416 - Building a Family while Building a Business with Mark Szymanski

The landscape of website builders has evolved so much since I got started in 2010 and you know what else has evolved? Web designers. 

Building high-converting, well-designed professional websites is still at the core of most web designer studios and agencies but the landscape is evolving now to where, in my experience, clients are relying on web designers to help make sense of the scattered online world and to help them drive traffic, leads and customers to their website.

This means an identity shift for many web designers, who are now viewed as more of webmasters or web consultants/strategists. 

That’s exactly what we dive into in this chat I had with Mark Szymanksi. This convo was recorded for his show Fueled by Progress but we covered so much important ground, I wanted you to hear it as well.

Apart from the landscape of website builders changing, we get into:

• How web designer identities change as we progress
• Where AI is in web design now in 2026
• The changes in the DIY market
• My identity shifts from designer, to course creator, to community builder and coach
• Running an online business around family (as Mark is expecting his first kiddo soon)
• And more.

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned, along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/416

Transcript

Why Josh’s Coaching Hits Different

Josh Hall 0:00

I am 1,000 times more valuable and powerful as a coach in web design because not only do I have my experience, but I also have retained the kind of consultant role for in transit. So I get updates from Eric, my CEO. And at any point I can dip in and see like, hey, how are we doing maintenance plans? How are we doing support for the maintenance plans? What are the growth plans look like? What are you doing in marketing and web design? So I have like, you know, literal like behind the scenes on all of that. And I'm overseeing hundreds of web designers who are in different stages and have different models. And I perhaps know the fastest route to success for web designers now because I can pinpoint where someone's at, what their goals are, what model is going to work best for them, potentially even what tool set will work for them, and then help them get there with the support and coaching that they need. I need to put that on the sales page, by the way. Welcome to the web design business podcast with your host, Josh Hall, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love. Hello, my friend. It's great to have you here for this one, a special episode of the podcast because not only is it special because we have a repeat guest on the show, but it's because this was actually a conversation that was recorded for my guest's podcast. This is Mark Sismansky, who I view as somebody who is kind of on the leading edge of the technology side of web design, particularly AI, and has a really good finger on the pulse of what is happening today in web design. He uh has a podcast called Fueled by Progress. And this conversation you're about to hear was recorded for that. Mark was kind enough to allow me to share this with you as a listener of the Web Design Business Podcast, because we covered some gray ground in this one. Uh we do get into a little bit about what I've experienced and what how I've seen web design as an industry change for web designers, which is one of the main reasons I wanted you to hear this, because I think there are some very important things that are different now in 2026 than there were when I got started in 2010. But a lot of things have stayed the same. So we cover a lot of ground in regards to how the industry has changed, where things are at today for web designers. But because he has such a pulse on what's going on in technology, we get into AI and the role that that's playing right now in web design. And uh also Mark was really interested as a webpreneur himself in some of my journey, going from web designer to owner, to course creator, to community builder, to coach, to handsome model. So uh all those things and more are covered in this wide-ranging and super fun chat with Mark Cismanski. Show notes for this one are gonna be at joshhall.co slash 416. You can connect with Mark at marksismanski.co. And again, he's the host of the Fueled by Progress podcast. Uh, I'm not sure if this one's gonna be live by the time on his show, by the time this comes out, but definitely give that a listen and uh go give Mark a follow, tell him you heard him on the World Design Business Podcast. All right, here we go.

Mark Szymanski 3:20

Josh Hall, my brother, how are you doing? Good to see you. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Josh Hall 3:25

Yeah, thanks for having me and for uh being patient as my family is undergoing a new year's sickness, as many people are. So uh, but you know what I was I was actually thinking about? It's so freaking cool to be in a position, like I don't know what we would do with a nine to five. Yeah. If you know, like what do people do? Like I was just saying, you know, what we got like a belly bug going through the house, my wife is out for the count. Like, it would just be so hard. And with the special needs kiddo, um, I can't imagine, you know, being able to I don't know, like the you have no sense of freedom with a nine to five without leave. Um, so anyway, all that to say, I'm doing really good considering, you know, yeah, the sickness and thinking about the freedom that we have in this industry.

Mark Szymanski 4:09

100%. Yeah, it's uh I think about that all the time as well. Um got a lot of good chats or a lot of good topics here that uh that I think kind of like revolve around that because I'm gonna I'm gonna tee it up here and we can go a couple different ways with this. But I talk to a lot of, you know, in my time, my tenure here of like WordPress kind of like adjacent content and building my community there. Um we have some different directions that we're going that we can definitely talk about here uh on this chat as well. But I'm gonna tell you like one of the specific things, and I sent you a voice memo the other day, you know, when we're kind of starting to think about this, is I talk to a lot of younger people now, I feel like, or something. I feel like it's like 20-year-olds to like 35-year-olds. A lot of people are like, you know, they're entrepreneurs, they're freelancers, they're doing their thing. The thing that you already mentioned about this is how your family dynamic affects your business, right? And I think you you you positioned your chat with Jay Klaus recently, kind of around this a little bit. It was, you know, it was part of it. Obviously, we're talking business because that's what we're thinking about it a lot. But I think your your story there and your your dynamic is particularly interesting to me. And as we're talking about off camera, I have a son due in in May. So like I am rapidly thinking about this. So I think part of our chat today would be great for myself and for the listeners to kind of like get your wisdom on what it's been like to run a business while you were also like, you know, building a family, dealing with like, you know, New Year's sickness, like all these types of things. Because that's something that I know. Maybe it's a selfish question that because I'm gonna have to deal with it here pretty soon, but it's but it's something that I definitely would love to chat about. So um that's definitely that's definitely part of part of this. But um I s I say we table that just for a second.

Josh Hall 5:52

Okay.

Josh’s Origin Story

Mark Szymanski 5:53

And let's let's talk a little bit. So introduce you to the people if they don't somehow already know you, uh, because you've been in the you've been in the WordPress game, you've been in the coaching community game here for a very long time. I do want to, I I try to always do this with the guests that I have on because I like to really solidify like the foundation. So I think it's really important to understand where people have come from, like their kind of their origin and their journey. So I kind of know yours a little bit, but I would love for you to share just kind of like how you got started. Uh, I know specifically kind of like in WordPress, I guess. And then, you know, there's the Divi days, and now there's the coaching, the community, and mentorship, and everything like that. But like, where did you how did that all kind of stem? Where did you first get into? I know you had the agency. Was that kind of like the first glimpse into like digital marketing and like service and helping people? Was there a little bit before that? Where does it all really start at?

Josh Hall 6:41

It really started. I was a cabinet maker for a tour bus customizing shop and a metal drummer at the same time. And I got laid off from my cabinet making job in 2009, and I was kind of forced to figure something out. And I had always had an interest in design and I like drawing and stuff. So I got into initially graphic design in Photoshop. And because I was in the band, I started doing our artwork. And then um, that kind of led to me doing the artwork for my band. And then somebody asked us how much I would charge uh if I were to design their artwork, and it was like, wow, my light bulb moment was realizing I could make money doing something I enjoyed and a creative pursuit. So I mentioned that because that's when I started getting into design, and then very quickly was asked about website design help with the church I was helping out with and some other people, and that was circa 2010, so Dreamweaver days for those who uh were around in web design back then. So I got into web design, graphic design, and then I did that for a decade. I was a freelance web, a proud solopreneur, a freelance web designer until I could not do it all on my own anymore, and then started begrudgingly scaling my little studio uh and then loved it, and then built up a nice little multi-six figure web design studio with remote contractors and started a family. And then that kind of led to me meeting the folks at Elegant Themes uh who created Divi, which is the tool of choice that I use for WordPress. And then that's what kind of started my foray into teaching a little more and uh getting into a little bit of online marketing because I didn't do online marketing as a web design agency owner. I was completely in-person, networking group, meeting people in person. I I literally did like no online marketing whatsoever. So it was a new ball game to me once I started uh opening my horizon to writing for elegant themes and then uh dipping my toe into tutorials, which I'll stop there, but that's kind of the progression of how I went from web designer to agency owner to this new world in online marketing. Interesting.

Mark Szymanski 8:54

Okay, so I didn't even know about the cabinet maker stint. That's that's that's incredible. That's a great origin story.

Josh Hall 9:01

I did that through, yeah. I mean, well, technic technically, I started as a janitor because I I worked there during high school. After high school hours, I'd go in. So I was a janitor for this tour bus customizing shop, mainly because it was right next to my house. So I could walk there. And then I got my license and continued to work there. And after high school, I was like, yeah, I'll just I was really serious about the band in those days. So I was like, yeah, I'll go full-time cabinet making and um did a lot of work on custom vehicles and tour buses and stuff like that. Um, which it all translates, by the way, to what I do now as a designer and a creative, like detail-oriented work like cabinetry, and then don't even get me started on how the music world translates to creative business, because there are so many parallels to being in a band and knowing how to work with people and knowing how to balance creativity, also marketing and business. So it all translated really well to me becoming a web designer.

Mark Szymanski 9:57

These are why I asked these this is why I asked these questions because I always get these fascinating responses. Like you never you never would have guessed that. And but I get by but again, like you said, it when you step back and you look at it and you hear the story, it's like uh I can I can see it. It tracks, it makes sense. You just never know where life's gonna take you, but your your skills start to compound as you as you do whatever it is, and then you know you just find your way. So well, it's funny too, real quick on that, Mark.

Josh Hall 10:18

It's like I thought I was such a unique I thought I thought I was a unicorn going from the band to a graphic designer and a web designer. Come to find out, like I'd say probably honestly, 70% of the people that I've met over the past 16 years in web design have come from a similar background of some sort of like video or photography or some sort of background or musician, is some sort of creative background that lends itself to you know web design or design or any of these things.

Mark Szymanski 10:48

You know, I do want to kind of weave this this a little bit. I feel like there's again, there's there's so many topics, there's so many different things that we could kind of go to, but let's but you bring up a good point there, and I want to I want to double-click on it. It's a little it's a little abstract, but like you're bringing up a point where there's people that are photographers, videographers, even like musicians, and they found web design. And I think that we're in a very interesting time right now as we as we you know jump into 2026 here. You're saying that was 2010 to like 2020, roughly, agency years for you?

Josh Hall 11:22

Yeah, exactly. I sold my agency in 2020 to go full-time teaching online courses and building what is now my personal brand and Web Designer Pro, which is my community today.

Why Creatives Funnel Into Web Design

Mark Szymanski 11:33

Yeah. I definitely want to double, I definitely want to dive into that. And and but over those 10 years of of of the teens, like the 20 teens, right? That was an interesting time. And I was just getting into like kind of WordPress and web design at towards the end of that, because I was like 2017, 2018 is when I discovered it. I was like still working like a job like out of college there, and then I and then I started. So a different timeline than you. But during that time, like I've said this before in the WordPress community specifically, it's like you have a lot of people that were here kind of when it began, maybe in like the you know, 2005 range or what have you. And then, you know, obviously people like pick it up, you know, during this whole timeline of like that 15-year period from like 2005 to 2020. But with you specifically and like seeing those people, I mean, do you what do you do you think there's a reason? I'm trying to click on like that that part that you said about why do you think people found WordPress, or not necessarily WordPress, but like web design in general? Why I mean it was it was the hot the new hotness, so to speak, right? In a way, like during that time to a degree. Like, I mean, it was coming around right in in the early 2000s. That was when kind of WordPress started, and you could kind of actually do something. But then I think when you're when you're saying people are getting into web design, are you thinking like they're getting into like even Wix, Squarespace, and then obviously these other tools? Because it's becoming easier. Like that's that's how I think about the trajectory of technology, specifically in the web in the web industry. That's really where you know Shopify is blowing up and everything else is like coming to like a level of maturity or breaking out. Do you think a lot of that kind of attributed to people being like, I don't necessarily want to do just videography or photography anymore? Everybody wants websites, so now maybe that's an opportunity.

