Web Design Business with Josh Hall

372 - Rebounding from Losing $6k in MRR (in One Week) with Steve Schramm

• Josh Hall

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They say business is like a roller coaster…ups and downs and highs and lows…and “they” couldn’t be more right.

My guest in this chat, friend of the podcast, king of the Subscription Web Design model and founding member of Web Designer Pro Steve Schramm can also confirm.

Recently, he shared a thoughtful, transparent and inspirational post in Pro about how he rebounded from a tough situation when he had over 6k+ in MRR drop within one week.

At the same time, he also landed one of his biggest contracts to date…the emotional highs and lows of entrepreneurship truly are comical sometimes.

But most importantly, we get into exactly WHAT he did when he had the week of 6k down and HOW he began to rebound quickly.

Enjoy.

Enjoy this chat and enjoy the ride of being a web design entrepreneur baby!

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/372

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

Steve Schramm:

in the blink of an eye, 6200 worth of monthly income is gone wow and you're thinking, okay, don't panic.

Steve Schramm:

right, so that was, that was where the whole thing started. Now, that's that wasn't where it ended, right, like when it, when it came around to that that post that I, that I put in uh in pro, so that was where it started was like with that. And now one thing I will say about me is I'm good under pressure. I'm like hypothetical things cause me a great deal of worry and anxiety. Once something becomes real, typically I can move along and deal with it. Okay, so within a couple of weeks I was like you know what it's going to be. Fine, I've been working on like a lead flow process and everything I'm probably going to have to like let my team sort of fade into the background a little bit while. I take a little bit more of the hands-on work for a little while. But thanks to what I teach recurring revenue, subscription-based web design you know we were good.

Steve Schramm:

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.

Josh Hall:

Oh, my friends, the roller coaster that is business, particularly web design, and entrepreneurship. My guest in this episode recently lost over $6,000 per month in recurring revenue, but he's rebounded. In this episode we're going to dive into everything that he learned and what he did immediately when this happened because this was all within a span of a week and, most importantly, the things he's done to give himself a buffer of MRR monthly recurring revenue. My guest in this one probably needs no introduction If you've been following the show for a while Steve Schramm.

Josh Hall:

He is kind of the king of subscription web design. He's been on the show numerous times. He's a founder of my community Web Designer Pro and he has built up his web design business with a subscription web design model and subscription web design recurring revenue is amazing, but what a lot of people don't talk about is, while you build it up and get to a certain level, it's awesome, but that does not mean that it's always going to be there. You have to continue to innovate and in the case of what Steve went through recently, he just kind of had a bad week where two of his biggest accounts dropped and that was over 6,000 a month of recurring revenue. That was in one week kind of gone for him, but again he's rebounded and he had a lot of lessons to share in this one that I learned from him.

Josh Hall:

So I know you're going to take this and be able to apply it to your business. Whether you're doing the subscription web design model or whether you are doing support, maintenance or growth plans in your business, the key is you want to reduce churn and I hope everything that Steve and I get into here helps you as well. You can connect with Steve at steveshramco. That is his website, which will link you out to his courses his podcast. He used to have the subscription web design podcast that is now rebranded to Web Design MBA, so give that a go If you want to listen and learn for more on Steve, but for right now, let's hear about how the heck he rebounded from $6,000 down in one week.

Steve Schramm:

Shivers in my spine Just hearing about that. Here we go.

Josh Hall:

Well, Steve, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show again, man, and to take some time to chat about the roller coaster of business.

Steve Schramm:

Oh, my goodness, and boy is it a roller coaster. It is just one day to the next. You just never know what's going to happen. But I'm blessed again to be here with you, josh, one of my favorite people in the world, so I always say yes to this opportunity.

Josh Hall:

Well, man, you posted a post at the end of 2024 in WebCenter Pro. You're a founding member of Pro, you're one of the many people in there that just make it what it is, and this type of post that you laid out there is one of the reasons. I think it's one of the things that makes Pro so different compared to most online communities is like sheer transparency and utter um, I guess that's it Authenticity, transparency because I think a lot of people, especially as as coaches, you want to focus on the bright side of business, but people need to know that this is hard and that there are good months and bad months. And I just wanted to just briefly go over what you said here real quick for everyone watching and listening, who isn't in pro, who maybe hasn't seen this, but you had just mentioned your. Your title was therapy, transparency and, hopefully, encouragement, which I absolutely love.

Josh Hall:

So right there, I'm hooked copywriting Steve at it again. And you said in short, I'm not going to read, obviously, the whole thing, but you said there have been some serious highs, some serious lows, a lot of uncertainty, gratefulness, frustration, joy, pretty much every emotion, excitement, trembling, fear. You said I'm writing this post for a few reasons to process, to vent, to encourage, to seek encouragement, to stay real and to get over my own pride, and probably a few more things as well. And, in short, I just wanted to lay that out there because that was the foundation for the roller coaster that you had at the end of 2024. So, yeah, give us the what's the summary version of of what you went through that prompted that post.

Steve Schramm:

Obviously, I just read the intro but yeah, yeah, no, that that that's okay, I you know, and that I'll just. I'll just give a plug, a, an unsolicited plug here, because Josh's group, Web Designer Pro, just really is fantastic for this kind of thing. I mean, it's, it's, it's the one place on the internet where I feel pretty comfortable, bearing all. I mean I'm pretty transparent on my own podcast and stuff, but but you know I'm not going to get into all the nitty gritty like I would in Josh's club, so I still keep calling it the club. It's not the club anymore, it's Web.

Josh Hall:

Designer Pro. It's fancy, but it's habit. You know habit, that's all right.

Steve Schramm:

So so yeah, I'll, I'll give you the basic rundown. So the whole thing sort of started about a month or so earlier than that post. I woke up I think it was on a Tuesday and I got two emails that morning, neither of which I was kind of thinking were coming at some point, neither of which I was expecting to happen quite when they did, and certainly certainly not both happening on the same day. But the long and short of that is that my two, my two biggest clients, essentially both they didn't cancel their service. They both downgraded to needing maintenance only because in one case we had a bigger retainer that was focused on development work and then in another case we had a marketing program with them. There was not any hard feelings. There was not any hard feelings, there was not any huge problems. Again, the one company there was a planned eventuality where the WordPress site was going down and a standalone app that was being developed was going out by another company and the buyout was like a multi-year process and throughout the majority of the process we had been doing marketing for the company that had been bought out and essentially that was coming to a close and they didn't need our marketing services anymore because the parent company was going to be taking it over. So, again, a couple of just very reasonable circumstances, with no hard feelings or anything like that. Nevertheless, it's a Tuesday where you wake up and, pretty much in the blink of an eye, $6,200 worth of monthly income is gone and you're thinking, okay, don't panic, right, so that was, that was where the whole thing started. Now that's the. That wasn't where it ended, right, like when it, when I, when it came around to that that post that I that I put in, uh, in pro, so that was where it started was like with that.

