Web Design Business with Josh Hall

382 - Looking at a $2,000 Paid Discovery Offer with Racheal Graham

• Josh Hall

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Paid Discovery is a HOT topic right now in web design.

The idea of getting paid for a discovery call – before wasting an hour of your day with someone who has a budget of $300 – is dang intriguing for pretty much every web designer.

But then the questions come up…

  • Is it just a consult/strategy call?
  • How much do I charge for it?
  • What if I don’t have enough experience or expertise?
  • What’s included in paid discovery?
  • What if I don’t want to be viewed as a digital marketing agency?


Welp, we tackle all of those questions and more in this episode with Racheal Graham, an established web design agency owner who has a proven $2,000 paid discovery offer and who graciously pulls the curtain back on her entire process.

Enjoy!

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/382

Racheal:

It feels like it has been the key to financial stability for us, like it's what it's kind of like the, the fuel for the recurring revenue that was going to let me sleep at night. You know what I mean. Like when I first left my corporate job, I had no idea that I was like emotionally jumping off a cliff because I just really liked that paycheck coming in every two weeks, because I just really liked that paycheck coming in every two weeks and just having that steady relationship with a handful of clients that continue to trust you and come back. It made all the difference in just how I felt about business in general. So I think it's a really good approach. 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:

Hello, my web designer friend, it is splendid to have you here, especially if you are interested in one or more of these things paid discovery, how much is charged for it, how to offer it, and growth plans. If you are considering, or you're in the weeds right now, of figuring out how to take your web design services to build your MRR, your monthly recurring revenue and offer growth plans, my guest in this interview, rachel Graham, who is the CEO of Greenhouse Creative, is and I'm not even joking about this is like a shining example of both of these things. The reality is, in web design right now, paid discovery and growth plans are huge hot topics because they lead to better clients and bigger MRR. But how much you charge, how to offer them, when to offer them, what you do, how you protect your scope All of that is what we're going to cover in more in this one.

Josh:

You can check Rachel out at her website, greenhouse creativeco, and she has a little something special for you as a web designer that is completely free. It is a free on-demand workshop to help you put your paid discovery process together. So after this conversation, I think it'll be a great next step for you. We'll have this linked in the show notes at joshhallco, slash 382, but you can also go to coursesgreenhousecreativeco and there you can pick up her, get paid for your plan how to offer paid discovery in your web design business to build your MRR and attract higher paying clients. Again, rachel's a bonafide expert, someone to really learn a lot from. I sure did in this conversation, so I can't wait to hear how it helps you as well. All right, let's talk paid discovery. Here's Rachel. Rachel, it is so great to have you on. We have a mutual friend in Shannon Mattern. You are a web designer who has done all web designers dream, which is to pack up and move down to the beach.

Racheal:

That's exactly right.

Josh:

And you took your business with you. I mean, does life get any better than? I mean, honestly, like how awesome is that that you and your family can just move? I don't know what, uh, you know your family situation is like, but for you, as a web designer, to be able to move to a beach and probably keep your clients, I mean how awesome is that.

Racheal:

Yeah, it's been incredible, um, truly like pinch me kind of moments. We bought a boat, we spend most of our weekends on the water, um, and there's all sorts of. I mean, we still work really hard, but it's. It's nice to have the freedom to do it when you want and where you want. So, yeah, it's, it's highly recommend.

Josh:

How long have you been doing web design in the form of, of what you're doing it now, with the focus on strategy and business growth and some of the other things you're doing it?

Racheal:

now with the focus on strategy and business growth and some of the things you're doing. Well, it's been an evolving process. So my background is in software development. I was a system analyst, so my whole job was translating between what people say they need or and what they actually need there's always a difference there, right and then somehow translating that for the people who are going to go build the solution.

Racheal:

So I carried that experience into my business and sort of accidentally started torturing my clients with it. When they said you know, I need a website and they thought they were getting something simple, I'd start asking 1000 questions and then all of a sudden, what we were trying to accomplish became a little more comprehensive than just I need a website. So it happened pretty naturally. But it's been about 2 years that we've offered this exact model that we do today and have just really grown to love the way that it works for our team, for our clients. So it's something that I feel so passionately about I can't not talk about it, so I might as well share and make it accessible to others. So here we are.

Josh:

Now this was after your move down to the beach. You said you moved in 2020 from Nashville down to the beach before we hit record. But what was the foundation of your business at that point? Because I think this is important for context with, particularly for anyone who maybe wants to move out of state I imagine, a lot of folks with local connections. I don't know what that looked like for you. It's probably a little nerve wracking to think like do I want to leave all my local clients? What did your business set up look like at that point?

Racheal:

So at that point I was still running my business on the side. I was probably working 20 or 30 hours a week and it still had my full-time corporate gig happening. Luckily it was a fully remote situation so I was able to bring that income with me without any disruption. But all of the clients I was working with, especially there at the beginning, were from personal connections. You know friend of a friend. The same way you just like start knocking down doors at the beginning to get your first clients, it was that same group of people and because the relationships were there, there was truly no disruption at all.

Racheal:

I mean, I never met with clients in person a whole lot it was always on a call just for the sake of scheduling and availability, so that was a convenience to them. There really wasn't any disruption to my business at all, and then it just continued to grow and I was able to leave my job shortly thereafter. So Gotcha.

Josh:

That's great. I think it seems like after 2020, the entire world got used to doing what we do, which is to just prefer calls, so I think, even more so nowadays, there's just more room to be able to do things remotely.

Racheal:

Absolutely.

Josh:

Without it being odd, you know, to corporate.

Racheal:

Yeah, people expect it, I think.

Josh:

Yeah, mm, hmm. So you said you kind of gradually lended yourself, and probably with your background too, with your corporate background. I imagine you're probably systems data. Am I correct in saying your systems data?

Racheal:

juror men, yeah, yeah, I don't want to do any work that's not going to produce results, period.

