When to add a new web design service (⚠️ proceed with caution)

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Chapters

• 0:00 Two Ways New Services Start
• 1:16 Proactive Entrepreneurs Vs Designers
• 2:16 Accidental Business From Requests
• 5:15 From Design To SEO To Courses
• 7:38 Reactive Offers Sell Easier
• 8:56 Proactive Win: Launching Maintenance Plans
• 11:30 Proactive Miss: A Course That Flopped
• 13:09 Caution: Do You Actually Want This
• 15:01 Test Sprints And Private Back-End Offers
• 17:05 Be Ready To Be Known For It
• 18:42 Build Referral Partners And Exits
• 19:59 Protect Time And Expect Delays
• 21:20 Introducing The Mastery Sprint
• 23:05 Why No Permanent Higher Tier Yet
• 25:07 Who The Sprint Is For

Transcript

Josh Hall: 0:00

So I've found if you launch a new service or a new product or any sort of new offer, you generally fall into one of two camps. You're proactively launching something because you want to, or because of a monetary goal or an interest or a vision or an opportunity, or maybe a course that you take or a program that you go through. Or two, you reactively launch something because somebody asks you to do something for them. You there is re there are requests that are coming to you or demands for your skills or services. So I want to dive into real quick on this little solo episode, this weekly edition of Joshi Time, uh, to just kind of expand specifically on kind of my cautionary advice on when to launch a new service in either one of these categories. So that's what we're going to dive into. This is based off my newsletter that's coming out this week, uh, which is all about launching a new service and when to do it. And this is very timely on top of mine because I have just launched something new that Web Designer Pro members already know about, but I'll share with you publicly here. So let's dive into this because if you, as a web designer or an entrepreneur, I've found well, no, I want to separate those two. I think as a business-minded entrepreneur, you more than likely fall into a proactive category where, you know, you think of opportunities or you see opportunities and you do not in all cases, but you create something to, you know, again, fulfill a vision or an interest or a skill set or an opportunity, or maybe you're from a niche and you think of an offer for that niche. It's probably a little more proactive. What I've found is most web designers like myself are in the second camp to where we're just interested in design and people ask us, hey, can you do this for me? Next thing you know, you're charging them and you got a business, my friend. This is the case for most web designers. Now, I've become an entrepreneur, I was an accidental entrepreneur, so I'm kind of straddling both worlds now. But I like you more than likely fall into, you know, most of my services, I as I look back, have been more reactionary. So, for example, when I started doing graphic design for my band after I got laid off from my cabinet making job, I did not have any, you know, true like um vision for it to become a business. I just knew I had an interest in design and started dig digging into Photoshop, doing graphic design for my band. And then, as I've told many times on this podcast, we were playing a festival and somebody asked us how much I would charge to do their artwork. And then I realized, holy crap, uh I can make money doing this. Awesome. So definitely reactionary. When and really, as I'm looking back here, most of my services have been in this category. Because when I was doing graphic design and print design, as I've also said on this podcast, and which is completely true and not an opinion, it's truth. All design roads and marketing roads lead to websites. Because when I was doing graphic design and print design, clients would ask, Hey, do you do websites as well? Or thank you for these graphics. I want to put them on my website. Do you do websites? And then when I was doing websites, clients asked, you guessed it, how I could help them get found on Google, aka SEO. So I dug into SEO and started offering SEO plans with an SEO partner. Now, when I had built my business up to six and multi-six figures and I started writing for elegant themes and started my YouTube channel, I was proactively thinking I would create like website templates and child themes because I saw the opportunity in that realm. But why would what I was actually being asked about was how I built my business and my business processes and my SOPs and how I was building recurring revenue with my maintenance plan. So essentially they were asking, like, do you have any courses? How do you like, can you share your stuff? Which spawned me getting into course creation. And then when I had my suite of courses and I had hundreds of students going through them, some of the students who were finding success asked me if I had like uh a community aspect for support or if I did one-on-one coaching and personal coaching. That eventually became what is now my main membership, Web Designer Pro. These are all real-world examples of services and offers and products that I've created based off of what was asked of me. And again, I think this is most common for web designers, but I have launched some proactive services that I'll share with you next. Um, real quick, I think it's I I personally like launching a reactive new service because I think it's a lot easier to sell because it's something that you probably are already doing if it's asked of you. It's something that you know there's demand for. And I find it's a lot easier to sell when people are asking for it instead of like creating desire and creating urgency and explaining why there's something new that they