Steve Schramm:

And now one thing I will say about me is I'm good under pressure. I'm like hypothetical things cause me a great deal of worry and anxiety. Once something becomes real, typically I can move along and deal with it. Okay, so within a couple of weeks I was like you know what? It's going to be? Fine, I've been working on like a lead flow process and everything like. But I'm going to have to like, let my team sort of fade into the background a little bit while I take a little bit more of the hands-on work for a little while.

Steve Schramm:

But thanks to what I teach recurring revenue, subscription-based web design. You know we were good. I mean, we weren't going under like the money was there to pay all the bills and everything. I just you know we had a few projects in process to pay all the bills and everything. I just you know we had a few projects in process and so figuring out who was going to do all the work related to that was something to think through and I worked through it and then and I don't remember the exact, I should have looked this up, but I don't remember like the exact events and timing and everything.

Steve Schramm:

But I think it was like the day or two before I posted in pro a client that we had a current project for which is also a, you know, not just my standard 297 a month, you know recommended subscription web design. This was a bigger project, it's for a town and anyway that project was, which was about two months in. I made a discovery slash, you know, early administrative error on and we were nowhere near as far along in the pro and the project as we should have been for the, for the timeframe, and so I delivered an update to the client and the client was basically like what the heck is this? You know this is not what. What you know, we expected, and we expected much more than this, and blah, blah, blah, we need to have a meeting, and so the pit of my stomach anxiety at this point is just becoming a little bit overwhelming.

Steve Schramm:

And then in that same time period, like either the day after that or whatever, like right around when I posted in there, I had six deals that were in the pipeline, which is part of why I was like, okay, I think I can get over the income loss thing. I had six deals in the pipeline, five of them closed on one day, and in that same day I received the biggest single check. I'm not going to disclose the number here, but I received the biggest single check for an annual project for a new client or a new project for a current client that I'd ever received in my life. So here I am, I've, I've received. I'll just say this it was tens of thousands of dollars. I will say that, okay, so I received a check for tens of thousands of dollars and yet felt like the biggest failure.

Steve Schramm:

And that was because that was the exact same time that the one client had an issue and you, the one client had an issue of a, two clients had left, and it's just all the roller coasters and it finally just was like I'm never getting past this if I don't write about it Right, and uh. And so the gist of what I wrote in there was look, the issues aren't solved yet, we haven't made up for the same, you know, for the recurring revenue. But like I just need to process and just talk about how I'm feeling right now. Maybe somebody else can relate, or maybe sometime down the road when you need it, it'll be here for you and yeah, so that's basically the story of uh that led up to that post that you referred to in December.

Josh Hall:

What was the time period between losing those two big recurring revenue clients and then getting the huge wave of influx of cash? Was it a couple of weeks span, or what was the time period between all that? It was about a month it was, it was about a month.

Steve Schramm:

Yeah, it was about a month, it was. It was just enough to be like, be like whoa. What are we going to do? Actually, let me reframe this a little bit, let me back up a little bit, because I just remembered something. I think what happened is I got notice about this in early October.

Steve Schramm:

Okay, so October, november, december I got notice about it in early October. That made the last month for the $2,000 ish a month client, okay, and then the rest of it was made up by this other client and that notice I said, hey, well, by the way, you have like a 30 day expiring. You know there's like a 30 day written notice that you have to give us. So I was able to get one more payment from them for November, one more month of service for November, and so that kind of gave me November to think about, like, okay, I got to figure some things out, I got to figure out how this money is going to be replaced. And then by December, of course, I knew that none of that income was there anymore, and so it was getting really real. And so then early December is when we did have that huge influx of income come in and we added some new recurring clients too. So it was like the last three months of the year were just like, if I can say this, scary AF. I mean they just were scary.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, I would say something more drastic than that for sure. I think. I mean, look, you're in this post, all of the emotions you mentioned uncertainty, gratefulness, frustration, joy, excitement, trembling, fear, highs and lows. I mean your month is very common in the entrepreneurial world or just as a business owner. I love that we're talking about this, because even with a subscription style model or recurring revenue model, if there are waves or big clients that drop off, it still happens. You still can have feast and famine with a recurring revenue model, especially in your case when you have a lot of eggs in a couple baskets. So I do love that we're talking about this. Steve, I want to drill into the specifics on this just to hear about what you did and how you made it through, especially that first part. I have to say, though real quick, it's not uncommon. I've found I just know this from my experience and talking with members in pro with having a single day of emotions like that.

Josh Hall:

I remember when we landed the biggest project we did to date. At that time, which was $15,000. I got a call from the client and he said we were moving forward. The same day he called me at night, and prior to that day my wife and I. She had watched a family friend, a little girl, for like a year and she became kind of like a part of our family and it was our last day watching her, so it was kind of an emotional day. She wasn't going to be around, this was before we had kids and so like we took her to the park we kind of shed some tears because it was like, oh, we're never going to ever do this again with her. Probably that happened. And then we got the call because Em was pregnant at the time with our first Bria. We got the call that after some genetic testing that Bria did have a chromosome deletion. So life-changing news.

Josh Hall:

Immediately after watching the girl, after the gal was picked up, probably not two hours later, the client calls and says hey, josh, really exciting news, we're going to move forward. Normally I'd be like that's awesome, all right, rock and roll. But I just remember probably I don't even remember what I said we were just kind of in shock about the stuff with Bria. That it was. It was that wide range of emotions in the same day. I mean, I tried to keep my shit together, basically. But I basically told him like all right, really excited man and but I didn't like, I didn't really feel at all just because there was such more bigger things pressing, although it was really nice when we got that news to know, like, all right, we got a huge wave coming in. All that to say, man, it's not uncommon. It seems like for like everything to happen on one day.

Steve Schramm:

Yeah, and and um, I I agree, and that there's been. You know I've had in the course of my business, you know, just a handful. I mean maybe, if I'm being generous, three to five. You know that I can think of off the top of my head maybe two to three days like that, where it was like you know, where I got a life-changing email right that just totally ruined my day, or you know, or something, and it sounds weird to have like one of the worst days in existence be a day where you got paid a lot of money and I think there's a really interesting lesson there of just how little of life is actually about how much money you make beyond. You know the basics and the and everything else it's. You know it's nice to make money. A hundred percent certainly helps, um and uh.

