426 - Building, Growing & Scaling a Freelance Design Business (James Barnard interviews Josh)

In this special edition episode of the Web Design Business Podcast, I’m sharing a recent live interview I did with my mate from down under – James Barnard – one of the most prolific designers in the graphic, branding, and logo design space.

James invited me into his Designerrrs community for a live Q&A session which turned into a masterclass chat about how to build, grow, and scale a freelance design business.

He was kind enough to let me repurpose this interview for you! Whether you’re a web designer, graphic designer, or brand designer, this one digs into my experience from starting out to scaling up with a big emphasis on how to SCALE YOUR WAY.

Gosh doesn’t that sound like a good course?!? 

In this episode, we cover:

• My full career trajectory in web design
• The key stages of building and growing a design business
• What scaling actually looks like (and when to do it)
• How to start thinking about team building and hiring
• Ways to get everything off your shoulders as a solo designer
• Mindset shifts required to grow beyond freelancing

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned, along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/426

Your special offer:

Get 3 days free access to my scale your way course (actually, my entire course suite) inside Web Designer Pro® here!

Claim my 3-day trial to all Web Designer Pro Courses →

After trial, continue access to all courses for only $49/mo.

Transcript

Why This Interview Matters

Josh Hall 0:00

Hello, my friend. It's great to have you here. This is another special edition episode of the Web Design Business Podcast. This one is a recent interview where James Barnard, who is one of the most prominent designers in the graphic, branding, and logo design space, uh interviewed me recently for a QA for his designers community. And he was kind enough to let me repurpose it for you. We really get into the nitty-gritty of building, growing, and scaling a design business. Whether you're a web designer like me or whether you're a graphic or brand designer, you're going to be able to pull a lot from this interview to help you again build, grow, and scale your design business. We really cover the entire trajectory of my career and hit all the highlights and really have an emphasis on scaling and dipping your toe into team building and hiring and how to get everything off of your shoulder. So that's what we're going to dive into. And again, this was a live guest QA session for his community, Designers, which is powered by Adobe Express. Check that out, especially if you are a brand, graphic, or logo designer wanting to have a community. James is one of the best in the business. I had, it was an honor to be able to help James start this community. He'll mention this in the beginning, but I was actually fortunate to be the first member. So I've been able to see him build this uh incredible community for designers, very similar to what I have in Web Designer Pro, except for graphic designers. So link below to check that out. And if you are interested in what we talk about in this interview, which is my scaling course, I'm gonna put a special deal for you below to get access to my scaling course three days completely free on me. So there's absolutely no reason not to jump in and check out the scaling course. You can dive into what we talk about and more and help you scale your web design business or graphic design business your way. All right, without further ado, here's James asking me questions about building, growing, and scaling a design business.

James Barnard 2:00

Okay, we're live, we're recording. Welcome to another guest speaker interview on the designers powered by an Amy Express community. This week we have the one and only the first member of the designers community, uh Mr. Josh Hall himself. How are you doing, Josh? Thank you for joining us.

Josh Hall 2:18

I'm doing good. I rarely do calls at 7:30 Eastern PM, but uh appreciate you getting up. Well, you're not up too early, but uh we make it work, man. When we live across the world from each other, we make it work. So we do.

James Barnard 2:31

We've done this a few times. Uh usually one of us has got to give. Um today, not me. It's leisurely 9 30 a.m. in the morning. I want business hours in front of my desk. I've dropped the kids off. You know, this is me starting my day. Poor old you said to stay up late. Well, not that late, but you know, work outside the business hours. Um this is my this is my life, though, buddy. I like I you know, if I'm dealing with people in the States as dealing with people in Europe, usually someone's gonna give. And uh, you know, thank you for doing this on my uh on my terms this week. I really appreciate it.

Josh Hall 3:02

Dude, no problem. I was just talking to my neighbors. We had a couple beers before this sitting outside, and it's kind of cool in Columbus, Ohio to say, hey, I have a call with some Australians after this. That's not a normal thing around here, so it's cool. You know, this world is just awesome. The design online world, it's the best.

James Barnard 3:17

Yeah, you're right, you're right. Okay, man. So listen, first member of the community, I've got a lot to thank you for. Uh, not just for helping me set this community yet, but for some other things as well, which we'll get into. Yeah, number one member of the designers community, and um, you know, you're no stranger to the uh community environment. You've done this for a number of years. So tell us a little bit about your community and and then how it all got started.

Josh Hall 3:41

So my community is for web designers. I primarily focus on the business side of web design. It is called Web Designer Pro. If anyone wants to check it out, webdesignerpro.com is where to go to take a gander. But um, I actually came into this world of online education back in 2017 with my YouTube channel. I started posting tutorials about building websites, primarily with Divi and WordPress, and then uh started my podcast, which is called the Web Design Business Podcast. And I used to have courses that were all just one-off courses. And then eventually I knew that I wanted to number one, build recurring revenue. And number two, I wanted to be able to get a lot of my students together and actually see results and have a deeper relationship with like Alexia, who's in the chat right now, who's all designed.

James Barnard 4:32

She's a number of good communities, isn't she?

Josh Hall 4:33

Yeah. So so the end of 2020 is when I launched Web Designer Pro. So I've been in the community game for five and a half years now, and it is maybe the hardest business model, but also the most rewarding. And man, when it gets going, it's awesome. But I have such a heart for designers of all sorts. I was a graphic designer myself years ago. That's how I got started. I was a metal drummer in a rock band, and um I started similar. Yeah, and I'm similar. Right? You like you are just the odd you're the British slash Aussie version of me. And uh started started doing t-shirt designs and then got into websites, and then here we are 17 years later. My God.

Getting Laid Off And Starting Over

James Barnard 5:10

Amazing. So uh a butcher, a baker, a former cabinet maker. See what I did there. Uh you you were like non-graphic design for a long time and then you know worked your way into the industry. What happened? Like, what made what encouraged the change?

Josh Hall 5:25

Well, I got laid off from my cabinet maker job in 2009, and I'd always I'd always had an interest in design. I loved art class in high school, and um I had some friends that knew Photoshop. So I just got like a ripped version of Photoshop, and I was in the band at that time, and I was like, screw it. Like the day after I got laid off, I'm like, I'm gonna do something. And I started learning Photoshop, and then I started doing our t-shirt designs and eventually album artwork. And then I was playing a festival one weekend, and my light bulb moment was when somebody asked me who did our artwork, and I said I did. And they asked me most importantly, how much I would charge to do theirs. And I was like, Oh my god, I can make money and design. This is incredible. And that's the seed that was planted that that started everything, man.

James Barnard 6:12

Brilliant. We've got Ryan Sylvie in the chat saying, Boycott Cabinet, solidarity for just do you know Ryan? Ryan is the host of uh File New, the Adobe Live show. He's uh uh on the East Coast with you. So enjoying his time zone.

Josh Hall 6:25

I don't, but Ryan, nice to meet you. I'd love to connect. Brilliant.

James Barnard 6:28

You should check out his show. Uh anyway, so yeah, okay. So do you find that there was like um, you know, being in the in a kind of design with the cabinet making side of things, measuring, cutting once, you know, that kind of thing. Do you find that there was like similarities with that? Was there something between those two industries that kind of you know blended in to make the graphic design side of things a bit easier when you got started?

Josh Hall 6:50

I actually feel like there was more parallels from the band world and the music world to design than that job in particular, mainly because when you're in a band, and I'll say up front, I thought I was such a unicorn with such a unique story coming from the band world to web design and graphic design. Come to find out, that's a very common path for a lot of web designers in particular. And I think it's because when you're in a band, you learn to work with people, you learn your instrument, you learn to tinker. Your job is never done, you learn marketing. Like when you when you are in a band, you create an album, that's a marketing campaign. You learn how to brand it, you learn how to create a product and go release it and publicize it and do interviews and do the shows and sign autographs. I don't sign autographs anymore, but maybe one day. I'll be a Christop one day, maybe. But um, yeah, a lot more parallels from the from the music to business side for sure.