Racheal:

And so a lot of even just the positioning of this offer where we lead with strategy to our clients is let's figure out what you need and let's figure out what you do not need, because I don't want you to pay us any money that doesn't bring you a return. And so we work with a lot of people in the interior design, home design space. In the interior design like home design space very aesthetically driven industry, obviously it's all about pretty pictures. Oftentimes, our clients come to us initially thinking that's all it is, and so we're having some aha moments in those initial conversations where we're saying you might not have to have an Instagram account that you post to every day, and we can help you with the things that will actually help you get new clients, as opposed to the things that are just going to create a lot of activity for you. That's a pretty powerful statement to somebody who'd never considered there was another way to solve the problem. So that's kind of where those things begin.

Josh:

Okay, so you just opened the door for me to just dive right in here.

Racheal:

Yeah, there you go.

Josh:

What's included, how you offer it, how you price it, all the things what you said. Right, there is the key, I think apprehension for a lot of web designers, yeah, and they're afraid to become like a business consultant or a digital marketing person, but at the same time, I'd argue that in most cases, web designers are having those conversations anyway. Even if you just scratch the surface of where your traffic is coming from, you could probably nudge that little hint what you just said, rachel which is like, yeah, maybe you don't need to do Instagram, maybe it's LinkedIn for you or something else completely. So how do you? I guess let's start out with how do you constrain strategy?

Racheal:

Yeah, that's a great question and it truly is unique to every client we talk to right Every. Even if you think on broader terms, like anyone who's in anything tangential to marketing, you've got some frameworks like you know what to some degree, what works in the market. You know what solutions are available. Are we going to do this kind of funnel? Are we going to lead with these platforms or those platforms? So you kind of like, have this, you've got a menu of choices right. So you've already got some constraints built in there because you know what's possible.

Racheal:

And I would argue, especially speaking to that hesitation, some people have to show up as the expert. We overestimate what our clients know and understand in this space all the time. Designers that I've seen probably still have 10 times the knowledge about these things and what will help a business grow than many business owners. So I think you've got to start just kind of giving yourself that credit and then, for the most part, from there we just talk to the business about what they need. There's a lot of why. There's a lot of what are we trying to achieve by building that website and asking some deeper questions? And I find all the time even more advanced business owners haven't always really thought through those things. A lot of times they're seeing what their competitors do and they think, look, maybe I just need to replicate that, and so being able to guide them towards a more custom solution that's going to feel good for them or even fit in their budget in some cases, can be really powerful and earns a lot of trust.

Josh:

So the big question here is and let me just put myself in a client's shoes If I get referred to you or if I find you online or some other mechanism where I end up on your site, I see currently business growth, blueprint growth, cadence and website care in an audit. I'm wondering where does this strategy session come into play? Is a call a strategy session for you? Yeah, essentially so.

Racheal:

This is what we would consider to be a paid discovery process, and I started doing this and sort of refined it. I know you and Shannon had a training or a podcast interview or something where you went through some of that process. A lot of that came from just the experimentation that we were doing and I was sharing inside the Web Designer Academy. So, and then we collaborated and said we need to, like, put this together in a way that someone could repackage it and use it. So it starts with literally just an intro call. It's just a very loosely structured open conversation. So clients will get on a 30 minute call with me and I ask some of those questions. The whole goal of that call is just to get them to zoom out. Instead of asking me for things, talk to me about your goals. That's where the conversation turns, and then at the end of that call I'll pitch okay, here's how we structure all of our projects.

Racheal:

The first thing we need to do is I've got to understand your business at a deeper level before I could ever recommend what is actually going to help move the needle for you, and because we apply the investment for that blueprint towards any implementation project that they choose to move forward with super low risk choice for them to make. For the most part, our clients are. It's an easy yes because it feels like it's a way to try us on before they make the big commitment. And then the real beauty of it.

Racheal:

I was listening to your interview with Austin Church earlier today and he said perceived value is really where all of our thoughts about what's worth it and what isn't come from. This is how you build that. So now I have the chance to talk to my client in language they understand. I have a chance to educate them along the way. I have a chance to demonstrate that I really understand how they work, who they serve, the details of their offers, all of those things. And by the time we get to a proposal phase, they're going. How could I not choose them? So it does extend the timeline, but it gives me so much opportunity to build relationship and to educate and to increase that perceived value before they see a real number that it has changed everything for my agency.

Josh:

So your business growth blueprint is your paid discovery strategy mechanism. It's fascinating this idea because there's just so many different ways you could frame it and slap a label on it.

Josh:

But I do like that. Obviously, the proof is in the pudding with what you have going on. I think there's like three things in there that are very clear. It's for their business, it's about growth and it's a blueprint to get the growth for their business. So is that something that somebody could just purchase and dive right into If, like, if I were referred to you and I was like I'm ready to just get going, or do you require an intro call to see if they're even a fit before they would get to a paid discovery?

Racheal:

It's out there, uh, on our website. No one's ever just booked it. I mean, at this point we're charging $2,000 for that engagement, for that 90 minute call and the strategy that comes on the backside of it. So I think in most cases, business owners are going to want to at least have a conversation first, and so it's available. No one's ever used it, but it is a nice reference point because there are plenty of times where we have that initial conversation. We've done an intro call and it's going to take a little time for someone to get their head around that idea, so they can come back to those pages on our website and read more and make a decision later.

Josh:

Is it an easier sell to when it's something that's public facing and it looks like a packaged up product that has like results and testimonials and stuff.

Racheal:

I think so, yeah, I think it makes a big difference because it feels more tangible to the client, and this is another reason that I love doing strategy first. Clients don't buy what they don't understand. You've got to make it clear what they get and what they don't get, and so having a name and a framework for the deliverables and a timeline and all of those things, I think just builds a little bit of trust so that they don't feel like it's you know, you're making something up and you're just going to ask me questions and I have to pay you $2,000 for that. Like that doesn't quite compute. So I think the packaging does help.

