Why Doing It All Yourself Is Slowing Down Your Web Design Business with Bailey Collins EP 177

If you ever feel like you're on the prices right when pricing your web design proposals, just trying to guess the highest number that they'll say yes to without going over, I've got just the thing for you. Go to webdesigneracademy.com/proposal to get a free training where I break down the five subtle proposal mistakes even experience web designers make that have them leaving literally thousands of dollars on the table and find out what to do differently so that you can charge two to three times more for work you're already doing. To get your hands on that free training, just go to webdesigneracademy.com/proposal enter your name and email address and I'll send you all the details. That's webdesigneracademy.com/proposal. Welcome to the profitable web designer podcast. The place where women web designers come to raise their prices book higher paying projects and run their web design businesses without overwhelming burnout. I'm your host Shannon Madden, pricing strategist and founder of the web designer academy where you're just one proposal away from the money you truly deserve to be making. And I'm here to help you build a web design business that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. So let's go ahead and dive into this week's episode. Hello everyone and welcome back to the profitable web designer podcast. Today I am joined by Bailey Collins who is an award-winning brand and website designer in the founder of Honeywave Creative and Bailey helps the business owners grow their businesses with custom brands and websites that built in a day and also helps fellow creatives through her signature design day blueprint course helping them to scale faster with strategy confidence and ease. I love that introduction Bailey welcome to the profitable web designer. Hello thank you so much for having me. I was telling you before but I feel like I've been listening to your podcast for forever now so the fact that I'm here is super cool. Well and I love that you reached out to me to ask to be on the show because we're all about like outreach marketing here and creating our own opportunities and you sent me a really really good pitch that I had to say yes to. So kudos to you because it was fantastic because so I'm like yeah I want to meet Bailey. Oh thank you I had to. Yeah. That's queen. You and Josh all I feel like are taking over the whole podcast around with website. We're trying. We're trying. Yeah. So tell our listeners just I gave the standard intro but tell our listeners a little bit more about you where you're from and how you kind of got into this. Yeah so I'm from Louisiana like Charles Louisiana so I'd be here a little bit of a tank of my voice that's fine. Usually the first thing clients say to me when they get on a call is where are you from? So Louisiana and I've been designing websites for around like five years officially. So I started I guess 2020 COVID January but I was kind of learning a little bit before that on how to do it all and I do have a bit of a schooling background in it. I'm just school for marketing and then I got my masters in business administration so I did have that knowledge but I did not learn how to actually do graphic design and so I ended up whenever I graduated I was trying to find a job and our town actually got hit by a really bad hurricane that year. So I'd found one and then it just like kind of fell apart. I was in a hotel for three months and I was just sitting in the lobby thinking what can I do like if I get find a job I'm just gonna hire myself and so I just started watching YouTube videos and learned it and I talked to somebody the gym who had a fitness business and I made him a logo and so that's really how it started was just going on and saying okay if I can't find someone to help me make this happen I'm just gonna make it happen myself and then five years later here we are making brands of websites every day. Oh my gosh I love just that organic start and I think it's so important to talk about that and I love hearing everybody's origin story because we all start marketing like you have a degree in marketing you have an MBA and we all start marketing in the smallest little ways that we think are like not really marketing that put us on the path to having the business that we want and so I'm so curious going back to those early days and you're like yeah just talk to this guy to Jim and Jim and did a logo for him how that aligned with or how that felt compared to like your education and everything that you learned about marketing a business what did that feel like? Yeah it did line up so it was nice getting to actually put some of that yes so I was just saying like okay I'm using my degree I know what a brand is no it like color balances all that so it was cool using that but it was still just such a new world and you know in the beginning of it I mean you don't even know what do they get with the logo who tied to sin a PNG follow pdf it's like you don't even know so it was very new in the beginning of it and just figuring things out but I knew and I actually think this is a good part to the story that I forgot to mention the last one but part of what got me just inspired to start this was I was gonna start a potato pet business and I say that and you're like like what I need to know more yeah so it was like a basically a pet rock business and I knew that I'd done so well in the past for other people feels like I'm gonna do a potato pet and so I spent like so much time is trying to shrink of it so I felt like we all had some extra time on our hands I just can't wait it and so I did this whole brand and website for this potato pet business I had a pertado and it was just like a cat and a potato and I did like a whole training manual that was branded in a website and all this stuff and so I finished didn't think any cells but at the end of it I was like okay that didn't work and I don't think that's my calling but I did really enjoy getting to create and getting to make the brand make the website and take something that was an idea and like wasn't really anything and bring it to life and so even though in the beginning days like for the first logo I didn't really know what I was doing I knew that I liked being creative and taking these ideas and just putting life into them and making it turn into something okay I think everybody listening