Josh Hall 13:17

I think that's part of it. I think it's also the the true fact that all roads lead to websites. Like if you do any online marketing, it's going to lead to your website. And it was very different back in circa 2009-2010 when you you could get by in some ways, maybe, with just having like a Facebook page as a business, but very quickly, especially I think with so many different avenues online to have different social media presence and and all these different places, like you have to have a home. I I think that's really what it is, Spark. It's truthfully what a website is is a digital home. And through those years, in particular, I mean, honestly, like back in 2009, 2010, there wasn't near as many social media platforms as there are today. The internet wasn't as scattered as it is today. So as it started to expand and get bigger and bigger and more disjointed, you needed to have some sort of, yeah, like a hub, like a home. So I think that's truthfully like the core, the root reason as to why so many things led to web design and why subsequently a lot of people, whether they wanted to or not, got into web design, which that was my case. I didn't get into web design because I was like, ooh, I really like design. I think I'm gonna be a web designer. I got into it because so many people are like, thanks for helping me with this graphic design piece. Do you do websites? Do you do websites? Do you do websites? Do you do websites? So I think that was, you know, my story was similar to a lot of other creatives, whether it's a music background, photography, videography, where you work with somebody, they like working with you, there's trust, there's likability there. So naturally they're gonna be like, well, what else do you do? Do you do my can you help me with my website? I think that's truthfully what was going on in those years. And it is still true today.

Mark Szymanski 15:08

Do you think that do you think that it is fully so I that was kind of like my my thought too? Like I was a little late to the party, so to speak, just based on like my trajectory with my you know, my age. I was, you know, coming out of college in 2018. I was like, okay, I like building websites. I think that is kind of a cool thing. I wasn't really the design background necessarily, but I wanted like I was my first thing was like I wanted a place for me. Like I wanted my personal brand. I wanted to kind of like tell people about my like what I'm doing and things like that. And that's kind of the reason. Not really a blog, but ultimately just kind of place to share information. And I think that the I've that idea of your website being your kind of like your your digital hub or your digital home has always resonated with me. And I'm wondering now, do you see? I'm gonna jump ahead for a second, do you see, because you're like at the you're on the pulse of this a little bit because you deal with a lot of, and we're gonna dive into this more, but like you deal with a lot of different people that literally, you know, kind of they're in your community, they rely on you for coaching, they rely on you for insight of like everything where everything's going. Do you feel that anything has changed or is on the precipice of changing as far as like general societal and user behavior on how we're is a huge loaded question, I know, but like where like where things are headed here? Because I've just I've seen this, you know, I've made some personal decisions to kind of like pivot slightly, but like I was really burning to ask you this question because like is there anything that you're kind of dipping your toes in or thinking about where the you feel like the actual internet and the world is headed with how how vastly it has changed in even the last five years since you've got out of you know the agency world?

Tools Shifted The Industry

Josh Hall 16:54

Well, in in relation to websites, would you say, Mark? Because we're gonna start there. I mean, here's how here as I'm thinking about this and really reflecting on the past 15 years in particular. So let's just go, we'll save like 2009-ish. I love that you asked this question because it just made me visualize why so many people got into web design between 2009-10 to 2015-16. And I think it's because prior to that, you had to be a developer to make a website. You just had to, even if you're even Dreamweaver or front page of some of the other builders, you you had to know HTML and CSS pretty good to make it legitimate. So you had to be a developer. And that was a very small margin of people who wanted to do that and had the skill sets to do that. With the rise of WordPress, other CMSs like Joomla and Drupal, there was kind of the bridge between becoming more visual. And then boom, you got Divi, you got Elementor, you got other visual builders that rocked the world back in 2013, 14, 15, which allowed people like myself who were more visually minded to be a web designer, with not being developer first. And um, sorry, Kevin Gary, if he's watching this, because I know it's gonna make him this, you know, real in his skin. But that's just the reality of the industry. It was like it was like visual designer people got in, got into web designer and had the tool. So the web design industry shifted significantly through those years because of that. And then inevitably, that brought in the DIY crowd, which completely just screwed everything up because DIYers are I mean, you basically you got developers, you got designers, and then you know, heaven forbid you got DIYers, which are just you could give them the perfect template, you could give them the perfect AI tool today, and they will still completely ruin a website and just destroy it. So that was what was interesting about the DIY, and I'm I'm saying all this because I think that leads us to today, where you've got developer, designer, DIYers. Now it's like what I'm seeing is a lot of web design companies are actually moving away from DIYers. They're they're trying to create a like hands-off tool, like an AI tool or a builder that will just let a DIY person, you know, quote unquote set something up. And for web designers and agency owners, SEOers, I think where things are right now in web design is we're kind of at a mix of like all of it, honestly. But the added thing in there that I see in the horizon is a little more I'll say marketing, but it's kind of more like business consultant. Um, I'm for a lot of my members of Web Designer Pro, which is the coaching community that I run and I founded, most of the members who are top performing and really killing it, they are viewed as more of like a digital marketer, consultant for their clients. And websites are obviously the main thing they're doing, but they also may be doing SEO plans or growth plans or maintenance plans at scale. Um, if they have a six figure business. And so I think that's where things are are now and where they're headed is as a web designer, learn web design, feel good with your tool stack, train your clients, empower them, not necessarily to be a DIYer, but you know, if they want some semblance of access, there's probably some you know gap in between there. And then it's really a matter of like, how can you help your clients with the ever-evolving scatteredness of online come to their website and bring all that together? I I don't know if that answers the question, Mark, but that's as I'm like trying to visualize the past 15 years, that's kind of where I've personally seen things go and evolve from.

From Web Designer To Strategist

Mark Szymanski 20:41

Well, I think it answers it perfectly, especially from your perspective. Because again, that's the reason that, like I said earlier, I talk to people now from all different kind of like varying levels of experience and and background. And, you know, again, your your track record is literally that you you transitioned into the space, you built a successful agency over a decade, and then you gra well, I'll call graduated, but you you know pivoted again. I mean, like you sold an agency and you're like, okay, well, now I have all this knowledge, and now I'm gonna essentially leverage the knowledge and sell that either, you know, via well, and I want to talk about that specifically because that's somewhere where I'm headed now, too. And that that that that trajectory I've seen it in different patterns in different industries where it's like you build something and then you can teach it, and you can teach it with not just not just like assumed authority, but also like backed uh experience and achievement, so to speak, right? Because you you did it and then you could do that. So no, it makes sense, and I mean the re again, the reason I asked that question is because you have like again 15 years of of experience in this now, and you have been your your finger has been on the pulse of it. So you can like everything you said there, maybe somebody has a different perspective, but it's literally objectively pretty close to the the actual truth. So I appreciate that.

Josh Hall 22:00

Just to put a to put a cap on that that out of like the past 15 years, the reason I mention where things are now in the evolution is because back in 2010 to 15 when I was coming up, you could just be a web designer and be fine. Like, you know, like clients, they would ask me if I helped out with social media, but I'd be like, no, I don't do that. And of course they would go elsewhere for more uh advanced SEO or marketing. But now I think it's definitely the harsh reality for web designers is it is more than just building a website, um, which has been the case for a long time. I mean, even when I was, you know, back in like 2015, I partnered with an SEO guy and we started doing SEO, like advanced SEO ongoing plans. That was my growth plan, quote unquote, back in those days. So, I mean, things truthfully haven't changed like that much from what you could do. It's just now I think clients especially are viewing web designers as truly like a webmaster. You're kind of like, you're kind of in between being a webmaster, like knowing all the technical development stuff, design stuff, and a web marketer to some extent. Um, and I don't want that to be overwhelming, but I think if you're serious about you know having a web designer title, um, you're you really got to get ready and prepared for being a web strategist, you know, web marketer. Um, luckily you don't need to go too far into the technical side of things now, and you can always partner up with people to handle that. Like if you don't want to do DNS and email and domain stuff, you don't have to. You can absolutely hire that out, especially if you join my community Web Designer Pro, because that's like what it's there for. It's like you focus on your lanes, you can find partners to fill the fill the gaps that you don't want to do.

Courses, Recurring Revenue, And Divi

Mark Szymanski 23:35

So I I wanna, I wanna, I want us to dive into that. And I think probably a good way to do that is to dive into a little bit of the community stuff because I want to hear about your experience so far with this because I am right on the precipice. I probably could have done this potentially earlier, just based on my like skill set, but I haven't I haven't done it for whatever reason, like limiting beliefs or what have you. So I want to dive into the community side and we'll kind of we'll kind of blend this conversation a little bit. I want to talk to you about your actual experience running community coaching. And I kind of have like a mental framework that I could kind of interpret or and you can describe like of what you have going on now with under the personal brand and under Web Designer Pro and everything. And then I also want to uh kind of come back to a little bit of that about we'll we'll we'll tie it specifically to the people that you're talking to all the time, though, right? Like those people in the community, like how you're steering them moving forward, like the insights now versus maybe a few years ago, that type of thing. So with that lay of the land here, sounds like again, 2010, or I'm sorry, 2010 to 2020, you were running the agency, sold the agency, moved into this new thing. So let's maybe start right there. What was that transition actually like? Did you have the idea that you were gonna go this route? I think I remember you telling me one time you like stayed on a little bit as an advisor. What was the what was that what was that transition like from agency owner to more content creator?

Josh Hall 25:03

I know you had been doing that, but also just like everything that you're started as a course creator essentially, um because in 2016 I found out that the content manager of Elegant Themes, the creators of Divi, lived in Columbus. So I took him out for coffee, just talk shop. I had absolutely no um hidden agenda when I met with him. I just was I have always been truthfully a community builder at heart, and I think that's really important. Like keep that in the back of your mind when we get into the community stuff because that is a deal breaker. If you're not a community builder at heart, do not start a community.

Mark Szymanski 25:39

So just keep that in mind because as I can you yeah, can you can you elaborate specifically on what you mean by a community builder? Like what are like it makes sense to me, but like what do you actually like doing?

Selling The Agency And Going All In

Josh Hall 25:49

I like connecting with people, I like pairing people up, I like organizing friends, and I I just like I I think back, and I did this during the band days, I did this in high school. I'd be like, oh, you would like this guy or this guy. Like you guys should you I just I've always liked being a bit of a I don't know, I don't want to say matchmaker, but I I do like building community, but a community of people in some extent. And even in my band, like I was I was not the founder, I was kind of the second guy in, and I helped bring in like the other members and connected a lot of people, and that was a community-building experience being in the band as well. So, all that to say, I've always enjoyed that. Even when I started being a web designer, I founded a local networking group that became like the 50% of my leads came from my networking group, which I helped found. So I have always been a community builder at heart. So naturally, like I got to a point where I also really enjoy the build teach or learn uh build teach model. So you learn something, you teach it, and or you learn something, you you build it, and then you teach it. Um, so when I started really becoming pretty successful with my web design business, and I met Nathan, the content manager of Elegant Themes at the time, I just let him know what I was up to. And he said, dude, would you like to contribute to our blog at Elegant Themes? It was huge at the time. Still is big today, but really, really big back then. I was like, absolutely. So essentially, they asked if I would be open to sharing what I was learning about running a six-figure Divi business, and I did on the Elegant Themes blog. And then I got a ton of notoriety in that specific community in WordPress and Divi. And so that planted the seed for me to be like, I really enjoy teaching, and I love, I love helping people build their business and see this. So um initially, my thought was to be like a child theme creator and sell templates for Divi and do very web design specific stuff. But then I realized so many people were asking me for like courses about the different tools I was using and everything. So that's what kind of planted the seed for me to try out courses. So I launched my first course in 2018, which was my website maintenance plan course, because I had built up recurring revenue with my maintenance plan, huge part of my business. It's also what carried us through a 56-day NICU experience when we had our first daughter, my special needs kiddo. And um, I've been very public about this. That yeah, like literally when we had her in the April of 2018, I don't know what we would have done if we didn't have our maintenance plan, because that was our guaranteed recurring revenue through those two months of living at the hospital, basically. So when I came out of that, I was like, you know what? I could do a Divi course, but I was like, I'm just so passionate about building recurring revenue. So I did the maintenance plan course, and that took off for me. And it we had over 80 students in the first round. I made like $10,000, and that opened my mind up to be like, oh my gosh, let's do this again. I love this. I'm teaching. And I was also still running my agency at this time. So it started off as a passion project, honestly, Mark. It was like, let me dip my toe into these waters. I had started scaling my agency a little bit in the way of like I wasn't doing all the work at that point. I had just started hiring out a little design help and development help. So I had a little more free time to be able to build this passion project up under joshhall.co and start to do courses. And then once I'm an all-in guy. So once I started doing courses, I'm like, I'm all in. And I just I had this idea of like a suite of courses that Josh from 10 years ago needed to know to get to a six-figure range. And that's actually still the core curriculum that I have today, which is a mix of design, SEO, DNS, and business side, which is business, recurring revenue, and scaling. Um, and so I started building those courses out, and then yeah, that got to a point where I was making much more in courses than I was in my design business. And I got to that point in 2020 where I was like, I could try to get myself out of all the additional roles I'm fulfilling in my agency, but I just knew how much time that would take. And I'm such a like one business at a time kind of guy that I was like, I think I just I want to just go all in on courses. This was also in 2020 when COVID hit, and everyone was going online. I mean, my course sales went zoop as soon as COVID hit because there was so much demand for people wanting to learn online business. So I just went all in on that. And I actually sold In Transit to one of my students uh who was killing it, and uh just got comfortable with him, and then I knew he was very entrepreneurial and I felt comfortable. And so the say the sale of In Transit Studios, my agency, was not sexy by any means. It was actually still going on, it's over a 10-year period. Um, I basically am a consultant for them, and I get paid quarterly based off of the percentage that we agreed to. Um, so there's a certain mark that all hit, and if we hit it before 10 years, awesome. Um, we should. So that's kind of way that way that worked. And then I went full in on courses, and then um shortly after that, community.

