Didn't hit your 2025 goals?

👉 Read the newsletter issue that this episode is based on.

Other links mentioned:

• Sign up for my free Web Design Business Newsletter
• Read the latest 12 newsletter issues
• WDPCON 2025 Recap Post 
• Join my community Web Designer Pro® 

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Share This Bonus Note
• 1:06 Year-End Reflection Mindset
• 2:05 Discouraging Metrics And Plateaus
• 4:00 The Core Lesson: Focus On Wins
• 6:40 Restructuring Coaching To Save Time
• 9:30 Family Health And Reclaimed Presence
• 11:05 Launching A Profitable Community Event
• 13:05 Sponsorships Over Brand Partnerships
• 15:05 Multiple Revenue Streams Drive A Record Year
• 17:20 Redefining Wins Beyond Revenue
• 20:00 Planning For 2026 And Final Invites

Transcript

Lindsay Halsey: 0:00

Hello, my friend. It's Josh here popping in with a bonus episode of the podcast. I wanted to expand on and share with you as a podcast listener a little bit more about my latest newsletter issue that went out because I'm getting a lot of good feedback. I think I uh hit a uh much needed nerve, as it were. So I wanted to share it with you as a podcast listener if you happen to not be on my email list. And if that's you, if you're not signed up for my newsletter, I will put a link below. So you'll see this right below in the description. But I highly recommend jumping on my newsletter, my email list. Every Sunday, I generally, almost every Sunday, I send out a tip or a piece of advice or something that's gonna help you as a web design business owner. I also send out when the next podcast episode goes out as well. You can sign up for that for free at joshhall.co slash newsletter. And again, below a that will be the link for that. And I'm also gonna share with you the link that has the latest dozen or so newsletters, and it will include this one. So you can actually, I'll make sure to include this individually so you can read this entire newsletter if you would like to read this one. So this newsletter is titled What's Good? And the premise of this is if things have not gone well in 2025, or if you're feeling discouraged, or if you didn't hit your numbers, or even if you hit your numbers but you're not just satisfied for any reason, I have a piece of advice for you, and that's what I want to kind of share with you here. Now, again, I'm not gonna read this verbatim, but I am gonna cover it. Um, so you can read the full issue with the link below. So in this issue, I said it's that time of year again. I love to reflect on what has been. A lot of people do this in the new year, but I actually have found myself enjoying doing this at the end or middle to end of December, just because I don't know about you, but when I get to the new year, I'm generally like in go mode. There's something about the new year. I've got a fresh Star Wars calendar up, I've got my new little action day planner notebook ready to go, and I'm just ready to get to work. I don't really like to look in the rearview mirror. So I like to do that now. And I gotta be completely honest with you. I felt a little discouraged. And these are some of the main reasons in this newsletter. I articulated why. Number one, my newsletter or my um YouTube subscriber count has not grown like at all, like probably in like well over a year. It's hovered right around 30,000 or 37,000 subscribers, which is great. That's cool. But I see some new YouTubers pop up and they're just crushing it. And and my YouTube strategy is basically just the video version of this podcast right now. So only myself to blame on that. But regardless, it's still like, man, we're the number one show for web design. I would think it would be growing past that. Um, anywho, so felt a little discouraged about that. And then I also couldn't help myself, I know better, but I got into the vanity metric trap and I looked at my social media and I'm like, and again, my social media strategy is more about connection, so it's not really a I'm not marketing or doing a bunch of growth on there. But regardless, it has barely increased over the past year. My Instagram has increased a little bit. I'm now active on LinkedIn, which I'm really enjoying, but um, it's uh modest at best. And then since launching the tiers for Web Designer Pro in the fall of 2024, so we've had just over a year with the tiers, um, revenue has essentially kind of flatlined. And I'll get to the benefit of that, but I'll just stick with the feeling of like a little discouragement there because we've hovered around 28,000 monthly recurring revenue, which is great. It stayed stable and consistent. That's wonderful. The tier what basically more people are jumping into the courses and community tiers, and then folks who are downgrading from the coaching tier, that's a big loss of annual revenue per member. But with the amount of folks joining at the lower tiers, it's making up for that, which has kept it stable. But it has not moved dramatically up and to the right. I have plans to change that in 2026, but that is the state of things now. So again, those few things got me feeling like a little, hmm, you know, I'm not, it's not dramatic, uh, not like a couple years ago where we had a huge decrease in in revenue, uh, but enough to be like, hmm, darn. My email subscriber count has actually dropped over 400 subscribers over the past year. So as much great feedback as I'm getting on my newsletter, um, you can't help but wonder, like, what's going on here? Why are so many people? Now, I did just do my Black Friday sale. Inevitably, when you do a Black Friday offer of any sort, you're gonna get unsubscribes. So that probably has to do with it as well. But um, that has not gone up and to the right. And then I also pro uh Web Designer Pro members got the behind the scenes look at this, but I put a ton of work into a new brand partner campaign offer for select