wants to know where they can buy a potato first of all so funny how adorable what's so funny and I shared all my stories sometimes and anyway I just got to show but I had a whole promo video and everything and so it's like I still have if anybody wants a potato or potato I still have the training manuals in the boxes that have like the whole scut else of the potatoes could breathe so I have a semi-amassaged we can make something happen I love this so you start building this really creative fun crazy idea which like how delightful in a time where things were maybe not feeling so delightful right yeah and you decide that you fall in love with your creativity you start talking to people you are kind of figuring it out as you go and what led you and I'm kind of fast forwarding a little bit and we'll kind of fill in some of the gaps but like what led you to then shift into like designing in a day and doing the things like offering the service the way that you offer it to clients now yeah and I've always been a person who really likes just locking in on a project and getting it done I get so distracted so easy and so if I don't just cut all the distractions and focus in it takes forever and so I've always been that type of person my whole life and whenever I was first getting started I took a course and in that course she actually taught a two-week website process which I didn't know it at the time but that's already a really accelerated process and so I just jumped into this two-week process and that's all I really knew it's like okay this how you do things and so I was doing that for a little bit probably about a year and then towards the end of that process and having some clients and I'm about I was like you know I'm finishing this website really early and then I'm just kind of sitting around for ten and like I'm doing stuff and I'm sending the clients something over and asking if they have feedback and almost like wanting them to give me revisions and almost making it's where they felt like they had to try and find something else and there really wasn't anything else to do so whenever I sat down and just cut out all the fluff I said you know I think I could do this in a day and then build the process around it try to it out and then we got rolling with it and it all went from there so I think everybody listening is like okay tell me more because this sounds like sorcery and magic and how is it even possible to extract the information that I need from a client to be able to spin up a website in a day so what is some of the fluff that you cut out and what are some of the maybe counterintuitive things that listeners think that they need to do that they actually don't really need to do in order to tighten up their process and not have to deal with a lot of things that they really kind of dread about the whole thing so a couple examples and this is stuff I used to do and then I was like wait why but I used to for example at the end of the website process I would make all these custom social graphics for our clients to share on their emails and Instagram and send them on their way with all these custom graphics and I started realizing they weren't posting the graphics they maybe make posts but they weren't using them which by all means fine with me but I was like go why am I spending all this time I could just make it so now what we have is we have a pack of social templates that we provide them with it's camo templates and they have it so they want to make something they just plug their picture in and they can use it and some people do. that's not us spinning all the time on anymore. And then another example is I used to go in and add for all the images we do, the title and the meta description, all that stuff. And I said, you know, I'm like, this package doesn't include SEO. Why am I spinning all this time on this? And something that like a lot of clients don't even know is there. You tell them what you're doing and they don't even fully understand. So a lot of the little stuff like that, we just kind of stripped away. Got it down to the core pieces that people really care about. And then also that really drive results. And got it down to the one day. That's beautiful. So did you, as you know, as a listener to this podcast, a profitable web designer, we talk a lot about pricing and money mindset and all of those things. Did you have any like a money or price drama related to making this shift from like two weeks and I'm working really hard and like doing all of these things and providing all of this stuff to shifting to this one day model. Like what was your money mindset like around that? Well, so whenever I offered the first design day, I had it for $800. And at the time, I'm pretty sure I was charging around. It was between $2,000 and $3,000 for the full two week process. And so even at that time whenever I look back, I remember thinking $800 for a day. Like, oh my gosh, does anybody actually get a baby this? I don't think somebody's going to pay me this. But then I said, even if I lose a couple of clients, like the $3,000 clients, I'm doing it in a day. And I can get in that two weeks way more and make up the difference of what it is. And so I just kind of like let the thought of potentially losing out, go to the wayside in terms of freeing up more time and the potential to make more money. And then after I sold a couple of $800 price point, I just kept bumping it up, bumping it up. And now we're at $3800 for a one day website. And we have a $500 brand add on. So if they don't have a brand yet, like you get a mini brand and it bumps it up to around $4,300. And yes, people are paying that for a day. And I think once you lose a mindset of, I can't make that much in a day. Or why was somebody paying me that much? It's like, no, look at the value you're providing them. The value and the quality of the work doesn't have to be tied to time necessarily on like a big, long timeline that doesn't quantify how much you can charge. - Oh, that's so good. And like just the name of your offer website in a day is not like I bought eight hours of Bailey's time for $800. It's the website and you're getting it in a day. And like us, we've been all raised to be employees, paid hourly, paid salary, selling our time, trading our time for money. And it is so hard even for a lot of our web designers who are selling like package-based projects to not still do time math behind the scenes. And like we like, well, this takes me X number of hours to deliver and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so this is my hourly rate. It's like, please can we just stop? - Not necessary. Well, and I'll tell you this too, whenever I first started one of those first websites that I did for $800. They had a business already. And they were just selling on Instagram. They didn't have a website presence. We dropped the website that next week or two, they did a launch, but the same offer they've been selling but they actually had a place to send people to do the selling form. They had like a $40,000 launch. And so after seeing that, I was like, wait a minute. They paid $800 and got a $40,000 return on this because they now had a website to send people to instead of just selling. And so things like that, like a designer's listen to this, trying to think like, oh, how many hours is that? What's the hourly rate? It doesn't matter. 