Mark Szymanski 30:56

Nice. Okay. All right. Appreciate that transition context there, because that's I don't know. I don't know how many people. I mean, I mean, you probably have better data on this than me. I don't know how many people necessarily are gonna have to sell their agency and make a deal like that in their lifetime. I mean, maybe some will, maybe some won't, hopefully more do than than don't, obviously, right? I mean, that they they they've built that up and they can move on to the next piece of of what it is. I think one question that always comes to mind here is and maybe again you can kind of see this potentially from all the people that you've interacted with, you've taught, you've, you know, and and just in in the space in general. Do you feel like what do you feel like is I think there's a lot of people out there, and I'm again partially this partially is from personal experience, people out there that they can build and they have a skill and they've built their business around a certain skill, like again, web design or what have you, and they're making money selling that as a service. However, I imagine you've run across some people that are actually probably better at educate learning. Uh yours is yours. I found I was laughing because yours was learn, build, and teach. Mine is like learn, try, and share. So it's like, it's like there's probably people that are like better at that, so to speak, than they are at like running a business and like more passionate about it than trying to go find leads to actually do that skill. Have you found it? Seems like maybe I'm not saying that I'm not putting you in that camp, but it sounds like that is something that you're kind of that's your main passion now and something that has worked well for you. What is there any like is there any self-awareness that you feel like you had to have around that period that was like, you know what, I don't maybe maybe it was just like, oh, this is just making more money, so to speak, or something like that. But like, is that is would you say it's more of your passion to build these communities, teach and and everything, than it is to actually go run an agency? Like money aside, necessarily, obviously money's important, but like let's say where they're making the same amount of money and we're gonna make the same amount of money forever. Would you still like doing what you're doing now more than you liked doing the agency work?

Josh Hall 33:11

Yes, and and that's because I like teaching and community building more than doing service work. Um, and this is a really important distinction. I'm glad you brought this up, Mark, because I think there's actually a lot of people that I've seen try to build a community and try to do online courses when in actuality they would prefer to just do services or build products. And I the self-awareness thing that you hit on that is crucial. And this is why I started this kind of you know, this journey with my trajectory with the thought and the reminder that I am a community builder at heart. So I love what I do now more than anything. And important to note too, I was not burned out as uh a web designer and an agency owner. I was kind of in the beginning of scaling when I started courses. So I could have continued to do that for another 10 years at least and been really content and happy. Like I really enjoyed, I still miss some of my clients every once in a while. I miss doing a sales meeting, I miss going to networking events, and I miss like a really good client. And uh, you know, really like I do miss that sometimes. But because I'm wired the way I am, I just absolutely love teaching. And and and this actually, I skipped over this, but I had started when I when I just started kind of getting to six figures in my agency, I there was a local high school that had a mentor program for like tech students. And I would go in maybe once a quarter and sit with a couple of students and share about my design business. And it was like a mentor program. And most of them were in interested in like game design, but a few of them were fascinated by what I was up to. And they were like, You build websites and you make like a hundred thousand. And I was like, Yeah. And they were like, and you work from home? I'm like, Yeah, it is pretty freaking awesome. You're right. And I loved teaching those students who were like all about it and soaking up everything I had to say. So that was actually what planted the seed even more was like, man, it's cool to do this like in person on a little scale of two people. What if I were to do this, you know, on a much bigger scale? Um, so that's really important because I do think a lot of people for me, market was not uh about the the higher earning potential. I mean, that was a nice factor to it for sure, but the reality is a lot of people, I think, chase money and they're doing work that they are just not aligned and self-aware to do sustainably for the long term. So for me, it was it was an easy transition to go full-time into teaching and then subsequently community building because that's truthfully what I love to do more than anything. I enjoyed the services, I enjoyed working with clients, I enjoyed helping them build their business, but I definitely like helping, you know, helping Josh of 10 years ago way more. Yeah.

Mark Szymanski 35:58

Definitely good insight there. Would you say that most of the people that you you now teach that are in your communities in your programs, I do want you to lay that out a little bit more too, because I'm interested to see like what your full I know you have, I don't know if you have multiple circles or what the what the situation is there, but I know you have like coaching, you have community, you have courses. I've seen it all. It's it's uh I was looking very deeply. I was doing some deep research on the uh the circle discover. I think you probably submitted it. It's it's all I saw, I saw your face in there multiple times. Um, but uh I do you think that most of the people that you're teaching now, like obviously they're trying to scale their business. Do you see anything with them when you're talking to them day to day where is it a lot of is it a lot of people that are definitely like still in the trenches, they're trying to scale? Or can you have you developed this random offside off the off the cuff question? Do you have an eye now to see, oh man, maybe this person's gonna break out a little bit more as like an educator at some point rather than just a service?

Building Community On Purpose

Josh Hall 37:00

I can tell almost immediately who is what I call a webpreneur, which is like, you're gonna be I I actually um Alexia, who's one of our rock star web designer pro members, she's actually on retainer with me now as a brand strategist and designer. Um, she's she's in pro and she is scale her business very quickly and growing it like wildfire, unsurprisingly. And I told her, because she was like, I actually think I could get into like community building one day. And I'm like, oh yeah, I'm not surprised at all. I could tell immediately the way she talked and the way she connected inside of Pro. Like, there are just people who are a good fit to be uh more so than just a service provider. Um, and I should say, neither one is wrong or right or better than the other. And they each come with pros and cons. Like, there are some times where I'm like, sometimes I do wish I was just a service provider and just worked for clients that could just turn off my brain and just call it a day. But um, God bless the people who are wired like that because you're not like that. Uh you know, like there are people that it's just it's not better or worse, it's just different. Um, so I can tell very quickly, yeah, whether someone is gonna be destined for more than just being a web designer, web strategist. Uh, you know, they're they're probably gonna be some sort of community builder in their own right or or mentor or something outside of just being an agency owner or studio owner.

Mark Szymanski 38:24

Yeah, it's definitely something that I have uh I've kind of struggled with to kind of like self-identify myself. I think that I appreciate you saying that because like I think that that's kind of much more of the track that I'm headed on. But that's those have been the things that I've been thinking about heavily and trying to move towards. Again, whether it's like time, you know, time in the trenches or limiting beliefs or whatever. Like that, I I think that it's cool that you're able to, again, with the people that you work with on a day-to-day, you're able to kind of like spot that out. Because, you know, I feel like sometimes people just kind of like even need that to just be like, yeah, you know, you you probably like you're good at things, but like you're probably like actually better at this. And maybe if you just have a little bit more self-reflection, self-awareness, you probably realize that like you could actually scale this other thing probably way more if you just kind of leaned into it, just because, again, not because it's right or wrong, right or wrong objectively, it's just right for you. It's more right for you than the other one.

Josh Hall 39:23

It's a biggie too, because we with people who are multi-passioned, like we would, you know, like we like to do a lot of different things at once, or we're like, oh, like in the case of Alexia, I know she would love to build a community today, but I've advised her and she knows and she's self aware about the fact that like she has to build her business up and make it stable before jumping into a passion project. Because I think the challenge that folks like you, folks like me, and other people who have all these like different I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to do that, I want to do that. You can't build anything steadily. Like you can't stabilize any of those if you're doing them all at once. Like you have to build a strong foundation with one. You have to, you know, have like one strong vine to hold on to before you start grabbing other vines. Otherwise, you're just gonna go falling down. So, you know, for me, as I look back, I'm glad that I stuck to like building my web design business for seven, eight years to get it to scale up a little bit and then finally sold it at 10 years. And the same is true now. Like I started my course creator business, got that to a multi-six figure level, then added the community component, and then eventually wrapped it all into what we have now in Web Designer Pro, which is everything that I do, which is a little uh a little pro tip for anyone who has a lot of different passions is like if you can get it all under one umbrella, it's pretty cool because now I can do courses, community, coaching, podcasting, YouTube, sponsorships, all under technically Web Designer Pro. So I've kind of found a nice little sweet spot with like scratching the itch of a bunch of other entrepreneurial endeavors to keep it under Web Designer Pro. Now, I don't want to take us too far ahead, but like right now I'm getting hit up for so much community building requestions. And um, I could absolutely start like a community builder side of the business, and that's not gonna go in Web Designer Pro. But I also am self-aware and know have done this long enough to know that I'm not ready to like start a whole new passion project right now because I'm still solidifying pro even more and more. I also have three young kids, one with special needs, and a wife that I don't want to take much time away from. And I've struck a really nice lifestyle freedom business here. So um that's the challenge, just heads up for anybody who gets to this point where it's like you absolutely could start another passion project, but I know that like that's just gonna add, you know, 20 hours more a week, probably that I'm gonna pull away from my family and maybe pull emphasis and focus away from pro, which I'm I can't do at this point. So I forget, I think I took us off on a tangent, but um those are some things I've learned as like a multi-passionate, interested entrepreneur. Because, you know, we could go like you, Mark, you could build an agency, you could be a designer, you could be a mentor, you could do coaching, you could do you're doing your podcasting, you're doing YouTube, like you could do all these different things that could be their own separate businesses, potentially. Um, so I've had to reel that in and tried to keep it under one umbrella-ish. Uh yeah.

Mark Szymanski 42:28

I'm right there with you, man. I I I totally hear what you're saying. I I you you said something really interesting there where you were like, it's like in it's like it's like multi-layered inception. It's like you become a you could become like some people probably like they become a designer, maybe they work for somebody, and then they start their own business, like freelancing or doing their own thing. I know that necessarily wasn't exactly your trajectory, but then then like you're in the agency realm, right? For you for 10 years. And then you're like, okay, now I'm gonna teach people about what I what I taught them in my last cycle, which was building websites and building a business. Now it looks like you could eventually pivot again to it's just getting more and more inceptioning. Now you're teaching people about how to build communities, and maybe it's even teaching people how to build web design communities. It's just it's just amazing. But like, I mean, the thing is like But it's so hard because I have to stop.

