I did a lot, but all that to say, it started working very well. The other thing I did that was a big benefit and this is the same for any of you who have hosting clients, maintenance clients, growth clients is I started getting really serious about the big, important R word retention.

Josh Hall:

Prior to this I had never gone through a training on memberships or how to build a community. I just did it. It's fairly natural for me as a community builder. As I look back my personality profile. I've been a community builder since I can remember. Even in high school I was connecting friends with each other and building little communities and that siphoned over to the band world when I was introducing people and building community in the band world and then that transferred over to business and community building is in my nature. But what I didn't really realize was that in order to make that work in a membership model, you have to be proactive at keeping a community going and not just like I'm good at creating community but I wasn't great at retaining community necessarily. Now that to say, I didn't have a huge churn rate but it helped because my membership has always been premium and been smaller and be really high impact. But I did get really serious about what can I do to make sure people don't just jump in and jump out of pro because there's monthly option. So I got really serious about retention, which meant I was being much more proactive personally in DMS doing more calls.

Josh Hall:

We started doing challenges, as I mentioned earlier. I recommend that you always go back to your case studies and your testimonials to keep you going through tough times. One challenge we did in 2024 last year is we did a wall of awesome challenge, which just means whether it's a wall on your office or whether it's a collection of notes and testimonials and snippets and case studies, or whether it's something you put on your desk get your client wins and successes in your office in your line of sight, not just on your website, not just in your computer. I'm looking right now at my wall. I have a little lounge area in front of my main computer area and I have an entire wall of awesome. There's like 70 plus testimonials from students and members of pro on that thing. So I look at it every day to remember what I'm doing is working. And luckily, 2024 was absolutely incredible, completely up and to the right. But I still have never taken that for granted and I've learned to not get comfortable when numbers go up and to the right, because for any reason, numbers can go down, whether it's a pivot in your business, whether it's unclear offer, whether it's lack of confidence, whether it's personal situations, whether it's life coming at you.

Josh Hall:

We all go through down times and the reality is business is it's so cliche, but it's true it is a roller coaster. There are ups and downs. You know it as a web designer. You have really good months and sometimes really bad months. Even if you're working on an MRR model of recurring revenue, you're still going to have times where you're going to have some churn. A lot of members are leaving. You're like, oh my God, what's happening? What did I do? Why are a bunch of members leaving at the same time? And you'll have a bunch of members join at the same time and you're like, what did I do? I want to keep on doing this. Did I say something? What did I do? Let's keep doing this. It just happened. So I learned that business is a roller coaster. But all of those things combined are what helped me with this business rebound.

Josh Hall:

I'm going to let me give you a quick recap of this rebound on the steps that I did. It's not like a you know seven step process or anything, but I've just got a little list. I'm looking at what I did as I look back that helped me with this rebound from 125K down in two years to 2024 being the best year ever. In 2025, my friends, I'm looking at potentially doubling. Potentially, depending on how wild I want to get this year. I'm a family guy so I don't sacrifice family time, but, depending on what I want to do, I think I have the foundation to potentially double my revenue in 2025. And then where sites will be set on a seven-figure business annually. So, anyway, where was I? What I learned in this rebound is what I'm going to share with you.

Josh Hall:

But there's one really quick idea that I don't want to leave out, and it goes back to a conversation I had with Amy Porterfield. She was on the podcast in episode 185. If you have not listened to that episode, please do yourself a favor and go back to that. It is a hidden gem of the show. It's all about longevity as a entrepreneur, and you look at somebody like Amy Porterfield who has I think they just crossed last year a hundred million dollars in her business. You look at somebody like that and think, even if their numbers dip a little bit, it must not be a big deal. But she actually went through a very, very tough season in her business in a dark time, both both personally and kind of mentally and mindset through that. And when we talked about that on the show, I'm so thankful I had my interview with her leading like prior to what happened in 2022. I talked with her I think in the spring of 2022, got her episode out and then shortly after that is when life kind of hit us.