Josh:

Do you have any sort of weed out or funnel before clients can book that first little half an hour call with you? Or has that not been an issue with the way you're attracting clients?

Racheal:

I mean we do have an inquiry form there that I think. Just there's a couple of questions that we ask in a certain way to make it pretty obvious if this is for you or not. So we ask about how long you've been in business, the size of your team, some things like that. So I think there are some very subtle hints. Occasionally I'll still do a call with somebody that's not quite the right fit and you know I can just sort of navigate that through the conversation. But for the most part it's pretty open ended.

Josh:

Did you realize? When you packaged up your strategy sessions into a blueprint, did you have the thought that a lot of us have where, as web designers, where we're like whether it's a strategy session or a maintenance plan or something else where we're like, god dang it. Why didn't I do this, like five years ago? Because I'm already doing. This is the big revelation for web designers that they haven't had it yet. You're already doing strategy, so you made as may as well follow your lead, rachel, and make it a product that could be ideal for paid discovery, cause you're already doing it as a part of it anyway.

Racheal:

Yeah, absolutely I. I started doing this. There was a. There was a web designer Academy mastermind call and Shannon's Next Level group about two years ago, where I've got the video.

Racheal:

I'm like hair in the messy bun looking just exacerbated and I was like I hate my process and I want to completely rip my business apart and do something else, because I hate everything about the way these projects are going. At the time I had three packages and they had way too little definition, so every project was pulling teeth to get the content you need from the client. I mean, it's the same story every web designer can tell. But my problem was, as a person trained to identify opportunities and gaps, I couldn't hold myself back from doing that and just deliver the five-page website. I was always saying, oh, but we could do this and it would be this much more powerful or whatever.

Racheal:

So I think I spent as much energy trying not to deliver those things as I would have to just learn how to sell it in the first place. And so when I got to a place where I figured out I'm just going to do the really custom, complex things that serve more advanced businesses and I want to make sure that I have all the detail I need before we begin so that I can price it correctly, so that I can actually create estimates on the timeline that are close to reality, so that I can give the business owner the runway they need to pull all that stuff together and get it to me in the first place. I mean, you talk to a business owner who's doing well, they can't get stuff turned around to you in four days. They need some time. So I needed to understand the scope of the project at a much more granular level way earlier in the process to change things for me, and that's kind of what created this paid discovery offer.

Josh:

What did? What would the first iteration look like? What was your price point? Was it messy in the beginning? To try to figure out how to constrain it, cause this is, like you know, you're getting into potentially business consulting, digital marketing territory. How did what were the uh, what were the first few bumps in the road with offering strategy?

Racheal:

Well, I will say this I had already kind of made a decision that I didn't like the way it felt to go through a website project and hand it over to a client and then just set them free. It felt like it just didn't have the right ending to the story that I wanted. So I already knew I was going to expand my scope of services when I started doing this, and I think that's probably an important point to consider. Not that it can't work for a project based offer, but I do think part of my motivation was that I wanted to go a little bit deeper with the clients that I had and it felt like sometimes I would deliver them this beautiful strategic website and it was like a sword too heavy to wield. They didn't know how to drive traffic to it. They didn't understand how to even service the leads that came through, so I wanted to offer them a more comprehensive solution. So that's part of why I landed here. But literally the first one was like this is going to be an experiment.

Racheal:

I was very candid with my client and thank God for Laura, who was the first person to say yes to this, because she is really scrappy. She's very open and transparent. She's also very invested in her own success and those are the best clients for this kind of an offer. So I was like this is $500. I'm going to create a plan. I didn't know much more to say other than that it probably took me 20 to 30 hours to put together that first strategy, because I designed a deck and I had to come up with a framework and all of those things. But she was an immediate yes. She chose my highest package and if you know anything about Shannon's pricing strategy, you got to offer three options, so she chose the most expensive one. I sold a $38,000 project off of that first $500 paid discovery Highest project I'd ever sold.

Josh:

Worth the 20 to 30 hours.

Racheal:

She spent another $22,000 over the next 18 months and she's still a client today on a monthly retainer. So that's, that's the client relationship that this process creates. Um, and there's a lot of nuances. I've learned along the way to make it work that way, but uh, it's really powerful if it, if it fits you and your clients well.

Josh:

So 500 on the first one. You're at 2k. Now how long did it take, did you? Did you raise your price gradually, or did you get to a point where you're like, okay, this could be a $2,000 thing?

Racheal:

Um, it took hiring my first team member to go. Rachel, you can't charge $500 for this anymore, so I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to undervaluing what we offer. But it's gotten easier and easier because, as I've gotten feedback from these clients who are going through the process saying like, oh my gosh, this is so valuable and now we feel like we have clarity on what we need to do, whether they use me or not, I think that just that piece is so. It's just very empowering to the client themselves. You get enough of those comments and you start to feel okay about the money.

Josh:

You hit a buzzword right there, which is clarity.

Josh:

I think we had a web designer pro member who framed her calls as clarity calls at one point and I actually liked that idea, just because that is what it is.

Josh:

I mean, the value of clarity on your business is incredibly underrated and very hard to put a price tag on. But the value of that, I mean, as you just mentioned, I feel like it's. I think, as web designers I don't know if you've experienced this, but you feel like the work on a project begins when you start to build out the website and get behind a screen and type, but it actually is so much more on a call or in a meeting, when you're talking about the ideas and the strategy and everything that you I'm sure go through in your blueprint. There is so much value that happens there Maybe well over I don't know 50-60% of the project if it's going to be successful that happens before you even get behind the keys. So I just wanted to accent that point and make sure every web designer knows how much value is happening before you actually build the website, cause it's huge.

Racheal:

Absolutely and truly the theme of how we run our business today.

Racheal:

Because we come right out of this blueprint into a retainer model service where now we do this on a cadence we the client chooses their, um, their frequency, so we might meet with them for another strategy session once a month, we might meet with them every other month, every quarter, and we work through the blueprint we've laid out.