should, you know, think about diving into. Now, on the other hand, I have absolutely been more proactive in some services for good and bad. For example, um, when I launched my maintenance plan, which was a cornerstone of my business. And when I learned to love this lovely term called recurring revenue, I had no, and actually, somebody told me early on, one of my mentors told me when I was doing WordPress websites, we're talking circa 2014. He's like, Have you considered opening up a support plan and charging your clients like$39 a month to update their plugins? I was like, Who in the hell is gonna pay me to update their plugins? Who's gonna want that? I had a very limited mindset. Little did I know a lot of people would be interested in that because they're not web designers. And more specific to maintenance plans, for those of you who have been through my maintenance plan course inside of Web Center Pro, you know that clients are very interested in having somebody as a support partner for them ongoing for website updates, for tweaks, especially if they are not DIYers and they're a serious business owner who needs a web design partner in their corner. So that was asked of me, but I neglected it. And on my honeymoon, uh, I met a guy in the pool named Dan. Sounds where's the story going, Josh? I'm happily married with three kids. Don't worry, it ends well. Um so I should have, maybe I should have called this podcast. I met a dude in a pool with my shirt off. Anywho, um, yeah, I met Dan in a pool because I heard him talking about WordPress and he was from the UK. And we were talking, chop, and as entrepreneurs do, you're on vacation, you don't want to talk business, and then you hear somebody talking about something you're interested in, you're talking business. And uh he asked if I had done maintenance plans like recurring revenue with support. And I was like, no, I was like, I've heard about it, but I just don't think people are gonna do it. He's like, dude, people are doing it. So Dan and I actually, because he had a what he was a web designer, web developer, we actually partnered in the first version of my maintenance plan. And it was a 50-50 split until eventually I took it on myself because he wasn't interested in doing client work and we kind of I kind of took over the maintenance plan fully for my agency in Transit Studios. But anywho, um I proactively launched my website maintenance plan to all my clients. So they weren't at like my clients were not like, hey Josh, can I pay you to update our plugins? They weren't like, can I pay you every month to add team members to our site or make quick updates? No, I actually proactively launched it and made a big launch out of it and like told my clients, hey, we're offering something new. It's called our WordPress or it was a website maintenance and security plan, is what I called it. And I had to launch it and build a little desire, and it was awesome. Started building recurring revenue out of the gate. We had almost 20 clients sign up in the first couple weeks, so it was awesome. So that was a good example of proactively launching something where it wasn't a fake need. There was a real need for it, but I had to like encourage people as to why. Now, another example of proactively launching something that actually didn't go well was I created a course on how to create courses. I had a couple people ask me about this, but it wasn't my market at large. And this is why we're gonna get into a few caution, like key word of advice, caution before you launch something new. Uh, I had completed my main suite of courses for web designers. And I had some folks in those, some folks who are still in Web Resenter Pro and still actually love that course. I had Amher on the podcast recently, who was one of the first members of that course because he's kind of a webpreneur. He's a web designer, DNS guy, developer, and he uh is an educator and entrepreneur. But he asked me, along with a few other people, if I was interested in like sharing my process on creating a course. So I created my first course in what I was gonna originally do, which was like a tertiary category of courses for webpreneurs. I was gonna do one on how to build a course, how to do a podcast, how to do a YouTube channel. And when I launched that course, it effectively flopped. I still had like 20-some members or 20-some students go through it and they loved it. It was still like a great course. But I, because my audience, especially at that time, was purely web designers, not many web designers wanted to create a course. And they weren't wanting to pay a few hundred dollars to learn to build a course. So I learned in that case, even if there's a little bit of interest, it doesn't mean that you should just jump into a service right away. And actually, I am such a like, I like to share what I'm doing right now, but if your market isn't ready for it or if it's not big enough for it, I learned don't invest a bunch of time and energy and potentially derail yourself by launching something new if it's yeah, not going to be worth it. So, you know, there's pros and cons to both of these because there's also times where you don't want to launch a reactive reactionary service. So I want to give you uh some caution, uh, just a few tips here for either one of these cases, because neither one of these categories is right or wrong. There's pros and cons to proactively launching something and then reactively launching something. But in either category, uh here is my kind of like word of warning. Here's some caution that I want you to think about before launching a new service. Because obviously I'm overseeing a lot of Web Designer Pro members, and I have seen people launch a