431 - Hot Dog, I just made 1 million with community

Well, I’ll be. I just recently crossed 1 million in lifetime revenue to date with my community Web Designer Pro.

While it was never an exact goal and there was no rush to get to the 7-figure mark, it is a cool milestone and boy howdy have I learned a lot.

And that’s what I’m sharing with you here in this solo episode of the podcast.

More specifically, 7 secrets (and 1 important bonus), that helped me get to the Milly Mark in 5 ½ years.

Note, these are not community builder-specific secrets. They’re important for all entrepreneurs, web and brand designers in 2026.

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned, along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/431

Transcript

Josh Hall 0:00

Hello, my friends. It's so good to be here with you this week. It is a solo edition episode this week. And I wanted to take some time to share with you some thoughts after recently crossing a pretty big milestone for my community Web Designer Pro. We just earlier this month crossed $1 million in lifetime revenue for Web Designer Pro. It actually, funny, we were literally at the beach, like on vacation. I knew it was going to happen around there. And when we got back, I checked, and sure enough, one of the days we were on vacation, we we crossed the the seven, the seven-figure mark, the millie mark, and I was all pumped. I told my wife, and obviously she was pumped as well. And um, I've kept it a little bit secret so far, mainly because, well, for a couple of reasons. Number

The $1M Milestone And Why

Josh Hall 0:50

one, it is a million dollars based off of the community builder, like a community model. And this is the web design business podcast. I'm here to help you build your web design business. Although community in some capacity or some sort of memberships may be a part of your business model, especially if you're coaching for clients. Um, but also I'm still, you know, I'm as vocal as I am about revenue and milestones, and as much as I love celebrating milestones publicly, I recognize that I'm I'm trying not to draw the bro hustle crowd when I, and which always floods my DMs when I mention some sort of revenue milestone. But here on the podcast, I want to share some secrets that I've learned in my journey with getting to $1 million in lifetime revenue with Web Designer Pro. Now, these are not going to be community specific. I want to make sure that's really clear up front here. I do plan on eventually here, probably later this summer into the early fall, dipping my toe into sharing some resources about community building for those of you who are interested, again, in subcapacity, and it may be a part of your web design business. You may have like coaching alongside your web design business or some other entrepreneurial endeavor or maybe customer community type stuff, or maybe a community of your own alongside your web design business. But these are not going to be community specific tips or secrets. So just wanted to make sure you knew this is uh this is really, these are really just like some things that I've learned in hitting a million that are just broad entrepreneurial things. And oh man, I could give you a hundred things, but for the sake of time, I forced myself to stick to seven. So seven secrets for seven figures is uh, I don't know if that'll be the title, but that's what I'm gonna call these secrets. Actually, I'm gonna give you, I have to give you the final one, which is a bonus. So do not leave until you hear what I think is the most important thing to focus on in 2026, which I'll share with you at the very, very end. That'll be a bonus tip. But let's just start off with number one here. As I'm like reflecting on hitting a million dollars, um an important thing to note is that it let's see, we're about five and a half years out from when I started Pro. So this does not include course sales prior to Web Designer Pro. This does not include any of my revenue from in transit or any consulting, or this is just purely membership, like Web Designer Pro revenue. And one of the most important things I've learned with this, and this will come into play with the timeline on this, is that it kind of goes back to one of my favorite quotes ever, which is what gets you here won't get you there. And I say that as like the leading tip and secret here, because I've learned pricing, offers, and all of that, it's going to change over time. And quite frankly, it should change over time. If you're charging the same rates you were a decade ago, I'm willing to bet you are undercharging. Actually, I'm telling you you're undercharging. Um, you were probably undercharging then too. So I've learned, like with Pro, for example, that nothing is going to be the same forever, especially as offers change and you get more valuable. And the the offer suite and the stack looks a little bit different. With Web Designer Pro, we started at $99 a month when we launched because it was