James Barnard 7:42

Yeah. I have a friend who's a composer actually. He uh school friend of mine that I used to be in a band with, and we talk all the time about the similarities in our end in in our industries. There's so much like in terms of like production and rollout and even the software, you know, little things like filters correspond to a lot of stuff in audio production. They're very similar, those two um uh mediums. So so you were you were the drummer in the band? Yes. Am I right? You were the drummer? Just you're so similar to me. It's ridiculous. I was a drummer in my band, uh, former, I'll say retired drummer. I I had a go with an electronic kit recently over here in Australia. I think I've got the I've caught the bug again. I think I might want to get it.

Josh Hall 8:20

Dude, when you're when you're stateside again, James, we're gonna make it happen and we are gonna have a drop off. It is going to break the design side of the internet for sure.

James Barnard 8:28

Amazing. Okay, so yeah, so you were doing t-shirt designs for your band, and but you know, I might you start picking up other clients? Like, how did things kind of progress into like the you know that you could sort of turn this into a business and eventually move into web design?

Josh Hall 8:43

Yeah, it was all freelance design work, mainly for bands at first, and then I was I was playing drums for uh like a worship band for a church.

James Barnard 8:50

I was helping out what's your what's your favorite brand of drum?

Josh Hall 8:53

Ryan is just pearl, pearl drums, zildrian symbols, pro mark sticks, remo heads. There we go. Yep. Uh I was I was sponsored for a very brief time by Soul Tone Symbols and Chipotle, if you would believe it. Yeah, I ever got a sponsorship. I got 25 free burritos, and it was like the best day of my life.

From Band Gigs To Web Design

James Barnard 9:14

Oh my god, what a deal. What a deal.

Josh Hall 9:16

Yeah, anywho, yeah. So went from yeah, serving bands, doing you know, $50 t-shirt design, CD artwork. And then, yeah, the church I was helping out with asked if I would help out with the website. And I was like, I don't know anything about web design, but sure, I'll give it a go. This was circa 2010, and then I really enjoyed web design. And I've found, and I don't know, it'd be interesting to see like what your world of designers do, James, to like make a hard stop on websites. But I just found that everyone was asking for web design, even as a prime, like a designer first, like graphic designer first guy. So I just naturally started doing web design, and then I did graphic design and web design for many years, and I loved having those two services. Then eventually I phased design out and just with all websites.

James Barnard 9:58

Really? So at that time, 2010, was was WordPress like prevalent then?

Josh Hall 10:04

Just coming around. It was Dreamweaver, it was Dreamweaver. So I was learning HTML and CSS, and then WordPress had just started to come out. I didn't pick up on WordPress until a couple years into it.

James Barnard 10:14

But were you as were you as blown away as I was when you first took your toe into the WordPress world and realized like, what why is this all free? How am I allowed to do this? Like, take a built CMS system, plug it into my hosting platform, and charge clients to use this. Like, how what's the catch here? What's going on? Why have they done this?

Josh Hall 10:35

Totally, totally. It's like, yeah, what like illegal mafia is behind this because something adding up. And it is funny because now WordPress looks so dated when you get into it, and by today's standards of 2026. But back then, I don't know if you know kids these days realize that was revolutionary. And it the concept of having a free software that's open source that you can just use is still, and that's community driven, is still quite amazing. So for all WordPress's faults and failures, it's still an incredible gem of an idea. And I gotta give him credit for that.

James Barnard 11:12

Yeah, it did take like there was a definite learning curve to starting it. I think that was one of the reasons why it felt okay to be charging clients to use it as a CMS because there was a lot to sort of learn. I remember I got a book like how to start WordPress in 30 days or something like that. And I was reading through it like there's loads of PHP stuff.

Josh Hall 11:30

You can say it was WordPress, it was WordPress for dummies.

James Barnard 11:32

You can say it's something like that, yeah, yeah, basically. And I was reading through and there was like all these this PHP terminology, and I was like, this is way above my head. But I got I got to the point where I figured out there are templates now. You can buy templates to plug in that are very customizable to do your own thing. And with enough jiggery pokery, I can make a pretty awesome CMS for a client and charge them, you know, a decent amount for it. And I was just, I was just, how is this how is this a job? What what's going on here? What's the catch? What's the catch? It was unreal. I don't know if you felt the same, but yeah, it was it's like how did you like go from like, oh, I'm doing like one-off websites now to turning this into something that was like repeatable and starting.

Josh Hall 12:15

Yeah, I mean, my whole goal was to just get a job as a designer eventually. And what happened was a few few years into it, I I I think I did close to 30k on like working part-time on the side with my freelance. And I was like, shoot, if I didn't how long? So that was 2013 when I did like about sorry, I mean 30k in how long?

James Barnard 12:37

Like how much oh, in a year, so like 35 years as a side business.

Josh Hall 12:41

Yeah, so you know, I made like probably like it was probably about 10,000 the first year, 20,000 the next. And then I hit like 30. I'm like, wait a minute, I could like, if I were to go for this, I think I could really make this a deal. And that's when it became much more serious as a business. And that'll translate to this topic today of scaling and what I how I learned to kind of scale my way. That's kind of my big emphasis right now with the idea of scaling, is not to be a big agency with overhead and payroll and just unnecessary stress. But also, I know if you're a solopreneur who has everything on your shoulders and you have zero help or zero community, not that anyone here doesn't have that because you're in a community, but you are in a very dangerous position. And that's where I found myself. So that's when it became serious. It's like, okay, I have like a business, and then I became a solopreneur and a business owner mindset. And then eventually I started hiring a lot of help, and then that's what freed me up to start teaching online.

James Barnard 13:35

Okay, so we'll talk about the hiring part in a minute, but I want to understand where your head was at when you you figured out, okay, if I put my heart and soul into this, I can make a living doing this full time. Was there a moment where you realized I'm gonna do this? Or was it a case of and I know what you're like, you're a pros and cons list kind of guy? Like, did you make a pros and cons list of like, you know, whether or not you should do this? And what was the kind of tipping point for you?

Josh Hall 13:58

Like, when you're I am actually, I'm not a pros and cons list. I don't know. Is that on the internet?

James Barnard 14:03

Because that is well, you did when we talked before, we talked about we'll talk about this later on about you know how to hire an assistant and yeah, making the pros and cons list of what you want to do in your job. But anyway, what what was the moment that tipped you over into you know?

Josh Hall 14:16

I think it was getting a feel for how much designers got paid in jobs, which was, I think, like at that time, like a good salary was probably 50 or 60,000 for like a good job. I'm like, shoot, I made half of that working part-time with freelance, and I get the freedom to work when and where I want. I was like, there's no reason I couldn't do three or four X this thing. And that was very early on, me like trying to become an entrepreneur. I was an accidental entrepreneur by all means. So I think that was the moment, James, as I'm thinking about it. It was like, while I didn't make a list, I certainly weighed the option of like, you know, yeah, I did this on the side. Who what if I had 40 hours a week to dedicate to this thing? Let's let's freaking go. And I had no bill, I had very little bills. I I did I had just met my wife, so I wasn't, we weren't living together yet. I I had like a car payment and some insurance. So it wasn't, I was in a good space to go for it.

James Barnard 15:07

Yeah. Right. Did you have savings before you got started?

Josh Hall 15:11

Nope. I probably had like $250 in my bank account.

James Barnard 15:14

Wow. Okay. So that's contrary to a lot of advice you hear out there is to have at least sort of three months of um what do you call it? Fuck you money. Do you know what I mean? Just like being able to have survive if nothing comes in for three months.

Josh Hall 15:26

Yeah, no, I had um I had yeah, I had unfucked money, is what I had.

James Barnard 15:31

Uh Ryan says, Did you ever take a business class or anything, or did you just hop into this?

Josh Hall 15:36

Just head first. You figured it out as you went. Yeah, as I always do. Take the hard route, just go for it. And I will say, naturally, I am a risk, I'm not a uh risk-averse person. I'm I'm down with risk. And I think um now as I look back, I'm like, I'm actually quite entrepreneurial. I didn't realize that, but I had the balls back in the day to say, I don't want to go to college, I want to do drums and I want to do the band and I want to take it very seriously. And I learned a lot of skill sets that were very entrepreneurial that again translated to this. So it wasn't as hard for me to become an entrepreneur and also to adapt a new mindset of going from freelancer to like business owner.