'Cause you're providing so much value and something that they can use for a year. So it's not something you have to go and sit and do the math and to figure out the numbers. - Oh my gosh, I love that. And so kind of going back to like the fluff that you were cutting out and the work that you're cutting out, it also sounds like you are delivering like something that's going to help them create results. You said that earlier. - Yeah. - It's not like, let me stuff this full of deliverables to justify the price. Let me give the cleanest path from visit to results whatever that is booking a call, buying a product, whatever. Was that part of your thought process and kind of stripping away like a lot of the unnecessary things? - Yeah. Well, part of stripping away too, whenever you have a really standard nuts and bolts package available for people that gives them what they need and gives it to them quickly, is that you're able to productize that offer. I will get on sales calls if people want to get on sales calls, but a lot of times I'm not even getting on sales calls anymore. And I've been able to automate it. So we have the package listed on the website, give them all the info they need. They click out to go, we used up Sado, but they do proposal, contract and invoice, and they can do all that while I'm sleeping. And then my assistant goes on on board them and then the ball's back in there for me. Just wait on them to prep and book in their day. And then it's ready. So whenever you strip everything down and just simplify and so many designers, you know, just like just over complicate things to the max. And it's unnecessary and almost makes it more difficult for clients to make a decision. Sometimes whenever you have all that. And so that was part of it too, is just productizing it. And then we do have a couple of add-ons to the so-for-the-blog, the mini brand, but we don't ever try to crowd it with too many options. 'Cause I want it to be as easy of a yes. We also offer a payment plan to help that be easier, but as easy of a yes as possible, that way we can set up the best experience as possible behind it and just perfect it time and time and time again. - So I'm curious when you were like, okay, design in a day, $800. And then that was your starting point to now. The offer that you just described. What was like your own progression from, I'm just gonna do this for $800 to that. Like what was your vision in your goal and like the drive behind building it, the way that you have it now? - Yeah, well, so I saw that one client had the $40,000 launch and that's whenever I said, okay, let's bump this a little bit. And so I think I went up $1,200 and just, I just kept slowly raising it. Usually at the end of every year, I do a bit of a price increase, which that works very well for any designers. Listen, and I have found it's very well at the end of the year. Do a low price jump, it keeps your prices relevant and then tune with everything. And it also helps the closed deals at the end of the year. But yeah, we just constantly were raising it after each project. And then at the end of the year, we bump it up a little bit more. And so over the years we've gotten to the $3800 price point. And it feels good too, because, which I should have mentioned, but whenever we were at those lower price points, I was almost getting too many websites. Like, okay, I still want that freedom in my life. I still want to have, like, I don't need to be doing this every single day. So let me go up on price. We'll tone down the sites a little bit and still make the same money basically. - So how are you marketing this and getting clients? - Mostly Instagram. I dance around like there on there, like a crazy person had a lot of fun with it. And I also have a newsletter that goes out once a week. But so we get a lot of our business there. I'll also say though, that since we have done, like we've done over 400 design days at this point, that's 400 plus websites. Yeah, I need to go back and actually do a recount and see where we're at now, because that was earlier this year when we actually counted it up. But we have so many past clients that have been so happy with it. And so at this point, we get a ton of referrals too, which I love about the design day, because you get to work with so many people. And so we get a lot of referrals to our past clients who are telling their friends and sending them our way. - I love that. And so this has been working so well for you. At some point you're like, okay, I need to help other people do this too. So tell me more about that decision and what led you to starting to do that. - I honestly was just getting so many DMs from other designers asking, how do you do this? There's like this looks amazing. How do you actually do it in a day? How can I start doing it? Or maybe they were already offering design days, but it didn't feel as smooth behind the scenes or they kind of just felt like they were faking it till they were making it or were making it. And so I had a bunch of people ask me about it and I said, you know, let's test it out. I'd been wanting to do a course. And so this year decided to put one together, just take our process that we worked on the past four something years, put it into a course forum. And it went really well. I was thinking we were gonna have like my goal the first launch, I was like, okay, let's try and get 15 designers on board. And we ended up getting 42 in the first round. And I was just like, whoa, this is, I knew it was needed and