service when I could tell like they didn't really want to do it. They just thought like they should, or maybe there's opportunity or the money might be good, and then you get into some of these issues here, which I'll share with you. And again, I've been through plenty of these, and I'm sure you have too, as a web designer and entrepreneur. I'm sure you've done something where you're like, yeah, not gonna do that again. Uh so some cautionary tales of starting a new service. Number one, make sure it's something you want to do. That has to be key. Do not just do something for the money because it's gonna eat at you because you just don't want to do it. And there is nothing worse than building your own business that you don't want to show up for. So make sure it's something you want to do, my dear friend, before you launch something. And number two, make sure you don't commit to something long term unless you're for sure you want to see it through. And caveat to this is if you are going to start something new and you wanna kind of test it out, this is gonna come into play, as I mentioned, with something that I'm now doing as a new offer inside of Web Presenter Pro, which I'll share with you next. Um, but if you if you launch something new, consider doing it in like a sprint style approach. So give yourself a timed window. For example, let's say you wanna like you might want to do SEO, but maybe, maybe not. Or you might want to do branding, but maybe or maybe not, or you might want to do some sort of strategy or conversion rate optimization, but you're not quite sure if you want to do it long term, you want to get a feel for it. Don't create an SEO ongoing plan with an annual commitment and launch it because you're gonna be on the hook for at least a year when someone signs up. And this will get into another tip here, but you want to be careful not to launch a new service and start getting referrals for something that you don't want to do. So consider starting something new, more like a timed sprint style, or maybe even more of like a back-end offer that's private to just let me let me jot this down. I'm actually writing my newsletter. I wrote the outline of it and then I'm doing the audio. Um uh private offer, that's what I'll call it. So consider maybe making it like a back end offer, something private for just clients, just to you know, offer something new with people you know, like, and trust and who know, like, and trust you before rolling it out publicly. And if you like it, awesome. But just know you're gonna start getting referrals and you could very well start being known for something. So uh actually, this is very timely because I I did some circle videos, like some videos about circle, which I absolutely love. But I knew when I created those videos and posted them on YouTube, there was a good chance that they would get some views and I would start to be known as like a circle guy. And um, obviously, building community is like the main thing I do now. I'm actually much more of a community builder than a web designer. So I knew like I didn't want to go too far into the community building world because I don't have the personal bandwidth and time to have an offer for that. But I was okay. I got to a point where like, okay, I'm okay with like putting my name behind some circle videos because it's something I have interest in doing eventually for sure. So you need to be, it's my word of caution on that is you need to be make like make sure you know you may be known for something. If you do what uh SEO for a little while and you start getting results for clients, they're gonna share their results and they're gonna be like, oh, you gotta talk to my SEO guy. And you may be like, Whoa, I've only been doing this for like 90 days. How am I known as an SEO guy? Well, very quickly. So you will get referrals when you do services and if you do them well. Now, if it is something that you won't want to do forever, for example, or you may foresee an eventual exit like uh from it, either have an exit plan or have a referral partner. So with my SEO plan, I didn't have personally like a huge interest in SEO, but it was such a need, it was requested so much from my clients, I was like, okay, why don't I just do the foundation, which is what I teach in my SEO course, and then like on-site foundational SEO, keyword research, on-site SEO principles, alt text, all the goods, all the good basic principle stuff. But then for ongoing SEO, I had a local partner who did ongoing SEO. And I he white labeled for me for clients who wanted more ongoing SEO for authority building, backlinks, etc. Ongoing SEO up, excuse me, ongoing SEO updates. So I did have a referral partner and kind of an axe uh exit plan in that case. So do something similar if you don't think it's gonna be something or you're not sure you're gonna do it forever. The biggest thing here is make sure you have time in your calendar, in your mental bandwidth to take something new on because it will eat into your current offers, it will eat into your calendar, it will eat into your headspace. So do not launch a new service if you are not like if you're if you feel like you're just overwhelmed and booked up, do not launch a new service. This will get into what I'm doing in Pro next because I feel like it's time to launch something new. And last year, when it was asked of me, I just didn't feel like I had the time or bandwidth for it. And lastly, in most cases, you do need to probably expect some delayed gratification because anything new, just like your business, takes a little time to look to build up. And I think a lot of people launch a new service thinking it's gonna take off just because there's already a set of