Evolve Pricing Without Fear

Josh Hall 4:25

exclusively just a coaching community, mainly for students who have been through my one-off courses. And then when I added the courses inside of Pro and came to what it is currently now with courses, community, and coaching, uh, I bumped it up to $199 a month. So the pricing shifted, and that was a huge boost with the kind of as I look at my revenue numbers, when the revenue really started ramping up is when I effectively doubled the price. Well, over doubled the value, I'd say, but actually I'll say it's 10x the value, but I doubled the price on that back in 2023. So um I've just learned, yeah, what gets you here won't get you there. And today we're actually I'm recording this before I'm finalizing the plans for kind of what I'm dubbing Web Designer Pro 3.0, which is the next evolution of our pricing tiers and our ranges, which is going to stay secret on this episode until I have more concrete information to share with you. Don't worry, current members, your rate is locked in. So for any current member of Web Designer Pro who just got a little sweaty, wipe that sweat away. It's all good. You are locked in as long as you're a member. But pricing is going to change. I've and I'm very comfortable with that. What gets you here won't get you there. Um, and actually, as we speak, we went from having a one-tier model at $199 a month with Pro to having multiple tiers when I was just completely up on bandwidth with coaching over 200 members inside of Web Designer Pro at that level because it included DM coaching with me anytime. Um, so now, as of today, our pricing Web Designer Pro is $49 a month for all the courses, $99 a month for the community, $199 for DM access to me for coaching. And then we do have a mastermind level now that is uh $1,000 a month or $10,000 a year. By the way, all of those have annual options as well with price breaks. So the current pricing doesn't reflect like the current pricing and what got me close to a million doesn't reflect the pricing five and a half years ago. And again, offers evolve, your services, your everything evolves, and your pricing does too. So I've been really comfortable with that. And I want to stress that from the beginning here because if you're thinking about hitting a million or if that's a goal of some sort, I don't want you to feel like your pricing is gonna like you're locked into your pricing. You can always change your pricing. You've got to be careful about doing it too often because you want to have some um level of stability there. And you especially when it comes to referrals, you don't want to have pricing that's bouncing around. You also don't want to be charging some people more than others, uh, if it's like public pricing and you know, going back on your pricing. So, pricing, of course, is very tricky when it comes to raising and changing, but all to say, you're never locked in and married to a certain price point or even a certain offer like suite of services. Um, in fact, it's kind of funny. One thing that's been really popular inside of Web Designer Pro recently is our partner Bailey Collins with the Design Day Blueprint. She has a website in a day model um business. And it may be the best in the business for like a generalist who does websites in a day. And one thing that a lot of pro members are doing is since I partner with Bailey with her course, pro members have been using her course to just tweak the offers that we've come up in pro. And a lot of members are actually charging more for a website that takes less time. Like what was typically a 30 to 45 day timeline for websites for pro members is now shrunk down to a week and they're charging more, not because the timeline is like you don't have to charge, you don't have to charge less because the timeline's shorter. That's what I'm trying to say. So your offers are gonna change and your pricing's gonna change accordingly. And it's kind of cool to be able to have a service that reduces your timeline and you can make a lot more with. So here, here to that. Um, but yeah, get comfortable with your pricing, your offers. Things changing. Your setup is never gonna be exactly the same for that long, especially depending on your personal bandwidth. Speaking of personal bandwidth, perfect segue to number two, a secret that I've learned in getting to this million-dollar mark with Web Designer Pro is you really do have to step into the owner role of your business. You have to go from operator to owner. That's kind of the big theme from the book E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, um, which is kind of a classic at this point, but I do still really enjoy that premise. And most web designers fall into this category where you're just you're building websites. You're used to being the web designer. And you get to a point, and I'm helping so many web designer pro members through this right now, where you realize I am the bottleneck in my business, and I gotta stop doing support. I have to stop doing all the edits, I have to stop doing all the revisions, I have to start, I have to stop doing