Josh Hall:

But she said you can't believe. You can't always believe what you think. Believe you can't always believe what you think. And that quote, as simple as it is, has so much wisdom, especially in downtimes and when you start doubting yourself. So let me say it again If you're multitasking, come back to me, take a pause here, because this was huge for me. I thought about this almost every day through that season. You can't believe everything you think and it just goes to show that your thoughts aren't always right. It's easy to think, especially in those downtimes, and I'll just reiterate what she told me, but it's so true from what I experienced when I went through those downtimes. It's easy to think, oh my God, have I lost it? Should I not be doing this In 2023, when I thought my business course was going to be a whopper sale and launch and it was a 10th of what I thought it was going to be that.

Josh Hall:

I thought modestly what I'd probably bring in. I did have thoughts like am I dated? Am I out of the? Am I not a good person to learn the business of web design? I had all these thoughts and I did start struggling with a little bit of confidence, but I kept on thinking about that quote you can't believe everything you think and for me personally, it's easier to say that when you have a record of proof and proven results. For me personally, but even if you just have one client or one nice design, that can be your confidence booster. But I went back to the members and people who I knew who were getting results, and I looked at them and again meeting them at WordCamp US in 2023, hearing their stories. That was a huge aspect to helping me get through this, because I thought back to what was working for them, thought about my resources, thought about my story, what I learned and realized.

Josh Hall:

This was just, for all the reasons we've talked about, a rough patch in business, started with the personal side. Then it went to a business pivot, went to some unclear offers, some confusion and lack of confidence in knowing how to sell it. But that didn't mean that I was not a good person to learn from, or it didn't mean that my stuff was dated or my strategies weren't working. It just meant that there was a lot of other variables and I had to keep on going. So thank you, amy Porterfield, for that quote, which I don't know if she knew how beneficial and needed that was in that time of my life. So, episode 185, get on back to it, friends. Huge one Amy was freaking awesome. Can't wait to have her back on the show Supposed to come back on here at this year or so. I'll get proactive and see if I can make that happen again.

Josh Hall:

Anyway, what I did to rebound, in short, I did not stop Hell or high water, I did not stop. I'm committed. Ain't no way. I would be a terrible employee. I can't get a job. There's no way. I have to do this. My hope is to continue to do it and continue to see the revenue go up into the right every year. But hey, if I get to a point where there's stagnation or a down spiral not a spiral, but, you know, a little downtime Now I have the muscle and the foundation to know exactly what to do, which is this list I'm sharing with you. I didn't stop. I committed to one thing.

Josh Hall:

The end of the road for me was Web Designer Pro. Now, if you have a few different offers, you could have different products, but you just can't send people 30 different places. You have to have one area. Or if you have multiple services, you need to have guided journeys and paths through those journeys or through those products to get where they need to be. For me, courses, community and coaching boom, web Designer Pro. All my courses were good pieces to the full meal, but they were appetizers. They weren't the full meal. The full meal is Web Designer Pro, but we've got appetizers, entrees and desserts. Those are my courses. Now I'm getting hungry. I use those courses as lead-ins to my main product, web Designer Pro.

Josh Hall:

I realized that information was being commoditized with AI and market changes and that the real winning was community and coaching with the information when you had it ready to go. Community and coaching with the information when you had it ready to go. Meeting members in person again, I'll say it one last time I can't recommend it enough that you meet with your clients or get them on a call or listen to their wins, do a case study, get their testimonials, hear from them, have them submit a review for you whatever. Actually, christian, my developer, just recently sent out a little survey for him to collect client testimonials and it's gone really well. It was a really short survey and there are also like case studies for him and testimonials for him. So do that and meet your folks in person. Thank you again to everybody who was there in person at WordCamp US 2023. You have no idea what you mean to me and what you meant to me there.

Josh Hall:

At the end of a very tough summer. I doubled down on marketing. I was dead serious about mentioning pro always and everywhere. I was not shy about marketing. I will not be shy about marketing. I am not afraid to be in people's inboxes too much. I'm not afraid to shout it from the mountain top. There's no mountains here in Columbus Ohio, but if I was near a mountain I would be up there shouting Web Designer Pro and my pro swag. Double down on marketing in the podcast, social media, youtube, at summits, et cetera. I did some more lives. I did workshops, I did partner webinars. I really started getting serious about sharing member stories and member wins on social media in my newsletter, which I had started as well, and then bringing those people on my podcast.