Steve Schramm:

I am uh mucho grateful for that project that came in and um, you know it didn't. It didn't save my business, but it sure did help my anxiety. It was like, okay, good, we got, we have months to work with now of like figuring things out. You know we can calm down. I will say one thing that that, you know, made this a little bit worse for me and this does not mean I'm better than another person or anything who, who, who is dealing with with this. It doesn't mean that at all. But one thing that's different is I also have a role sort of coaching and educating other web designers, and I'm very vocal about the model that works for my business. And in fact, after those clients left, the first thing I did was record a podcast episode about it. Right, and that's a whole other story. I actually took a hiatus from the podcast for a few months and that was the last episode that was left hanging out there.

Steve Schramm:

The truth was is that I just got so busy after that season that I just couldn't justify getting back to it. I had to put my head down and get to work. But it probably looked to most people, like you know, I lost these clients, my business failed and I peaced out. So part of the emotion of that was twofold. That's why I mentioned the part about pride. Part of it was well, not only do I like coach other web designers, I have a podcast. I like I'm supposed to have my crap together right, so that I can, that I can help other people. But you know, even within your group, within Pro, I have somewhat of an influence there, and you know, I'm just.

Steve Schramm:

It was really hard to come to terms with the fact that, like hey, you know, I don't, I don't always have everything under control. You know, as much as we we'd like to think that we do have control. So again, that that just is a little bit different thing. Where it's like you know, I, I was, I was kind of this is a little bit dramatic, but I was kind of suffering in public in a way, right when I was like I'm really nervous about what this means for who I am and my validation as a business owner.

Steve Schramm:

Does it make me any any, you know, worse as a coach or whatever? And of course, looking back now, objectively, I can reason through those things and I and I know where I stand and know my value doesn't lie in how much money I make or whether or not I lose a client. It's in the experience that I've gained and how I could communicate that to others. But in those moments though, when it's all weighing down on you, it's hard, it really presses in and it just makes you want to shut down.

Josh Hall:

And I think the reality is because you are in a coaching role and kind of an authority role in web design, both in pro and with your podcast and your subscription model stuff. It's like people appreciate authenticity and transparency, but people also want to learn from and follow people who are successful, and so it's like failure doesn't necessarily attract paying customers. Um, so I think that's where like going into the outset, like we talked about, customers. So I think that's where like going into the outset, like we talked about. I think that's why I really am so glad you shared about that the roller coaster. But at the same time, I think that's why so many quote unquote influencers and authority folks are afraid to share when things aren't going great because suddenly it can look like oh well, you know, like you just said, is that somebody I want to follow?

Josh Hall:

But most importantly, things did turn around and you know and I talked about this I think you saw recently like I shared my story with two down revenue years. I shared a little bit about that publicly but I didn't let on to it with exactly where things were. I waited till I was kind of past the storm and figured out the most important lessons learned through that before. I shared that full podcast episode, which is 360, if anyone wants to go back and listen to that, because I really drill into everything I learned from being over $100,000 down in a couple of years, but my best year ever was last year in 24. So it was a lot easier for me to be like, okay, we're back, I'm fired up, confident, as ever. Here's what I learned. So to you, I do appreciate you, steve, being open to share. You know what you were going through, but I wanted to specifically talk to you here today to find out what you did to.

Josh Hall:

Even. I don't know where things are at today. I don't know if you're completely rebounded, but, most importantly, I think a lot of people give up when things get hard. And the reality is there's a reason I don't put easy in any of my marketing or courses or podcasts. It's not easy. Web design, entrepreneurship, business, being a business owner it's not easy. If you want easy, go get a job. That's. That can be a lot easier. So I'm kind of curious immediately when you lost those big recurring revenue, those big MRR checks coming in. You mentioned you're good under pressure, which is step number one get good under pressure. What did you? Did you scale your team back? You mentioned you were talking about. You know what could they do. What was your like? What did you do practically in those first couple of weeks when you'd lost a ton of revenue and cashflow?

Steve Schramm:

Yeah, oh, this is, yeah, this is a great question and I I certainly hope that I can do it justice, uh, with an answer, because, uh, you know, frankly, it comes down to just remembering well, what, what did I do?

Josh Hall:

I also, it is man.

Steve Schramm:

It's been a. It's been a, it's been a total whirlwind. So, right, the first thing that you have to do when a moment of crisis comes is, frankly, you just have to get out of your head a little bit and you have to make a distinction between what is okay and what isn't okay. All right. So, um, it's kind of like if you leave the house for a vacation and, uh, you know, you start to get this nagging feeling that you left the stove on, uh, from breakfast or whatever, like before you left, and you know you're about to be an hour away from, you know, from town, and so it's kind of like, what do you do when that situation strikes? Well, um, if you're reasonably certain that the oven was left on or the stove whatever I just said was left on your house could burn down, and so, um, probably wise to check and and and make sure. Either have somebody go check or, if you're still close enough, turn around and go check to make sure things are okay.

Steve Schramm:

Maybe a weird analogy, but the point I'm getting at is that if you don't already have a great handle on where the numbers are in your business, that's sort of where you have to look. And again, we're assuming a situation similar to mine, where you know, I mean I, you know, I'm not qualified to help you if your crisis is of a different nature, right Of a family crisis that happens, or whatever. I mean, we all deal with those things differently and I'm not qualified to. But if the crisis is, is you lose a really big client? You know, then I have something to offer here, and the first step would just be to make sure that you are very clear on your numbers. What's the number coming in? What's the number that has to go out? What's the amount of? You know, what are the current projects that you have? What are those things do? Who do you have working for you? What roles are they in? You know, are you by yourself, Right? So there's all these factors. Now, for me, are they in? You know, are you by yourself, right? So there's all these factors.

Steve Schramm:

Now for me, uh, my business had gotten to the point where my, uh, my staff was doing, you know, 90 plus percent of the deliverable work. And, um, there are, there are business consultants who would, who would come into my business and look at my numbers and argue that, even at my, even at my highest, um, which is which, which you know was, was a lot better than a lot of web designers. Right, there's a lot of struggling web designers, unfortunately, I've been blessed to do very well, okay. And so there are business consultants who would come in and say that, even at my highest you know point of revenue and income, that I should have been doing all the work myself. Right, that I shouldn't have hired a team. Oh, this is good. It just goes back to the first podcast episode that you had me on back in like April of 2021, where I made the point that I started scaling early, and I stand by that. I think, if you're, if, if freedom is the game you're playing, I totally stand by it.