I knew that we'd be able to provide value and then especially getting their feedback too, but I didn't realize it was so desired by these designers and they have so many people so interested in this model. - Yeah, the thing that I see when people are like, oh, I wanna do design days, I wanna do VIP days, I wanna do this like one day service. The challenges that I see them run into are that they don't have the systems, processes and strategies to actually deliver something in a day. So they'll sell a day and I'm putting that in air quotes, but then they will deliver multiple days until they complete whatever they sold. And so there's a lack of boundaries around it. There's just a lot of like messy pieces and parts to how I've seen people try to implement the VIP day process or the design day process or whatever. I think VIP days and design days and website in a day are probably two like very different things from the way that you're saying this, but it sounds to me like you have a very specific process for here's how you can deliver this deliverable in a day. And it's not leaving a bunch of ambiguity over like you come up with what you think you might be able to deliver in a day. And I'll show you how to sell days. You're like, no, here's how to deliver the thing in a day. Yeah, exactly. And we have to because it's so in the very first module of the course, we go through and help people create the offer that they want because we do a six page website in a day. And at this point, I didn't start that way. I started with a three page website. Now I do six. I also have an assistant who's in the office full time, helps me design. So we do a lot more advanced fuller websites now, but we have at the beginning of the course, a module that goes through and says, okay, what do you want your day to look like? Do you want it to be a more intense day? And you can maybe do six pages, five six pages. Do you want it to be more chill? Maybe you don't even work the full day. You just kind of like chill a little bit, sleep in a little bit and do maybe two or three pages or even one landing page is very much so an option as well. And that way people can take it and craft it to their needs and how they want their day because I know you teach on it all the time. Like you need to build a business you love. And if you're not the type of person who likes having more intense days, then scale it down, do a one or two, three page websites. I'm smaller until you feel comfortable with it and work your way up. I love that. I definitely, oh, a thousand percent agree with you that you have to design a business that fits your life and your energy and your needs. And when you think it has to look a certain way because you see other people doing like, oh, I think that this is what it takes to quote unquote be successful or whatever. And then I was literally just having a conversation with my coaching clients who was just like, I need to just pick a goal and then like do what it takes to get there. And I'm like, no, like that does not sound fun at all. Can we just like, let's go at this in a completely different direction. So I love that you start out from this place of what you want things to look like. Guess what? We can build an offer that works for you and your life is such a novel idea, right? Yeah. I mean, I have some moms who they know they need to pick up their kid at three PM. Say, okay, well, while we set it up almost as a half day type scenario where you're done by three PM and you leave and you go pick up your kids and get to do this up you one. I even have some moms who do, they take the same framework and do it over a week. But same process applies. And it's really just building the offer at that point to fit what you would enjoy for your own business. Yeah, like we all get to do that. We don't get to do this part. So I'm curious with your students that have gone through your course and your training, what are some of the most exciting transformations that you've seen aside from this idea that like, oh, you get to actually build a business so that you can go pick your kids up at three PM. Yeah. I mean, some of it, one of the most common things that I heard was a lot of people saying that they just feel so much more professional and put together now because even like one day, not even included, but just the systems and processes built behind it. A lot of business owners don't really have a set thing. They're negotiating prices every time they're trying. So even just having the process, people are saying they feel so much just more professional put together and able to stick to the boundaries they put in place because they know they're, they're leading the ship instead of like sitting behind the passenger seat. They're now driving the process and guiding their client down the path they want to take. Another one that I really liked was we had a couple designers that they call themselves a creative duo, but they were in the course this round and they designed together and they had been doing websites for a while, hadn't done the one day model. But before we even got like halfway through the modules, they had already sold a design day, did the design day and they're like, oh my gosh, we actually did this and they were even doing not a completely new website platform, but they usually use Wix, they use Wix studios is kind of a new platform to do like, this is possible in a day. I can't believe in them since then they went and sold a bunch more. They were selling it like at the same price that I'm selling it to. Like see, this isn't even, you could literally start today and start selling design days for $3,000, $4,000 and have people buy it and not just buy it, but be excited about it and be looking forward to doing it. So that's been really cool seeing people actually go out, do the design day, finish by the end of the day and then come back to me at the end saying, wow, I did it and the client's done and now I'm like, I wipe my hand, I don't have to do edits. I'm just done. What is this? What is this? Yeah, it's a cool world. So what do you think keeps people when you're like, you could literally do this in a day? Like, you could start this now and by next week, you could have delivered one. Done. What do you think stops people from like moving forward with that? I'm just self-doubted. I've just no way I could build a website today. And my point to that is one, try it because whenever you're not sitting