Josh Hall:

Many of you have probably been on the podcast as a member of pro and as a listener who has had some success, as you know, in your journey as a whole or maybe in one area, and those have been huge. Not only converters for me, but they're pieces of content I'm able to reference back to all the time Huge, so you can do the same thing, by the way, if you do an interview series for your clients, which is going to be a challenge in pro here for Q1, worked on better retention for members, and I think maybe the most important thing I did to rebound is I let go of my identity as a course creator and embraced my identity as a community builder and semi-coach mentor. Course creation was part of that, but the bigger picture was being a builder of community and a mentor and coach. So I will have that list ready for you to be able to skim through over at the show notes for this episode, which are going to be found at joshhallco slash 360. So leave me a comment.

Josh Hall:

Friends, I would really love to hear from you If this resonated with you or if it helped give you some solid ideas to help you, whether you're in a tough season right now and you're just desperate to get out of it, or whether things are going really well. And then shit, I got to go back to that episode that Josh talked about, about the rebound, because it was really helpful. I hope this is a good resource for you, whether you need it now, whether you need it in the future. You can't believe everything you're you think. Quote Amy Porterfield slash. Abraham Lincoln really really appreciate you guys and I'm happy to share this to kick off the year because I think this is a really important thing to get into. So I hope you enjoyed this. Leave me a comment If there was a takeaway, if you want to share some insight or if you just appreciated this. I really would love to hear from you. Leave me a comment at joshhallco slash 360. You can also leave a podcast review. It would mean the world to me. This is an audio only podcast right now. So, whether you're on Spotify or Apple or do people listen to podcasts anywhere else, wherever you listen, leave a review would mean the world to me. It helps me grow the show. I read all those as well. But, man, I would love to hear from you and I hope this helps again.

Josh Hall:

2024 happy ending to what was a very, very tough 2022 and 23, but 24 was freaking awesome. 2025, maybe I'll be doing this show from my helicopter. If I was going to do anything, it would be from a boat. That's the dream, and I don't even want a huge boat, I want a pontoon boat. I just want to take some beers, have the family, have a good time. A little pontoon boat. I could actually do that now, but we've got medical bills and we've got other stuff to pay for, so I'll worry about that first. But just know, 2025, pontoon boat is the goal. So not going to be rolling in a Lamborghini or helicopter or anything, but by golly, my new goal is to do one of these shows from my sweet pontoon boat one day. So look simple, simple man here, small dreams but a big aspirations. So I hope this has helped my friends again.

Josh Hall:

Whether you are looking to boost your revenue or whatever that looks like for you, whether you're in a down season or whether you need this now for when the time comes, I really hope this is a good resource. I love to hear from you. We did mention some links, so those will be at joshhallco slash 360. As I mentioned, go back to episode 290 to hear in depth about how I survived that tough year freshly, as I was still out of that tough year. And then recently, 328, we'll get into more of my daughter's recovery and shares a little bit more about what we covered here. But, man, the rebound Gosh, I'm pumped. Thank you for listening. Stay subscribed.

Josh Hall:

My goodness, I was sitting here to tell you I'm not afraid to market Web Designer Pro when I completely, completely forgot to market to you.

Josh Hall:

Now I do want to mention yes, web Designer Pro, we now have tiers. You may or may not have known that we recently expanded the offers to pro, since the coaching level, which is what it's been at for a while, is nearing capacity. So we now have an option to get just the courses all my courses for you. You can take your time to go through those and that's only 49 bucks a month right now. And then the next step up for you is the community level. That gives you access to all the courses and all of our community features live trainings, monthly AMA. That's available for you if you're ready for the next step. And then we do still have some spots currently at the coaching level. If you want more, josh, if you want me to be able to DM 24 seven, if you want access to our weekly group coaching calls, which are smaller kind of mini coaching sessions, that is available for you at webdesignerprocom. So head there after this and we can talk about your own business rebound if we need to. Webdesignerprocom friends.