James Barnard 16:16

Um so before you did this and you thought, okay, I've got the I've got the book, I've got you know what it takes here to spin up a business and to be actually to make an income doing this. You've worked with clients at this point, you've made $30,000 in the year. And to get to that point, you must have had some kind of like sales technique. You must have known how to speak to those clients. Where did you get that kind of sales training or learn how to speak to clients in a way to kind of actually start selling this into selling yourself?

Josh Hall 16:48

Yeah, that's the thing. Like, I I actually did not go through any formal training, although I did at that point start reading. I got into Seth Godin around those years, a couple of his books. Like I actually started to like read for the first time ever and read a couple business books, which helped prime my mind. A lot of the sales tactics were actually things I picked up from the band because like we wouldn't need to, you know, sell a production company on us headlining a show and just saying, like, this is what we have, this is what I think we could do, this is how we'll market it. So again, I like the band really did prime me for this so much better than like school would have, because I just hit the ground and I was pretty fearless with and I was honestly, I was also very honest with where I was, what I knew about the industry. And one, there were two things that I think separated me because I was an okay designer, I wasn't great, but there were two things that no one could match me on. One was I truly cared about my clients and helping them and the work that I was doing for them. Number two was my communication. I was relentless with my communication, and that went such a long way. I actually just had one of my best clients on my podcast recently, and he hired me in 2012 originally. And I asked him, like, what made you hire me? And he even said you made us feel like we were your only client. So that like if you care and if you communicate, even if you're not the best designer, you will get clients and you can make some good money.

James Barnard 18:16

That's something to be said, isn't it, about people who are worried about starting a freelance agency. That there's definite business out there for people who want to deal with one-on-ones. They don't want to deal with big agencies or be scared or be intimidated. They want to know that the person working for them is has their sole focus and that they're not working with an agency who's going to hand that off to a junior designer and maybe be project managed by somebody more senior. They want to know the perfect person that they're working with is the person working on the project. And I had this the other day, somebody emailed me that was worried that I would be handing off the work to a junior. I was like, no, no, no, no. I do it all, I still do this. I do all of the logo design in my business still. Um, I have assistance to help me with parts of the business that I didn't particularly enjoy. We'll talk about that later. Um believe. So you have you really didn't have like any kind of formal sales training. Um so did you struggle with the business side of things as things got going? And how all of the you know, accounting and project management and pricing. Like, how did you tackle that when you were first getting started?

Josh Hall 19:19

You know that Chris Barley gif where he's just like rolling down the hill, you know what I'm talking about? Like it was you know, just like a complete slop of him just rolling down the hill. If you want to post that in the chat, that is that accurately describes how I went through it. Yeah, I made like every mistake you could possibly make, charged way too little, um, yeah, took way too much on. But again, just the care, and and I really enjoyed the work. I think that was helpful too. I really enjoyed both graphic design and web design. And I am a slow mover. I didn't have any ridiculous expectations. I wasn't trying to make six figures in the first year. I just went one step at a time, and I just, yeah, got through it one step at a time. And then I started, there it is, perfect, James. Yep.

James Barnard 20:01

That couldn't find the animated one. Okay, but that's you can put in it.

Josh Hall 20:05

That's that's pretty accurate, especially those first few years. But then I, you know, you never I don't think any of us really realize how much we learn about ourselves and our business until you reflect after two or three years, and you're like, oh my gosh, I am a completely different person. And then my mindset started to expand, and I'm like, whoa, I could actually make some real money from this. And I'm like thinking about this as like a business and not just a job for myself. So it was messy, but I got to the point where I was like, Yeah, then I just started making my own systems, met some colleagues and some friends in the industry who really helped me, started a networking group with other professionals. And next thing you know, I'm like, wow, I'm like a semi-professional. So there we are.

Raising Rates And Finding The Sweet Spot

James Barnard 20:48

Uh Emma just posted a good question there, which ties in that basically just after what you just talked about. Did you ever have a big jump between the types of clients you were targeting, or did they just naturally kind of evolve over time in terms of what you were charging?

Josh Hall 21:00

Yeah, they were they evolved, but also funny enough, I don't remember what triggered me to just up my rates because I almost doubled my rates at one point. And a lot of the clients who I thought would never pay that much paid it and had no problem. And then I was like, why was I charging so little for so long? And I also realized, like, you know, some of these projects are getting pretty, pretty big. And I realized like my clients were getting results, they were actually getting clients from their websites. And then I realized like, wow, there's like um, you know, this is not just a brochure where people are getting information, this is a conversion tool. Uh, all design is. And yeah, so that's when I started to go from like a thousand dollars per website to two thousand to three to four to five, and then I got up to fifteen thousand plus for some of our projects.

James Barnard 21:50

So did you find that was a bit of a plateau with pricing? Did you ever reach a point where you couldn't charge anymore and you had to kind of find that sweet spot?

Josh Hall 21:56

I could, but it's the type of projects that are The 15, 20, 30 Ks that I actually didn't like. I I still, and I'm finding this a lot uh with a lot of my members of Web Designer Pro. There is a very nice sweet spot between about four and 7,500 for like a smaller website. And then you tack on recurring revenue support services and growth plans or strategy, those can be really nice with that. Um that seemed to be a sweet spot. Once you get past 10K, usually it's a bigger site, which can be fine, but those tend to be a little more intricate. Honestly, I'd rather bang out a $5,000 project, get them on a hosting and maintenance plan, and then serve them ongoing with other services.

Proving ROI With Case Studies

James Barnard 22:36

So are you always looking for the recurring revenue after the client is over the line? Imagine that's a bit easier with web design. There are similarities in what we do, but my work is sometimes very kind of cut and shut. It's like right to move on to the next client. And also, I find it's quite difficult to measure the return on their investment with things like a new logo for your business. The actual return on what does that mean for your new business is harder to quantify. Whereas with a website, you have analytics and you can actually see how many people are on the site. How would you recommend someone like me quantifies the return on their um on you know working with me?

Josh Hall 23:18

There's probably a few different like categories of results you could look at, which again, it is trickier, right? Like no one's gonna say the logo persuaded me to jump in. Like it may really help, but they're not gonna articulate that, or they're not gonna, you know, use the logo to go to a contact form. But you could probably look at a lot of the different metrics with overall site traffic, depending on what that looks like with a website redesign if branding is a part of that. You look, you could look at their marketing, especially if you're doing other social graphics, digital graphics, print graphics, and what that would look like as far as like their marketing campaign. You could also look at potentially just like the feel and the confidence of your client. Um, I know Alexia, yeah, true. Alexia, who is here in the chat, uh, she's actually a member of Web Designer Pro and a member here. She's been working with me for over six months now for as a brand strategist and designer for me. And I feel so much more confident. And I'm actually way faster creating slide decks for presentations based off of the initial brand strategy and design assets that she created last year. So it's yeah, it's like I don't know. I I couldn't quantify that exactly, but I will say I just did a post on my social media. If anyone wants to follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn, it's at Josh Hall Co. And it'll be worthwhile because you could check out this post if you want to see it. I just posted it last week, but I posted the swag from our recent in-person event and I shouted out Alexia, and like it was cool to like want to promote the swag. Like, not many people are like, check out this lanyard, but I was really proud of that because of the work that she did. So um, yeah, like that that those are just some metrics that I would I you could probably follow up and say, like, what type of responses are you getting on in your lead generation? What type of responses are you getting on your marketing? How do you feel? Are you more confident selling, going out marketing? Those are the type of things that yeah, hard to put a number on, but you could still probably justify the the the brand you know investment.

James Barnard 25:21

Definitely. So I've I found personally like it's a very difficult thing to quantify in terms of like what when I'm when I'm trying to attract new clients like to show them what I did for previous clients. Like, how do you how do you show how your new design moved the needle for them? And it's a really difficult thing to to put into words. Sometimes it's a case of like this company was here and now look where they are, um, after your redesign, you may not have had much to do with it, but at the same time, it's showing the sort of standards of the company that I'm working with. So one of my clients, after I worked with them, raised $6.3 million in Seed Round funding. Um, and I put that on my website as like, you know, this is this is the client, and I put the testimonial, and underneath that line I put raised six point three million dollars in seed ground.