and balancing emails and client calls and just having your attention pulled in different directions all day long and you sit at the beginning of the day with everything you need and you make a website, you can move a lot quicker than you think you can move. And if you've never tried it, I encourage you to try it. But the second part of it too is that the biggest struggle that a lot of designers have with the website process and being able to move quickly is that they don't have everything they need from their clients. They need copy, they need pictures. The client didn't give them a link or a log in that they need. And that's the biggest piece. And so with the design day process, a huge part of what makes it successful, what allows you to focus it on the day is that you're getting all the information before. And so we use Trello. We send our client a welcome video and kind of talk them through. We don't have them do a ton of things. Like, I don't want them getting in. They sign on their side about a website and then they see a big homework assignment. They're like, I just paid you. I don't have to do this. You know, like, I never want that to happen. So we have really simplified it. So we're only asking for the things we need. We give our clients, like, even for writing the words on their site. We have a copy guide that outlines the most important sections for the pages. It gives them prompts of what to write. Shout GPT prompts if they just want words. And we do review what it says, but they're able to go through write it, give the pictures, give everything we have a prep code before where if we have any questions, we can ask them, if they're missing anything, I tell them what they're missing. Make a little checklist for them. They can get it done for the day. And then on the day, you're cruising. You have it and you're not having to sit and hit all these roadblocks because, I mean, you know, whenever you're working on something, you're cruising and then you had a roadblock. It's so frustrating to sit and wait. They take three days to get back to you. You, you know, at that point, you're over it. You're like, I don't know. You wanted to do this anymore. I don't feel creative. Let me take another three days to get back in the mindset. And then it just carries all like that. So having everything you need and being able to focus in on one thing at a time, get it done, and have your client available at the end of the day for revisions, knowing what time you need them. They're there. It just streamlines everything. It makes it so nice and you could do way more than you think you could do if you never tried it. Yeah. And there's like this natural container around the whole project that is like not even an option for it to drag on. Like beyond this. So I want to shift gears a little bit and ask you about like throughout this process of starting and over the past five years. Like what are some of the biggest mindset shifts you've personally experienced? Like in your journey of growing this business and then shifting from implementation to like education and those types of things. What have been your biggest transformations and shifts? I think one being the whole, you don't have to tie the value or quantify the value based on just the hours. That's huge. And also that more time doesn't necessarily mean it's more valuable or better quality. Because I see that when a lot of you and that's not necessarily that don't have to be the case. And then I think to just realizing the importance of systems and because a lot of times we think, oh, we're doing all this stuff. We're really busy for getting pulled on all these directions. I'm crushing it. I'm doing awesome. But then you take a step back and you're like, wait, that took me 15 minutes, but I could actually automate it. And I don't have to do anything. I just set it up once and it runs on autopilot. And so maybe I don't have to be doing all these things to just feel successful. Feel like I'm busy and doing good. I can automate it, systemize it, make it easier for me. And then I can still do a lot if I want to do a lot, but it's a choice at that point. I could enjoy slow down or if I want to do, fill my day out. I can, but it's a choice. I think what jumped out at me from what you said is just like equating, crushing it and hustling and working really hard with success or earning it, earning the money or earning the whatever. And I think that that is one of like aside from selling your time, that it's only worth it if it was complex, if it was hard, if it was a grind, if I struggled for it. Therefore, somehow it's worth more or I earned it. And if it's simple and easy and it flows and it's this, then maybe I cheated or maybe I'm ripping people off or maybe whatever. And so that's a big mindset shift that I have to work with, especially women on for some reason. I don't know to just like it's not cheating if it's easy. You're not ripping people off. It's not about any of that. It's about the $40,000 outcome from a one day site. Yeah. That was easy and fun for you to do for them. Yeah. Another one to come up while you were speaking is a lot of, or something that's often with designers, is we care so much about our clients in every little piece of what we think they need. And I'm not saying not to care about your clients. I'm best friends all my clients. We put so much care in everything we do, but I've had to really shift my mind in the fact of, I can't force them to care as much as I do on some things, and I also don't need to mentally care more than they do. If, because there's some things on the website where I'm like, for example, I have one website, we have a form on the site, the form submissions have not been going through for probably a year now. And I've told them I need this certain log in to get it connected for you. And I've tried, I've tried, I've tried. And to me, I'm like, oh, let me care for you. Like, let me connect this for you. But the client just doesn't, that's not important to them. And so I had to learn to just like, release it. Don't stress about that stuff. It's not on you if they don't care. That's fine. Let, we're all adults here. Let them do what they want to do. And if they want your help, you're there for them. But don't, I used to stress myself out so much about stuff that my clients just did not care about at all. - Yeah, it's like your responsibilities to deliver on what you said, dude, deliver and be an