Racheal:

So after that strategy is created, we itemize it into. These are all the tasks that have to happen and they get to choose how quickly they want to work through that list, which of those things in the scope they want to tackle. And we have a pretty flexible arrangement where, if they're working with us on a monthly basis, they may pick the top 10 and then think that we're going to work through the rest and come back to us the next call and say I've got this new opportunity and I need a funnel for this now, and so we can prioritize those things. So the whole theme is do the hard work upfront, get really, really specific about what you're creating and why, and then everything downstream gets so much easier. The client knows what to expect, you know how much time it's going to take, you can plan out the timeline, you know what tools you need. So it's a lot of Be lazy in the work that comes later and work really diligently at the beginning.

Josh:

Timeline and the runway of these blueprints and these strategy sessions. I found that to be a hiccup for some web designers because it's I've I've said more recently like if for anyone who's dabbling into this or maybe putting their toe in the water, I would probably personally do like a 90 day sprint or something that could be a little more achievable to build some confidence. I mean, how far are you guys going out? Do you look at like an annual type plan? Do you go further? What's your typical road or runway and timeline for these blueprints?

Racheal:

So today and I'll say really small agency we max out at about six clients and as of right now that's as many as I want. On this model we still do website maintenance. That's a lot lower lift, but we require a six-month commitment. That's really about the amount of time we need to help anybody create measurable results anyways. And then it rolls into just a month-to-month arrangement where the client can cancel or down throttle or whatever they need to do. When they need to do that, I tell them. I literally say this in my delivery of the proposal. We just assume you'd like to work with us forever.

Racheal:

So this plan is going to auto-renew at the end of your six-month commitment and then we're going to let you know what your options are to change things, whether you want to slow down or speed up or whatever you need to do, at the end of that six months. But until you fire us, we're here to stay because we're an extension of your team. So we really do get inside the business almost as more of a fractional marketing department in some ways. But I think you could. You could maintain only the scope of a website and still offer the same thing very easily. It's similar to what you've talked about a lot with your growth plans. It's staying in front of the client with those ideas, because they don't have the expertise or the experience to think of them on their own.

Josh:

Yeah, I mean, in your blueprint you're again paid discovery strategy session. They're all kind of the same thing. Is really the start of a growth plan in some way, especially if you're doing a box of like miscellaneous services that you don't want to. You know, have clients just choosing an add-on randomly every month. If you want to put it into an action plan, I think that's definitely the way to go, especially if you're doing a little more than just websites, depending on how far you're going. Now, going back to the idea of constraints, like, how far are you guys going with your blueprints as far as giving strategies for doing things on social media or other marketing, versus, like, what you're implementing? Like, how far do you go basically outside of the website with your I?

Racheal:

stay squarely within our scope of services. So, um, when and there's a lot that we do but SEO we do some social, but it has to be kind of in conjunction with with content marketing on your site. So we do sort of an SEO first approach. We might do some SEO, uh, blog posts, that kind of thing, and then social as a repurpose, the content we've created. We often help with a lot of client experience and CRM kind of things. So sales assets and lead magnets and things like that that our clients need help with. So it all kind of everything. Everything kind of begins with the website and it's all the pieces that connect to it that we can help with. But I tend to say yes to a lot of things when it comes to this, because if I can figure out a new problem to solve, I get a little excited. So our, our scope of services expands based on the needs of our clients in a lot of cases services expands based on the needs of our clients.

Josh:

in a lot of cases, and I was going to say I mean, the big thing you mentioned just a little bit ago was that you're currently working with what half a dozen right now ongoing. I mean that's huge. It's very different, Like if you're, if you only have a half dozen clients, I would imagine, with a little team sport behind you, the implementation of all this stuff, you could manage quite a few miscellaneous services, especially if it's a part of the blueprint master plan and you're going month to month. But if you have a hundred clients, I imagine offering, you know, nine different optionality categories could be. That's where you probably run into trouble with this kind of stuff.

Racheal:

Yeah, I think I think scaling for us will look a lot like um, taking the strategies that we use and packaging them in a way that a business owner might be able to do some DIY following some of the same methodology that we do.

Racheal:

I also think I have a dream for some days, sort of like building almost an apprenticeship program where I can mentor strategists to do this and then, if I've got three or four strategists now, we can multiply those six clients by those three or four strategists, with small teams that handle implementation. I don't know if I'll ever do that or not, but it's fun to think about. So, yeah, I do think you have to know what you want your business to look like, and I think the paid discovery and the strategy session can lead into all sorts of offers. Some of them could be very scalable. You could have pretty pre-built websites and still offer this piece to help educate your client on what it is and how you use it and see a lot of success. For us, we just like being all up in your business and knowing your dog's name and your kid's birthdays and all of that stuff. That's what high level thing Like, like you still have maintenance plan clients.

Josh:

I look at my old model and I'm like I could have absolutely offered this to like four or five clients and I know some of the clients I was working with probably would have you know paid several thousand dollars a month to do some more marketing. In fact, they were hiring other marketing people and digital marketing folks to do that and then I would work with them to do onsite website stuff. But yeah, all that to say, if I were interested in doing League Magnet, email nurture sequences and copy and some of these other things, it could just be an upsell and you could do it quality over quantity and kind of few and far between. But then have your base, other recurring revenue streams with maintenance plans and hosting and other stuff. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for this is kind of what I'm getting at Now.

Josh:

When you started, what was the breadth of your scope of services? Like, were you doing it all you know four or five years ago in a way, or did you? Were you ever like I'm not touching SEO or I'm not touching copy or I'm not touching social media? Like, did you ever hire stuff out to have partners or did you pretty much go all in on you know being all up in your client's business.

Racheal:

Yeah Well, I like to be in control, so I sort of took over from the beginning. But at the beginning it was mostly just copy and the website build. We would do like a very simple funnel and help with that initial email welcome sequence or something like that. So that was kind of where it ended. I started offering SEO and then had to go learn it real quick. So that's sort of how I tend to operate. When I want to learn something new, I just tell a client I'll do it the best SEOers.