Move From Operator To Owner

Josh Hall 9:36

all the plugin updates, I have to stop doing all the sales, all the marketing, I have to stop wearing all the hats. And you really need to step into being the owner because the other problem with that is it is it is a role that only you can fill as the founder of your business, is to be the owner. You can't, unless you hire a CEO and you remain the web designer and the salesperson, you are the owner. You have to clear time to set vision and think and study market trends and think about what you want your life to like, where what life to look like, where you want your business to be over the next year or a couple years, regardless of how fast things are moving and AI and different tech. Like just the general premise of your business. Who do you want to help? Who do you want to serve? Who are you thinking about as far as your clients? Who are you caring about? Like all those things are really important owner style work that you can't do as an operator. So I really want to encourage you to think about being more of an owner or at least putting some time in your week to week where you dedicate to being the owner of your business, vision casting. Uh, and maybe that maybe that's actually just putting your marketing hat on for a little while. This is really common for Web Designer Pros who get to a certain point where they're starting to scale. By the way, uh, if you have not yet gone through my scaling course, Web Designer Pro members, it's called Scale Your Way. Go through that course, even if you don't want to scale, because it will, I think, put a different frame on what scaling can look like for you. It really is about scaling your way. And if you are not yet inside of Web Designer Pro, you can get my free training on how to scale your way by going to joshhall.co slash scale. I'll put these links below. Completely free. Give you some tips to just uh get you primed up for scaling. But that is going to help you become an owner because once you get to a certain generally revenue range, your mindset shifts. I don't know of a way to make a million dollars doing everything unless you are either working 90 hours a week or you are just hyper, hyper niche in like really, really high value with your projects. I mean, even as a like a solopreneur or a freelancer who's doing all the work, to get to a million dollars, you could just subtract it. Like you, you know, I don't know. Let's do it right now. A million, and let's say you're charging 20K. So 20, let's say, as a brand designer, uh, website designer, strategist, strategic partner in some way, you're very high value, and your average projects are 20k. To get to a million dollars, it's still gonna take you 50 clients to get to a million. Not impossible within a certain amount of time, but depending on how much time is going into all that, you're getting into like fractional part-time marketing level role. 50 is gonna take a while. And man, is that probably gonna be overwhelming? So if if you are the bottleneck in your business, the only way to scale is to scale up in price or scale up in your time. And you're probably not gonna want to do that. Most people want to have balance and freedom and a lifestyle you love, which is the theme of this podcast and Web Center Pro. So, pro members who are killing it and who have either exceeded or are closing in on the milli mark are folks who have a support system behind them. They don't even need to be full team members, but they're not doing everything themselves. Now, those of you who are early on, that might seem really daunting and you might be terrified to scale and hire and contract out. Totally get it, totally understand. I was right there with you. But again, go to my course, scale your way inside a web designer pro and all shall be clear after that. Or go to joshhall.co slash scale to get the top tips from that course. Completely free on me. But the general premise here, point number two, is to go from operator to owner. And after hitting million dollars, I can say that is 100% true. Biggie, biggie, biggie. Now, when it comes to, I probably should have made this point number two, actually. When it comes to like practically getting to a million dollars in revenue, it I mean, really, like kind of like we did right there, you just need to outline your prices and your offers. And ideally, in some sort of spreadsheet. I do have a revenue calculator in Web Designer Pro. You guys can just search revenue calculator, it'll pull up for you. If you are not yet a member of Web Designer Pro, this is completely free for you when you sign up to my email. Go to joshhall.co slash newsletter. Right now I'm sending um every new episode that comes out of the podcast, you'll get notified. And then any additional resources I have for you, new videos, new tutorials, new pieces of advice, all that stuff you can get on my newsletter. And the first thing

Map Your Revenue With Data

Josh Hall 14:41

that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter is the revenue calculator. So head over to joshhall.co slash newsletter. All these links will be below, and you'll get my revenue calculator. But what that'll do is it'll give you the clearest version of building a million-dollar business for yourself. Now remember, and the revenue calculator is built out for a year, meaning it's not gonna like course you can make it a, you know, you can make it to million dollars as the goal. But what I generally recommend for that is to have an annual revenue target. In a lot of cases, let's say you do want to get to a million dollars, but you're not gonna rush it. You don't want to burn out. So you just want to focus on building a quarter million dollar business. That revenue calculator is gonna help you map out your prices, your offers, and how many units you need to sell to get to a quarter million dollars a year, top line revenue. Of course, expenses and stuff are gonna come out of that, but uh you got to have like a guiding North Star for it for your prices and your offers. And I've found in doing this myself and for making this available for members of Pro, they are so much more confident to sell once they know these are my prices, this, these are how many clients I need to bring in per month, how many clients I'd like to have by the end of the year, and you just go. It takes much less like personal emotion out of it, and it just once you there's some there's there's knowledge and power in data, and there's confidence in data, even if you're not there, excuse me, even if it's just projected, it really is gonna give you some confidence. So, yeah, guys, completely free. If you haven't got it yet, go through my revenue calculator. It's a Google spreadsheet, it's not AI, it's nothing fancy. It is something that is yours and you can have some fun with, and I'll guide you through how to tweak it and make it your own. But do your revenue calculator, set your prices, and again, the goal may not be make to make a million dollars in a year, it may be to build the foundation to get to a million dollars maybe in three years, four, or five, or six or seven years, whatever that looks like for you. Which brings me to my next point, which is again to reiterate why I'm not hesitant, but uh why I'm just not like uh shouting this from the mountaintop of the online world. Um because I don't want always for people to have a monetary focus that's going to well kill them, quite frankly. Like, I don't want you to set a million-dollar goal and just kill yourself trying to get there. Point number four here that I have listed is to make sure you walk before you run. And the reason this is really timely with this is I've talked to a lot of pro members and people outside of pro who are just killing it in their web design businesses on paper. But what's going on on the other side of the screen is equally maybe more important. Actually, it is more important. How are you living your life? Are you living to work or are you working to live? And of course, there's seasons where you're gonna be doing some pushes and some hustling, but I don't want you to stay there. And I see a lot of not just well, all age groups, but there are a lot of like Gen Z I've found who are just eagles, rock stars, killing it. But I've talked to a lot of younger folks who are just they've been hustling and grinding and they get to a measure of success, but it