Josh Hall:

I was just thinking well, who the hell consultant would tell you that you shouldn't hire a workout and be the owner?

Steve Schramm:

I would fire them if somebody tells you that, yeah, there's. There's things that I've read and seen where people that it's like if you're not doing a minimum of 250 K a year, then you shouldn't you shouldn't hire any workout. Oh that's pish posh.

Josh Hall:

Losers.

Steve Schramm:

I agree, I think it's stupid. That's why I didn't, that's why I don't do it Right. But just to make the point of like, so yeah, I had gotten to the point where my business was mostly the most of the actual work was being done by, by other people and I was just very high level sort of an editing, editing role and like looking over things and making sure the work was being done Right, and so, you know, it's kind of one of those things where, okay, when you're looking at finances, you can go look at, like, all your subscriptions and you could try to trim your, your design subscriptions and your project management subscriptions and all that down by by five, 10, $20 here. But if you're paying us, if you're paying a team of any kind, then you know that's where the expense is. The expense is in your team, right. The other things are, you know, not not nearly as significant. They won't move the needle nearly as fast.

Josh Hall:

So I wrote an email to.

Steve Schramm:

I wrote an email to my team and I've always been very transparent with them. Um, when stuff like this happens and I've had it, I've had revenue dips once or twice before. This is nothing new. New this one was the scariest one, for sure. And so I wrote to them just hey guys, look, you know, here's the situation. Um, just so you know, I am going to be scaling back a few things, I'm going to be taking over a few things. And we looked at the latest, um, heartbeat.

Steve Schramm:

My project manager writes what's called a heartbeat every monday, which is basically a look at the current projects that we're working on, what's left to heartbeat every Monday, which is basically a look at the current projects that we're working on, what's left to do on those projects, et cetera. And so I went through the latest heartbeat and was like I'm taking over this, this, this, this and this. You know, the funding source for this is a little bit different. Like I have a project that I'm working on, that I'm working with a group, and they're kind of funding the team as we go, and they're kind of funding the team as we go. I'm doing my part for free, it's because I'm involved with the project and so like that project can continue and I don't have to be the one to work on that, there's money for the team to work on that.

Steve Schramm:

So there was a few things that fell into that category where it made sense for the team to keep working on it, and then a few things that were currently going on where it made sense for me to be the one to be hands on and to work on those, and so, as it relates to that one thing, I have been gradually bringing the team back in on certain aspects of projects from that time until now, and so I'm feeling good about where they're at. I'm still doing a lot of work, but they are also continually doing more and more, and so we're ramping that back up slowly. But the first thing was just to take a hard look at the real numbers and say what do we have to do? And the reality of what I had to do was I needed to basically go back to a clean slate and say I am the chief designer, developer or whatever, again for a hot minute while I figure out what the numbers look like. So that was the first and biggest thing that I did.

Josh Hall:

Gotcha. Now I feel like there's probably a couple different approaches somebody could take when the numbers dip like that, when you do have a team. Steve, I'm so glad you mentioned what like. What expenses do you trim? Because you're absolutely right, team costs is always generally way more than subscriptions. Like you could cancel a $9 monthly subscription, but that's not going to make the biggest difference, especially if you're losing, you know, several thousand dollars of MRR. By the way, I'm so glad you stayed in pro and I hope it wasn't, you know, I hope that was like one of the last things that you would have cut on your list. So I feel honored that you were like Josh lost a MMR, I got to step out of pro for a while, so I count that an honor that I was not, you know the first things.

Steve Schramm:

It didn't even cross my mind. If I'm being completely honest with you, so that's like the biggest win ever.

Josh Hall:

So I appreciate that, um, but the other area I feel like you could have gravitated to is I'm going to go hard on selling and actually take less of the work on and go into sales mode. What prevented you from doing that? And obviously and maybe maybe okay, I have, I have an idea as to why, but I want to hear your thoughts Like why didn't you just sell more at that point?

Steve Schramm:

Yeah, that's a good question, and it's um, it's kind of like saying why don't you just be more skinny? Uh, you know what I mean. So, um, because there are processes involved with sales and, and one problem that I had up to this point was being lackadaisical with my processes that lead to sales. Okay, now I've done, I have you know, I do some things right Um, but the truth is is that I have been so bogged down with just the overall team management and things like that, and I went through a period of a few months where, I'll just be honest, things were good and it was like, yep, I should be worried more about sales right now, but I'm not right, and so that'll bite you in the butt when it turns out that you have a client that that leaves, and so what's interesting is, about a month and a half before I, before I, before all this happened, I had made the decision that I was going to change that, and so I started spending $10 a day. I said, actually, it's either $10 or $15. I can't remember which. I said I'm basically going to spend $10 to $15 a day on ads for the rest of my life, and I'm going to figure out that right, because Facebook ads can can be very, very powerful and they're they're a way that does not rely on creating content right To to be able to do it. So, anyway, I, um, I wanted to learn ads and, by the way, to this day it's now whatever date, it is February, as we're recording this is February 6th I still have those ads active and I'm monitoring that.

Steve Schramm:

Now I'm not I'm not doing much to convert those people into sales full transparency, cause I haven't gotten there yet and I'll explain more why in a minute.

Steve Schramm:

What I was trying to do is get my lead generation game as a web designer figured out right. What does it look like and what does the testing look like? But I know it's a long-term game, okay, and so the resolve part of it was I'm going to spend $10 to $15 a day figuring out this problem and I can save that much money in other areas eating out a little bit less, or just a few less business lunches or just whatever. It is right, I can figure that out, and so that was part of where my confidence came from, because at that point I had already generated quite a few leads. I think at this point I've generated over 100 leads that are just qualified web design and digital marketing sort of leads. Now again, like I said, I'm not trying to paint myself as some huge marketing guru here. I have not done anything reasonable to convert those leads. My plan is to implement a steady newsletter and I'm working through that.

Josh Hall:

That's interesting. It wasn't soon enough yet. It's good to know that you had already preemptively started changing the sales marketing funnel a little bit before that even happened, Because otherwise I feel like the strategy would have been a little different.