Josh Hall 26:07

And it sort of shows the standard of the client that you're working with, it shows how serious they are, shows um, you know, it might not necessarily have been because of your work, but it's also like like a quot like a um a qualifier almost to show like how how what's the standard of client that I am working with as far as as far as like actual data, you could look at social media though, and like once a company has a new brand and a new logo, you can see like what do like how many, yeah, how many likes, how many shares are they getting, what's their engagement? Those are things that are are tactile, you know, tactile. Same with website analytics. If they do have a fresh brand, a new logo design, is there a difference in traffic? Maybe.

James Barnard 26:47

One thing to remember, I know it sounds simple, I know it sounds like I'm spoon feeding um you here, but like taking screenshots of the before's before you start working with them. Sometimes people forget. I I I always forget to take the old logo and put it in a folder somewhere just in case. Because when they, you know, you do a rebrand or a new website, they roll out with it really quickly and you don't have access. There's no way back machine for logo design, right? So you need, you know, basically within my template file in Adobe Illustrator, I have a section that says put the old logo here so I don't forget to do it. So I could show the before and after in the case study later on. So how does how does a case study on a uh for a web design um project look on your portfolio or on your website? How do you treat case studies as you can see?

Josh Hall 27:33

Yeah, pretty similar as far as well, before and after for sure. And actually, it's funny, on my website, my third most popular page was the before and afters. And that could be different than a case study. Like you could, I actually literally just had like a wall of before and afters just for like a landing page, yeah, like a landing page, and then actual like case studies. So case studies, pretty similar to graphic design, before and after, uh, as far as like challenge, solution, result. And then the tricky thing with web design and graphic designers is you're generally not going to get a great result initially. You got to wait for there to be some time. So it's probably a good prompt and a reminder for everybody to circle back to your clients and check in with them on their recent results and look at the last work of the last six months or year, however long, and look at those results because they probably haven't thought about it. But it's a great time, number one, as an add-on, like an upsell potentially to reignite the conversation with them. But also number two, yeah, it's like mostly if you do a case study right when a site goes live, it's going to be like, James was great to work with, so nice, love our logo. And that's all right, it's nice, but that's not like measurable results. But if you go back in six months and say, in six months, our site has done this or our brand has done this, or our social media campaigns look like this and are getting way more engagement. So that's what I would recommend doing is treat case studies like they're never done.

James Barnard 28:56

Yeah, okay, that's cool. I've had I've spoken to people about this before as well. A lot of my um colleagues will check in after a year and make a note to go to back to go back and say, like, how's things going? And um do like a year anniversary of the new brand or the new website, say happy one year anniversary. How are things going? Let's have a look and see how things are. Isn't that cool? Just to kind of check in with that client. And then also, you know, anybody, you know, do you want to send any referrals my way? Reminder that I'm still doing this.

Josh Hall 29:24

Great Mark, great way to get clients. Send send your clients like like throw your your new low, throw their logo design on a birthday cake and put some candles on there and just say, hey, I just want to let you know it's you know the first birthday of the logo and it's getting so big and so proud of it. Here's you know, some cake, whatever.

James Barnard 29:41

That's cool. So you so you totally recommend, you know, when the project launches, pop it onto your portfolio, obviously, and share the work, but then update that as it goes along. Don't just leave it as it was. That's good advice. I never do that. I never go back in a year later and go, like, oh, it's just outside now and checked in. And especially good ones.

Josh Hall 29:59

Yeah, like not every client, but you know, certainly some really good clients. It's worthwhile updating those. And then guess what? When you update them, there's fresh content for social media, for blogs, for newsletter.

Recurring Revenue With Support Plans

James Barnard 30:09

Yeah, yep. Definitely. So we talked a little bit there about um when you've done a new project and you've launched it for a client, you have um recurring revenue within your business. Um, you have ways to keep that client going. Can you talk a little bit about that and what that kind of looks like from a web design perspective?

Josh Hall 30:28

So, and especially in WordPress realm, you need to update plugins and you need to make sure the site is maintained. So, in my world, the easiest way to build recurring revenue was a support and maintenance plan. So, hosting the website and then charging for updating plugins and updating the site, doing optimization, and just giving a monthly report to clients. And you could tack on. I always tacked on up to an hour of support time per month if clients needed it. Most clients didn't, but like some really and it and it worked out great. It was great. I basically just framed it as we are in your corner every month. You, your web, your webmaster is here. You can worry about building your business, we'll worry about your website. Now, for folks who are not in WordPress or are not in web design at all, there is still a couple different avenues for recurring revenue. One thing I've found that has worked pretty well for a couple members who don't use WordPress in my community is they've created something that we we dubbed SOS plans, and that stands for support, optimization, and strategy. And this is specifically for like Squarespace or Webflow sites where they don't have plugins, but you can absolutely support them with an hour of your time or basic content updates, team additions, stuff like that. Optimization, you could probably go in, and there's a variety of optimization things you could do on all platforms for like alt text on images, image sizes, redu, you know, clearing out content that you don't need. And then strategy. Strategy could be super open-ended. It could literally be like every quarter you do a call with your best clients if they're on your plan, and you could just talk about the website, their marketing, um, anything they're looking forward to do. You could really, and or if you are any sort of like digital marketing component to your business, strategy could be a part of that. You could say, like, we support you, we're gonna optimize what we have in place, and we're going to add marketing in there with the strategy. So that's that's kind of one of the best things I've seen for designers and web designers who don't use WordPress for recurring revenue.

James Barnard 32:29

So, with those kind of um packages with the client, do you package those up as services on your on your site when new clients come in and I can see, you know, this is what you might get. This is another add-on to this. And um, how do you sort of position that on your on your marketing before you actually talk to a client? So those first leads, like how are they seeing that on your website?

Josh Hall 32:50

I do like people seeing it generally. That way it's not a surprise, and that way clients don't feel like, oh, here we go, just another subscription you want me on. No, but I it is something that I do like to make up front. And and I've learned in selling my plan, we had over 75 sites on our plan at one point. And the best way I learned was that when you talk about web design, you talk about it upfront and say, after we build the website, it goes live. We have a support plan. You can get 30 days free on us. We'll take care of any last-minute things that we missed before launch, and then we'll kick off on the support plan. You can have an annual option or go month to month. And that worked out great generally. And then the cool thing is too, is if they were ever to pass on it, I give them a liability release saying you're liable for your website. If it gets hacked, it's on you. If you come to us, it's gonna be extremely expensive. Um, or you can upsell it at any time in the future. So you could say, like after a few months, check in to do the case study and say, by the way, we have our support plan for you. If you want to do more to your website, you're done tinkering around with it, we'll take care of it. And we have our support plan. No, no pressure, no rush, but it's here for you. We want to support you and help you grow your business with you know all the hard work we put into this.

James Barnard 34:01

So when you got to that point where you had 75 sites on your plan, I'm assuming by this point, this isn't just you working on the business. Yeah, at this point, you started to hire a team.

Josh Hall 34:12

Yeah, I yeah, yeah, at that point, yeah. At that scale, yeah.

James Barnard 34:16

Yeah. So talk to me about that first hire. So you've got to the point where the you know the business is coming in, you've got too much work coming in, you realize that you needed to sort of scale this up. How did you was your first hire like a friend or someone you knew, or was it um you interviewed for it? How did you how did you handle that first?