brands that I felt comfortable working with long term. And it just did not shake out. Um, Web Designer Pro members get access to the Pro Podcast feed, which is a private podcast feed for all pro members. I didn't talk about this publicly, but if you're a pro member at any tier, make sure you go back because I did uh do a solo episode that gives a behind-the-scenes look as to why that didn't work out well and why we had like comically bad timing on uh rolling out the offer for the full brand partner campaigns. So that didn't shake out like I expected. So uh all those things combined got me feeling a little discouraged for 2025. And a lot of these static or downward trends are self-inflicted. I could absolutely and plan to do better with my YouTube channel. I could do way more on social media if I wanted to, but that's really not my goal with social media, so I'll let that go. Uh, I do have lots of plans to grow pro sustainably in 2026 to get that number to go back up and to the right. And I have a lot more plans to grow my email subscriber count as well. Um, but regardless, I felt a little bit bummed. But then I remembered a very, very valuable lesson as an entrepreneur, and that's what I want to share with you here. And the lesson is this. So if you're multitasking, come back to me on this one. Here it is. Focus on what's going well. One more time for those in the back. Focus on what's going well. Because I've been at this long enough. I've been an entrepreneur for 16 years now. I've been self-employed since 2009. I know as soon as I start feeling down or whatever, there's more to the story. And I've also learned if you do start feeling like that, I just needed to rem remind myself of this, which is why I'm I'm doing a solo podcast episode for you on this as well, is to remind you to focus on what's going well. Because the reality is you've probably got a lot going on that went really well. That unfortunately, the negatives always outweigh the positives. What's the old quote? One negative will outweigh nine positives. Like somebody could say you look great in that shirt nine times, and then one person says, Oh, I don't like you in that shirt, and that just ruins it. Similar structure here, similar vibe here. So when I thought back to this year in 2025, I realized or remembered the following. Yes, Web Designer Pro revenue hasn't grown wild because of the downgrade options with the tiers, but I have freed up so much of my time because I was beyond capacity with the coaching tier. I talked about this last year. The reason I moved from a one-tier membership, which was courses, community, and coaching altogether, is because of the coaching aspect, I just got to capacity. We were nearing 250 coaching members. That meant 250 people could DM me anytime and get coaching. And some of and not, you know, not that many people were DMing me every day, but I would do check-ins and quarterly um kind of boosts for all members. And I remember at one point I had like 83 DMs to get back to. And these are not like quick little, hey, how's it going? DMs. These are like, okay, let's look at your business, let's look at your strategy, everything I'm doing in the coaching tier for those members. And I was beyond capacity, which is why I opened up the tier. So while yes, a lot of the coaching tier members have downgraded and luckily stayed in the community or stayed in the courses. Yes, that was a huge drop in revenue from the coaching tier. The good news is, like I mentioned, people have joined the community and courses tier or and or stayed in pro instead of just leaving all together. And most importantly, it's freed up so much more of my time. So I'm definitely at the point where I'm gonna be more selective and more uh there's there's gonna be scarcity and limited space in the coaching tier because I want to do more for the coaching tier members, but I'm also one guy and I have a family and a wife who I want to spend time with and three little kids and lots of other stuff going on. So I have to be very, very intentional about that. So the good news is with that change, it also freed up so much time. So when I see a stagnant line, um, I'm I have to remember that what you don't see on the revenue line is time. And that's actually a really good tip to remember is that sometimes things on paper look precarious when they're actually, like on the personal side, huge and awesome. So what may not look great for profit may be what you need personally. So for me, I freed up so much more time because I was at capacity and could not grow pro past that point. With that extra time, I was able to be fully present with Bria, my special needs daughter, uh, who had a we had a very busy year this year. We had two major surgeries. She had a G2 placement in February. She just recently had a major spinal surgery in October. And she had two additional unexpected hospital stays. She had a uh seizure breakthrough in the spring, and then I didn't talk about this publicly, but I was actually just in the hospital with her two days ago, just last month, uh, for some post-surgery stuff going on, uh, which was not totally unexpected, but nonetheless, two surgeries and two additional hospital stays. Um, I told her all I want for Christmas this year is no children's hospital stays in 2026. So um the fact though is that I will with this extra time that I that I was freed up for me, I was able to be fully present and with our two other kids be with them, and then my wife be with them, and maybe with Bria Bria and and all the above this year. So again, it looked um not great on paper, but on the personal side, it's what I needed this year. And again, nothing's bad with the business, nothing's turning downward, so that's good, but we are technically stagnant, so time to ramp things up for 2026. Now, with this extra time, I was able to plan, prepare, and host our first Web Designer Pro conference. If you've been a listener of the show for a while, if you followed my social media, you have seen a lot about this. You may have just seen that we just launched early access tickets for the 2026 event, but I was not able to host an event like this and plan and prepare and fulfill it with the the lack of time that I had leading up to this year. So by again freeing up my time and my mental bandwidth, I was able to launch our first event, which was a rousing success. I will put the link below to the recap post if you'd like to see what it was all about. Um, it was absolutely incredible. 