Courses To Membership: The Hard Pivot

Josh Hall 43:14

I have to stop myself. Like, oh for sure. I mean, like, I bought community king.com just to have it. I literally bought that, I own that domain. I was like, I wonder if because somebody called me, they're like, You're like the community king. And I was like, ooh, I wonder if that's available. And it was. So I literally have that domain, and I don't know if I'm gonna use that, but um like I bought it just just in case because like I would love, I would love, love, love to truth, because I like to share what I'm doing right now, just like you. Um, and yeah, I'd love to do that, but I just I know like that's gonna derail me or take me away from my family, and I just I'm not at a place to do that right now. Um real quick, just side note, you asked about like the signs of somebody who's destined for more than just being a service provider. A lot of it is the openness to share, by the way. If you're somebody who feels comfortable sharing, and it doesn't need mean you like need to share every you know, revenue number, um, but if if you share, if you often share wins and successes and stories and what you're doing and what's working, then it's probably safe to say you're gonna do more than just be a service provider.

Mark Szymanski 44:19

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, the whole thing, yeah. I mean, the um the the inception ish part of it is just it's just funny. But it but it's not, you know, I'm I'm making a joke because it's because it is funny when you step back and you look at it, but ultimately it's not really that surprising. It's like I was I was stuck in this for a while. And I think a lot of other people probably are stuck in it too, is that you think that you start a web design business or you start any sort of business, and you think just naturally, I think as humans, I'm gonna be doing this for the rest of my life, just because you're in the present and you're just thinking about that. It's like, well, no, you don't have to plan the rest of your life, but don't don't feel trapped that you have to do it for the rest of your life either, because you're probably gonna evolve. I honestly feel like, again, I don't want to make this about me, but I I only have my personal experience to to pull from, like, you know, extremely, you know, um, you know, uh, extremely like specifically. And it's like, I I started it and I, you know, I did projects and I, you know, I got to a stable, like recurring revenue type style income because I never took any projects that I didn't have the the website care plan for and stuff. So I like thought immediately it's okay, we need some recurring revenue, we need that, the MRR. And then at a certain point, I was like, literally, the reason I started making YouTube videos was because I was watching other people, I was learning from them. And then I started to listen to them a little bit more. I was like, you know what, I actually don't necessarily agree with everything they're saying. I've found, not like I could totally disagree, but it's like, I think there's actually different ways to do things that I've found on my own in my agency, on my client projects, that I would also like to share. You know, I think that was if you go back and you look at the trajectory of the YouTube channels, probably right around the time I was just talking about, I was learning more. And then naturally I get curious about, oh, is there more things that I can bring to this conversation publicly? And, you know, again, I use myself as the example, but I think if other people are like that and they find themselves doing that, that is actually like a really big sign, like you're saying, that there's probably you're probably not meant to just stay directly in the trenches of doing it. Again, no problem if you want to stay there. But if you're naturally inclined to like learn, try and share, learn, build and teach, like whatever it is, then you're probably, you're probably your next evolution is probably gonna be a little bit removed from the actual service and a little bit more in like a role where you're you're higher up, you're thinking, you're strategizing, you're either delegating it to other people, potentially AI in the future, et cetera, whatever, and you're and you're telling people how to do that more than just like taking in requests and then doing them for clients or for whoever.

Josh Hall 46:48

For sure, for sure. Because yeah, I mean, there's a lot to that, just because if you're somebody who is entrepreneurial, you're gonna want to do other stuff. And what I would say is like step one is to just build a secure, stable business up. And you're gonna have to shelve your entrepreneurial, ah, I want to do this and this and this feelings. You just have to, you have to delayed gratification, wait for it. Like you you have to earn, you almost have to earn the ability to like do a bunch of different things. You have to make your main business stable. You have to, whatever's gonna fill the bank account, you have to focus on that. And in most cases, it's it's service-based business is the easiest way to get to the first level of that. Doesn't mean you're probably gonna be like multi-six figure wealthy yet, but you definitely need to have a like stable foundation. So build a business and then scale it to the point where you can basically have the time and freedom to experiment and to build passion projects and open up different wings of the business or whatever you want to do. Because I think what is different with entrepreneurs from most people is the question, what do you want to be when you grow up does not apply to us. It is a bullshit question from elementary that you know, like if you want like and what's interesting is like a generation above us, Mark, like I'll still put you in, you know, my age group, I'm 39 now. But it was all it was our parents' generation to where like pretty much everyone had the same job forever until they retired. That was it. That is not the case anymore. And even outside of online entrepreneurship, people shift and change jobs quite a bit. But if you're a firefighter, it's unlikely you're not gonna be a firefighter, or you're gonna do that and maybe have a side business one day. Like you're probably gonna do that most of your time. But an online business, you are a multifaceted person. Um, even as a service provider, as a web designer, you're it's gonna evolve just like we talked about from the outset. You're kind of probably gonna be more of a digital strategist at some point. So I think that's really important to be prepared for and just to basically know when to like hold your passion back because you have got to fill your bank account and you have to have a stable business before you go over here and over here and over here and over here. So yeah, as I'm thinking about it, I mean that's just like it's so crucial for entrepreneurs who have a lot of different passions and a lot of different ways they want to go is to uh embrace delayed gratification. Uh, and then you get to a point where like I built my course business to six figures really quickly because I had built up a six-figure business and I learned a lot over eight years before I started doing courses. So the good news is like once you learn a lot of this stuff, you'll get to a point where you can build pretty quickly and make six-figure wings of your business. Like we talked about leading up to this in DM. You listen to my sponsorship chat with Justin, and I told him, I'm like, I'm really not interested in sponsorships unless it's six figures because I know that's gonna pull me away from you know multi-six-figure wings of my business. So um, you know, you get to the point where it's like, okay, you can basically do passion projects that are successful at a level that make it worth it once you have a stable business behind you.

Coaching Style And Member Wins

Mark Szymanski 50:10

Yeah, that all makes sense. Yeah. I think I think I want to go back here for a second. So we've talked a lot about the the the reality of like, you know, people in these, in the community, people that you've dealt with, et cetera. We were talking a little bit about how you made that transition, and I think you've kind of said it, but more specifically, you started with the web maintenance course, jumped right out of the gate, was awesome. Did you start how tell me the trajectory from 2010 to now? Did you go, did it sounds like I'm I could be wrong. You had courses, you didn't have community at first.

Josh Hall 50:48

Right.

Mark Szymanski 50:49

There's there's like this whole thing, okay. So now this is this is like again a selfish question, but also for people out there that are kind of like us that want to move into this realm or have or you know, potentially like eyeing it at some point, right? Talk to those people directly about the trajectory here because it's it's now a whole new frontier of business. I've learned this over the last month with uh just launching my first course yesterday on circle. But like there's like multiple different like actual pieces to this. We can go deeper into the sales stuff in a second, but ultimately, I feel like there's good ways to do it, bad ways to do it, and then just like so-so or whatever. It's it feels like you should not actually just launch a community randomly out of the blue with no following or anything like that, because nobody's gonna come to that. There's no inherent value to a community, even though a lot of the AI guys that I follow in the past year would tell you that. You need to have like some sort of value there, regardless of what industry you're in. You need to have like the courses there and then potentially turn that into a membership. I'm just interested in what your trajectory was. I imagine you sold that first course at like a dollar figure, like maybe a lifetime access or something. Yeah, yeah. And then you and then you moved into more courses, and then at some point maybe you you you bundled them all and put the community aspect, or that community aspect is separate. And then I know probably you layered on coaching. So, what was that whole thing like?

Staying Current Without Client Work

Josh Hall 52:05

So the first course, yeah, what it was 297 lifetime access. Second course was what my Divi CSS course, 297 lifetime access. Important thing is I already had my YouTube channel. I was already blogging for elegant themes, I had already started a Divi Facebook group at that point too. That's another thing I completely left out. I had started what is still today the second largest Divi Facebook group, which was my first foray, you know, like building an online community. So I had started, you know, I had authority, I had an audience, so it made it easier for me to grow my courses. And then, yeah, like I mentioned, I was like, you know what? I really enjoying courses. What I needed to know 10 years ago was like these certain areas. I needed to have a process, I needed the basic of design, SEO, basics of DNS, and then I needed to learn how to build business, get clients, build recurring revenue. So I had this idea for nine courses. It was my initial suite of courses. So I just chipped away at building those between 2018, 19, and 20. And basically, like every quarter or so, I would have a course come out and it was all lifetime access. And then once 2020 hit, and I really wanted to take that more seriously and take it to the next level. I knew even before I sold my agency that I wanted to have another recurring revenue stream and also have some semblance of I didn't know what it was. It was a very muddy idea of like community or coaching or something. Because I had a lot of students who were in all the courses, and some of them would give me updates, and I'm like, oh my gosh, my courses are like changing people's lives. But I didn't know that unless I prompted them to reach out or like basically the problem with just doing courses is you, unless you're getting testimonials and really serious about getting research from them and and you know, following up with them, you just don't know what impact you're making. So when I went full time with it, I mean, I I was I started what is now Web Designer Pro three months after I sold my agency. It was immediate into a coaching community, which at that point I made that available. It was initially called the Web Design Club. And I basically said, I'm gonna create a coaching community. And I initially offered it to all my students. It was just to my students at first. I was like, you know, you got my courses. If you want to go further, if you want to meet other students and go to the next level and get coaching with me, I have this thing called the Web Design Club. It launched in the fall of 2020. So at that point, my courses were separate, they were one-time access, like lifetime access over at joshhall.co. And then I started what was initially called the Web Design Club on Circle. And then that just became everything. I just I absolutely loved being a community builder. And then this was my first time into like coaching because I had people DMing me, members who were getting coaching with me. We were doing weekly coaching calls, and then I realized I actually have a pretty good knack for coaching just because I'm seeing what's working. I know my experience. Um, I think as a coach now, because I'm a lifestyle guy, it's I'm not your typical coach, quite honestly. Like most coaches are like your your realtor like bropreneurs who are just from a different world that I came from. I'm a very chill, gonna shoot it straight to you, gonna try to make you laugh. Probably we're gonna have a good time, kind of coach. Um, semi-unprofessional most of the time. So, like our coaching calls are notoriously, like I can't I wouldn't say that probably publicly. Um, so so I but I but I attracted people who liked having a lifestyle, fun web design business. So I really, really enjoyed that. And then uh the for two years I had coaching and community on the side, built that up slowly while selling my courses one off. And then when Circle came out with the LMS feature and could have courses inside of Circle, immediately, I think I put my courses in there like two weeks after they launched that feature. So it wasn't even out of beta. And I was like, let's do it. We're going all in. Moved all my courses over to Circle. You could still purchase them on JoshHall.co if you just wanted lifetime access for a while. But pretty quickly I realized, okay, the people who are getting the results, uh, they have my courses. They've at least gone through the core curriculum and know my style and know what I recommend. They're engaging the community and they're getting coaching with me. It was the power of courses, community coaching. Uh, and that's what built Web Designer Pro. And then and then eventually, when I added the courses, um, I didn't love the name Web Design Club. It was kind of a filler name. So I forget how I don't even remember how I came up with Web Designer Pro. Oh, it was because I was gonna call it Pro Josh Hall Co. But then I was like, that how am I gonna say that? That's weird. Like, GoPro, do you wanna be a Josh Hall Pro? It just sounded weird. And then I was like, who do I help web designers? Web Designer Pro. I was like, well, surely that has to be taken. And no, it well, the domain was $5,000, which I did purchase. I did invest in it, but I got it. I got WebdesignerPro.com. The trademark just went through last year officially, so boom, Web Designer Pro it was. So that was kind of the transition from being course uh and then going membership. Now I've been really public and open about this. It was a son of a bitch of a transition in 23 because I essentially went from selling a lot of one-off courses to going membership model, which is great, but memberships are MRR, monthly recurring revenue, and it is a slow and steady up and to the right, ideally, which meant I went from selling like a lot of one-off courses and the bundle of all my courses to slow and steady up and to the right, which is great now. Uh, I just posted recently that 2025 was my best year today. You can see the trajectory, but it was very precarious in 23 because I my main wing of revenue at that point essentially went to almost nothing when I moved from course sales to membership. So I probably would have done a few things differently in that window, but um it worked out. It worked out.