Josh Hall 34:35

So I I had dabbled, and I mean dabbled in like hiring some parts of workout the couple years prior to hiring my first like official designer in 2018. Um, there was a local guy who was like really good at code. I hired him just hourly to help code a couple things that I couldn't get my head around. I hired out some graphic design work periodically just because I was moving more towards websites, but I never had anyone that was ongoing really at that point. Um it was mainly just sporadic and just getting help here or there. It was February 2018, and that's very, very um, it still stands out to me because number one, I had 23 projects all on my plate. It's like uh you know how it is. Like sometimes you're like the pipeline is dry, and then for whatever reason, it's like everyone joined like moves at the same time, and it was just like a flood of work, which is cool, but way too much work for me to get done. Also, my first daughter, Bria, was about to be born in two months. So it was like, oh good lordy, what am I gonna do? I didn't like the whole booked out model, but I knew like I don't want to let these clients down. I don't want to work a hundred hours a week with my wife being so pregnant in the third trimester. Um, at that time, I had started my YouTube channel and I had actually done what I call an interview series, which is a way to get clients, by the way. I had just prior to this interviewed a bunch of Divi business web designers. And I told them on many of those chats that I'm looking for like, you know, eventually like a junior designer or something. And by chance, what Jonathan from Australia, he's actually in Melbourne, uh reached out and said, Hey, I saw one of your interviews on the series that you did. I'm new into Divi, I'm a junior designer, but I'm really hungry for it. I love your work. I'd love to have a mentorship role with you or help you out with with projects that you need help on. So I gave him a shot. I gave him a which, if you guys get into higher in any in any you know, realm, I always recommend starting out super simple, super small, low risk, low pressure. So like don't give somebody you don't know access to your Stripe account and all your projects. Like let them do one project. And if they do one project good and it's on time and they communicate well, then have them do something else a little bigger. And I just followed that that stair step approach with him. It was one CSS tweak. He killed it, he figured it out faster than I could. And then I had him design a section of a website, and then I had design him, I had him design a full page of a website, and then within a couple months, he was designing like quite a few pages on websites, and then it didn't take long for him to design like almost all of the websites.

James Barnard 37:18

So was this a contractor at first and then brought on as a full-time employee?

Josh Hall 37:23

I actually know we always had a contractor, right? Um, yeah, he was he was working almost full-time hours, it was over 30 hours a week at the height of it, but um he was never a W-2 employee, especially because he was in Australia. We still did it under his design. Yeah, and there's pros and cons to both of those. If you have a contractor, the pros are it's gonna be less in taxes, it's they're they're their own entity, and there's some benefits to that. However, the cons are they might be working for other clients, they might get really busy, you may not be the priority. So you kind of have to weigh those cons. But I think if I were to continue that business and had I not started teaching and getting onto courses, I probably would have hired him full time as like a full salary position.

WordPress Versus New Site Builders

James Barnard 38:09

So just quickly before we move into talking about scaling and and and more about hiring, um, we had a question from Emma about which is one I was gonna ask you as well. Like, have you now how have you navigated the changes to the website landscape? So we have WordPress, which is obviously CMS built in, requires a bit of coding knowledge. And now we have tools like Squarespace, Framer, Webflow. Um, very much kind of design in browser platforms. How has that been different in terms of like working with clients? And do you do you see clients sort of more and more asking for you know using tools like this? Or are you interesting?

Josh Hall 38:45

The the web design landscape is so cluttered. The thing is with WordPress, there are so many page builders that are design friendly. Uh, our friends with DesignerBoss, Emma and Anna, they use the same theme that I do, Divi, which you can absolutely build a Divi site without touching a line of code. Um, so there are builders that are actually very design-centric. Like Elementor is the most popular DIY friendly tool for WordPress. So I actually, it's funny too. I mean, thing to remember, WordPress is like 43% of the internet. So Webflow, Squarespace, Framer, these tools actually don't hold a candle to where WordPress is as far as the size of the internet. And all of those tools are very limited at some point. So I'm very keep my eye on the prize. And um I I would it would take a lot for me to bail from WordPress as far as websites. Now, I use Circle as well, just like designers. And James, I was happy to get you onto Circle because it is incredible. There is certainly a time and place for like other platforms if need be. And in fact, like there's a lot of hosting companies that have pretty dang good builders. I mean, you're using the circle website builder for the front end of designers. Yeah. And you know what? In some cases, I'm totally fine in saying, like, you know, maybe Squarespace is perfect for you for this, or maybe the circle builder or a hosting builder is fine for you. Um, but in most cases, like if you want a serious scaled website that is complex to any degree, I'm still all about WordPress and then any number of page builders or themes that you prefer.

James Barnard 40:22

Yeah. From a designer's perspective, and somebody who's not as adept with code, the appeal of Squarespace was it was kind of once I'd handed this off to the client, then Squarespace support would take over for any problems. And that was a big thing for me because I used to use WordPress and a plugin would update and the site would crash, and I didn't know how to fix it.

Speaker 40:42

Yeah.

Collaborators And Referral Partner Networking

James Barnard 40:43

Having something, you know, with 24-7 support that I can then hand off on all the billing to Squarespace, that was a big draw for me. But you know, it depends on your level and it depends on your skill set. And it sounds like, you know, these kind of um plug-and-play platforms don't kind of have the versatility that you might need, especially when you're working with clients who are much bigger and require more complex offerings. I think that's um it's it's slightly different between you. Okay, great. So we've covered the web design landscape, we've covered the the origins of your business, and you've started to scale up now to the point where you have 75 um website clients running concurrently under some former subscription model or service. How the heck did you get to that point? And and how do you go from like one employee to many? And did you ever did you hire like non-contractors and and actual employees under the business, or have you always worked under the contract?

Josh Hall 41:40

Yeah, so I never actually had any full-time contractors, they were all 1099 subcontractors. Do you guys do you guys have 1099s in Australia, or what do you call it when you have a tax form for uh don't ask me?

James Barnard 41:54

I just started my Australian company uh literally like a few weeks ago. You mean um you mean like just like a standard employee?

Josh Hall 42:01

Yeah, yeah, because there's like an employee form, which and here in the states is a W-2, or there's like a like subcontractor who's just contracting for you. They're not an employee, but they they contract for you. But anyway, that was all that was all the setup I had. I'll share real quick. This was my team size at the height of my in the version of Intransit Studios, which was my business when I was scaling. Um, and it was as such here. Pull this up for you.

James Barnard 42:30

So it's like a archive version. Okay, yeah.

Josh Hall 42:32

What's that?

James Barnard 42:34

Because this is your old company, right?

Josh Hall 42:36

Yes, it's my old company. That so I did sell my agency in 2020 to actually one of my students. So it looks different now, but I'm still the founder of it. Um, but this was their team at the height of that, which was me, Jonathan, who was my lead design developer from Melbourne, Australia. My wife was actually doing administrative work and handling our monthly maintenance plan reporting, just doing some some, and she would do like graphic design, business card orders and stuff like that. And then I had collaborators. And for anyone who is interested in becoming more than just you, this is the best way to do it without having employees. I love having like the main team and then collaborators. And I even put here how often they collaborate. Robson, he did a bunch of graphic design and print for us. He was pretty frequent. He almost every month he had a project. Amher, who is my email and DNS IT guy, he was on a lot of projects. So I put frequently, but then I had specialists who were just occasional. We had Noelle, who was a whiz in WooCommerce, and that wasn't every month, but you know, every once in a while she would come on and and hop on a project. We had Amanda here, who uh had some expertise in web design, and Pat, who was my local SEO guy. So this is what I would recommend doing for anyone as well who you don't want to have like a full team, just have Your collaborators. Have your, you know, your colleague. And I'm sure this is happening in the designers' community. There's no shame in having a team page that has you, as you know, in my case, the head honcho, and then you just have some collaborators. That way, clients know if you do get slammed or they have a huge project, you at the very least have a support system behind you. So that worked really, really well for me.

James Barnard 44:24

That's clever. And so talk just about like, you know, how do you go about working with a collaborator? How do you you go about hiring that first assistant? What are you looking for? And how are you advertising that into the world? Uh, like you said, the first one came through a connection because you you advertised it on a podcast. But what about the rest of the team? Like for people like not like you know, I've got a community and I've got a social media following that I can just ask. Um, what about others who might not have that? Like, how would you go? How'd you recommend hiring?