40 members of WebR Center Pro came into Columbus, Ohio. We had a full weekend of socials, we had an all-day conference, we had a group dinner and some amazing hangs. It was freaking awesome, and we are running it back for 2026. In fact, um, another perk of being a coaching tier member in WebRPRO is they got early access to tickets, which are already at 50% capacity for our 2026 event. So it just goes to show how amazing this first event was. Uh, and again, that's a testament to me being able to have the mental bandwidth and time to do it. So uh another big pro of getting that time back. Something that is easily overlooked when you look at the paper metrics sometimes. You you don't realize like, yes, but I was able to host our first event, which was profitable, by the way. So that's great too. It'd be one thing if I lost a bunch of money on the event, but no, we were we were profitable on it, and I've got all the systems and contacts, and I've got an SOP already set up, um, and I've already got almost everything ready to go for the next event, and we've already sold 50% of the tickets without even like officially opening it up. So um, yeah, freaking awesome. A couple of things that have gone well, and again, I'm just reminding you not to overshadow and overlook what's gone well, is yes, the brand partnership offer did not go like I planned. People were just not ready. My partners were just not ready to commit. In one case, one of my partners uh actually, when I sent the brand partner proposal over, uh, she was either let go or left her role. I've been working for her for years. So again, terrible timing. But the good news is I was able to dip my toe into more sponsorships um with brands and tools that I trust and use and recommend. And um Siteground, 17 Hats, and Termageddon were sponsors for our first event. I've already got SiteGround committed for the next event, and I'm about ready to launch the event sponsor uh opportunities there with more. And I've even had the brands that I reached out to ask about other versions of sponsorship opportunities. So while like a full dedicated year-long brand partnership wasn't able to move forward, it showed how serious I am about sponsorships and working with, again, only brands and tools that I trust and recommend. And it's been awesome. I've made new connections and they have uh it's made selling other sponsorship opportunities a no-brainer and a lot easier because I I went in with like a high-ticket offer for a brand partner proposal. So um, yeah, that's something that, yeah, you could look at like that didn't go well, but it planted seeds for a lot of other things to go well and they've already started to bear fruit, as it were. And then finally, most importantly, well, actually, most importantly, was getting time back for my family and everything we've done. But second to that is I looked at the numbers and I didn't really realize this, but we are on track to surpass 400k this year. If I we should cross it, if not, we'll get very close, which means it's my largest and most profitable year to date in business. So like you can look at the the first few things, which are mostly vanity metrics as far as subscriber and follower count, but I I always I've learned as an entrepreneur to always look past vanity metrics and in this case focus on what went well. And a lot of these things are much more important. Free time, like more time, more mental bandwidth, more time to be present with my special needs daughter and my family, more time to be able to host our community event and build member retention and and really like help my members get to know each other and just create this incredible, unique experience that we all had together, which you just cannot replicate online. We online communities can be incredible. Web Designer Pro is incredible and is literally one of Circle's most high frequency quote unquote communities because it is so amazing. But man, when you get in person, there is power in the room. I I couldn't have done that had I not backed off some of the um revenue growth strategies that had worked prior leading up to this. And again, I was able to build a new revenue stream with sponsorships and all that combined, the mix of stable Web Designer Pro revenue, because you may wonder, well, I thought your revenue was stagnant. Yes, but Web Designer Pro membership revenue is not my only income stream. I have other income streams through uh now events, affiliates. I do some high-level consulting for$1,000 an hour upon request. Um, this has actually been more common in the community space because some people have asked about if I could consult with them for their communities. And I don't publicly share this well until now, but um, I do say that I do have a$1,000 currently hour consult. So um some of those, and then sponsorships, all that contributed to the growth, uh, which has led to yeah, our best year ever. So despite follower counts being stagnant or down, despite subscribers on the newsletter being down, despite Web Designer Pro monthly recurring revenue just kind of staying flatlined right now, and despite what I was really excited about, which was a big brand partner campaign offer to select clients, all that you know either stayed the same or did not go well, but