Josh:

That's the strategy for all the best SEOers. You sell an SEO plan. You're like I, better Google some stuff.

Racheal:

I better figure this out, yes. So I mean, that's how I've done my entire business. I say a thing out loud and now it's real, so I better make it happen. And that's how this process even evolved. But that very first blueprint was a full brand redesign. So she had some existing branding that needed to evolve. So we did that. I don't I'm not a graphic designer so that I always hire out. Now we have a team member that handles it. But then it was that building a new website altogether, which included rewriting all of the copy. We did a whole deep dive in messaging and then we built kind of like a course platform into her website as well. So that was where the scope ended at the time. And then I offered her SEO after that and we started doing some content marketing. So it just evolves as the client needs evolve.

Josh:

How do you the scope of, like the ongoing work? How do you manage that with clients? Like if a client's paying you maybe a thousand, two or 3000 or more per month and they're like, hey, we want to do something this month but it's out of scope, do you do an add-on or retainer of our type options? Do you just do an additional project that's tacked onto that, or would you adjust the plan and bump things a month or two out, like getting nitty gritty here? How do you? How do you handle that?

Racheal:

Well, okay, you're going to get the really nerdy version of me here. Um, I stole everything I knew about a software development life cycle from my corporate days and built it into our client process. So that blueprint basically becomes a backlog of all the things that we want to implement and we call it our feature wishlist, because clients don't know what a backlog is. And we maintain that for our clients and we keep it in priority order. And every time we meet with them we're asking what are your new opportunities? Where are your pain points? What's going on in your business? And we, you know, we kind of adjust things there and then together we plan a sprint for that time between now and our next session, and so there's a lot of opportunity for them to introduce new ideas, to say, oh, that thing we talked about six months ago doesn't really apply, we can take it off the list. We also go through every single one of those and write up detailed requirements for each thing.

Racheal:

So when I say I'm going to design your homepage, we've talked about the outline for the copy. We've talked about what you want your hero section to look like. We have those conversations on the strategy call. So by the time anybody clicks a mouse or types on a keyboard, the client knows exactly what they're getting back. So our revisions are very minimal. Our clients are very happy because they had a ton of input at the beginning. So when I say be lazy in the implementation and really diligent in the planning, that's what I'm talking about and it allows us to be flexible with our scope, because we have those conversations, we put an estimate on it, we know what our capacity for the month is. We make those decisions together. Everybody's happy.

Josh:

So are you writing in pen, as it were, you know the next month or two with those tasks and those implementations, but maybe pencil the you know the, the last few months of a of a six month cycle or or something, just in case those do after a quarterly call or something in case they shift around.

Racheal:

Yeah, I mean there are definitely some constraints around. When the flexibility sort of ends right, there's a point where we say, okay, this is officially the list for this month and if you want to make a change you may have to forfeit some of what you've planned. And if you want to make a change, you may have to forfeit some of what you've planned. So there's some sort of hard cutoffs in terms of the planning piece. But there's always the opportunity to say, well, we could buy a couple of extra sprint points. So instead of estimating things in hours, we sort of size them by points and so they could throttle up a little bit and pay a little extra fee to get more. They could defer something to the next time. So we've got a few options, levers we can pull to be flexible, but all within the constraints of what works for us and our team, and we're exceptionally clear about what those boundaries are at the beginning of the project. So the client's got a really clear picture.

Josh:

Big question care plans, because you've got two sources of recurring revenue with. I'm just going to call your cadence, your ongoing services. I'm just going to lump it into my framework, which is just a growth plan. Yeah, it absolutely is. Yeah. So you have your strategy session, your pay discovery, that's the blueprint. The implementation ongoing is your growth plan, which those are. You know, with big website redesigns and the amount of work you're doing, I imagine those are with six clients, those are probably pretty meaty. Higher end monthly plans. You have your lower end subscription offer, which is your maintenance plans, your care plans. Big question when do you offer those? How do you offer those? Are those included if they are in an ongoing growth style plan? Is that something separate? Is it a fallback questions? Six questions in once. But how do you? How do you do this?

Racheal:

So if, uh, for our clients that are on the growth plan is just included, we do their hosting, we do all their maintenance, anything that I could. If it's not a new feature, if it's not new functionality, if it's not new content, it's covered. And then the website care plan is basically a downgrade from there and we offer two tiers. One's just maintenance. We're going to keep your plugins updated, we're going to take care of your hosting, we're going to deal with vulnerabilities, but it's just keep the site healthy. The second one is unlimited content updates.

Racheal:

So you fill out a form or send us an email hey, I need this new blog post updated. As long as you provide the content, we're going to take care of the rest. The way that we work that process is we've got a team member who works through all of those tasks in order on Wednesdays, and so when you submit your thing, you know that, unless you tell me it's really urgent and we'll do what we can, you're going to get it back on Wednesday. And it works really well because clients feel like they're really well taken care of. We know what to expect. It's really profitable because we plan for them to have a lot of requests and they have some, but not nearly as much as we've planned for in our capacity and the price that we're charging, so it works out really well.

Josh:

What's the percentage of your business? It does need to be exact, but I'm just curious on what amount of business is your care plans versus your growth plans? I would imagine your growth plans by the sound of business. Is your, your care plans versus your growth plans? I would imagine your growth plans by the sound of it. Is is your main thing, but are your maintenance plans, your care plans? Are they a pretty big baseline to your business?

Racheal:

They're. I'm trying to do some quick math. I mean at this point they might represent 15 ish percent of our recurring revenue. Most of it is in our growth plan option, but it's a natural transition for a lot of our clients. So it's not unusual that our clients will be going through a phase where they're doing some pretty aggressive growth. They're trying to heavily market something new or they're building a brand new website or doing a brand refresh. You know they're ripping things apart and creating something new. There's a really intense period of strategizing and implementation there at the beginning and then they'll sort of naturally taper off. A lot of those will end up in in one of our all-inclusive website care plans where we're more in maintenance mode.