Josh Hall 44:52

Yeah, it was it was a mix of so Robson was Jonathan's good friend also in Australia. And so he was an easy hire because they just work together. Um, no, well, we were in a a Divi group together. So, like, and that's one thing too, whether it's designers or whether it's a free Facebook group, like you're probably having conversations and you just never know where where those things are going to lead. And you could always try it out, just give them one little project to try without going to Fiverr or Upwork or a different marketplace. I always recommend start with your personal and professional network and then start with your colleagues in the actually, the best place to start is to start with your colleagues in the industry because they probably have somebody or they know somebody, or you know, maybe someone on their team is also part-time, but they're open to more work. Like it's the best way to go. So that's the way I went about that. Pat, our my SEO guy, was actually a local guy, and we were in the same networking group organization together. So that's how we met. So you can do a lot locally as well, as far as meeting that one of the best ways to get clients and to get team and collaborator partners is to build referral partners, which are folks who are kind of adjacent to what you do. So if you just do logo design and branding, find a web designer locally. They will be a great referral partner for you, and vice versa. Because if they just do websites and you become their branding guy or gal, then awesome. Like you guys will get it off. SEO people, videographers, photographers. One of my best referral sources was a business coach. And I was I became their website designer. Guess who they worked with? Yeah, business owners. They were just an easy referral train. But that that can help with the team too. The the way the way you get clients can also help get you a team, too.

James Barnard 46:37

Do you do a lot of networking? Do you do a lot of events?

Josh Hall 46:39

Yeah, that's how I bit that's how I bit my business. Yeah, all in-person networking.

Task Inventory For Smart Delegation

James Barnard 46:42

Yeah. Interesting you say that. I've talked to a few other people before about this, especially people who are you know experts in freelancing, and they they swear by networking, getting out there, local events, meeting people, it's so important um to sort of build, you know a team to help you build a team to help you eventually scale this, whether that's with good leads, whether that's with skills, um, actual face-to-face meetings and networking events is um really handy. So when we first chatted and I was in the pros of hiring my first assistant, you gave me some great advice, um, which was to create a pros and cons list of things that I like and don't like about my business and stuff that doesn't need to be done by me. And I found this really helpful in terms of like pushing past my fears about hiring my first assistant. And it was um, you know, I would I would list parts of the business that I loved. So I love doing the logo design side of things, I love speaking to clients, I love selling. I've realized that I actually really enjoy that part of the process. I don't necessarily enjoy building brand guidelines documents or exporting logos or creating mock-up after mock-up for you know parts of the business that being brutally honest, I don't need to do. I can actually help somebody to do this. So would you recommend you know, that pros and cons list really helped me. How does that work with, you know, when you're hiring out someone? Are you looking for skills? Are you looking for people to fill the parts of the business that you don't need to do to free up your time? Like, how would you taste that?

Josh Hall 48:09

That's mostly, that's mostly and I still have that mindset today, which is like as soon as either I don't enjoy something or I feel like I somebody else could do this, or it's a repetitive task that I dread doing. Yeah, I'm looking to get some help on that. Um, that's so that's where the pros and cons list came from. I got it, James. Yeah, I call it a task inventory, which is a much more boring corporate word. So yeah, I uh pros and cons list sounds good. But that idea is so important, even if you have no interest in scaling in any way right now. I I still think it's really important at the very least to check your energy in your business. Because if you list out and doesn't need to be super complex, I have a a course called Scale Your Way, which everyone's gonna get access to for free briefly here if interested. If anyone's interested, that's gonna give you three days completely free access to actually all of my courses because I have my scaling course in there. Check out the scaling course if interested, because what I have is there's a there's a simple way to do this and there's a more detailed way. The detailed way is a task inventory with like a spreadsheet where you list out hour by hour, what are you doing? And then based off of what you're doing, what role is that task fulfilling? And then the last thing to do is is this task uh like friction or flow? Meaning, is this am I dreading doing it? Is it bogging me down, or is it putting in my like flow state? Do I like really enjoy this? The simple way to do this is probably what you did, James, which is just have a pros and cons list, write out what you're doing day to day. I would I would try to measure at least a week because your weeks are going to look different as a designer. Like if you had no sales call one week, then that's important to get it on there because you got to figure out if you really enjoy it or not. And then, yeah, based off of what you're doing, what you like and don't like, that's generally the the data-driven way to hire off. Now, the gut approach is just to say, like, okay, I should not be in editing my videos anymore. Or with my maintenance plan, I should not be manually sending out these client reports every month when I could make a video on how to do one client and somebody could take it and run with that.

Speaker 50:17

Yeah.

Josh Hall 50:17

Um, the brand guidelines. I bet there's a lot of like exporting files and doing that stuff that is probably, you know, once you do it a couple times, you get the hang of, and somebody else could do that. They may enjoy it more. So that's the best place to start. Definitely.

Scale Your Way Without Building An Agency

James Barnard 50:32

So we we we talked about scaling by hiring a team. What about scaling our leads or scaling how we our business in terms of financials, like charging more? Like what's what's the how do we how do I put this? Like, what is like the if you were to look at my business right now, my Lego design business, and work out, you know, where the sort of the the friction and the flow is within my business. Um, I'm a one-man band operation with an assistant who helps me out with parts of the the design type things that I don't necessarily like doing. I've done pretty well on my social media, so I'm getting leads coming in. What would you recommend for somebody like me in terms of um scaling up my operation here? Now, would you recommend making this look more like an agency? Or would you recommend me scaling as an individual but trying to charge more for client server? I'd probably charging more versus volume.

Josh Hall 51:29

Yeah, because I think but the thing is like both routes work. I think for you, James, like you know, stepping into coaching session time, it's like I would just ask yourself, like, what do you really want? And the cool thing is is there's always room for either path now or in the future. But I will say, I think in the age of AI and the age of just commodities and clients, like clients just want a personal touch. So personally, I would hold on to you being the personal driver as much as possible. However, there is kind of a hybrid way to go about this. There's an agency that I'm friends with in the States here called Artillery Media. And artillery media do very bespoke like website designs. That's all they do. They build $5,000 for a website and then they have a $99 a month maintenance plan. Right now, they're managing 500 plus maintenance plan clients. So they're closing in on a million-dollar business with just websites and a maintenance plan. Now, I say that because their founder is kind of the James Bernard of website design there. And in order to work with him directly, you need to pay a lot more. So that is one way to go, which would be like, you know, you have your systems for your systems for you, but you would basically have two offers. One is like, you know, if you want something that's, you know, let's say $5,000, you work with our team, maybe James reviews it and and it's and James is a creative director, but you're not going to have the hands-on approach. But uh, if you want to work with James directly, then it's you know, then it's 10 or it's 15k, something like that. So that that would be the hybrid approach. But personally, like if you're still loving doing web design and it's keeping you fresh, and this goes for anyone. I would try to hold on to to you know, being at the very least, being the lead person until you get to a point where you're like, okay, I'm ready to step out of the limelight and be the owner and not the designer first.

James Barnard 53:31

There's something to be said there about your happiness in the business, like what fulfills you as you do this. For me personally, just just you know, to let you know, I I love doing the work. I got a point to a point in my career where I started managing people and I realized I didn't necessarily enjoy that as much. I like being hands-on and I like using the tools, and that's fed into my social media context. But you know, you might be somebody who is in the business in the part of the industry now where you're like, you know, I've done I've done my time, I've done my the legwork in the in the industry, I've I've done the hard work. I'd like to start reaping the rewards of this, of my knowledge now, and I can get people to help me to to sort of scale this up. And I talk to people like Christy Campbell, um, who scaled up an agency very quickly in their careers, and they swear by it. And I I look with envy for people like that. When I go to these design conferences around the world and I see these people with agencies working with teams, um, some a part of me is like, wow, that's really inspiring. Maybe that's what I want to do. And then I'll come home and realize I can, you know, have dinner with my kids and I'm always there to put them down at night and and have that kind of lifestyle business. Um I personally realize that maybe, maybe that's where my kind of happiness lies. So I think there's something to be said there about, you know, we're talking before about our pros and cons lists. Think about your personal life as well. Like, you know, how's this going to affect your your personal life if you do scale this up? And um I that's have you found like your personal life is being affected at all by the success of your your business?