Steve Schramm:

Correct, yeah, and so I started out with that, okay and um, I don't, you know, I'm not a member of any local networking groups or anything. And so what, what I was doing during that first month of of knowing that that you know that December was coming and I wasn't going to have that big check to rely on anymore, uh, I was. I was trying to do some strategic planning and figuring out of um of how I was going to start converting those leads. But we had active projects that we were working on that now I had to be more hands-on. And then, when early December came and those five projects you know came in, especially with the holidays and everything coming up, I left sales mode.

Steve Schramm:

I was like I just, I mean, I was in sales mode in the sense that I had just converted six you know leads into into clients, right? So you know, in, in one sense there's there's something a little wrong with your question, right? Because in one sense I was selling. I had six leads in the pipeline. I converted five of them, but now somebody had to do the work and so I had to do the work, and so I have been. I mean, you know, here it is early February, other than holiday travel. I have been head down doing the work ever since then and I'm just, in the last couple of weeks, starting to come up for air.

Josh Hall:

Well, and it makes sense too, because I think the reality is look, you have a family, you have a team, there are actual expenses, actual numbers going out the door. So I told and I I asked that question a bit of as a devil's advocate, just because I do feel like there's you you took in, well, not actually because you did sell during that. So it my, my assumption, or the way I thought that that went down, is that you didn't really have too much in the pipeline at that point. You just took a conservative route by, like here's what I know is coming in with cash flow. So I'm going to make sure we don't go over budget or out of pocket over the next couple months, which is why you would do more work and spend your time in that.

Josh Hall:

But you actually did, yeah, preemptively have a bit of a lead sales engine there. So when you found out that month between you, finding out that they are going to be dropping, it actually is fair to say you did do those sales. What did you do to land those half dozen clients? Did you do more calls? Did you do more emailing? Did you do more DMing? What did you do to actually land those, to get that big wave that kind of saved your butt in December.

Steve Schramm:

Yeah, fair enough, and this is where my story is not very sexy. I didn't do anything, right? I mean I didn't do anything, and right I mean this, this, and I didn't do anything. And yet I did everything. What do I mean by that? Well, I didn't do anything particular. I didn't send DMS, I didn't even do a Facebook post. I don't think I might have, but, like you know, I I didn't. I didn't do anything like that.

Steve Schramm:

A few of these were uh deals that had come in because they were referrals from past clients. One of them was a current client that was looking at adding a new website. Another one, well, they all mostly fell into that category. One or two may have come because they saw my link in the footer of another website or something like that. On my podcast occasionally I do these.

Steve Schramm:

Where did I get my last five clients episode? And I was thinking this morning that I actually want to do one. So I'm going to take a harder look at that and I'll have an answer for people on this. On the specific question that you asked me, when I do that, but the reality is is that I said I didn't do anything, which I didn't, but I also did everything and that to this point I've been in business for eight or nine years, whatever it is now, and they always say that about 10 years is that inflection point where the word of mouth you know if you can survive for 10 years, then the word of mouth can bring a stability to your business. After that point that you know it's a coveted thing and we're kind of to that point now. That's why you know it's like well, are you selling now?

Josh Hall:

Well, again.

Steve Schramm:

I haven't even started working on my conversion mechanism for the lead gen. I've done, but I've got seven leads in the pipeline right now From Facebook. Well, from a smattering, from referrals from other clients, work for past clients, things like that. I'm not talking about the Facebook leads at all, yet I haven't done anything with those. This is just a matter of consistent activity over the many years that I've been in business. So there's, you know, there's no, there's no guru ness here other than to survive and do a great job for clients so that you get, you know, you get more referrals and more people interested in, in, in, in, working with you. So you know, and I, I have, I have new deals that are starting and, lord willing, I mean I, uh, I don't plan to take any additional new clients, even in February. I'm experiencing, uh, experimenting with a closed model, so probably start taking new clients again in March.

Josh Hall:

And the only reason, the only reason I'm drilling in and hanging onto this month is because I I'm just, I'm more and more so fascinated what people do under pressure and what can be done. I mean, you know, as a kind of part-time web design coach yourself, people come to you generally when there's challenges or there's a dry spell. So, like, the most common question just about I get now is I'm in a dry spell, what do I do? So I'm even more really refining my ax on. I mean, I could give somebody 100 things to do, but it is very dependent on their situation, their time, their variables.

Josh Hall:

You are in a different situation than a lot of people starting out because, like you just alluded to, you had pre-built compounding interest of leads based off of your clientele. How long you've been doing this. So that helps clarify it for me. Steve, I think I was under the impression that the work you had started doing with Facebook gave you an option to reach out to those leads, but no, in fact it just kind of landed in your lap with just the nature of all the work you had done prior. So now I am really curious about this, though what would have happened if that didn't happen. What would you have done?

Josh Hall:

This is hypothetical, of course, but you know, you did kind of have. You were in a place where we all know, when you're in business for a while and you build a lot of referral partners and you and you get referrals, there are waves of business that come. You have a month where there's none, you have a month where there's ton. But what if that hadn't happened? What would you have done if that big wave didn't come for you in December? Yep.

Steve Schramm:

That is a very good question and I was about to answer it, so I'm glad that we're going here. Probably the lowest hanging fruit is that I would have been, I would have started aggressively selling to those leads that I had started generating. So, um, but here's why. So when you look at, like, the spectrum of things that you can do, the you know, I mean you can obviously go to networking groups, or, or you know you can go to networking groups. You can start. You know you can start a podcast, right, you can go to a haunt. Facebook groups would be helpful, right, you can obviously go to networking groups. Or you can go to networking groups. You can start a podcast. You can go to Facebook groups would be helpful. You can generate leads on Facebook. There's a number of things that you can do.

Steve Schramm:

I probably would have spent more time doing things that had worked for me very well in the past. So networking groups have not worked for me very well in the past. Facebook groups have worked stellar for me very well in the past. Facebook groups have worked stellar for me in the past. So I immediately would have paid more attention to Facebook groups because I know that that has been my bread and butter in the past on getting really good clients and it's a little bit shorter of a distance usually to a client even though there is some upfront value anticipated. It's a little bit shorter of a distance to clients than, say, starting a YouTube channel or a podcast or something like that. Right, that's a good long-term strategy and you should do it. But if you need money now, you know, don't start a podcast.

Josh Hall:

Those are not quick wins strategies, for sure. Yeah, those Facebook groups, by the way, steve, are those like business groups they're not talking about, like Divi web designers, or would it be a mix of? Yeah?