customers and stuff. But even if it's even if you have a established business, a new wing or a new service is gonna take time to catch on. So just lastly, just expect a little delayed gratification. And this all culminates to where I'm at now with Web Designer Pro, which is I have launched something new based off of these lessons that is reactionary, and it is a more high-ticket intensive coaching offer. So again, Web Designer Pro members have already heard about this, or at least you guys should have. I have sent emails and it's on the private podcast feed, and um, it's in pro, so Web Designer Pro members go check it out. It's called a mastery sprint. And the way this came about is I have been asked about more intensive private coaching and together and separately, a more like small group coaching experience that's a little more like a cohort with folks who are at a higher level in business who quite frankly have six and multi-six figure problems. But I haven't really had that offer in pro yet. And the reason is I didn't want to, to this point, have like a whole separate higher tier. I didn't want to pull away the folks who are really advanced in their businesses, away from the community, because if you're not yet in my community, one of the beautiful things that we have together is we have this amazing mix of I call them builders, growers, and scalers. Builders are folks who are new starting their web design business, building it. Maybe they may not be new into web design, but they're new into really building their business. And then growers who are like trying to get to that six-figure mark, maybe working as a side hustle, wanting to go full-time. And then we have the scalers who are established, maybe they've been in business for at least a few years. They've got a small team, they're at a six or multi-six figure level. The challenges are very different at that level than they are building your business. It goes from like, how do I get clients to what do I do with all these clients? Um, and that's one reason I never really felt comfortable with having like a higher level tier, is I didn't want to pull people away. However, I found out that by way of people telling me straight up and just hearing through the grapevine that people got to a certain point in pro and felt like even outside of my current coaching tier, which is where you get our weekly coaching calls that are group calls and DM coaching with me, that people wanted more. People uh they wanted a little more Josh, but they there wasn't really an option for that because I wasn't offering private coaching or a more intensive group experience. Now, I I have took, I've taken my own advice that I just shared with with you. And because I could definitely foresee this being something ongoing, but I'm not ready to commit to like an ongoing annual thing yet for all the reasons I just mentioned. I have offered our first ever sprint, a higher level, what I've dubbed mastery sprint. And I've just rolled it out, and I'm so excited about this because we've already got a few members in, and it is a chance for members at a higher level, at a six or multi-six figure level, to get intensive and private one-on-one coaching with me, and as an addition, chance to all learn and grow with each other over a 10-week period. So this mastery sprint that I've created, and I'm telling you this for two reasons. Number one, it is exclusive to Web Designer Pro, so you have to be a member of Web Designer Pro. So jump in, and then you can apply as long as you apply before Sunday the 15th. So you gotta jump on it because it's a couple days after I'm launching this. But overall, I want you to think about this when you offer a new service, because this has been asked of me for a couple years now. And I finally got to the place where because I've been coaching so many members and because I feel like I'm a much better coach now than I was even just a couple years ago, I'm seeing what's working in web design at all levels. I'm seeing what's working with pros who are at a six and multi-six figure level. I feel very confident, and and because quite frankly, I've made over two and a half million dollars as an entrepreneur over 16 years. I can help a lot of people at a high level. And I feel super confident because the proof is there with people I'm coaching in pro. And I want to do it more. I'm really at a place where like I'm I like going a little deeper with members who are at this level and who I really think I can make a big difference with in their business. So that's what kind of led to me getting to this point where I felt comfortable with launching my first ever mastery sprint. It's 10 weeks. It is uh, well, it's actually a little over 10 weeks. Our group calls are going for 10 weeks, but we'll be doing a one-on-one call before we kick off, like a personal coaching call. We'll be doing a mid-coaching call and a wrap-up coaching call along with weekly group calls with everyone in the sprint, up to 10 members. So it's a very small cohort. And each one of the members here is going to have a personalized coaching plan that will have all of the goals and challenges you want to hit and get with this sprint, all of our coaching call replays and summaries and action notes, and then I'll be giving kind of a personalized wrap-up to help folks who are at this level who want to either get more revenue, get more profit, get more time back, implement systems, grow your team, scale in a way that is personalized to you, tweak your offers, figure out the best marketing at your level. So those are the high-level things that we're doing in this. And I'm super, super excited about it. And again, the the main reason I'm sharing this with you publicly, because