Mark Szymanski 58:11

So interesting. So you were selling you were selling lifetime access to them at first, and then I imagine when you moved, you gave those people still like access to whatever they had, but then ultimately anything new or any completely new people they had to generally they had to purchase just into the membership.

Josh Hall 58:29

Yeah, yeah. To actually to this day, I still have the original versions of all those courses on JoshHall.co using Learn Dash. So like anybody who got lifetime access can have that. This year I plan to completely shut that all off, but I'll probably just make those courses available as a download. That way, if there's any stragglers who are still over there, they can download you know the videos and stuff. Um but yeah, then it moved from lifetime access to to the membership. And it went pretty dang well, all considered. There were some people who were like, oh, I you know, got lifetime access to the course, and I wanted to have because I had a student center at that time as well, just to answer questions. Um, and there were some people that were a little upset by that, but they still had access to the course, lifetime access. And uh overall, like overwhelmingly, I'd say like 99.9%, it went awesome, moving from courses to membership. And it just made sense too, because it was working for people.

Mark Szymanski 59:24

Yeah. I think in in that realm, I'm dipping my toes in. I have a lot of secondhand experience, but now I'm dipping into first hand experience. And it's gone well so far. But like I think that the the reality of the situation is that if you just look at it from a business perspective, which we're dealing with business people, right? We're not necessarily dealing with consumers in this sense. I mean, they're consumers of our content, but they're they're other business owners. So they should, you know, theoretically understand you can't sell somebody lifetime access to somebody and then support them forever. Exactly. Contrary contrary to what happens in WordPress all the time with these products, you know. You can't do that. You can't do that. That's not viable. So, you know, that's interesting that you and it's awesome that you got to that model too, because I feel like that is it's what a lot of different people do again in different industries. But ultimately, it's like if you're paying me regularly, I mean it's a simple, there's a simple analogy too. It's like your clients are paying you regularly if you're, you know, following the web, the web maintenance course and everything like that, right? Your your clients are paying you regularly to help to make sure their website's up to date, secure, all that sort of stuff. You wouldn't do that if you just if they just paid you, you know, a couple thousand dollars to build the website and never paid you anything again. Why would you do that forever? Yeah.

Content Strategy And Repositioning

Josh Hall 1:00:39

Yeah. Imagine for any WordPress designer who is mad about you know having a recurring subscription for support. Yeah, just put yourself in those shoes. You if you sold something for $297 to a client and then they just expect to be able to email you forever and they want a monthly call forever, like, no, it's that's not that's not how it goes. It's not uh feasible unless it's just a passion project and you just want to do stuff for free, but that's probably not the case. So I would say for anyone who is in this, like, maybe course, maybe community, maybe membership type of model, what I would do is you said that, Mark, do not rush into doing a community because community is a whole nother ball game. I personally think, even though I love it and still love it, it is the hardest thing to sell and the hardest thing to continue to run because it's all encompassing. Community is just people, it's just a lot of different people. And that's hard. That's very, very hard. You have to be wired to be a community builder if you're gonna have a successful community. So, what I would do personally is to have a course or a few courses and do it in a cohort style to where maybe they get lifetime access to the material, but support, community, those are a different billing process. Um, Amy Portafield has notoriously done this really well because I joined one of her courses. I still have lifetime access to the course that's updated, but you got a year of free support, which were basically just like a monthly Zoom call that you could tune into with her. And then after that year, it was 297 to do that, to get access to that per year. So, what I would do if I were doing that today, and what I what I wish I would have done then was you buy a lifetime course, and then you get, you know, maybe a year of support, and then after a year, it's 297 or whatever it is for support. Only if I wasn't doing a full-blown community. That's how I would go about that. You could always also do the cohort style, which is like a six-week sprint type of thing, and you get the course and community slash support for like six weeks or 90 days or whatever it is, and then it's over. And then that's actually for anyone interested in building a community, do that first. Do like a 90-day or a six-week cohort style experience, which is gonna replicate what you would do in as a community builder, and then see if you like it. Because if you if you do that and you're like, oh my god, I'm sick of the questions, I just really don't care. Um, then you're you're probably like a service guy or a product person or or a marketing person, and you're not, you know, you're probably just not suited to be a community builder, and that's fine. So yeah, just some tips that I wish I would have done then to make that transition into building a true community even easier.

Mark Szymanski 1:03:27

Yeah. That makes sense. Definitely good good insight there. I might have to take that myself because uh I'm rapidly approaching that that situation. Um, I got a question for you about it's a tougher question, at least tougher for me. Maybe you've already thought of it though. Okay, so you build like anybody builds an agency, realize that they want to pivot into this realm that we've been talking about here, right? And then now you're gonna teach the thing that you did, you know, for those amount of years. How do you how do you like keep your knowledge and your your experience fresh when you are no longer in the industry that you are now consulting, coaching, et cetera, or whatever, teaching on? Like, do you feel like there's like a a limit to that? Do you feel like like how how did how has that played out at all for you? Like, what is you know, maybe like you, you know, you're you're running a community for 10 years and then somebody comes and sees and says, hey, what about this thing? It's like, how do you, how do you just stay tapped in to the things that the people in your community, whatever the case is, it doesn't have to be web design, obviously, whatever it is because everyone has this problem. How do you stay tapped into that?

Josh Hall 1:04:38

It's a great question because I get asked it a lot, and I'm I'm there right now to the the actual reality is I have not built a website for a client since 2018. Now I've overseen projects up until 2020 when I sold, but I have actually not like start to finish built a client site since 2018. So you would think like, yeah, at this point, 2026, are you completely out of the game? Are you, you know, like I I understand the like um cynicism about that or like the skepticism about that, but here's what I've realized I am 1,000 times more valuable and powerful as a coach in web design because not only do I have my experience, but I also have retained the kind of consultant role for in transit. So I get updates from Eric, my CEO, and at any point I can dip in and see like, hey, how are we doing maintenance plans? How are we doing support for the maintenance plans? What are the growth plans look like? What are you doing in marketing and web design? So I have like, you know, literal like behind the scenes on all of that, and I'm overseeing hundreds of web designers who are in different stages and have different models. And I perhaps know the fastest route to success for web designers now because I can pinpoint where someone's at, what their goals are, what model is gonna work best for them, potentially what tool set will work for them, and then help them get there with the support and coaching that they need. I need to put that on the sales page, by the way. Um, but truthfully, Mark, like I it's a great question because I had those reservations myself. I'm like, how long can I go not building websites to teach, you know, websites? Um, but the reality is like I'm seeing so much more. I have a pulse in a you and a very unique position that I don't take for granted. Also, I have the number one podcast in web design, web design business podcasts. So I've talked with hundreds of agency owners and studios and freelancers at all different levels to truthfully know like what is going on and what's working, where things are headed. Um so I'm actually like, yeah, a thousand times more powerful. If I was still just running my agency, I'd be able to teach a few people what we're doing and share it online, but I would be missing out on like, well, what about other tools? What about people who are using Squarespace or using Shopify if I don't use Shopify? Um, I like having an agnostic community because a lot of people use Divi in the tool stack that I use because it's what I use. But I'm very open and like, if you don't want to use WordPress even nowadays, don't you don't have to. You can be in Web Designer Pro and use Webflow or Squarespace or whatever it is. So I really like that. And I'm finding more web designers are using different tools. Like we talked about when I had you on my show. Um, it's not uncommon for people to use a few different tools now. Um, so that that, yeah, I'm still like even more so relevant, especially on the business side and strategy. Now, the one thing to that, to be completely honest, is yes, I'm I'm like, I'm not the like Divi guy anymore. Um back in 2020, I was the Yoda of Divi, and people came to me to learn the Divi tricks, and I was getting really good with CSS. So that side of things, I'm even starting to phase out more. Like, and I'm honest, like, like don't come to me to I'm not like the Divi guy anymore. So I'm honest about that. Um, but as far as like business as a whole, more valuable than ever for sure.

AI’s Real Role For Web Pros

Mark Szymanski 1:08:12

That's that's incredibly good context there. And it makes sense because now you have more of a surface area to kind of learn from, you know, because you're consulting on all of it. And honestly, I didn't even think about I didn't think about the role that the advisory played where you have even more, you have more direct, you have more like I would call it like like secondary kind of like learning access from the people, even just the questions that the people are asking and that you're answering, and you're talking to all these different people, you know, on calls and in the community and stuff. But then you also have direct access with the with the agency that you did run. And now you could see it's like, oh, we were doing it differently, you know, a few years ago when I was there, but now they've changed it and it's like to just change with the time. So I think that that's actually a huge thing. It's maybe you could be either on the board of your own company or the board of another company. So you have more access if you do change that. That's a that's a great one. I want to ask you this question here, too. So obviously you have the podcast. You're not you did a bunch of tutorial content from okay, so from the content side of things, right? You did a bunch of tutorial content in Divi and just in general and WordPress and everything like that, taught a lot of people and gained a lot of authority there. Then, you know, as you moved away from that or moved like kind of up into like the thinker, community builder, et cetera, role, uh, you your channel, I think, moved towards just mainly just the pod, right? So now you're doing the pod, largest in web design, a lot of authority there. Are you at this point in 2026 and kind of beyond here, do you are you where is like your main lead source, so to speak, and student source coming from? Are they still seeing the evergreen content and then coming to you via that? Is it mainly from the pod? Are you doing like separate outreach? What's it actually look like to build could continuously build the the MRR within this community?

Josh Hall 1:09:58

That's my biggest challenge right now, Mark, is the content because what I just mentioned, which is like I have gone from being like the Divi and WordPress guy to like web design coach guy. So absolutely the podcast is number one for me. Um, and the way people are finding that is a lot of people say they're just searching web design and podcasts, like in a in an Apple Play or a Spotify. And I've been doing this since 2019. So we've been we're generally the number one um, you know, the the search. So huge for me. I'm so sorry I'm dealing with this freaking cold, by the way. I'm making am I muting myself when I coughed because I want I didn't want to hit everyone with that.

Mark Szymanski 1:10:37

Yeah, yeah, you're good, you're good.

Josh Hall 1:10:38

So that is the big struggle, though, is I've like truthfully right now in the point where I'm transitioning all content from like Divi WordPress guy to more general web design business kind of guy. Um, now a lot of that content is still super helpful. People do find my Divi tutorials, and the moment something is gonna be irrelevant, I will take it down. And I'm actually about to go through like a really extensive because I got like 400 plus podcasts, at least 300 plus tutorialslash videos on YouTube that are not the podcast. So I've got a huge catalog that I need to go through and be like, okay, what is dated? What's irrelevant? It pains me to delete something, but I know it's for the good of everybody if I just delete it. So that's kind of where I am right now is transitioning from like the the tech, you know, Divi WordPress guy to you know to more of the business. Now, I still love sharing tool stuff as far as like tools that I use and trust and recommend, especially if I get into sponsorship stuff. So I will still do those, but it'll probably be a little less frequent. And I think what I'll do, like, I'm still planning on doing like a Divi5 tutorial on how I'm using it, but I think I'll cater that towards like here's how I'm using Divi5 on Web Designer Pro, here's a look at the back end, here's how I build it, versus a like you know, true like Divi advanced course. Because Tim Streifler with Divi Life, Anya with Divi Lover, those two are like I was actually just looking at Anya's uh new Divi course. She gave me behind the scenes look at that, and I'm like, this is so much better than what I would do. Because she that's what she does. She is like, she's an amazing designer, all in on Divi, knows way more about CSS than I do at this point. So to that point of like, do you become irrelevant? You do, I think, tend to get to a point where you need to. It goes back to the quote, what gets you here won't get you there. And I think I'm there right now with like being the Divi CSS guy. I think it's it's it's definitely my content is gonna change to where I'm much more moving towards like business. Web design obviously is the huge part of that. And I'm still gonna teach on the process of web design, SEO, design principles, but you know, you could use whatever tool you want with my frameworks and principles. So yeah.