integrity. And they have their own side of the street and the things that they're responsible for. And they are responsible for making sure that they have an offer that people want to buy. Like, I imagine if someone came to you and they were like, I have this awesome idea for potato pets. And I want you to build this website for me. You could build that website and it would be like an awesome website, but you're not in control of whether or not people buy the perfect potato or the potato. (laughing) Like you're just not in control of that. Like, it was their responsibility to make sure that they had product market fit, like find the buyer for the potato. You would have delivered an incredible website for them. You know, and so I think it's like, we get a codependent almost when we make their outcomes and results about our value and our worth. And I think you said it so beautifully to be like, I've told them about the form, they don't care. There's nothing more I can do here. I cannot jump in their body and make them give me the log in. I can't force their hand. And it feels almost like you're doing something wrong to at least it used to to me to be like, I'm trying to help you. I think I know what's gonna make you more successful and create the results that you want. I'm telling you, but also, it is your choice as a human being with free will if you wanna do it then to the day. - Yeah, especially some of the revisions at the end of the day, it's like, okay, I can do that for you. And I would not, if this is my website, I don't explain to you why, but if they still wanna do it, go for it. Your website, I'm like, I'm gonna make you happy. And I told you my recommendations. So it's just one of those things. - Yeah, oh my gosh. - So I have so many questions I wanna ask. I'm like, I wanna ask her all of them all at once. When it comes down to the offer and the boundaries seem like they're really built in. And you seem like the kind of person that is really good at communicating boundaries and holding them. But what are some challenges that either you have had or overcome or that you have helped your clients overcome because we know clients are people. And even though we put these guardrails and guidelines and boundaries in front of them, they like to just, some people like to just step on over them. Like what are some experiences you have had or you've helped your clients have with like holding the boundaries of a design day type engagement? - Yeah, there's two common ones that I see that really impact the boundaries surrounding the day. One of those being people not getting the prep work done in time. And for that, two things. One, you could put a reschedule fee in there. If you need to reschedule, it's not, you don't give me a week heads up. Okay, it's gonna be this price. That's one of them. That helps, that simple helps a lot. And then just communicating, giving them the chance, like, okay, look, I don't want you to have to do this, but if you do need to move it, here it is. If not, this is what I need from you. And then that usually gets people to kind of kick it in gear, get their stuff together. And then the other one is, it doesn't happen often because again, it's so much on the communication if you tell people yes. - On the sales page, on the proposal, on the contract, on the welcome email, on the prep call, on that like you have so many touch points. And if you tell them they need to be free from three to five CST to get work on me with revisions. They're pretty much always free that time because they know, okay, we have two hours make revisions at the end, we're done, we're launched. Even then, there will be some times that you don't have somebody available to, or three to five. I make sure that I always do my part, do what we need to do. If that ever happens, which, trying to avoid at all costs, if it ever happens, usually what I'll do, just to give a little bit of lenience, say, okay, look, I have two hours banked in for you. That's your revision time. Take your time with it tonight, go through, add your revisions into the Google Doc, which is how we track it's in a Google Doc. And I have those two hours banked for you. So tomorrow or depending on if we have some times, we'll have four design days back to back. So whatever the next availability is, I have time on Friday, and at that point, I'll go in, you have two hours or revisions. Anything past that is gonna be built at the hourly rate. I haven't done this, but if I were to be concerned that they would extend this out to three months later, and then they're coming back, then I would probably put some sort of constraint of, okay, look, I'll offer this to you until end of next week or whatever that may be. But that's the kind of one thing, is if they aren't available during that time, a little bit of grace is okay. Even though I told you 10 times, I get it, things happen. I'll save you two hours, and you still have that two hours or revisions, but anything past that, 'cause what you don't wanna happen, and what I have seen is people say like, oh, it's fine, yeah, like just, whenever, let me know. And then they go, they show their friends, they show their mom, they show their cousins, they show Facebook group, and then at the end of it, they have a big, long Google Doc, and they're like, there's no way how can get this done in two hours. And then it just turns into a big thing, where it's like, well, you said you do revisions, some limited revisions, why can't I keep doing it? So you still need to put that time constraint on there, that way you have the ropes, and you don't have to go and wrestle the sheet back into the gate, you have the ropes on it, you tell them what's allowed, and if you tell them what's allowed, you guide them, they will stick to it, or they'll pay extra. - Yeah, right, exactly, but that's a choice too. That's what we always say is like, at every step of the way, I really don't like punitive boundaries. I don't wanna feel like I'm your mean manager or a punitive parent where I'm like, no, this isn't happening like this, we're not doing this way. I always even say like, in any of our communications, you're likely never gonna hear the word, no, never, not like we just don't even use negative words, we're like, if this then not hear your choices, and putting decisions in front of adults who can decide within my boundaries what I am and am not willing to do, and here's how it works, and choose your own