Walk Before You Run

Josh Hall 18:07

came at a cost, and they are working 80, 90 hours a week. They don't have friends, they're not seeing their family, they're not leaving any time for personal health and relationships that are really, really important. So I have learned in making a million dollars basically. I'm I'm glad I've stuck to a sustainable pace because I hit a million dollars in five and a half years. So for some people, that's probably super impressive. To a lot of people, that's probably not impressive at all. I have friends who are in the community building world who have $500,000 memberships, which means they can get to my mark in two years if they get to a certain point. But that's not the goal. Like I didn't set out to hit a million dollars. In fact, I didn't it didn't even dawn on me to track that number until later last year. Uh somebody, oh, I think it was like somebody asked me. They were like, How much have you made with Pro all together? And I was like, Well, I never I haven't even thought about it. So I looked, and at that point, I think it was like eight something, like low eight hundreds. And I was like, oh my gosh, I was like, we're absolutely gonna cross a million dollars, you know, probably Q2, Q3 in 2026. Um, but I didn't rush to get to a million dollars, and I really want to encourage you not to do the same with your goals as much as I want you to have a revenue target. I don't want you to blow up your life and blow up your health and blow up your sanity. I have been an entrepreneur since 2009, when I got laid off from my cabinet making job and started doing t-shirt designs and band artwork in Photoshop. And I learned very early on to basically build a business and do services that I like to do, that I'm interested in, just go one slow step at a time. That is not for everybody. And of course, when I started my business and I was making, you know, 10, 20k the first couple years of my web design business, I didn't have a wife, I didn't have a family. It would look a lot different now if I was starting today. But the reason I say that is you gotta kind of keep your blinders on, I think, especially being in the online world. Um, even listening to this, like I don't want to, I don't want to cause comparison syndrome for some way. Or that's that's not the right way to say. I don't want to to cause you any sort of feelings of comparison by hearing, you know, my revenue number or anyone else's revenue number. It's it's got to be what works for you. You may not even be worried about $1 million. Not likely, since you're listening this far into the episode. It's probably of interest. Some of you have probably already hit a million and you just realized it. You may have been in business for 10 or 15 years and you're making, you know, two, three hundred thousand dollars a year in your web design business, and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm I'm a million-dollar web designer. How about that? You're there, my friend. Congrats! Welcome to the Millie Club. Um, but there's no rush to it. And I think it's so, so important because I just see too many people, yeah, they may be hitting revenue numbers that are pretty impressive, but at what cost? You have to ask yourself that. So, of course, I want to challenge you, and I want you to challenge yourself with getting to a certain revenue range because you're definitely worth more than you are. But I also am just reiterating the point that you have to build a sustainable business. You have to. There's nothing worse than making a million dollars and being miserable while doing it, or looking back and realizing you have no friends, no relationship with your family, and your your health is out of whack and you're just not enjoying it. Like that is not success. A million dollars made while miserable is not success. That's a bo that sounds like a book, doesn't it? Million dollars but miserable. Uh I don't know how many people would buy that book, but you get what I'm saying. I just I think it's really Really important. And kind of goes back to something one of my mentors taught me early on. Well, he was a referral partner of mine. He was an IT guy. And we were just at Panera one day. And I'd let him know that I was just a little like honestly, just feeling like a little imposter syndrome and feeling kind of bummed that my business wasn't growing faster than it was then. And he was like, Josh, there's no rush to success. And I don't even think he recognized he told me that, but that just that really stuck with me. And I think slow and steady is the best way to get to success. So lots of thoughts there in this fourth point to walk before you run. Slow and steady success is so worth it. Don't rush your way to a million just to hit a million if it's gonna cost everything. Five and a half years worked out great for me. And this isn't my only revenue stream, um, but it is the main revenue stream in my business. But yeah, I just yeah, I hope that helps. I think we can end it there as far as that point. Um, slow and steady, success. Walk before you run, my friend. Take it one step at a time, one day at a time. Enjoy yourself, enjoy the process. Ah, doesn't that feel good? A little more calming. I feel better even just saying that. So, all right. Number five, let's get a little more practical on something I've learned here, and that is to have a high-ticket offer. This is something I've talked about in my business course, my scaling course, and um actually that scale, I had a master class about how to get to six figures, which I'm actually going to be revamping here for the summer. And one of the quickest ways to get a jump in revenue is to have a high-ticket offer of some kind or a 10x offer. So, for example, if you're charging $1,000 for websites, have a high-ticket offer that's like $10K. And maybe only one client signs up for that service that year, but hey, you just landed a 10x offer. You just landed 10 sites in one