Steve Schramm:

No, I mean, look, ultimately it's niche dependent. In my case, it's always been like you know course creators and membership owners and stuff like that, like groups like that. That's where my client hangs out, and so by being helpful in those groups before I've made yeah, I've made tens of thousands of dollars from clients that I've gotten being helpful in those groups over the years. In fact, they launched I mean, they were part of what launched my web design career, so I know how to generate value for people in those groups. And it's still a longer term play sometimes, but it's way shorter, you know, than a podcast or or you know anything like that and um, so that's one thing I would have done. The other thing that I that I would have done, in fact, I was pretty well gearing up to do it until until it became pretty clear that that I had a handful of deals that were getting ready to close and I needed to focus on getting the details close with those so I could dive into the work. The thing that I would have done otherwise is to start calling on and having a more aggressive sales approach with those leads that I had generated via Facebook, because those were people. That's the beautiful thing about lead generation is these are people who are raising their hand and they're saying I have a problem that you can solve now. Of course, they're not saying I and I want you to solve the problem for me, but at least they're taking the first step to say, oh, I have this issue. Um, I am interested in what you have to say in helping to fix the issue, and so, in my case, I'm using a Google business profile cheat sheet to basically help them with that, and so that would be for the more local business side of my business. So I've got two main clients are local businesses and then, course, creators, et cetera, and so that would have been for that side, and so that's what I would have done on either side. I would have paid attention to my leads that had came in from Facebook and really started emailing them, calling them and doing that, and then, on the other hand, it would have been Facebook groups.

Steve Schramm:

Now, I'm not against cold activities, cold email, cold calling and things like that, but if you're like me, I mean I hate those things, I hate being on the receiving end of those things and I hate being on the quote, unquote giving end of those things, and so, frankly, obviously, if it's make a cold email or my business doesn't survive, then I'm going to make a cold call or send a cold email so that my business will survive, but to me those are the last option. So I was trying to do anything other than that and again, fortunately, like I said, I had the mechanisms in place. But thank God, it worked out the way that it did and we had a good influx come in and look, I mean we're, we're not done yet, right? Um, I still haven't made up for the actual MRR loss, right that that came in. So we're still working on and developing these things, but I had to get these initial projects, you know, out the window.

Josh Hall:

Was a big reason also for you taking more of a like, stepping back into the role of lead designer, developer et cetera, was that to get projects out faster so you could close the books on them faster, like you know, like finish projects and get more revenue in, or with the subscription model would that have not mattered as much.

Steve Schramm:

Well, it was a second order type of thing. So, yes, but that wasn't my first motivation. It would be unfair to say that I was thinking that far ahead. My first thought was I got to save money. I can do a lot of this work and that's it. And you always hate to take money away from your people, but you know, these are contractors. They have other people they work for too. I'm not the only egg in their basket.

Josh Hall:

And look, the worst thing would be for you to go out of business. So, yeah, it's better that they have reduced hours and you stay afloat.

Steve Schramm:

If I'm out of business, then we're all tanked, right, so that doesn't really make sense, right? So? So you got to again put first things first your family, your business, unfortunately, has to be first, so that everybody else can can come along with you. Okay so, but here's what I noticed and all due respect to my team, some of whom are probably going to listen to this podcast, right, my, my team does fantastic work and I love them.

Steve Schramm:

But after I started digging into things, it started to become clear that there were some inefficiencies that had crept in to our processes and some areas where it's like well, it probably takes an hour to write this thing up in Basecamp, whereas, do we really need to write all this up? Why didn't we just do it and then say done as the comment in Basecamp? Now, a lot of times I like a lot of writing, but sometimes it's not necessary, and so there were just these little inefficiencies in the process that I'm like, okay, well, what we're going to do here is use this as an opportunity. We're going to tighten things up a little bit, we're going to try to streamline the process, and I haven't made a ton of progress with that. I'm just saying that I'm trying to look into the processes and the things that we're doing.

Steve Schramm:

Can I adjust my timelines? Hey, I'm noticing that even on best effort, we're taking sometimes three weeks to five weeks longer than we should. So I started asking some people around well, what kind of timelines are you guaranteeing on custom projects? Well, we had been guaranteeing not guaranteeing like not guaranteeing but we had been. We had been estimating six to eight weeks for projects, even, you know, bigger projects, and I'm finding other people, even on their smaller projects, are saying nine to 12 weeks these days and I'm like, okay, well, so I'm, I'm off on when I first set this system up, so I need to go back and readjust it. So little inefficiencies, just incorrect expectations. Frankly, on my standpoint, on some of the items that I was able to uncover and fix, so it was an opportunity to do that.

Josh Hall:

I think it's worthwhile, even if you're not in that situation, just to dip back into some of those processes every once in a while to look at what could be trimmed. I did that last year when I brought Jen on as my new VA. It gave me a chance to go back in and I'm like, oh, we don't need to do that anymore or crap, I need to put that on this SOP that we have and make a new one. It was actually really good that, for when Cam, my previous VA, left, it forced me to revamp the processes and we're, like you know, 10x more efficient now with those. Sorry, cam, if you're listening, I feel like she would have loved what we did when she had to step away. But I think it is a good reminder.

Josh Hall:

Sometimes you got to get your work boots on and go back into those processes as the owner. Most of us who are scaling in any way are going to have a couple contractors or a few. So, yeah, good reminder to go in and make sure to clean up those inefficiencies. And, quite frankly, it doesn't mean that you need to reduce team costs all the time. It just means that maybe you open up more opportunity for your team, because if it's not their business, I think some rock stars are going to be like hey, steve, we could improve on this, but most contractors are going to do what they're told, and then that's kind of their job. So it is up to us, as the owner, to make things more efficient. I'm curious oh, go ahead, steve.

Steve Schramm:

I was just saying, I was just agreeing with you.

Josh Hall:

I'm curious what was your runway in in regards to like? Did you have a few months before cold selling was going to have to be, you know, like, like? Obviously you laid out a really good plan of action for, like, a emergency revenue boost. Ooh, that's a good name.

Steve Schramm:

Ooh, yeah, yeah, I need to make that a emergency, yeah, life boat revenue, emergency revenue boost.

Josh Hall:

I think that's the one ER, erb. There's my new product I'm working on. All right, emergency revenue boost. Ooh, that could be a good challenge for pro. Anywho, what was your runway there between? Like you know, you had. You had the month there where, luckily, the work came in. So this is, of course, just hypothetical. You would have done the proven stuff that had worked for. You had the month there where, luckily, the work came in. So this is, of course, just hypothetical. You would have done the proven stuff that had worked for you in the past the Facebook groups, nurturing the leads that you had in the pipeline, and then cold calling would have been the third. What was your runway like? Did you have a few months or did you have more time that you had some leeway there? Was it less? What was your runway of? You know, know you don't have to say numbers, but savings and like cash flow.