adventure, make the choice, but I wrote the book, you wrote the choose your own adventure book, you can turn to page 72 or 94, but I wrote both outcomes, you get to choose whichever one, whichever one you want, and it's like boundaries don't have to be no bad, anything like that, they can actually just be like, very chill and simple. - Yeah, and a lot of times too, I don't think clients want to push boundaries, a lot of times they just don't know what the boundary is. - Exactly. - And a huge part of it is just communicating, and you might have already told 'em three times, tell 'em again, tell 'em on the prep call, is you're not being repetitive, they have a lot coming out them, just remind them of what to expect, when to expect it, what it's gonna look like, that way if they're overstepping, they at least know they're overstepping, and then they can make the choice. - Yeah, the other question I wanted to ask you about is marketing. Like I know people listening to this are gonna be like, "Okay, all of this sounds amazing, "but how do I get clients for this?" - Yeah. - So what is your best advice for people just in general, whether they're doing a design day or anything to create opportunities for clients? - Yeah, so in the course we do have a whole two week launch period that we advise you to go through, it starts with doing a beta rate, if this is a new offer, get you a beta rate going, half off, get those first two clients in, that way you can make the sell and then you have proof. It's not just a concept anymore, you have proof and it might have been in a lower price than what you want in a charge, but example, $800 to start, or even less than that. But you have the websites to show, because just having sites to show in your portfolio make it so much easier to sell something than if you're trying to sell somebody an idea in a concept where they, the design day and its episode, it's getting more common, but it's still so rare that you tell people that and they're like, "What am I gonna get for that?" That's a, "Huh, okay." Do that, so that's huge. Beta rate, get your first two clients in. If you can't get the two clients in, I recommend doing your own design day site as an example site. If you don't have one, that not only gives you something to show people, but it also gives you the confidence to sell it, 'cause if you're having trouble selling, you're probably not feeling that confident in it, And it gives you something to show and gives you proofs that you can do the offer. So you're more confident. selling it to and I find that really helps. - Yeah, I love that. And like, clients are out there in the most unexpected places. Like, I'm at the gym working out and I'm doing a logo for the guy on the treadmill next to me or like whatever, you know? That's my second client came from someone at the gym being like, "Oh, hey, what do you do for a living?" I was like, "Oh, I'm in marketing and communications "I do web design on the side." And the only reason I said I did web design on the side was 'cause I'd like taken on a random side gig project from someone like a vendor at work who's like, "Who built your website?" I'm like, "Oh, I did. "He was like, "Do you do side work?" And I'm like, "Sure." And then telling someone at the gym, she's like, "Oh my gosh, we've been looking for someone for forever. "Do you do WordPress?" And I was like, "Yeah, I do." And then I told my best friend's husband, I was like, "Yeah, that girl did gym, you know, do you know her?" I was like, "Yeah, she just hired me to do web design work." He was like, "You do that? "My dad's website got hacked. "He needs somebody." Like literally it is the simplest thing to get clients. It doesn't have to be some complicated marketing strategy at all if you just are willing to tell people what you do. Yeah, and once you get one person, ask them if they have friends. A lot of them do have friends. A lot of them have friends. Put it out there. People are so afraid to ask, 'cause how do you ever get that with people? They're like, "I don't wanna feel pushy, "I don't wanna feel salesy, "I don't wanna sell people something they don't need." Like they're selling like leggings or jewelry or makeup or something. (laughs) Yeah, I do. One of the ways they're one of the little tricks of how we do it is we have an automated email flow that triggers after the design day finish. It follows them for over two years with, and it's just perfectly timed. Okay, tells them whenever the end of their support period's coming up after that. It tells them, okay, it ended. Anything else is gonna be our earlier retainer. And then after about a year, it's happy with one year's website of nursery. And I think it was at the happier market to have to go back and look, but somewhere along there, we asked them, "Hey, do you have any friends? "Could you send this to one person?" Like, just forward the email to one person, connect me with them. And that's a way to do it's where you are asking and you're getting the results from it, but you're not having to do it in a way where you're like going back after months and you're low on business and you're like, "Hey, can you please send me a friend please?" Like, they know it's automated. They do appreciate it, but they know it's automated. It's not as like, I feel like it's not a sales unit that way. They love it, so good. So just a couple more questions for you. This one I ask everyone that comes on the podcast. And it's what belief about yourself did you have to change to get to where you are today? - That I don't have to do it all myself. And I know that's when you've heard, but I vividly remember my Google search is being whenever I was first starting because I saw other agencies that were successful business owners and I'm like, how can I hit this revenue milestone as a single solo printer? How can I do that? And that was like my whole thing. I was like, well, I see that they're doing that, but I'm gonna be better because I'm like, oh, I'm very competitive. I'll play sports growing up, play self on high college. So I'm like, how can I do it better? Like, okay, fine. You hit this number, but you had three people. I'm gonna do it with one person. It actually the craziest thing whenever I finally let go of that. It wasn't even necessarily by choice. I think it was a God thing because I was sitting, I had I think three design days on the week. I was on the third one. I'm like midday, like just grindin' to try