Josh Hall 55:01

Oh no, and and I will say, scaling, and and I call it my course is called Scale Your Way intentionally. Like it is very much a personalized thing. You it's not agency, it's not scale to an agency. It's like it's scale your way. You can absolutely be a solopreneur and and scale, and you can ramp up scaling and ramp down if you need to. Like, I've cut down on my video editor's hours just because he doesn't have as much right now. So, like you can do that. I I will say I can't imagine doing everything on my shoulders ever again. Like, I've certainly gotten to the point where even like we just hosted our first or our second annual um Web Designer Pro conference here in Columbus, Ohio. We had almost 50 members join, and we had Alexia did all the design, did the swag design, did a lot of the slide design, and and and I still did some design based off of that, but like she handled that. And then we have another member, Austin, who kind of filled in as like assistant coordinator. And I'm like, never again am I not gonna have those two roles hired out for Pro Con. Like it was just it really freed me up to like do the connecting and worry about the event and do the and make a better workshop and and and make a better experience and be a community builder. So, you know, I there's different levels to it, honestly. It's like there's no right or wrong. You could do it a little, you could do it a lot. The other thing I'll say too is I wouldn't be quick for anyone to say I'll never want to scale, because you may think that, and then eventually you get to a point where, like me, you're like, oopsies, I I was very proud alonepreneur, and I can't do everything again. And I've seen I see this happen with people who are really good at their craft and are killing it as a solopreneur, like doing it alone, is they get to a point where they get slammed, but it doesn't mean that they're gonna get out of that mess because once you're slammed, if you're really damn good, you're probably gonna continue to get leads. So you can be like, unless you stay booked out for three months, you could get absolutely buried. Um yeah, I at the very least, I recommend having like collaborators who can help out with parts of projects ad hoc if need be. Your situation, James, was ideal the way you scaled, which was to get, is it Emma? Is that right?

James Barnard 57:18

Uh Beatrice.

Josh Hall 57:19

Beatrice, I'm sorry, Beatrice. Yeah, yeah. Germany, right? She's that's right. Yeah. So you got Beatrice, she's doing a lot of the work that's admin, probably bogs you down, and then she might like that. Like my VA, I have a VA, Chris, who is actually she fills a lot of roles for me now, but she is from the Philippines. Incredible. I've never done a call with her. She does not speak English, but she types English incredible. And she's incredible, and she loves tech like troubleshooting and support work. I hate tech troubleshooting, and I hate support work. It absolutely drags me down. So we are like a match made in heaven. Like, I she is not allowed to ever leave me. Like, I will like, she's incredible, um, and it's awesome. So, yeah.

Lead Forms That Qualify Without Scaring People

James Barnard 58:05

I love that. Okay, so um you and I have talked before in the past about the issue of um pricing and how to go about that for cold leads or people coming into your website and looking at your your offering. Um and you know, how do you qualify those leads so you're not wasting time responding to inquiries where people don't quite necessarily have the budget? And I've done this twice. Okay, I've attempted this a couple of times where we put prices or some kind of floor price on the website, and it just doesn't work for me. I don't know what it is about my operation. I don't know whether there's a difference between the logo design visual identity versus the web design industry. But every time I've tried to qualify a lead by introducing a floor price on the website, my leads have just died completely, and there's been no inquiries whatsoever. And I've done all sorts of work to try and you know, qualify, put them put the price on and then qualify with a video and maybe a little explanation about it. But at the end of the day, it's it's not quite working. So one thing I've I've I've noticed is that when people have to come onto your site and there's a form, there are other ways to do this. Yeah. Being a little bit clever with drop downs with budget. I don't know, I want to see if you agree with what I've done on my site. Because you and I have talked before about this, and I put my full price on and it didn't work, and I've reverted back to the way um things have worked before. But I introduced a um drop down, and the drop down, instead of saying starting um, you know, the in the drop in the in the drop down on the budget inquiry form, says, what is your budget? And instead of starting at something like five thousand dollars plus, it now says less than ten thousand dollars, and then the increments go up from there. So I don't know about your thoughts on this. Like, what about here you go? You're gonna put me on the spot here. So, yeah, go to the uh there we go. Less than 10,000, 10,000, 20,000, 20,000 plus. What are your thoughts on this?

Josh Hall 1:00:01

That's a good approach, and I'm really like that. The thing about pricing on or hidden is the challenge, and this is the same for web design. The challenge is they both work. I know web designers who are absolutely crushing it, having their price right up front, particularly if it's a little more of a productized offer in some way. Yeah, yours is a little bit, yours is kind of like semi-productized. I imagine you have a process and a rough behind the scenes time span. Yeah. Um so honestly, I think it could work either way. What I like and what I we used to do, and that a lot of my clients are doing now, is or my my pro members are doing now, is if you don't have a budget here at all, just get a contact form in, and then you decide whether they are questionable or qualified. If they are a really good lead and you know they're a big brand and they've got big money, you're sure of it, then they don't even need to see a price point. You can dive right into a discovery call. But if it's somebody who's like, I think this is a tire kicker who's got like 300 bucks, then they should go to a hidden page that I call a potential client page. And that is where you would have your ranges. That's where you would have this, and you would say, like, our product.

James Barnard 1:01:15

You have separate forms depending on you scroll up a little bit on that on that page because there's some other things as well that I've put in that are that help with this. So one is location, that's a big one, first of all. Like where they're based, if they're based somewhere in the state, immediately their budget is you know is higher for me. That's just maybe that's a bit biased. And then also website and app link, so important. So you can do your background before you're you're answering any questions or you you're tailoring your response to a client. Those two questions, I think, are two of the most important ones. Yeah, especially for you.

Josh Hall 1:01:49

Yeah, because you have an online presence where you're getting people globally. Now, if you just did in-person networking in your area, then you probably wouldn't probably wouldn't be a big deal. But yeah, that's huge. Right. Um so yeah, the thing I think for you, James, like well, let me ask you this. What one would you what range is ideal for you? Just like you asked me, what's the kind of like what's the ideal range for you?

James Barnard 1:02:13

Like for run visual identity. Um I wouldn't usually work with clients that are that are spending less than 10,000. But that's not but that but what what I don't want to do is to stop people getting in touch because there are certain projects where I would. Let's say if it was for a terrorist thing that was close to my heart, or it was a particularly cool project that might lead to a lot of exposure, I would work with a client like that. And I don't want to stop them from getting in touch looking at the budget options on the site. So the the less than $10,000 wording frames it in a way like that's you know, likely where I'm going to be starting. Um, and these budget ranges kind of set the standard, they they kind of pre-qualify me to an extent, but at the same time, it doesn't discourage someone from reaching out, which is absolutely what I don't want. Yeah, like wow, he's too expensive, he'll never work.

Josh Hall 1:03:02

Yeah, no, this is clever for sure, as far as the the way you've crafted it. Because it's it doesn't feel like do you if you don't have 10,000, don't even talk to me. It doesn't feel like that, which is nice. Um, I think for you, especially it sounds like if you don't have a range on here, is the problem just the amount of leads that you're getting, like unqualified leads?

James Barnard 1:03:21

Well, not necessarily. It used to be a lot more. So I used to have um the budget range was like zero to one thousand, one thousand to five, five thousand to ten, and ten thousand dollars plus. Um, and then every, you know, lots of people would take the zero to one thousand. And then what usually happens is like when I see something like that, I have a pretty tailored response, it's just an email back. But when they go up and they collect 10 to 20 or 20 plus, they get a much more tailored response. And usually at that point they they put their link in and I've done a bit of research on them, and then I can go back with a much more personalized response to get them basically booking in a discovery call, like you were saying. Let's go straight to call. Yeah. Um, whereas you know, other people are like, I'll say, you know, I typically work with clients that are starting north of ten thousand dollars. Um how long how long has this been up? Maybe not long after we last chatted, so probably about a year, something like that.

Josh Hall 1:04:20

Oh wow, okay. Do you know like the estimated percentage? If you could just give me a rough estimate, do you know what like are most people choosing?

James Barnard 1:04:27

Most people check check less than 10. Yeah. But again, it doesn't stop people getting in touch, and it it it's kind of it's sort of not subconsciously telling them, you know, where I'm at, but it kind of it's putting it in their mind that maybe they should be considering that budget range. But it's important. Most important thing is it's not stopping them, it's not a barrier for them, it's not actually getting in the way of people getting in touch, which I think is really important.

Josh Hall 1:04:54

We need definitely to put web design business podcasts here.

James Barnard 1:04:58

There we go. Yeah, there we go.

Josh Hall 1:05:02

With Hottie. Oh, not Jotty. There we go. Oh gosh. All right, so there we go, a little marketing. So, yeah, I would honestly, man, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yeah.