Racheal:

Um so there's it. Really it's been about a two year timeline where we've had these two offers sort of working together. I think in the future that maintenance piece will probably represent a bigger piece of the pie. Um, but today it's. It's probably, you know, 15 or 20%.

Josh:

Gotcha, do you have limited capacity or spots for your ongoing plans, like your growth plan?

Racheal:

No, not at this point I honestly, if I get to a place where we're at capacity, I'd probably just bring on another team member to help with that volume.

Josh:

Gotcha, I was just thinking like, if you have your support plan clients, what an amazing pool of folks to be able to upsell to and to help out. You know, if you have your support plan clients, what an amazing pool of folks to be able to upsell to and to help out.

Racheal:

You know, when you have capacity yeah, this is somewhat unrelated, but I just um, I went to the hub spot conference last year and, uh, I went and listened to I couldn't even remember who the speaker was, but I I listened to a talk about the whole SaaS industry and anyways, it was a lot of stuff about go-to-market strategy. But there was one little nugget of wisdom about the volume of recurring revenue that comes from your existing clients who have already made one purchase, and it became so obvious to me that serving the people who are already in the mix, who are already in our client portfolio, was going to be twice as fruitful as trying to go find new clients. And so that's part of the strategy behind all of this. But out of that I said you know what? I'm going to start sending just a monthly client-only newsletter to share interesting things that are happening, updates on what's going on in our business. We talk a little about marketing, we talk a little bit about just general business stuff, and so I started doing that.

Racheal:

In January of this year, three of our website care plan clients who are just maintenance super quiet have popped up and said, hey, we need help with this thing. So I've got now got these little sort of side projects just serving the people we were already serving at a higher level, just because we were top of mind again, like they started seeing my name show up in their inbox again. So it's nice to have that happening where we can just continue to serve them over time when they need.

Josh:

I think that is the smartest business model, nowadays more than ever, which is some form of tiered level of clients and I'm experiencing this right now in pro We've talked about Shannon Shannon and I recently talked about this to where, similarly, she's learning from her top folks somebody like you, rachel, who has been in her top folks, somebody like you, rachel, who has been in her top tier programs, her mastermind stuff, the next level stuff, and similarly for me, with my coaching tier members.

Josh:

I know most of them by name, I know their businesses, I'm checking in on them and that all filters down to, in my case, my community. And then I have a tier now just for course access, and I'm starting to nurture them and nudge them to jump up to the community and coaching when they're ready. But same thing works with a service model, like you're doing with web design, which is the few folks you're really in intense relationships with as far as your clients go. That filters down to the other people who are on your plan, on your newsletter, and then maybe even leads who are maybe even past clients, who did a website with you a decade ago but maybe could hear from you again. So I just really like that. I guess it's like a synergy type approach with like intensive clients who you're really doing a lot with and you go down those next couple of tiers. So I'm glad you mentioned that because I think it's a. I think it's a missed opportunity in web design it.

Racheal:

It feels like it has been the key to financial stability for us, like it's what it's kind of like the the fuel for the recurring revenue that was going to let me sleep at night. You know what I mean. Like when I first left my corporate job, I had no idea that I was like emotionally jumping off a cliff, because I just really liked that paycheck coming in every two weeks and, um, just you know, having that that steady relationship with a handful of clients that continue to trust you and come back, um, it made all the difference in just how I felt about business in general. So I think it's a really good approach.

Josh:

Did that feeling of stability with being full-time solopreneur business owner? Did it help having a pool of clients who were not your top tier a few half dozen clients but were still in your circle, still in your newsletter and still having, like, a qualified pool of clients to potentially upsell to?

Racheal:

Yeah, I mean 100%, Especially when you can get to a place where those kinds of offers that are not as hands-on, not as time intensive can cover the basics. And now I've got the freedom to experiment with these new offers. I don't know that I could have taken the risk of saying I'm not even going to give you pricing until you pay me if I didn't have some of that to lean on. So I do think, I believe wholeheartedly that this kind of approach and this strategy can work for anyone. But there's a lot of freedom in being able to move a little faster, take a few more risks when you've got something cooking in the background that's going to keep things stable.

Josh:

If somebody is like, listen, we just want a website we don't really need. Yeah, we know strategy is a part of it, but we're not looking for like a long-term commitment. Would you offer to work with them and just say like, basically we'll just take our growth plan and just make this like a six month payment plan type thing for the bill? Do you? Do you ever make exceptions like that With this type of model?

Racheal:

Yet, Um, I mean, I reserve the right to change my mind, but I think I just enjoy the process too much of brainstorming and creating and helping clients see and understand new opportunities that the copy paste version of website design is just not for me. So I think in most cases I would probably say you don't, you don't need to pay my rates to get that, so let me give you some names. It's probably how I would end that conversation Well done.

Josh:

Yeah, that's cool With these. Oh, I totally wanted to make sure I mentioned this because I was checking out your blueprint page. You have a refund policy.

Racheal:

I sure do.

Josh:

So I have mixed feelings on refunds. I would love to hear your feelings on refunds. I'm guessing it's not an issue just by talking to you for a little while and knowing that, yeah, you've got this. But also I imagine the folks who are going to invest $2K initially are probably not going to be the refund folks. Am I on track with saying that?

Racheal:

100%. No one has ever asked me for a refund. It's mostly there to just remove that one little question mark in our client's mind where they go. I don't fully understand what I'm getting and I do think, as I've had enough practice and had enough of these conversations now, that I can make it a lot more tangible today than I did in the very beginning. If clients don't say, yes, I want to do this from that first call, I actually send them several follow-up emails. Some of them include examples of past strategy presentations, so it becomes a little more concrete for them as we continue to nurture that relationship and that has helped a lot. But that refund, I would be happy to do it. I mean, I know I've done the work. Um, I'm I'm pretty confident in the strategy that I deliver. The response I receive back is almost always like you know, blow my hair back. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I can't believe this plan is here Like it's a piece minute call right.