Use A High-Ticket Offer Wisely

Josh Hall 23:58

by having a 10x 10x offer, like a high-ticket offer. My high-ticket offer was our recently launched mastermind level to Web Designer Pro. We kicked it off this year with uh kind of a mastery sprint, which was really the beta testing for this higher ticket offer, this mastermind, which is a small group right now. Um, but even only with five members jumping in, that raises, that puts 50k plus with members, some members being on annual, some me members being on monthly. That that immediately jumped up my ARR, my annual recurring revenue, by $50,000 a year. So there's nothing stopping you from doing that too. Whether it's an SEO plan, whether it is some sort of growth or marketing plan, whether it's strategy, whether it's just a higher range, like a higher tier of either like larger sites, e-commerce sites, or maybe even a website in a day or a website in a week offer. That could actually be a top. That doesn't have to be your lower tier, that could be your top tier because you're getting it done so fast. Their priority, have a high-ticket offer. It's amazing what it'll do for your confidence. And join me right now when member, like when when leads see a high-ticket offer, suddenly, oh, that $5,000 website doesn't look that bad because I see that, you know, this person has a $20,000 option for their for their top tier. So yeah, let's go with the $5K. Ooh, easier sell. So have a ticket offer, high-ticket offer. And high-ticket offers are just so based off of your expertise, your specialization, the time that you have to give them high-touch service typically. Like I had thought about doing a mastermind like two years ago for pro, but the reason I didn't want to do it, I've talked about this before, so apologies if you heard me say this a million times. But last year, my daughter Bria had two major surgeries. We ended up having four hospital stays throughout the entire year. And it just was not the year to, I just didn't have the personal bandwidth, both in my schedule, my calendar, or just my mental bandwidth to like get to know some members' businesses on a much deeper level. Um, so I just I needed to wait till the time was right. But you can craft your high-ticket offer either around the right time or just whatever works for you in that time period. Um, like for me, with this, so the mastermind, just for note, like my high-ticket offer is a quarterly one-on-one with me and a small group mastermind that has two monthly calls and a small group chat. That's kind of how we all stay connected and help each other track things and give really deep accountability and get our getting to know each other's businesses much better and are already partnering up and working together and all this stuff. But I kind of created my high-ticket offer, my mastermind, around what worked for me. So when it comes to making a million dollars and you want to have something that's gonna jump up your revenue like that, just make sure it aligns with your schedule. For me, I was down with what is that? That's essentially, well, I added a lot more calls because it's two times per month, so that's 24 calls plus uh let's see, four, five members every quarter. That's 20, 20 calls. So I just added 44 call. I added 44 calls to my schedule. So yes, that was a jump in 50k, but I also just added 44 calls to my calendar this year. So a reminder to beware that your high-ticket offer, even though it sounds sexy, isn't something that is not going to align with your time, your bandwidth, your schedule, your calendar, etc. For me, 50k for 44 calls, worthwhile trade-off. Worthwhile trade-off for sure. And I love it. And it's freaking awesome. So when you think about a high-ticket offer, whether you want to get to a million sooner or later, whether there's a little bit of a rush or there's no rush, just make sure whatever that high ticket offer is, whether it's an SEO plan, whether it's hired out with some help and support behind you, whether it is strategy, whether it whatever it is, whether it's an experience. One of our mastermind members is actually crafting kind of like a brand in-person experience that is likely going to become hurt high-ticket offer because it's very personal, very high touch in person. She winds and dines these clients. Um, make it something awesome and make sure it works for you. That's definitely what I've learned with high ticket, which is also why I've been very slow to do high-ticket stuff because I'm leery about uh the calendar. It's got three little kids, and I'm a work-life balance lifestyle business kind of guy. So hope that helps with the ideas of high-ticket offers. Number six, and again, I'm gonna share maybe the most important thing at the end here. Number six is to just double click on personalization as much as you can. I think truthfully, one thing that's helped me get to a million with pro is that I don't have a community manager. I don't have a like, I mean, pro in a sense has a bunch of kind of what I'm starting to dub like expert, like resident experts, um, many of whom have been on the podcast recently. Pro members, you you know, a lot of these folks who have expertise in certain areas, who I'm bringing up often more and more now for our coaching sessions and calls and expert trainings inside of pro. Last week we just had our expert training with Alexia, who's my brand strategist. Typically, we do those inside of pro privately, but we did that one publicly just