I thought about not sharing this at all publicly and just keeping it as a back end offer, like I just advised. But I want to let you know if you're interested in joining Web Designer Pro and you're at this level, there is a new offer for. You, which is right now the mastery sprint. And this is definitely going to turn into something that is ongoing as far as like we'll do this first one, we're going to see how it goes, and then I'll likely launch another one come summer or fall. This may turn into something that is more ongoing. That's like an annual commitment. I'm not sure. There's there's some fuzziness with like the long-term goal for this, and that's fine. And I'm saying that for you, it's fine to have fuzziness, especially if you don't, you know, commit to something long-term yet. So this is great. Like I'm excited about this because I love doing something new that has a timed experience. Even when I started doing tutorials for my YouTube channel, I gave myself a 12-week window. I committed to doing one tutorial a week about Divi for three months, 12 weeks. And it was great. And I loved it and I kept on going. So that may very well be what happens here. But yeah, it's it's just uh I've kind of learned as I'm thinking through this and I'm launching this. Well, it's already launched. We're starting next week. Um, so again, if you're interested in this, you have to be a member of Web Designer Pro. You can be on the community or coaching tier. And when you jump into Pro, you'll see it at the top. It says Mastery Sprint. It is an application. You do need to be qualified for this. You need to be at or on track for six figures. Or at the very least, if you're building a side hustle, you need to have these like high-level problems. We are not talking about how to get clients or what social media channel to start marketing with. We are talking high-level stuff in this one. Maybe eventually there's room for like a couple different versions of sprints. I could foresee like a growth sprint to help people get to six figures. Um, but this one we're gonna start off high level. So this is for the folks who yeah, want want more me, want more private coaching that's confidential. Cause I've found that folks at a high level often don't feel comfortable talking about their numbers or sharing revenue for a variety of reasons, which many I understand. So this is the opportunity. And it's a really cool chance for for a very small group of people to go really far together in this mastery sprint. So yeah, that's what I'm super excited about. And those are also a uh kind of a list of my cautionary advice for launching a new service, because there's absolutely a time and not a great time to launch a new service. So I hope this helps. Whether you are proactively considering launching something new or reactively launching something new, I sincerely hope this helps you out and goes without saying if you are at that level as a member of Web Presenter Pro or you're at that level and this is your time to jump in and jump into Web Presenter Pro, this is not a separate the Mastery Sprint is a one-off uh edition. It's something that's going one-off. It's outside of a normal membership subscription to pro. So we've got a few spots left at the time of recording this. I can't guarantee it's going to be open or there's spots left when you join, but you could definitely be on the wait list for the next one. So there we go. And I do hope what I've learned in launching a new service helps you. Uh, a couple things to wrap up on this one. Again, this is taken from my newsletter from this week. If you are not on my newsletter every week, I send you this and I always send good stuff, I promise. No spam, no goofiness. Well, there'll probably be some goofiness, but dad jokes at most. Um, josh hall.co slash newsletter is how to get on my email list. And I do keep the last 12 newsletters archived publicly for you to read if you are not on my email list. Uh so you can check that out. That link is below as well. And of course, jump into Webpresenter Pro to join my community and to get my coaching and potentially join this mastery sprint. Last thing I want to mention real quick is I am going to be a featured speaker at the upcoming SEO Surge Summit. Sam Sarzden, who was on the podcast, is on the podcast this week, uh, I shared his live training from our first ProCon 2025 event. Um, he is actually hosting his first ever summit all about SEO. And if you are interested in building a stable business, building your MRR and growing it specifically through SEO, this is a completely free summit. It is freaking awesome. It is packed with incredible speakers and myself. So you can go sign up for free. That's gonna be going down February 24th through the 26th. Go to joshhall.co slash surge. That is my link to sign up for the summit for free. And I will see you there. And it's gonna be awesome. Build some recurring revenue and build your SEO plans and then get to six figures and join my next mastery sprint so I can coach you intensively and privately directly. How's that sound? Awesome. All right, friends, all the links for this below. Thank you for sticking with me and joining on this one. And uh, if you are enjoying these episodes that are casual, solo, and a little more scattered, although I try to keep them on point, let me know. I'd love to hear from you. Sign up for my email list, or you can go to joshhall.co slash contact and uh zip me a note. Connect with me on Instagram and LinkedIn. That's where I'm most active on right now at joshhall.co or at joshhall co are my handles for both of those. All right, my friends, have a great weekend and stay subscribed because we got some doozies up ahead. Cheers.