and get it done. And then my phone rings. And I was like, oh my gosh, okay. Let me answer 'cause any more business have to do this goal. And it was Kyle who's now my sister. He's been with me for three some years and he was asking, hey, are you hiring? And I was like, I was about to just say no, but I was like, actually, maybe, let me give you call back in the hung up. And then that turned it out, interviewed him. And he's been with me for forever now. And if I would have known back then, how much that would have helped me to bring someone on, how many more websites we could do, how much more, just like I would have enjoyed my life and not be so much stressed anymore. I would have done it so much sooner. And I would have brought in, like, I have an ad-minister to now, I have another graphic assistant as well who works part time. Having them just makes life a lot more enjoyable. And it's not a thing where it's like, you get a trophy for doing it by yourself. Like, yeah, that's cool, but you can only do it for so long. You can only get so far doing it by yourself. And at that point, it's not even a trophy anymore of trying to do it by yourself. Like the only person that cares about that is you. The people who are, you're trying to reach, they don't care. That's something that's on their minds. It's just for you. Just leave it behind, drop it. Oh my gosh, that is so good. 'Cause I hear so many people say the same thing. Like how can I hit these revenue goals on my own? Because I don't want to have to be responsible for someone else's income. I don't want to have to manage people. And they're telling the story of it. Like it's this really big burden. And it can be a beautiful synergy of, it doesn't have to be the way that you're thinking about it. Yeah. That's the type of person that's like, well, if I have a team now I'm responsible for them and my clients and this and it's so much more fun to work with people. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, every, what is it saying? It's like different levels, different devils. Like every level you hit, you're gonna have new problems. So there's gonna be your own pains. But it's almost, it's almost like just growing up. Like you get a certain age, you gotta go to college. You gotta move out. You gotta start paying your bills. Just grow up and you hit the news level. And it's difficult at first when you figure it out. You're like, oh, okay, that's easy. That's actually nice. Let me do that some more. Yeah. And like I don't know I like to accomplish things. You seem like you like to accomplish things. Yeah. I get bored when things get too easy. And I don't mean like I used to meddle when things get too easy. Like and not realize that I was doing it. Like, oh, it feels too easy. Let me like break it so I can fix it. Yeah. But I've identified that pattern and kind of fixed that. But now it's just like, okay, well, how can I, in a personal growth healthy way, like still grow? I never want to reach like the point where I'm like settled. Like that's not the point, right? I always want to like, have more fulfillment and things like that from a place of contentment and not a place of grinding. And I think that's kind of like what you were saying. Like new levels, there's going to be new challenges. And we can meet them with curiosity and courage and not like avoidance and all those things. So that's kind of like a deeper conversation. I'm probably not, we have time to get into. But where can everyone go to learn more about you, follow you on Instagram, get their hands on your course to implement this process in their business. It sounds like such a breath of fresh air for people where can they go to learn more about that? - Yeah, so follow me on Instagram at honey wave creative. Honey like a bee, wave like water, honey wave creative. And I usually am dancing around doing some silly stuff over there, so we like to have fun. We have a good community too. So you might find some other people you like following me over there. And then if you want to get more information on the course, you can go to honey wave creative.com/DDB, Design Day Blueprint DB. But I'm also giving Shannon a special link that she's gonna link in the show notes, right? - Yes. - And you're gonna want to use that link. So you Shannon's link instead, I'll give her a code. She can give me the code too in the show notes. But that's gonna get you our mini brand add-on for the course for free, which not mini brand. It teaches you how to do a brand in a day too. And it's usually $500. But if you go through Shannon's link, and if you use our code, it'll give you that $500 add-on for free when you sign up. So check it out via her link. - Amazing. So I will put all of that in the show notes. So if you're listening to this on your device, just scroll up, show notes are right there. You can tap on that if we sent you this episode, the email 'cause you're on our email list and you should be on our email list. (laughs) Go to mydesignercottemy.com/podcast, make sure you're on our email list. We will have sent that out to you in an email as well. So definitely take advantage of that, Bailey. - Yeah. - You're awesome. I'm so glad we met. - Thank you so much for being here. - Thank you, I'm here. - It was meant to be. I wish we had a metal long time ago. - I know, but you know, today's the first day of a new friendship. - Probably so many. - So I love it. - There we go. Well, it was nice meeting you and thank you so much for having me. All right, that's it everyone. We'll see you next week. - Bye. - Bye. Hey, so before you go, if you're an experienced women web designer who's outgrown all the beginner business growth strategies, and you're looking for real support to help you make the money that you really want to be making, I'd love for you to come and check out the web designer academy and see how we do things differently. Just go to webdesigneracademy.com/tour and fill out the form to schedule your program tour. You'll get to sit in on one of our live group coaching calls, meet the other women inside of the program, and afterwards I'll share options for working together in 2026. So if you're done figuring it all out on your own and you're looking for support, I can't wait to meet you. Schedule your program tour today at webdesigneracademy.com/tour. That's webdesigneracademy.com/tour. - This podcast is part of the Sound Advice FM Network. Sound Advice FM, Women's Voices Amplified.