James Barnard 1:05:14

Unless the the problem for you know, it's taken a long time to get to this point. It took a lot of trial and error and a lot of you know, sliding the scale and finding that sweet spot for me being so booked out that I've a three-month wait list and it never um, you know, shrink to being no jobs booked in at all, aka I'm too expensive. So there's always a sliding scale and it moves constantly. And I have to, you know, what what did um James Martin always used to say um keep adjusting and be open to Wiggle. Right? That's the the way to do that.

Josh Hall 1:05:45

I think the shift there too is anytime you tweak your intake process for leads, it's like if you keep an open door and you let anyone in, then you're gonna get a lot of leads. But it's just gonna take longer to filter them, and you better have a process behind that. If you You put a sign on the front door that's like here's how much it's gonna be, you're gonna get way less leads. So you just need to like mentally be prepared for like, wow, I might go from like 20 leads a week to like one or two, maybe. Um, but they may be really quality and you'll save a lot of time. So I this is kind of the hybrid approach. I like it. I'm yeah, if it's if it's worked out for a year and you're you know, there's always that shift where it's like, oh god, what I do. I think I remember when you made an initial change, it was like, Oh, I blew it up, didn't work well, but you do always have to give that like two to three month grace period for that.

James Barnard 1:06:33

Yeah, I've definitely done my my homework and I've definitely experimented, and this is where it's landed for me. How does it work for you? Like it like originally in your business. Did you have a floor price on your site?

Josh Hall 1:06:42

No, contact so contact form, super simple. Just tell me about the project, what services you're interested in. And then from there, I get an email and I personally decided. And keep in mind, I wasn't about getting a ton of leads. I was local networking, they were generally pretty warm or pretty hot. So all I wanted to do if they were online was to like sift them. If they're quality and like I this looks like a legit business, we're going to a discovery call and I might sell them on a you know four or five, ten thousand dollar project. If they're like, you know, I live in my mom's basement and I'm starting a you know app company. I'm like, okay, you know, I'm not even gonna talk to you unless you know that we start at 25 and 5,000. Right.

In Person Events And Final Free Offer

James Barnard 1:07:24

So yeah. This is just we we've run way out of time again. I could talk to you all day. Um for your time. It's always a pleasure talking to you. Just uh a couple of final things before we wrap up. First of all, um, tell us about your your meetup with your community because this is something that I hopefully one day we'll do with designers.

Josh Hall 1:07:43

Oh man, we might need to do a round two on this, then yeah. Yeah, we just had if anyone's curious, actually, just on my web design business podcast, that's on my personal site at joshhall.co. Um Josh Hall.co slash podcast. Um probably worthwhile just checking this out, but this will get into some of the specifics on that. Actually, James, if you if you have the time and you want to throw me on on a walk with you or something, I do um I'm sharing a lot about because this is fresh. This is just last week in the annual event. This is a bit of a behind the scenes, um, but it's incredible. I mean, I can't recommend enough that you do a designers in person. Um, yeah.

James Barnard 1:08:22

Now we have where to host it. Like where we're gonna have to go to America, we're gonna have to go to London, like right, we're all over the world.

Josh Hall 1:08:30

And it's like I did it in my hometown mainly because I have three little kids. I have a daughter with special needs. Travel is is very hard for me. So I would love to do a web designer pro con UK eventually. That would be a lot smaller. We do have, I think, 30 to maybe 25 to 30 members who are in the UK. Um, so I want to serve them, but it would it'd be more of a glorified meetup. It'd probably be like more like a little like retreat, like a workshop. The full conference, you know, we had over 40 people, I think we had 45 people all together at this one. Um yeah, it was freaking awesome. Yeah, and it was a mix of uh socials and meetups, and then a full-day workshop. But I will say, got to get some sponsorship behind those unless your tickets are expensive, because it is expensive to rent out a decent spot and catering all the expenses add up. So it's definitely something to be prepared for. And Alexia, yes, here Alexia is like the shining example of what happens when you get in person with your people. Because, yeah, literally last year she 10x'd her revenue and was able to go full-time in her job shortly after coming to ProCon.

James Barnard 1:09:39

There's nothing to be said about like local, like making your own networking event. We have a member in our community here who um set up a sort of collab with a few other people, like a few other designers in a um in our in an area and put on an event with like four talks, and then you know, ran their own event and shared the cost between the four of them, and then four of them got loads of leads in business from the local areas. That was reversible.

Josh Hall 1:10:03

Yeah, you could do that for small businesses, or you could do it for referral partners. You could say, like, hey, I'm hosting the, you know, like let's like get a video like someone find a videographer, photographer, website designer, graphic designer, digital marketer, whatever, and then get everyone together. But but there is something to getting around your people that is just, I mean, Alexia will tell you Pro Con, like I don't know, the buzz never wore off from last year, and this year was even more incredible. And you know, when you see people online, like the first time that you and I meet, James, one day when we have a few beers and get on the drums together, it's gonna be magnificent.

James Barnard 1:10:42

Yeah, isn't it?

Josh Hall 1:10:43

It is gonna be incredible. There's man, when you it's a you know, like when you first met a lot of your colleagues at some of the Adobe events, I'm sure it was like you go from 2D to 3D. I I just I can't recommend enough that everyone get IRL, baby, in real life. Get in real life.

James Barnard 1:10:59

Yeah, it's my fault for living in Australia, it's too far from everything.

Josh Hall 1:11:02

So far. Well, I know Jacob Cass was really interested. He was he's asking me about in-person stuff too. So maybe you guys could team up and have just an Aussie. How close are you to Jacob? Are you guys anywhere near?

James Barnard 1:11:13

Well, he's thinking, I'm uh the Gold Coaster's, it is quite far, it's a flight away. But we've caught up in a couple of events here in Australia. Met him in person, it's a lovely chat. Um, so yeah, that yeah, definitely. Like, and I'm gonna be in America three times this year, so fingers crossed.

Josh Hall 1:11:29

Dude, man, if you can take a quick flight up to Columbus, dude, let me know. I will move, I will bail on my children to come hang out with you. So amazing.

James Barnard 1:11:40

Okay, let's talk about that little offer you gave to everybody again. Three days of free access to all of Joshua's uh courses so you can binge those.

Josh Hall 1:11:48

Yeah, definitely for everyone on this for the after this one. I would definitely recommend again, you get three days free access, so go for it. Um, at the very least.

James Barnard 1:11:57

Um scaling course would be the one to recommend for that, would it?

Josh Hall 1:12:00

Yeah, you'll get access to my suite of courses. This is mainly it's all web design, but the scaling course is actually nothing to do with web design, it's just design. So yeah, go to scale your way. Um, if you are doing websites, or if you're interested in learning a little more SEO, or if you want to steal my well, you don't have to steal it, I gave you access. If you want to go into my lead-in process, that's inside of my business course. So check out scale your way, then go to business. If you like web design, go through them all and then let's talk.

James Barnard 1:12:29

Amazing. Alexia is in the chat to say it's so worth it. Okay. Sold. Thank you so much, Josh. Appreciate your time as always. You're an absolute legend. Thank you for all you do in the world of our in our industry and for your help with setting up this community. You're an absolute gem. Hopefully, I have paths crossed in real life. Um, one day soon. Everybody say thank you in the chat. Um, and yeah, well, hopefully I'll I'll see you on the next one. And if uh we could do this again, let me know. I know you have like how many have you know, how many courses on your um pro subscription there. Today we're scaling, we could do another one down the line with something different, I'm sure. But um, yeah, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it.

Josh Hall 1:13:10

So there we go, friends. I hope you enjoyed that one again. The special deal that I offer James's community, I'm gonna offer to you, which is three days completely free of my scale your way course. In fact, you're gonna get access to all of my courses by checking out the link below because that's gonna give you access to my entire suite of courses, three days completely free on me. If you would like to continue on, I'd love to have you a part of my Web Designer Pro community if it's a good fit for you. And if you are on the design side and you're more interested in logo design, graphic, and branding design, check out James Barnard's designers community. He's awesome. You'll love that community as well. All those links below. Thanks so much for joining. Show notes for this episode are joshhall.co slash 426, and I will see you, my friends, on the next one.