Personalization And Overcommunication

Josh Hall 29:50

to give people a taste of what's the talent that is in pro that can be at your disposal. But I have remained the lead point of contact in pro. And for folks on the coaching tier to get direct access to me, to make that available. So personalization. Like, I really want to encourage you to not hide behind a brand and make it really clear who is behind your brand. I'm still in 2026 shocked to see how many web designer websites that I see. And I'm like, who the hell is behind this? Is this an agency? Is it a huge team? Is it, you know, nephew in their mom's basement? What is it? Like, get yourself front and center of your brand. Even you don't have to be a personal brand, but show up as the founder, as the owner, as the creative director, as the head honcho, whatever you need to do to show face who's behind the brand. Now is the time more than ever, especially in the AI world. Because as things get more fake, more blah, more sloppy, the more personal and weird and quirky and just you you can be, the better. And things like sending personal videos. One thing that I've always done in pro that I think has been a big key to a million dollars, not only with new members, but lifetime value with keeping members there, is giving people an incredible, like first experience. Um first impression. That's what I was looking for. Thank you so much. First impression. I really leaned into that, and I think that's a big part of making a million dollars with Web Center Pro. Every new member who joins the community and coaching tiers, I send a personal video or sometimes an audio, depending on depending on um, you know, if I'm in my office, because I generally try to get back to people the the day they join, if possible, on weekdays. Um, but a personal welcome. And I've done that since day one. Almost no one does that. I joined a course recently, didn't hear from the person, and they weren't a big creator. I was a little surprised that they didn't reach out. Um, but the few times I have joined something and somebody has sent me a personal welcome from the founder, which all web designers should be able to do with no problem. You're not getting 20, you know, 30 clients a week unless you're a huge agency. Um, if you're getting one or two clients a week or a few a month, send them a personal video as soon as they sign and just say, hey, Bob, so excited to start working with you. I just wanted to, you know, we're gonna send the next step. So I just want to personally say thank you for putting your trust in me. I'm so excited to be your strategic partner, and I'm so excited about the work we're gonna do. And I'm excited to help you grow your business. Boom. What was that? 20 seconds? Send that over via Loom or whatever video platform you want to use. And it doesn't have to be professional. Could be you could be walking in the park, you could be doing the dishes, whatever, maybe not the dishes. You know, make your bed if it's gonna be in your bedroom. But the idea is to just get more personal, personal videos as soon as someone buys, making that killer first impression, building some trust and giving, setting them at ease, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge for all industries right now in 2026. Even more so. I've been doing that for a decade, but it works even better today. I would also really encourage you when it comes to personalization, overcommunicate, do check-ins. You can automate some of this stuff, of course, but as personal as you can get, the better. So if you have the bandwidth, and if you're just managing like a few projects, and every Friday you can send your clients one at a time a little like, hey, just want to let you know this is what I got done this week working on this, or didn't get a chance to work on something that I was hoping to, but it's on the list. We're gonna be jumping on next week. Overcommunication will go so far. It really like it alleviates having to be an expert in a lot of ways if you overcommunicate. Um Gary, who's one of our best clients for Intransit Studios, who was recently on the podcast, talked about this when I interviewed him and had him on the show. I said, like, what gave you the trust to you know hire me when I was so early on on my journey? And he even said, You made us feel like we were your only client. So I learned from the get-go, over communication, it goes such a long way. So I'll link that below too. That was episode 423. Last tip before my bonus tip, which is the most important thing, I would really encourage you, and this is what I'm doing, I'm going all in on making experiences, both online and in person. In person, you probably saw I've been talking about this. We just had our recent ProCon 2026 event, which is our in-person Web Designer Pro event a couple months back. And that is just that's become like such a core piece to pro. Only two years in, I have so many members who are like, Well, I'm making every pro con. I'm just, there's no way I'm missing pro con. And it definitely made me realize the value of bringing people together in person with some sort of experience. Now, for you as a web designer, this could look like what one of my mastermind members is doing