Steve Schramm:

What was your runway? Look like sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that that is good. No, I was. You know, we are cash flow wise. I was still, um, you know, coming in a little bit above what, what we needed at the you know to put, you know, I mean to basically to pay all the bills and everything, assuming that I did all the work right. So we were, we were right there at it, um, and now if we had lost, like another huge client, that would have been a problem. But we did have a runway of a few months.

Steve Schramm:

We, I always do the profit first method, and so I have money that goes out to, uh, profit savings and then I have money that goes out to tax savings. I mean, like I'm talking about worst case scenario, the irs can wait a few extra months, or like you know, whatever, like that's like the worst case scenario, which I would never recommend and this is not financial advice, um, but, um, you know, that was like the worst case. If it's, if it's if it's my family eats or the government gets paid my family eats, sorry, I did that paid my family eats.

Josh Hall:

Sorry, I did that. I took a penalty. I paid my taxes later, one year, years ago, because it just came at a really bad time. And it was a similar thing where I was like we have the cash flow, it's in billing, we're going to have a wave, and I think my penalty. I think I did it a month later. Yes, disclaimer Steve and I are not telling anyone to not pay your taxes, but I did do a penalty. I paid a month later and I think the penalty was like 12 bucks or something. I was thinking it was going to be thousands. I was like, oh, that's good to know, it's not that bad. I don't know if that's the same now, but that was the case then.

Steve Schramm:

Yeah, and I mean, if anything to actually take away from that, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please. Do not calculate your revenue based on your owner's pay, based on the top line money that comes in minus the few subscriptions you have. Please, that is not the way to do it. You've got to set aside money and get used to living on for yourself. Again, I'm with Donald Miller on the sort of recommended baseline below two 50 K you're taking home about about 50%. Um, oh, you know what? That is one actual practical thing that I did do that I'm totally willing to share. I, since my costs were down, I adjusted my profit first percentages to flow automatically more of that top line revenue towards me than into my operating expenses, because I didn't need to do that for the team.

Steve Schramm:

So that's a very practical thing that I did and I use a system that's actually endorsed by Mike Michalowicz and profit first called Relay, and it's basically a they're essentially a SaaS company that sits on top of an FDIC insured bank that allows you to automatically flow income into your account and then it breaks it out into checking accounts. They're like Profit First and it's just a beautiful system. I would talk for an hour on just it if we had the time. That is one practical thing I did and I would always suggest is that part of shoring up that foundation is making sure that you've got the money flowing correctly to be able to pay for yourself and your expenses and your taxes and your profits and all of that. Whatever method you choose to do, you gotta be setting that money aside. So all of this takes you know everything that we're saying and the money that's there and everything it all factors in. You know those numbers and everything.

Josh Hall:

So that's great. Yeah, I think we came up with like five to 10 new topics for your podcast here in this one, steve. A lot of really cool, inspiring stuff in this one. I want to bring this one home. I know we got a role here both of us here pretty soon, but is there anything left that do you feel like we should cover or somebody should know, or maybe like a?

Josh Hall:

motivational type of thing. But is there anything, any other lessons learned that are really important, that we haven't covered with this little rebound that you went through?

Steve Schramm:

Yeah, yeah, it's a. It's a really really good question. So here's what I here's, here's what I think. I think number one you you have to build in some sort of expectation that this kind of thing will happen. Okay, this is not. If you're a business owner, this is not a you know something that is just not going to happen to you. You're not immune from this. There are going to be hard days. Some of those hard days are going to come with a financial element, right, and there's going to be a rainy day. It's kind of like Dave Ramsey says right, it's going to be a rainy day. It's kind of like Dave Ramsey says it's going to rain.

Steve Schramm:

I don't know how you feel about Dave Ramsey, but I used to love his stuff and I read his Total Money Makeover book many years ago and in that book he says myth, if I set aside for a rainy day fund for when it rains, then I'll have a rainy day and then I'll have to use that money. If I set aside for it, then that means something's going to go wrong. And he's like fact, you're going to have a rainy day, it's going to go wrong. Set aside for it now. And so again, in Dave's purview. He's talking about money stuff, but I would say, from a financial standpoint, but also, just gosh frankly, from a mindset standpoint, the mindset is the biggest thing here. I'm convinced that mindset is like 80% of business. The rest of it is just details. It's really all about what you believe about yourself, what you believe about your value and just preparing for when things like this are going to happen. So that's the first thing I'd say, and the second one is honestly just related to that, in this idea of just like lock in and press on because it's going to be okay, like there's never been a time in my life where it has not been okay, at least when it comes to stuff like this. If your family's doing well, you've got a support system in life, people like Josh or me to coach you and mentor you, you've got colleagues, you've got your family. If you've got people who can support you and be there for you, you can just move on.

Steve Schramm:

I'll just share a quick story. A couple of years ago, we just voted in a new pastor in our church uh, in December, and so this is like his second month on the job here and um, but we were without a pastor for 18 months and um, uh, for just it was a bad situation. But we were without a pastor for 18 months and sort of our motto as a church during that time, because we knew we would come out the other side of this and we just had faith and believed that it was going to be better than ever. But we didn't know what the details were of that. It was a mindset, it was a belief, it was faith, and so during that time our sort of mantra was just lock in, Like now is not the time to peace out butter, you know, peace out, girl Scout. You know. Oh, my life is a failure, my life is a wreck, it's not going to work, our church is a wreck. So what we did was we said you know what, we're going to lock in, we're going to plug in, we're going to keep doing what we've been doing and it's all going to be okay. And guess what it was. So I would encourage you to really just have that mindset of like you know what today? Oh, I have one more thing I have to share. I'm sorry, but that would be the mindset is you know what today sucks. Maybe I need to take the rest of the day off, bury my head in a pillow. By the way, I did that. I took the day after I made that post, I believe. I took the day off and I laid on the couch and I did not do anything. And guess what? By Thursday, I was locked in again. I was focused, I was ready to go. And now this is all theoretical and this is all mindset, and sometimes mindset is hard to talk about.