Mark Szymanski 1:13:03

Well, I think it's I think it's simple as again, people people just evolve, people just evolve, you know what I mean? Um, people evolve, their their processes evolve, their their life evolves, their business evolves, what have you. I mean, because again, like yeah, I don't think that most people, if you you could you could make a living if you wanted to become the best Divi CSS guy as an example. I mean, well, you could argue is that is that pull big enough to sustain whatever you wanted to, revenue-wise or whatever. But ever, but the point is like you could find a skill and you could just do that. But I think a lot of times, like we've been talking about here the whole time, is a lot of times you end up wanting more, so to speak, not necessarily more money, yes, but more like a higher meaning so you can like affect more people with the thoughts that you have. And naturally it kind of goes from like very specific skill within a business to okay, maybe like now we're touching more of like the the overall industry. So you go from like Divi to like WordPress to like web designers to eventually maybe community builders of web design or something, you know what I mean? Like that's just it seems like a very natural progression. And um, but I totally understand because I'm already going through this in like my content and my thing, where it's like I don't just want to be like kind of a WordPress YouTuber or content creator, I want to be more, so to speak, than that. And I also feel like I don't know if this has ever happened to you, I feel like I'm such an avid learner that I go so hard and so deep into whatever the topic is, and I learn like 80 to 90 percent of what it is, which is more than the average person. Like I am now bored with this because I know so much of it. I'm seeing so many recurring things now, and I'm just seeing the same recurring thought processes. And I really don't think it's healthy for people that are like that to get stuck in that rut of, okay, now I'm just like seeing the same shit like 80, 90% of the time. I I need to go find something that's like adjacent, but again, maybe like a step up in that in that ladder, or maybe a step to the side in implementation or something like that. Uh, and I think that that's I mean, just I think it just describes kind of like exactly kind of what you're saying in in your business and in in your life in general there.

Josh Hall 1:15:11

And what it really gets down to is a change of identity, which is really hard. It's it's a really hard thing to deal with because I own and this is really common for most web designers, you go from being a web designer to a web owner, like a business owner slash maybe agency owner. And then you become almost like a web business consultant slash marketer, which is again brings us back to where I think web design is is has been for a while, and where all roads lead to websites, and then as a web designer, business owner, the roads open up to being more of a consultant kind of person. Um, so for me, like I went from being a web designer to a web owner, to a teacher, mentor, and coach, community builder. And somebody just recently Oh, it was Jason. I'm in a mastermind with Jason Grassi, who owns um Swift Sites, which is like an incredible product ties system for coach websites. Um, and he was like, Josh, you're such a great business strategist. And I was like, Oh, I never even thought of thought of myself, yeah. New title unlocked. Never even thought of myself like that. But as I'm thinking about it, I mean, some of our conversation here is a little bit of that with like, if you're gonna be a course creator, you know, the strategy of that business model should probably be more of a cohort style before you jump into community or membership. So uh I absolutely am like this is super top of mind because I'm there right now to where like community builder coach is still very much my main roles, but I'm like I'm definitely a business strategist now too. Um, I am not near as much of a web designer. Uh so and actually I was thinking just recently because I'm playing around with Divi5 and some of the stuff. I'm like, you know what? I'm like, I got people who I'm helping build multi-six figure businesses in Web Designer Pro, and I'm like waiting to get back to them because I'm tinkering around with the new presets versus variable options in Divi5. And I'm like, is this the best use of my time? And is it fair to them that they're waiting on me to help them with a you know $400,000 business because I'm tinkering around with presets? Like, I really am like truthfully getting to the point where I'm like, you know, I'll teach on a little bit, but I'm only gonna do do like the the fundamentals and the basics, the beginner style stuff of the tools that I use. Because for as long as I run Web Designer Pro, I still need to be a web designer. I need to have that role in me at some point. Like I still need to be able to, you know, get into a website-ish. But um, I'm certainly there now to where I'm like, I'm really not struggling, but I'm really uh warring with the identity shift of like, oh my gosh, I'm like business strategist now.

Mark Szymanski 1:17:53

I'm just I'm so grateful that we're having this type of this conversation here because I feel like one, there's probably a lot of people that are listening that maybe they never go this route, but maybe hopefully they still appreciate it because it's a peek behind the curtain. Because and maybe there's people that that are gonna go this route and it's really helpful for them. But the reason I'm saying this is because what you just outlined there, the actual nuance to that is that what's gonna happen, and you can't please everybody, but what's gonna happen is if you if you take that situation and you extrapolate it where you're sitting there and you're messing around in Divi on one screen, and then on the other screen is like I'm ex dramatizing making this dramatic for effect. But like on the leather screen is like emails that you need to get back to from those people, your your clients that are building their web design business that you can absolutely help and you have helped. The other screen is you mess around in Divi. Like if you spend time on the Divi screen, like you're saying, it's actually less valuable, even to like the world, so to speak, because you could actually they could you helping them help so many more people because then they can continue to build their business. But the thing is, when you continue to move up like this, that's literally a move up, in my opinion. It's like you're in the tech, the tech, uh, you know, digging ditches in the tech situation, and then you're moving up to like the consulting thing. People are eventually going to be like, this guy, because they're gonna have that objection. They're gonna be like, this guy isn't even a web designer, but he handled, but he runs this web designer pro business or whatever. But the actual reality of the situation is that you mastered the tech side of things. You now continue to learn the stuff as you're consulting and coaching other people. And the effect that you're having higher up the chain, so to speak, haven't figured out how to articulate this the best yet, but bear with me, is actually having such a greater effect across the board than you would have just having like one person, like or you know, like, or just dealing with like that one website or that one situation. I'm not saying it's absolutely the right way because I heard this thing recently. I'm probably gonna mess it up. Is like you either help a lot of people, a lot of people in a small way or a small amount of people in a big way or something like that. I don't know if that's something that I mean some quote.

Agency Systems, AI, And The Next Five Years

Josh Hall 1:20:02

Yeah. The logistics of that is like I could help out 20 clients who pay me 10 grand a year and make $200,000. Or I could help 200 people and they pay me you know a grand a year and get that same amount. It's two same results, just very different means of of how to get there. I will share with you what's next with this challenge of like how do I how do I basically how do I replicate myself where is needed for me to be able to be the true business strategist and coach and community builder. And what I've done over the past couple years is a lot of web designer pro members have shown expertise in certain areas and I'm starting to essentially build a bit of a this is truthfully like behind the scenes what's going on right now. And pro members are not going to be shocked by this but I'm essentially building up like mini coaches for Web Designer Pro who have skill sets in certain areas. So I just don't love SEO. I have an SEO course it's been a big part of my business. I enjoy parts of it but I at the very least I'm just not passionate about it. Like I'm not one who's like reading SEO news and just like I basically rely on a couple people in pro to give me the updates on like what is going on today. Michelle and Sam are my two SEO people. Michelle is like keyword research content copy Sam is local SEO Google business profile expertise. He he was a pro member who just excelled in in SEO specifically local SEO he actually has an academy that's like a sister business to pro, like a sister membership which is local SEO Academy. So most of the members in there are pro members who want to go in deeper into local SEO. So I'm actually building that up right now to where um you know Dave Foy? Yep. So Dave Foy is actually um he is a part of my I I revamped my DNS course last year which just covers the basics of domains and email and all that stuff. And um we kind of partnered up a little bit and he actually has a couple of lessons in my course that are his so mine's more of a fundamental course and I'm saying if you want to go deeper into DNS here's Dave and I have another colleague Amher who's who's really good with email and stuff. So that's actually what the next evolution of what I'm doing is I'm going to focus all in on me on what I want to do. But if there's something like DNS, SEO, maybe even Divi, CSS stuff where I'm like I only want to teach so far into that I only know so far into all those things. I'm going to partner up and have somebody who's like I'll teach my end of things and the basics and then if you want to go further into that this is the guy or this is the gal.

Mark Szymanski 1:22:58

Yeah so that's kind of where I'm at that's where I'm headed that mini coaches getting you're I mean you're a community builder man. You're you're you're connecting people with other people you're you're building them up and then you're and then you're leveraging them them too. I love that.

Josh Hall 1:23:13

And that has to be built in too because I could have like I could have YouTube people I could have podcast mini coaches but it's like under Web Designer Pro I'm going to keep it web design. Those things could be marketing sides of Web Designer Pro but it's definitely I I definitely I'm basically going to keep my core curriculum of design process SEO DNS business recurring revenue scaling and then you know take the lead on business recurring revenue scaling and have the other other things you know delegated out in some way. Yeah. Yeah that's my pain in the next year or two. I like it I want to ask you also I was just gonna say Web Design Pro coaching is probably going to look like me and like five or six other people as like sub coaches. Yeah.

Mark Szymanski 1:24:05

That is extremely exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing how that how that evolves I have let me ask you a loaded question and then let me uh then let me let's touch on the family stuff that we that we teed up at the very beginning.

Josh Hall 1:24:19

I've got I got I can definitely have at least 15 or 20 more minutes if you're down Mark this is fun. Okay. This is kind of a therapy session for me so I'm liking this this is great.

Mark Szymanski 1:24:27

I mean I this is this has been amazing man I really appreciate it. Uh okay so the here's the here's the the loaded question that there's too much you know what I mean like there's too much on a it's too much to go super deep into here but the world has obviously changed uh in the last in the last five years but at the same time you have built this over the last five years so I'll say it's changed over the last like one or two years like heavily obviously with like the advent of the buzzword of AI right and this is something that like I'm dealing with and and diving into much deeper now in a lot of different ways and I'm wondering as a community builder in I'm gonna make some assumptions and you can tell me if I'm right or wrong as a community builder in an industry that has been predicated on the idea of like we are going to be doing we're gonna be building websites we're obviously we've developed the skill of building websites all the different things that go into that which is not those skills are not in val they they are invaluable in a lot of ways they're not necessarily being replaced but now as society shifts and as people are constantly over the last year and a half been like burned into their skulls like they're seeing in every which way even my clients that have nothing to do with like technology at all they're like civil engineering firms I asked them the other day I'm like hey how's AI like what's your relationship with AI is like I hate hearing this every day AI AI all this but at the same time they're being constantly marketed to the fact that it can do everything for them in their day-to-day life it can build websites for them it can build apps it can do all these different things a lot of it's marketing a lot of it's wild west stuff right yeah how's it going how's it going for people who truly have it do everything like that's the question sorry that's true what but but but what but what is your whether it's right or wrong or where we're at in that situation it is a reality that people are being marketed that what what are your students and your base of of people that you influence what are they asking you how are you responding how are you maybe you know consoling them in a way but also I do want to say how are you encouraging or not encouraging them to leverage the tools that are existing because I have an interesting perspective on this that I don't think we're necessarily going to be we're professionals and these these these tools could be used to extremely increase our professional capacity because we're not just utilizing them willy-nilly like we were talking about with the DIY earlier because I agree with that. Right. But what's your what's your stance? How have you tried to especially over the last couple years how have you tried to implement it how have you tried to maybe change a little bit of your positioning or has it changed at all? I know it's a huge question but just in general.