Create Memorable Client Experiences

Josh Hall 35:10

with her brand experience and like actually like hosting an in-person style workshop, or if it's part of your process, could be like in-person strategy. How cool could that be, eh? Um, when did I turn Canadian? And anything you can do on in person is of course gonna be better than online. But also, you can do plenty of things online, you can make things an experience. Going back to Bailey, one of my favorite parts of her process with her website in a day process is, and I will link to as well her free training, which is on my YouTube channel. Um Bailey, I'll make sure that's linked below. But one thing she talks about is one thing that separates her process, is it really is an experience for her clients. Now, nothing is in person, but when they kick off, she sends them in a Starbucks gift card. They have ongoing communication via Voxer, and then when the website preview is there, it's a very interactive, collaborative experience. It is an experience. Her clients are not, she doesn't say, hey, send me content and we'll try to get your website back in a couple weeks. No, it is like it is a dialed-in process and it is an experience, and anything you could do to make an experience, the better. You could do this in like small groups type of fashions if you're doing any sort of QA's for clients or coaching, like marketing coaching for clients. Um, you could obviously anything you can do in person, even the better. Uh, if there's any sort of, like let's say you bring some of your best clients together and maybe you, I don't know, you rent out a suite in a baseball game or something, or do something for your clients. Like if they're comfortable getting together and that's worthwhile, anything you could think of, in person or online, I really want to encourage you to think about what type of experiences you can make in your business because especially these days, again, more real, more personal, in-person, ideal, online better, uh, next best thing. But experiences, that's really, I think, becoming more and more. And on a micro level, in Pro, we're doing this. We're getting back to doing more in-person meetups, like little mini meetups with members all over the world. Kind of got away from pushing that over the last couple of years. So I'm really reinvigorating that just to get members with each other, like in person with each other. Sometimes in groups of two, sometimes in groups of eight or nine, we've had little mini meetups. And those have been incredible for retention for pro, but also bringing our members together and creating those little micro experiences. We're also doing it online with challenges. So, like one way, one where we're doing an online experience is challenged. We did one in March, we did like a little 30-day um March like workout type of challenge. So things like that that you can do together even better. Um, also, like one thing we'll be doing here moving forward in pro is kicking off some like cohort style experiences to actually go through courses together. And you could apply this to a web design business in a lot of different ways. You could launch a new service or offer almost like a group coaching program to your clients that's just timed, like a little cohort group experience. Like maybe your clients are just there confused as hell about AI. And if you're pretty savvy with that and you have a lot to share, then you could create a cohort group experience that's like learn the basics of AI for website, content, whatever. And in this like six-week experience, maybe it's a thousand dollars. We'll guide you through exactly how you can apply this in your business. You open it up to 12 people, boom, you just made 12k right there. So just a couple ideas, give you some prompts while we're talking about AI Lingo to think about ways you can make experiences in your business. I really think experiences are gonna be, I mean, like maybe the big differentiator between us and the robots as AI continues to infiltrate um marketing. Lastly, kind of going back off of this, because this is the this is one of the main ways. Experiences are a main way to build trust. And my final bonus tip for you is to really have a trust channel. And what I mean by a trust channel is you gotta have a place online now. Now, obviously, in person this could be done too. For example, my trust channel when I was running my agency was my networking group. That was my trust channel. I didn't have any online presence really at that point for trust. I didn't have any no podcast, no YouTube channel, barely any social media. It was mainly just my networking group, but that was my trust channel. And that's because people got to know me and really trust me over months and over years being in that networking group. And then I became their trusted web partner for their clients and their ecosystems, which just led to referral after referral after referral after referral. So that was my trust channel, was my networking group. That's the same for a lot of community members of Web