Steve Schramm:

I don't know, josh, if you're an Ali Abdaal fan or if you've ever heard of him. He's on YouTube. He's got a lot of great business and productivity advice. I'm reading his book right now, called Feel Good Productivity, and he shared something in there that it wasn't even in the context of like anxiety and overwhelm and all of this, and I just thought, oh man, this is too good. This is too good. This is like the best framework ever.

Steve Schramm:

He calls it the 10, 10, 10 rule, and so it's a question you can ask yourself how is this going to feel, or is this going to matter in 10 minutes? And it's like you know what? Yep, in the next 10 minutes, this is really going to suck. It's going to keep sucking. It's going to keep feeling exactly the same. Well, what about? What about 10 weeks? Well, yeah, I can't imagine that I'm going to feel this way 10 weeks from now, like something's going to happen Something. Yeah, a lot can change in 10 weeks, there's no way. What about 10 months? Oh, my goodness, 10 months from now could be just intact. And just in my experience, since I learned this and started applying it immediately, the weight falls off. Not the physical weight. I wish the mental weight right, the mental load.

Steve Schramm:

We just recently switched our kid's school to a new private school from the old private school and we knew we had to do it, but it was still hard. And I ran through the same exercise because I was really feeling in the gutter about it, even though it was a great decision and we know it was the right decision. I was having a bad day thinking about it and just dwelling on it. I just asked myself okay, 10 minutes from now, yep, still sucks. 10 weeks from now, oh my gosh, life is way different. You know, 10 months from now, dude, we don't like putting all that behind, like we're not. We're not even going to be, it's not even going to be on our radar. Life's going to be so good, and so that 10, 10, 10 rule if you take nothing else away from this podcast, 10, 10, 10, and that will help you mindset wise, I believe.

Josh Hall:

I love that. That's a great little, great little framework to think about. It kind of reminds me just as we put a close to this one. I don't have exactly that, but I think from my personal experience with what we've gone through as a parent with the daughter with special needs and we've gone through a lot, not only in that situation, but just a lot of other things what I've learned in business over the past couple years I've learned to in hard times if I can add any insight on this is to zoom out and just remember that I'm in a story.

Josh Hall:

And for anyone who is in a dry spell and feels like there's no way out, if you zoom out and remember like this is just a part of my story. It sounds super corny and cliche and it is, but it's freaking true too. You are in a story and anyone who's read a book, no, or watched a movie ever in your life it's never a happy, go, lucky thing all the way through. There's always a challenge, there's always a bad things that happen, there's always persistence, all that stuff that's. You're in that chapter right now. So I don't know about you, steve, but for me I remind myself that, yeah, I'm in a story.

Josh Hall:

I'm in a dark chapter right now or I'm in a tough point, and if I zoom out, this 10-10-10 rule, it's a different style of frame. Thinking about zooming out, I think, and looking at like okay, well, in a year I look back on this. And it's really hard to do this in the moment because you just want to get past it. But if you think about, well, in a year, I'm going to learn a lot from this situation. I think being a business owner has taught me that that in that situation, as hard as it is, zooming out and looking at like this is a really important part of my story. And thinking about like it also helps you think about okay, I'm in this right now, but what's the next chapter going to look like? Is the next chapter going to be worse and I quit, or is the next chapter going to be the rebound? And this is when things started to actually turn for me.

Steve Schramm:

Josh, I'm so glad you said this because I literally I didn't put it or think about it nearly as eloquently as you just did, but I did have the same thought because I love storytelling. I mean, I study fiction writers because it helps me with marketing. So I'm a really big fan of studying story and studying fiction, and I did at one point throughout this process, have a very similar thought of just like this is one chapter in a story. Throughout this process, have a very similar thought of just like this is one chapter in a story and every good story. Like there's a saying by fiction writers that conflict is the engine of fiction, and the reason why that's true is because conflict is the engine of life.

Steve Schramm:

If you try to read a book that has no conflict in it, you'll put it down immediately. It's so boring. Conflict is what makes life interesting. Stuff like this is what makes life life that you can look back on and say I overcame that and so I love that. That's great advice, maybe even better advice than the 10, 10, 10.

Steve Schramm:

I'm just like zooming out, remembering that you're in a story and at the end of the day, you're going to have a happy ending. And look, what you can do, too, is you can look back to things in your own life. I have one in my childhood, because my dad died at a young age. I was in fifth grade when my dad died, and so I, in a strange way, have the blessing of being able to look back on that circumstance and be like I remember what it was like 10 weeks after that. It still sucked. I also remember what it was like 10 months and 10 years after that, and it sucks. But life has a way of healing wounds and time has a way of doing it as well. And so time, if you just can put yourself in the framework of time, of the story, and think about the big picture rather than this moment, it'll change everything for you. So I think that was great.

Josh Hall:

I don't think we can do any better than that to put a cap on this one. Steve man, Thank you so much for this has been a great chat, man. I really really enjoyed chatting with you through this. As soon as you posted that I was like, Ooh, I want to dive into that. So thank you so much, man, for, first off, being just a huge asset to pro. So many people look up to you, largely because of your transparency, on top of just your business principles and what you've shared with the subscription models and recurring revenue. I mean just you as an entrepreneur. You're just a shining example of what happens as an entrepreneur these tricky, challenging times, but I'm really excited to see you coming out of the other end of this. You're not through all the way, but you're at the tail end. The tail end of, it seems like this, this tough chapter. So really cool to to dive into this. Yeah, Thanks, man for for sharing everything, and who knows what our next chat will be on.

Steve Schramm:

I don't know. We could talk about any number of things. So I'm I'm excited to have had the opportunity and uh, and just really appreciate you.

Josh Hall:

Heck, yeah, dude, hey, I'm excited to see in real life here in a few months for Web Designer Pro Con, so let's do it.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, dude, thanks Steve. All right friends? Well, the show notes for this episode can be found at joshhallco slash 372. We did cover quite a few resources. Again, if you want to connect with Steve, if you want to check out his subscription web design course, if you would like to listen to his podcast or connect with some of his coaching, go to stevesramco. That will also be linked in the show notes.

Josh Hall:

And again, I just want to publicly thank Steve for coming on and being very open and transparent about this. I just find that a lot of entrepreneurs like to talk about the wins and the goods, but it takes somebody with honest integrity to share about failures or challenges, and Steve went through quite a challenge recently but has done an incredible job at rebounding. So I can't wait to hear from you. I know Steve would love to hear from you as well. You can leave us a comment at joshhallco slash three seven two. That will have links to his other episodes on the podcast as well. Stay subscribed if you're not already, because we've got some awesome ones ahead. And cheers to building your MRR and reducing churn.