Identity Shifts And Delegating Expertise

Josh Hall 1:27:04

I haven't changed much as of now and I uh we've talked a lot about AI but I haven't like rolled anything out that has been like an AI tool for web designers. Now that's going to come into play in 2026 for sure particularly like the way I'm the way I'm most utilizing AI and I'm seeing a lot of web designers use it is not actually building out sites with it. But you can I mean you could build like you could get a starter site template cooked out in you know 60 seconds with zip WP or something if you wanted to. And even you know like Adam Prizer who runs that tool has has said this is not supposed to replace web designers. This is to help get you started basically and I think that's still where AI is and where it's going to be for quite a while quite honestly um so I'm seeing in a lot of pro members are using AI to help out with a lot of the like website content side of thing or one of my members Kristen helps coaches and she has her niche is coaches who speak. It's like a real it's like a niche niche and she's actually she has a custom GPT that she does a sales call or a discovery call funnels it through that custom GP that is that she created that she knows like all the prompts and it's pretty detailed to her system, her pages and that has helped her content like it's helped her alleviate the problem of back and forth with clients and getting content when she is able to like take one call and reel it in and magnify it and get ready to kick a side out within a week or two. That is like the gr the best way for web designers to use AI right now is something like that to where it's more of like it's more of like a you could call it content collection you could call it copy creation stuff like that to where it basically just alleviates a lot of the back and forth or maybe even like a part-time job that somebody was doing for your agency. That's the best way I've seen it work right now. And I am not somebody who is fearful of AI taking over web design jobs because as you know websites are so much more intricate and complex than anyone understands who's not a web designer. Because yes again a lot of these AI tools and studios can kick out a quote unquote simple website that could get by for like I mean it's basically just like a starter template that somebody would buy 10 years ago. That's essentially what AI is today. Instead of somebody going to Wix and doing a DIY like choose a template here, you know adjust the copy there you go now it's just done with yeah well you could use ChatGPT for copy kick out an HTML site best of luck with that. But if you're using WordPress or another tool they're gonna give you some starting points but it's still basically a starter template is basically what AI is right now. Now for a serious business think about all the other implications to a website there's the technical side of things like accessibility there's privacy updated privacy policies which I use Termageddon for that's a separate tool. So are you expecting AI to go sign up for Termageddon put all their details in and then bring it back into create a new page and put the embed code and then and then you know get all your business detail information like there's a lot of things like that that AI agents may eventually come into play but I don't know when that would be that I I think that's going to be quite far off for like an agent to like go to different sites and log in and you feel comfortable with them doing that and then getting back to you and then logging into a WordPress site etc that's just accessibility and privacy we even talked about like optimization the copy side of things the messaging actual images from for for a website that are not just AI generated the actual design the user flow the user experience the customer journey are they going to reach out to your customers and do research do they know your customers do they know your story what about case studies and ongoing results like is an AI agent going to reach out to your clients and get case studies and go back and forth and then record a video with them post it on YouTube or upload it to Vimeo and then embed it on your site create there's all these other things that are actually going on on professional websites that no one is thinking about when they're like AI is going to take your website so that's kind of my view on it. It is a helpful tool in some areas for sure and I'll continue to implement it a little bit here but I am not a like have AI build your whole website kind of person and and I think it it is going to affect the DIY crowd which I don't know if you've noticed this Mark but elegant themes a lot of builders even Wix which was like the DIY tool has moved towards agencies and they've moved towards like web professionals in Elegant themes Divi5 is not a DIY tool at all it is very much a professional it's a professionals tool I think that's where AI is going to have the most effect is is the DIY market because again yes you could sign up for an AI builder or hosting and use it just to get you going but it's a starter template at the core. Yeah.

Mark Szymanski 1:32:19

Yeah I mostly I think my experience probably has been like probably a little different just because like I've I've dove in headfirst and I've like and obviously you're you have like a lot of clients that are or you have a lot of students and everything that are probably like I would imagine you're getting questions here and there about it because again they're probably like agency owners that are like busy and then they're like oh man should I be dealing with this should I be you know like looking into it. The the one thing that I would I wouldn't even call it pushback but one thing that I would like add to the perspective here that I would that I think that you actually could be incredibly incredibly well positioned to maybe look into in a sense of like you know take I'm talking like take a couple hours in a you know over a course of a of a few weeks or something. The way that I interpret what you just said is you obviously have all of the knowledge from your agency days. And now again like we talked about the surface area of all the people that are in in your communities and you the advisory that you're doing you know with with the agency still what you just said there like if we rolled the tape back everything that you said from my from my perspective of what is possible like with AI right now we're in this kind of like overhang period where it can actually do a lot more stuff than we think but that's just it. It's like a lot of people don't understand how to get it to do those things. Right. Like ever almost everything that you said could be done. Now I'm not saying it should be done. What I'm saying is like you I think the the the next five years of the world the people that literally go completely up, you know, logarithmically up or exponentially up are going to be the people that like that sit in their chair and their desk and they're like, okay, wait a second. I know how to do all of these things like you and like you and I, I would put us in this category, right? There's a lot of people that are like this right we if you asked us right now to just explain like just turn the camera on and explain everything about how to how to run a good agency or how to build a do a website project or whatever, we could absolutely tell it to you. The next problem though and the problem from five, 10 years ago is do we actually want to go do all of that shit? The answer for me is no right I assume the answer for you is kind of also no right I mean we'd rather teach people we know how to do it. We'd rather teach people we like it more than the service. We could but that's beside the point. So then now what this is affording us is the idea is like wait a second we don't have to go hire people we could train different again you were using a couple different things there like LLMs or AI agents or we you know the whole term of like vibe coding like AI agentic workflows to to do these things and if the the what I'm what I'm trying to articulate here probably kind of poorly is that the limiting factor now is understanding how to do things at a high at a high level and understanding the very specifics of what pieces go together. And then if we can articulate that into these systems and literally I don't know how else to do it other than I'll show you some time or I'll I'll make videos about it is like going into platforms like Claude Code and whatever ID you have and just explaining all of that. I don't even I don't even type anymore bro I'm using Whisperflow constantly to just talk like this. And then it interprets what I'm doing and we we have a back and forth on like maybe the best ways. Yeah. And then it can create workflows to do a lot of those things. Now the problem is that AI is in buzz buzzword land right now. It's in you know this is just like the new hot commodity some people are using utilizing it really deeply some people don't know how to use utilize it at all. At some point here in the future I do think it's gonna go from buzzword to not like oh do you use AI? It's gonna be like no everyone uses AI but it's like how you're using it and what it's in. It's like either natively in like Notion, I don't know if you use Notion Notion AI is pretty great because it's very contained. It's like I could build whatever because it understands Notion really well. So if I just describe what I want it builds it really well. But when we get into this more broader aspect where you're talking about connecting Termaged into our website and doing this and that and WordPress and then oh maybe we want to try Wix and maybe one project handles Wix. It gets really muddy really fast because we're just we're too early to that. So just say all that to say uh again not to necessarily disagree or anything I just think that that is the trajectory that I see us going on where there's there is a bit of a period right now where like it can it's very powerful but it's not powerful on its own. It's not like sentient it it's not going to know these things it kind of knows them maybe in space and its knowledge but we have to train it. We have to tell it what to do explicitly and the reason I'm bringing this up is because you have all that information. So it might be something.

Parenting While Building A Business

Josh Hall 1:36:57

Yeah and and my my answer there was purely to the like our like the our clients and the average person saying are you worried because AI is going to take over building websites that was that's my answer is and I I'm absolutely not telling web designers not to take AI seriously and not to learn it and not to implement it. Absolutely um we have a member Antoine who's like he's I had him on the podcast he's like this he's he's like you he's an experimenter he's a first adopter and he's like on the up and up on all these ways to use AI. Not my interest but I know the importance of it for sure because a lot of people who are using it who aren't afraid of it say the same thing which is it is a tool and it can make a lot of things easier but it's not a replacement especially because the DIY crowd and the small business crowd they could use AI just like they could build a website. But how has it gone for DIYers to build their own website? Not good 99% of the time unless they have a design background or a marketing background. So I think it's going to be the same with AI. AI for websites is kind of like it's reminiscent of where the Wix do-it-yourself builders were you know 10 years ago which is yeah like you could do it but it would be even more powerful if you haven't a web designer do it. And in the case of AI there's so it's so multifaceted there's so many different variations of it like you said so many different things that can get being intertwined in that I think a web designer's job which is like a perfect cap to the beginning of this conversation is going to be the like they're the they're they're gonna tie it all together basically like yes AI is going to be a factor and it may make the actual build of a website go faster but all these different tools platforms aspects of websites themselves and then we're not even getting into helping clients with like lead generation and email marketing and and conversion rate optimization all these other things I think are where a web designer is going to fill that that seat so again I don't want it to be overwhelming for web designers but I do want to prepare all web designers which is that yeah you're not gonna be just a web designer and that's already started. I mean that that was the case I think probably back in like 2018 and 19 web designers were viewed as like oh well you do social media too right like you're basically a digital marketer and I think that's gonna be even more important to lean into with AI. Yeah.

Mark Szymanski 1:39:19

Yeah 100% well I appreciate that perspective because yeah I I do think I share that sentiment. We gotta we gotta keep expanding our skill set I feel like so um all right so we teed this up at the very beginning episode and then I and then I told I said we were going to table it. But here's my here's my uh bringing it back around the fold here. So obviously I'm gonna be having a child our first in uh in May excited for that it's a real world thing though and I want to get your experience on it because obviously you're a successful business owner successful family man father husband etc and we talk about all this stuff all the time we talk about we've talked about business here for like over an hour and a half right like we're talking about business we're talking About our things, we're talking about making money, all that sort of stuff. Very important things. But really, like, I don't know if you share this. I imagined you. Like, why are we really doing this? Obviously, we're doing it to help people, but we're also doing it to, you know, provide for our family. And to, you know, the I don't know. If we zoom out, it's like the things that really matter are probably the people that we're going to spend most of our life with. So, you know, this isn't this is an area of this, you know, fueled by progress, like this podcast that I try to hit on as when it when it's appropriate, because it's not like I love business, I love that, but I also am getting older and I'm starting to realize like there's there's a lot of life, you know, there's a lot more to life than just the business side. And I imagine, you know, with your with your experiences and everything like that, I imagine that this is uh something uh something that resonates with you because you know, you've had multiple children, you know, you've had to deal with different different things that have happened, you know, from that and family. So we don't need to go like unbelievably personal here, as personal as you want to, but I do I just know that you are a source of wisdom for selfishly for me and other people that are probably in this position of either thinking about starting a family, thinking about, you know, just you know, going through those struggles, because it's not easy always to balance it all. So I imagine you have some good, some good insights that we could just kind of share here in the last few minutes.

Josh Hall 1:41:15

Yeah. I mean, my wisdom is um my my motivation is just like just get ready for the shit show. It it's hard. It's it's just it's not what it what it is is it's not clean. Um for like the productivity bros, good luck with a morning routine. Like it's just it's come it's it's chaos, and and it gets worse with more kids, as far as like it's it we're in the hardest season now of like the balance type of thing, just because my kids are seven, six, and three, and uh it's it's chaos if you are it's chaos only if you're not cool with it being chaos. You know what I mean? Like if you want things to be tidy and neat and productive and you want to stick on a bro hustle schedule, you're gonna be very unhappy. It's because uh kids dictate their schedules dictate appointments. We move this call around because my family's been sick, I'm still getting over it. Um, that kind of thing, just like that's what changes is it kind of becomes the the priority. I mean, you still, yeah, the priority is you still need to provide for them and and make money and and to do that. But it does shift in a sense of like the business is truly more of in a supportive role. And you know, you know me, like I'm still a driven entrepreneur, and I have to to to be really cognizant of, like I said earlier, the reason I'm not starting a community builder teaching business is because I don't have the time for it right now. I just don't. So those are the kind of things that I think are really important to be self-aware about is like you know your limits, you know what you're gonna be tempted to do, and you have to reel it in if you want to be there for your your wife and your little guy. Um, I will share with you a quote that is truthfully like probably the most impactful topic and thing for me that I've remembered, especially as an entrepreneur, because it's it's you tell me, Mark, is it hard to turn your mind off when you're not working?

Mark Szymanski 1:43:14

Uh yeah, I would say I would say like I feel like I have to. I I well it's not it's not the easiest thing, yeah, for sure.