Build A Trust Channel That Scales

Josh Hall 40:28

Designer Pro, too, by the way. A lot of members who are killing it have a trust channel in networking groups like BI, which is a referral group. You pay to be there, other people pay to be there, you guys give and get referrals, it's a lovely world. That's a trust channel. Doesn't have to be a YouTube channel or a podcast. Can you guess what my trust channel is right now? You're here, you're listening to it. And as a podcast listener, I'm amazed at how many people join Pro and consistently, almost like I would I have to look at the intros. I'd say probably 95%, at least, maybe 99% of people who join pro mention the podcast in their intro. They say I've been listening to the podcast and I finally made the leap, jumped the fence, here we are. Uh, and it just goes to show that like the time and dedication I put into this podcast, especially in the format that it's in, which is casual. And I mean, folks will tell you at pro con, like the Josh here is the Josh in real life, except I'll probably try to buy you a beer if you want one. Um trust channel. It really, I think you need one today, with whatever that looks like. Again, trust channels could be very different. Trust channels could be a podcast, could be a YouTube channel, could be one lane of social media, it could be a ton of things in person from networking to experiences, like I mentioned, like having an experience where somebody comes in and learns from you and builds trust right away, and that's something you can replicate and do over and over. So, my last tip for you is to really think about a trust channel. I think hitting a million dollars recently for pro, as I'm looking back, I'm like, there's no way I could have done that without my podcast. Like, this is the number one driver. Now, my YouTube channel gets a lot of reach, but it doesn't necessarily hit the trust factor as much because it's a different medium. I have a lot of stuff that's on there that's not on the podcast because it's a YouTube channel, it's visual. And there's just something more intimate about listening to a podcast and listening to somebody talk. And, you know, you may be doing the dishes right now, you may be mowing, you may be driving, you may be doing yoga, you may be whatever, tight roping. I don't know, whatever you're doing right now. Uh, it's definitely more of a an intimate type of trust builder than just like short form or or YouTube videos. Not that those can't be trust builders, but you gotta find the one that works for you, I think, for sure. Um gosh, I'm just pumping Bailey's uh brakes here, but uh going back to Bailey, one thing that I think she's done well as far as like I was thinking like, what's Bailey's trust builder? As I was thinking about somebody who's really active on like shorts and videos on Instagram. I would say her Instagram is a trust builder largely because she is showing her work constantly and she's talking about her clients and her projects and her case studies constantly. So a trust builder can also basically just be a lane of media where you are just sharing success stories and case studies. Those are that's a trust channel, too. So for whatever works for you, you can have multiple, by the way. You can absolutely have multiple trust channels, but you've got to build trust channels. Ideally, at least one that's like your go-to. What is what is the main thing you want to do that builds trust for you and your target audience to help them trust you and pay you and get closer to a million dollars, whether you want to do that soon or later, whether there's a little bit of a rush or a no rush. So I hope this helps, my friends. I just wanted to put some thoughts together after, again, these are these are not community specific at all as far as being really what I am right now as a community builder, um, as far as in this context of making this million dollars with an online community. But you see, all of these things that work for a community work for a web design business. And everything that works for a web design business can work for a community in any other industry. So it's very, very cool. You can literally take these tips and secrets to apply to anything. Those of you, maybe you're getting into real estate. Guess what? You can take every single one of these and apply these to a real estate business or whatever you're doing. So pretty cool stuff, I say. Quick recap what gets you here won't get you there. Do not be married to your pricing, your structure, and your offers. Number two, don't change them all the time, though. Number two, you really got to move from operator to owner. Number three, the path to one milli starts with your revenue calculator. Get yours for free, joshhall.co slash newsletter. Put your prices, put your offers on there. Use that as your guiding North Star. Number two, walk before you run. Don't try to get to success too fast. Number five, have a high-ticket offer. Watch your revenue go up very quickly, make sure it's aligned around your goals, your timing, your calendar. Six, really embrace uh personalization in 2026. Overcommunicate, be you, get on video as much as you can, over, you know, talk to your clients nonstop. Number seven, uh go all

Recap And What’s Next

Josh Hall 45:42

in on making experiences, both online and in person, and build that trust channel, friends. All right, guys. Well, I hope you enjoyed this one. I will see you next week on the show. We've got a killer couple episodes ahead because specifically we're gonna be diving into buying and selling businesses, web design businesses, uh, in separate episodes. So part one is gonna be a conversation with Jake Kramer from Artillery Media and Hans Skillred from Termageddon, who has experience with buying and selling agencies. And we're gonna talk about how to acquire web design businesses. Then round two is gonna be make your business sellable if you'd like to sell one day, which some pro members are actually already doing. In fact, my agency in Change of Studios just acquired a founding member of Web Designer Pro who just retired. We acquired her clients and worked out a pretty cool deal for all parties involved. So, very cool things on that front. So keep an eye on the show. Make sure you subscribed. All right, friends. Cheers to OneMilly. I'm gonna go pop some champagne with my wife here soon to celebrate. All right, guys, have a great one.