free time, time with my family, mental bandwidth to be able to host our first event, sponsorships, new revenue, and our top year to date, that's what I would have overlooked had I not focused on what's going well. So for you, I want you, if you did not have a great year, to focus on what did go well. And I will say, what doesn't what's going well doesn't have to be revenue growth or something measurable. Like I mentioned in my example with time. Um what you know, what's not on a profit statement, a profit and loss statement or revenue chart is me being at the hospital with my daughter four times this year, sometimes in case like multiple nights. Uh that's you're not going to see that on a spreadsheet. But that's what I needed this year. And for you, maybe there's something similar to think about. Maybe success, maybe something that's gone well is that you're just excited to wake up for your business. Maybe you have more like clarity and you know where you're headed. I've heard this a lot from members in pro who have got to a certain point, and especially those in the coaching tier who like I do these like mini action plans basically to where like we'll look at the next quarter and I'll give some advice on what to focus on. And a lot of members have told me there it's like a little clarity boost. It's like a clarity session. And you're not gonna see this on paper, but if you wake up and you're excited to show up for your business, that is a huge win. And that is what most business owners don't have. So you're winning if if you're in that camp. Even if it hasn't literally paid off yet, that is a huge, huge win. I consider that success. And again, maybe it hasn't paid off yet, but maybe the momentum you're building in your business and you're building the foundation, you've got to love progress. And uh just because something hasn't paid off in profit or revenue yet, it doesn't mean that you're not on track. And honestly, it if you go through a course, if you go through the courses that I have for you in Web Design Pro and you learn what you need to build the foundation of your business and you're pumped up to build it, that's a win. That's a success. Success doesn't just start when you get your first check or get your you know a certain revenue range. It starts when you are building. That is when success starts. That's it's all about progressing. So yeah, maybe it maybe that's in case for you. Maybe again, maybe revenues have flatlined or you're a little bit down, but you've cleared up more time. I've heard this too from pro members who are at a point where, like me, they just want to be more present and free up more time. So as long as your business is still profitable and you can support that, revenue a little down for more time is fine. Um, it's not all about up and to the right if it comes at a sacrifice for what really uh you know you care about and what means you 'cause what's the sense of going up and to the right every Every week, every month, every year, if it kills you faster. One thing to think about. Maybe you focused on team building and hiring, so you haven't seen the fruits of that work yet. That's a big one, too. You may have been, for those of you who are growing and scaling, you know, when you're creating SOPs and hiring and team building, that's not going to pay off right away. So maybe you've done a lot about a lot of that work this year in 2025, and you know 2026 is when that payday is really going to come because you're going to again free up time and bandwidth and all the systems you put in place. So it doesn't have to just be revenue growth when you think about what's gone well. It doesn't have to, you know, it could look like a lot of different things. So I hope this has helped. Again, I just wanted to share this. My my newsletter was not nearly this long-winded. It's much more Titan condensed. So below, I will give you the links to the following. The link to this particular newsletter issue, the link to the last dozen or so newsletter issues that I have put out there. Um, the link to sign up for the newsletter, of course. And what else did I say? Oh, yeah, the recap post of um ProCon 2025, which was formerly called WDP Con. We're now calling it ProCon, just rolls off the tongue a little easier. Sounds like a pros and cons list, but there we are. Uh so yeah, check all those resources out below. I hope you enjoyed this bonet bonus episode. If you did, let me know. I'm active on Instagram and LinkedIn mostly right now. So if you're on there, hit me up, Josh Hall Co. Let me know if you enjoyed this episode. Send me a DM. I will get back to you. I am on Facebook, but my DMs on Facebook are just a hot mess. Um, it's just best. If you're gonna do that, just go to joshhall.co and email me uh if you're not on Instagram or LinkedIn. So hit me up there. I would love to hear your thoughts. I'd love to hear from you on what's gone good. I will get back to you. If you're a Web Designer Pro member, of course, DM me. I would love to hear from you on this one. And I do hope this has helped. Again, I think we all need a good reminder, like I do, even like even if you're several years into your business or a decade in, I just want to share it. You're not alone if you feel like it's easy to dwell on what has not gone well. I think it's natural for us as driven entrepreneurs to we're problem solvers. We look at challenges. So it's easy to just dip into challenges, but man, is there ever a great time of year to look back and celebrate what's gone well? So I'm gonna be doing that with my wife here soon. We're gonna be going on our annual Christmas date. We will be cheerising with some delicious bubbly, I'm sure, and um celebrating on what's gone well, which uh I covered here. So I hope this helps you. Look at uh what's gone well, and I can't wait to hear from you. All right, my friends, see you on the next episode.