Josh Hall 1:43:22

It'll get way worse with kids because and uh quite honestly, especially with a baby, like and when they become little kiddos, like a lot of the the time together is like this sounds so mean, and I absolutely love my kids. But it's even playing with them sometimes gets like after 10 or 15 minutes, you're like you just start to wander and think about business and think about other stuff. And I go back to this quote, which is wherever you are, be there. Even if it's a like for 15 minutes, my phone is over here, or my phone's out the, you know, not out the window, but outside of the door, I'm gonna dedicate 15 minutes of soul play time with my with my kiddos. That means so much to them, and it means a lot to you too, without like being there, but being on your phone or like sitting there and glazy eyed thinking about business stuff while you should be playing with them. Um, I've really learned to like, even in smaller segments, be like fully present. Same thing. I mean, you've been married, like, same thing with your wife. You go on a date, you know, you could talk a little bit of business probably, but they don't want the whole thing to be a strategy session for business. Like you gotta be there and have fun, like be with your wife, like wherever you are, be there. I think that is the most important thing that I've leaned on and re and had to remember and still have to work on because as entrepreneurs, we're constantly thinking about the business. Um, and yeah, like a lot of times, you know, especially if you're doing feeds and stuff, um, it's a little bit easier with a baby just because they're just a little nugget of just cuddle, and you know, aside from cleaning diapers up and feeding them, they're you can just hang, they literally just sit with you and you can do stuff. But it's when they they need more from you, is when that that presence becomes all the more important. And and yeah, you don't want to lose that. Like you just you don't want to lose those years. There's plenty of times where I'm like, oh man, I feel bad. I've been sitting with my kids for half an hour, and I feel like I wasn't I was there, but I wasn't there, and that's the worst feeling. And I give myself some grace because it happens, it you know, it it inevitably it happens. And we I work from home, we spend a lot of time with the kiddos, so it's almost like it's expected when we're all at home together all the time. Like I can't be playing, you know, 24-7. I need to make money. Dad needs to go to work. And there are some times where I'm like, I've got a thought or something I've got to jot down, or I'm like thinking through something. But yeah, you just you gotta be careful, I think, not to let the the business bandwidth intertrude at the personal bandwidth.

Mark Szymanski 1:45:46

Yeah, my wife, she's uh a natural mother. Like she's worked with kids for for you know her entire like basically career. So like she's extremely excited. And the thing that I would love to give her is because she wants to, she wants to be like, you know, a stay-at-home mom effectively. And I I really do think that that's you know, society stuff has changed, and I think that that's kind of it it's harder, way harder to do now than it was before to make it happen like financially. But I think that it's I think that it's worth it if you can do it.

Josh Hall 1:46:14

Well, daycare, I mean, daycare is as much as a mortgage in most places, though. Yeah.

Mark Szymanski 1:46:18

So like it's like that's what I would love to be able to do for us. And that's kind of like my goal here. Um, but the reason me asking that is like, do you have when you have like a a system, you know, in your house where everyone is at home, do you have a is there any sort of a like a routine? Like, do you try to stick to some sort of almost like a nine to five within your house? Or is it just kind of because I imagine, you know, when you have kids running around and playing, et cetera, or whatever, you know, maybe it's distracting. Have you have you have any like little insights on how to keep it more um as structured as it as it can be, even though it's obviously chaos and that's it's to be expected?

Structure, Schedules, And Presence

Josh Hall 1:47:00

For sure. I mean, you definitely I think want to stick to some sort of structure, even if it's not nine to five Monday through Friday, if it's like a couple days a week, are like deep work segments or calls. And one thing that's helped is I've I am very open with my wife about like, okay, I'm on a a call for an hour or two, like keep the kids away from the door kind of thing. Uh and luckily the my kids are pretty good. Like they know if I come in here to work, daddy's not coming out unless unless there's an emergency or something. So, and because I don't work 40 hours in my office, it's it's not that big of a deal. I'm not in here all the time. Um, so a schedule for sure will help. It was a lot harder, like through we just got outside of Christmas in the new year, and it was so fun having like time off and hang out with the kiddos. But I was definitely ready to like get back into our routine. And my uh my middle daughter is in kindergarten now, so she actually goes to school four days a week in a in a private community school. So that's been nice too, because like it's not nice to seize out of the house, but it's nice to have some semblance of a like, all right, I'm dropping her off at nine, I come back, she gets picked up at two. Like, we have a schedule around that. So that that does help for sure. And when kids are not in school and everyone's at home, you have to manufacture that. Otherwise, it just it's like the it just all blurs together. So that's been huge. But I know for me, like I generally have I I've arranged my schedule to where there's two primary call days. Um, every once in a while I'll do calls on Wednesdays or Fridays. I never ever do a call on Monday, usually, and usually barely ever on Fridays. But Tuesdays and Thursdays are my like heavier call days. Those are podcast interviews, coaching calls. Um doesn't mean I'm on calls all the day. It just I might have like two or three calls in a day on those days. Um, so that's helped because like usually my wife knows Tuesdays and Thursdays are a no-go with appointments or other stuff going on, or if she has an appointment or whatever. Um, so that's kind of how we've worked it. I mean, generally, like what I've done is Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays are pretty much much flex days to where like we may have an appointment on a Monday, or we may have something else going on on a Friday, and I'll just work around that. Um now, some days, if there's nothing going on, I'll work all day. Or some days, especially if it's nice, like I'll work for four or five hours and then we go outside and play or whatever. Um, and then I do a lot of like two-hour segments here or there. And then sometimes if I got something to get done, if the kids are getting ready for bed or if they've gone to sleep a little early, I'll do some work on my laptop, you know, at 10, especially in pro. I'll jump on at like 10 at night and do some coaching via DM or get in and talk to people or like the other night when we were you and I were messaging, that was a later, yeah. That was I think at like 10 or 10:30 at night. And um, kids had just gone down to bed. My wife was getting our third down. Uh, I had already showered, so I was just sitting there, didn't feel like doing the dishes. So I just sat there and we're just you know knocking some stuff out like that. So that's kind of how that's what's worked for me, at least, is to have a bit of a balance of like stroke uh scheduled, structured schedule, but also flex days, especially with the amount of kids that we have and a daughter with special needs. It's just it's a lot of appointments. So I have those flex days to work around that.

Mark Szymanski 1:50:18

Interesting. Well, Josh, I just want to put it on record. I think I told you in like, you know, in our back and forths originally, you know, offline, but I just really do appreciate your your openness, your transparency, you know, your kindness and your authenticity with all this stuff, not just on the business side, but also on the personal side. I think that you know it resonates really with me that again, you're a successful entrepreneur and you're somebody that has built like the family kind of into the business, so to speak, or at least around the business. Um, and I mean, kind of again, like I just see you as like a, you know, a mentor and inspiration for me as I kind of start that part of the journey. Uh, because I I appreciate you sharing all that with me because that is uh I was actually literally just thinking about this as I was preparing for this. I was like, you know what? I follow a lot of people, I've talked to a lot of people and done all this. There's not too many, maybe it's an age thing because we were having kids later and all this sort of stuff and whatever, but there's not too many that like I follow religiously for business stuff that are also in the same position as you that have had that have had, you know, again, success in the in business and also like built like a strong family unit around it. And no, no disrespect to any of those people. I just, if you want to do it, you don't want to do it. But it's just something that like again resonates with me. And I think there are other people out there that it resonates with. So I've always appreciated, like, I remember seeing live streams, you know, that I've watched of yours, like, you know, throughout the years, where like you you are very open with what is going on. You're not you're not like open in a way where it's like like you're just you're just literally just being a human. Like I appreciate the humanization of it. And you're not like, you're not necessarily like you're not hiding things, you're not whatever. It's just like, hey, this is going on in my life. Maybe this is why I've been more or less active, et cetera, or whatever. And uh, I think that's really important because again, as we move towards a world of like potential complete artificial intelligence, like the authenticity and the transparency is just even more important. So again, just just kudos, my man. I I really appreciate it.

Josh Hall 1:52:09

Well, thanks, Mark. I mean, it's really cool to be in this position to be able to, you know, I'm kind of like the the not the level up from where you are, but I'm like where, you know, you I was in 2018. So I you know, I love being able to help folks in your position. So I definitely, you know, I hope some of these tips have have helped and give you some encouragement just because I I mean I think the big thing is, yeah, it's just you know, why I said the whole bro hustle thing is like again, no offense to entrepreneurs who are at the top, but pretty much all of them don't have kids. Pretty much all of them. Um so if they do, it's like one or two, which is nothing compared to more than that or special needs. It's like it's yeah, it's nothing. So I I yeah, it is really I I totally agree. I actually was just thinking this yesterday. I was like, where are the like taunt entrepreneurs who have three or more kids, one at least one with special needs? That is probably a very, very small list. If anyone knows, send them to me. And I only say that because I do think people it it parenthoods becomes seems so much harder than it needs to be because they're holding themselves to a standard of people who are not parents and mentors who are not parents. And and look, and I know like Hermosy and and all those guys are open about that, and and they would probably say the same thing, and like, yeah, like you know, don't don't don't align your schedule to mine because I don't have kids, like you're not gonna be able to function at that level or do those type of things. But I I think that's really important when it comes to comparison because who you follow and who you get mentorship from, inevitably you start to feel like you want to compare your schedule and your life to them. And if they are not living the same life, you cannot compare any of that. So yeah, all that to say, man, I'm I'm so I'm so glad to hear that, Mark. And I definitely I love being in this position and I hope it helps. And I do obviously have a huge heart and interest in helping parentpreneurs, um, for sure.

Mark Szymanski 1:54:10

So yeah, it's definitely a big niche. Yeah, it's I would say it's underserved. I mean, at least it's not on my algorithm. So maybe I need to start changing my algorithm here really soon.

Where To Find Josh And Final Notes

Josh Hall 1:54:17

Yeah, that could be. That could be. And it looked like Pat Flynn is a is a great guy who has teenagers now, but like that was one thing that attracted me to him was he talked often about his kids and how he balances his life around them. Um, why am I blanking on the membership? Um, Stu, Stu McLaren is really open, like being a family guy and building membership businesses. Like, there are entrepreneurs who who have that, but they're generally not at like the top, top echelons, or maybe they're in a place in life to where they you know have more time for their kids or teenagers, or they can do that. So um, yeah, all that to say, it's awesome, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm for you. Absolutely. It's fun, it's great. It really is great. Like it's the best. It really is the best. Yes, it's a challenge, yes, it's a shit show a lot of times, but as long as again, you're cool with that and you're down with you know, things being messy sometimes and the the schedule to be wacky and to be off. Um, my my conversation with Jay, you mentioned earlier, I think that's why he I mean he was really open about that, you know, being a very destructive year on the business because he operates and operated at such a like high productive, working a lot entrepreneur without a kid level. And when you throw a kid in there, it changes everything if you want to be present and if you want to be a family man or family gal. So yeah, but it's awesome, it's great. And the fact that we can have an online business that supports that and we're not working 90 hours a week, amazing. So I love it.

Mark Szymanski 1:55:46

Yeah, 100%, man. Well, I appreciate it, like I said, and I'm I'm looking forward to it. So I'll keep you posted how it goes. I'm definitely gonna be hitting you up for for more stuff as that as that happens. But uh Josh, man, this has been fantastic. Uh, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it. Where can I put links and everything in the description, but you know, tell the people where they can go to find out more about you, learn more. Uh, you know, grab the maybe become a web designer pro, etc. Where can they where can we send people?

Josh Hall 1:56:12

Yep, webdesignerpro.com is where to go if you want to enter my world and join my community and get my courses and community coaching. And then uh I do have my podcast and my newsletter over at joshhall.co, which is my personal site. So free stuff at joshhall.co, pay me at webdesigner pro. How's that sound?

Mark Szymanski 1:56:29

Love that. Awesome. Appreciate it, Josh. Thank you so much, man.

Josh Hall 1:56:32

I'll give it sends you at Blue Jackets uh Lindsay when the little guy's born. How's that sound?

Mark Szymanski 1:56:35

Oh, geez. Sounds great, brother. Thanks.

Josh Hall 1:56:40

All right, my friend. Well, I hope you enjoyed this one again. Show notes, joshhall.co slash 416. Connect with Mark, Marks is Banski.co, and the Fueled by Progress podcast. Both of those and more will be linked over at the show notes at joshhall.co slash 416, along with the previous episode that he was on uh about WordPress and whether or not it's just for old people. So make sure to give that one a listen as well. All right, friends, I will see you on the next episode. Cheers.