Josh:

And then I mean you're, you're detailing, I am I don't know exactly the specifics of the plan, like how custom are you creating, like custom slide deck for every client? So you're do you have a framework and a template you use? But then you put their branding and their colors and really match it. I actually do it in my branding.

Racheal:

I would say the most powerful piece of it is we. We do have a framework. So the first section of the it is we do have a framework. So the first section of the presentation is sort of just a summary of what I understand about your business. So we pull out a couple of sort of pillars of their unique value proposition. We don't say those words because clients don't often understand them, but that's what it is. We pull out a few of their ideal client profiles and talk about okay, here are really the three kinds of people that you serve.

Racheal:

This is revolutionary to most business owners. They haven't done this work, so for me to hand it to them on a silver platter and they go oh, she put into words what I've never been able to nail down. So they see that reflected back to them and then I say, okay, here are the four things that you do really well. This is why someone would pick you over your competition and it resonates. It probably didn't matter anything else. I say I'm already hired at that point.

Racheal:

And then the rest of it is just. You do have to find the balance between too much detail and not enough, because you can very easily overwhelm your clients with this strategy. So that has been a science to figure out. But from there you know it's usually three recommendations. We break it down to make it tangible enough for them to understand. I presented it in the video with a slide deck. They get the PDF. We do a follow-up call, so I do literally have a lot of research and thought put into it. There's always overlap, so there's going to be similarities between everyone, so there's a lot that I can templatize and repurpose. I also trained a custom GPT to write most of it for me, using examples from past presentations, and I've trained my AI to do most of the work, so it's got a lot easier. The first one took forever.

Josh:

Are you recording through like zoom? Are you taking, are they, is it doing summary notes and then you feed that into your GPT?

Racheal:

Yeah, yeah, we always transcribe our calls. Um, and I will. I will often like kind of download my thoughts and then provide the RGPT, the, the transcript, and say, okay, what other smart things did I say on this call that I don't remember, and um, and then I kind of go back and forth with it until we get down to like, okay, these are really like the three kind of main projects or recommendations we want to make.

Josh:

I mean, what a genius and prime example of how like the fear of AI taking over web designers, it's not. It's the perfect example of how to use AI, particularly in this case, as almost like a business consultant role. I mean, I would imagine too, clients probably view you very quickly as a legit like business partner in a lot of ways, versus just a task taker who's like hey, I need you to make this button green.

Racheal:

Yeah, we're extremely prescriptive. I don't ask you what you want. I don't ask you what you want it to say. I don't ask you how you want it to look. In most cases, I give a really nice speech about how the right shade of blue won't make you more money, and so I think clients who want to work with me want me to just say here's how you make it happen, and they're going to tweak things a little bit. But for the most part they're like yes, ma'am, I'll do what you say, and it works out really well for all of us.

Josh:

Well, I'm glad we unpacked what's in your blueprint as well, because I'm sure when we talked about $2,000 initially, I'm sure a lot of web designers are like I'm charging $2,000 for websites, I can't imagine just doing a discovery call for that. But it's much more than that. You're talking 90 minutes initially. That's off of a half an hour intro call, more than likely. You're doing a lot of custom work with the transcriptions, your own personalized chat GPT Is it chat GPT that you're using? So you've got some training in that. You've got bona fide results and strategy and everything else that you're working on that's fed in there. You've got a truly and you're doing a follow-up video. So it's a true blueprint, a true roadmap Um, that's another term that I've heard something similar call, which is basically like a digital roadmap or digital strategy roadmap and then you're following up with an additional 30 minute call, right?

Josh:

Is that to answer questions before? Is that kind of your? If you're, is that kind of?

Racheal:

your sales call-date. That's the sales call. That's the sales call. Yeah, and pro tip, I talk about this literally every time I talk about this subject Schedule that call before you get off the strategy session, when your client already has it on their calendar and they're committed to it. You will see the conversation all the way through and then you kind of just get to play the role of let me guide you to the right decision for you, instead of having to be a salesperson. You get to already sort of play the partner role at that point, because they've committed to seeing the conversation all the way to the end. So never had anybody just disappear and ghost me, because we're really careful about how we handle the followup.

Josh:

Love that idea. I'm just, I'm totally going to rip you off, I'm going to apply this.

Racheal:

It works so well, that's great.

Josh:

Well, I'm going to apply this to what I'm doing, cause I'm doing just on the side, like I probably shouldn't mention this publicly.

Josh:

But here we go. I am kind of hidden, like, as requested, doing some consulting about memberships and community building, with just what I'm, what I've learned with building mine, and I typically just do an hour consult call and I follow up with the transcription and just kind of get my personal take on a bit of an action plan based off what we talked about. But I like this idea of setting up a follow-up call after that and beefing up that package. Right now I do that for $1,000, which is basically an hour with me and then back up a little action plan. But I could totally make that a $2,000 to $3,000 blueprint in a way of my own to make it and to get more results from that, because it could include a little follow up with an additional video. Yeah, do it. This model, just like a lot of web design services, can work in different areas of business and different entrepreneurial endeavors outside of just web design too.

Racheal:

Yeah, absolutely. We just launched a course that's intended for service providers of any kind. I think if you serve another business, the scope of what you do doesn't matter a whole lot. This process brings so much trust and clarity to the client that it makes the sales process feel so different and I just feel like I'm helping you instead of like I'm selling you, something, which I think made me feel, you know, a hundred times more confident about having these conversations.

Josh:

Well, I think clients will probably get that too with the, specifically the follow-up, because it's not like you just took their two grand and you're like okay, great call, see you later.

Racheal:

It's like no let's like.

Josh:

Let's work on the next step on this. We want to. It's not just a peace out. You're never going to hear from me again. I changed my email. No, you're, you're going to follow up. I think that breeds a lot of trust, initially right there, which is an additional follow-up step. Yeah, absolutely.

Racheal:

I tell my clients this all the time. We are just a vehicle for your success. Like you are investing in you, I'm just the, I'm just the mechanism to get you there. So it makes it feel so much less transactional.

Josh:

That's awesome. Are you a podcast host? Have you done a podcast before? Not yet, but it's on my.

Racheal:

It's on my list because I can't help myself.

Josh:

It was a total pro segue, because we're at the top of the hour here. I was going to ask about if there was some way we could see your blueprints and see we've talked about it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who's curious about like what does all this look like? What are the details, the nitty gritty, the implementation. So tell us about the course that you are.

Racheal:

Well, are you cooking it up? Currently? This is going to come out. It launched last week so as of the time of this recording, it was a brand new baby. I think by the time this airs we should be pretty close, if not already, in a place where you can get access to it at any time. So I would say, if you're just looking for more information on how to do this process at the high level, we've got a free workshop called Get Paid for your Plan. You can go to getpaidforyourplancom to get there and that on-demand workshop is going to work you through, at least at a high level, most of what we do here.

Racheal:

If you want to just steal all my stuff and rip it off, with my permission, literally everything we do, down to every client email template, our pricing calculator, how we scope out a project, our presentation templates. You even get my fancy AI GPT that I have trained to create all of your assets. That's in our new course called the Growth Discovery Blueprint and, like I said, it's available for I think, for any service provider could find a way to use this model. So all of our resources it's mostly templates and tools and things. There's some video training for me to work you through our process and how we do it, and there's some nuances to the communication around this with your clients that I've just learned the hard way, so I'm sharing those in the course as well. But if you're interested, that's the. That's the fast track to getting started on how to do this without having to figure it out yourself.

Josh:

I am literally signing up for this for myself right now. So I am on your list and I can't wait to check that out, and I will. Obviously we'll have that linked in the show notes for your episode here, rachel. I might have to get you in Web Center Pro so we can have a teaser of this.

Racheal:

Listen anytime, I would love help. Yeah, you can tell I get a little fired up Like I just do this part for fun. We love to fire.

Josh:

And I love when look, I love when people are fired up about implementation too, because this kind of thing I feel like a lot of web designers get to it eventually, when they shift from artist and designer to like business consultant owner and then you realize, like this is, quite frankly, this is where the money is and this is where this on well, this is where the results are. I mean a nice website, like you mentioned, the blue there's. I don't want to devalue great design and artistry, but I imagine that's, like you know, lesser of a talking point for you compared to the goals of the group.

Racheal:

Yeah, I mean, we're working with clients who already assume we're going to be able to give them that Right. So great design is extremely important, especially for the clients that I'm serving. Most of them are in very visual industries. That's very important. It's still secondary to strategy.

Josh:

Boom. What a way to cap it off. Well, rachel, this has been freaking awesome. So glad Shannon connected us and really, really pumped up and inspired by what you're up to. Like you said, I think web designers and the reality is a lot of folks listening to this are also webpreneurs, so they're doing things on the side. Yeah, you're totally right. This can morph into anything, which is one reason I signed up for it, because, as I'm thinking about consult calls and just more endeavors in the membership world, I'm like, oh my gosh, this could absolutely work on that too. So freaking awesome.

Racheal:

What an exciting world we live in. This has been fun. Thank you so much.

Josh:

This has been so great. Thank you for your time. Hey, enjoy the beach. I'm going to be in your neck of the woods here very soon but, uh, you know, not too far going to be on vacation. But the goal is to do what you did, so I'll hit you up separately to learn about that, so we can yeah, I got.

Racheal:

I have some tips for you.

Josh:

Okay, pumped Awesome. We'll talk about how web design is coming to the beach. That'd probably be like our most listened episodes.

Racheal:

You know what that sounds like? A great workshop.

Josh:

I like it. You have to do it on the beach, by the way, if you're like, the beach has to be in the background.

Racheal:

It's going to be a little windy, but maybe we can work it out.

Josh:

You can't do a workshop talking about the beach without the beach on the background. I feel like it's one of them. Awesome Thanks, rachel. Isn't it just freaking awesome to learn from absolute professionals? I mean, I'm not going to charge for this podcast, but sometimes some conversations leave me feeling like this was a dang masterclass that people pay hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars for. So I sincerely hope you are not appreciative that's not the right word but I hope that you don't take lightly the type of gold that is being shared on the podcast and these type of conversations. I learned so much from Rachel and I'm saying that because of the amazing guests, particularly lately, who have been sharing some absolute money-making gold for web designers Would love to hear how you're going to implement paid discovery and or growth plans, especially those of you who are at a point in your business where you're wanting to go to that next level and build your recurring revenue up.

Josh:

So leave us a comment. Go to joshhallco, slash 382, to drop a comment there. All the links that we mentioned in this episode are going to be there. And again, rachel has a free workshop for you to help you build your paid discovery offer. Go to coursesgreenhousecreativeco to pick that up completely for free. So if you enjoyed this, I guarantee you're going to enjoy that because it's visual and on demand. You can jump into it right now. Again, links and everything will be at the show notes joshhallco slash 382.

Josh:

Big thanks to Rachel, and I should note too I meant to mention this at the beginning. If you would like to see this in more detail and be able to ask questions to Rachel directly, I highly encourage you to jump into Web Designer Pro on the community tier, which will give you access to our live trainings, which are live workshops. We do with guest presenters like Rachel every month, because Rachel is coming in to Web Designer Pro and going to be sharing about this and you can pick her brain live if you join the training as a member of Web Designer Pro. So just go to webdesignerprocom. You do have to be a community level member to get access to our live workshops and training, so make sure you jump in there and here. In a couple months you will actually next month, I believe we'll see Rachel and we'll talk a discovery and growth plans. All right, guys, really enjoyed this chat. I hope you did as well and I'll see you on the next one. So stay subscribed wherever you listen to the Web Design Business Podcast, see ya.