The Agency Hour
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The other thing that I'll say too when it comes to imposter syndrome in the early days is a quote that you told me, Troy, when I interviewed you on my podcast.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01You told me one of the best quotes of the year, and that was that you don't need to be the best web designer, period. You just need to be the best web designer in your client sphere. And I don't know if you thought about that much. You said it kind of offhand, but I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that is that is good.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast. This week we have no agenda and there are no giveaways. That's right, we're just jamming, keeping it authentic and having a genuine conversation with my good friend Josh Hall. We're discussing everything from competing with lower price course providers, the end all to imposter syndrome, and the need for what we're calling a webmaster. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us. G'day folks, welcome back to 2023. This is our first podcast recording for the year, and I am super excited to be back in the seat here hosting the agency hour. My name is Troy Dean, of course, coming to you live from the greatest city on the planet, Melbourne, Australia. And my guest for the first uh first episode this year, my guest is none other than Josh Hall.
SPEAKER_01Hey brother, how are you? Good to see you again, Troy. I'm coming from the best city stateside, at least, Columbus, Ohio. Uh it's dinner time here, morning time where you are, but that's the beauty of the online world now. We just we'll work it out.
SPEAKER_03So good. Matt, I was telling Max that I was on your podcast a while ago, and Max was telling me he saw this clip over the holidays. Max is our producer, by the way. He he was saw this clip over the holidays of a guy who is pretending to be uh two characters, and he he says, Oh hey man, welcome to the podcast. Oh yeah, good thanks. I was on your podcast too. Oh yeah, how did you find out my podcast from this other guy's podcast who loves your podcast? Basically spent the entire episode talking about everyone's podcast, and it was just like a great big echo chamber. And I feel like it can get into, I feel like it can become a bit of an echo chamber. But I straight out of the gate, I want to ask you how what impact has your podcast had on your business and your life?
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, massive, huge. Like it's the number one generator for my best students and customers who come into my courses now. I'm a essentially a web design business coach, not dissimilar to what you guys are doing with agency mavericks. And that is from the like the customer standpoint, but then there's the relationship side and the people I get to meet. Like, Troy, I don't know if you and I would ever communicate outside of this, other than maybe if I was on your email list and I responded. Like the a podcast gave me the chance to hang out with Troy Dean, which in my mind is the biggest win I can think of it. So there really is the two, and on all honesty, this stomp it. There's the two sides of it. There's like there's the the trust building authority aspect of it, and then there's the relationships that it opens up. Uh, because there's just something about last point on this, I think for me, is there's something about the trust that you build with audio in your ears that you just don't get with quick video. And I'm a huge fan of blogging and writing and all sorts of mediums, but there's something about listening to somebody while you're doing the dishes, mowing the lawn and driving, and that just adds this element of trust and authority. So it's been a big impact, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Totally. And I feel I mean, I feel like it I feel like you kind of I whenever I listen to a podcast, I feel like I'm eavesdropping on someone's private conversation. I I feel like I've for me it's the format that uh I feel like I'm cheating. I remember the one of the first podcasts I really got hooked on. There were three, there was John Lee Dumas, Pat Flynn, and Amy Porterfield. And I would just listen to those guys on rotation, and every time I I would just get off the the end of the episode and be like, I I feel like I was the only person that was privy to that conversation. It's such an intimate format, in having the especially having headphones on it, such an intimate format. I love it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree. There there is something, and I think that lends itself to be more conversational now. I actually think now there's no better time to be more just casual, real, authentic, and less polished. Like I'm a big fan of just letting it go, just record. If you say something that absolutely needs to be taken out, I guess that's your prerogative. But in my mind, if you say a little filler word here or there, it just keeps it real. Like I think in a world of AI and things that are too polished and perfect, the little humanisms we have and just a real chat, casual conversation that let people ease on ease in on that. I I think it's really powerful. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And and just for the listeners here, right? Just to prove a point for the listeners, we basically have no agenda for this episode, right? I mean, we i I know what you do, I know a little bit about your background, you know, you know what we do. I mean, we we don't have like here's the three things that we're gonna cover in this episode. We're just hanging out and having a conversation, and we're recording it, and we're gonna publish it, and hopefully it's valuable to people, right?
SPEAKER_01Honestly, that's why I was so excited to do this on top of just getting to chat with you again and being on the show. It's like there is not like a can you give us seven bullet points and you have two two minutes each point. Like that just lends itself. Like, if you're doing a polished YouTube video that is gonna piece be a piece of content that is intentional in certain places, then yeah, that might work. But there a podcast is by definition a conversation, unless it's a solo episode. So, yeah, I love episodes that are open ended. To be honest, I've been doing a podcast for over three years now. Some of my best episodes have been the like, I don't know exactly what we're gonna talk about, and then it just gets awesome usually.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I I also I I know like guys like Andrew Warner at Mixery and John Lee Dumas, I know they they do like a lot of prep before the call. In fact, with Andrew Warner at Mixogy, when I was on his podcast, you have to you have an like an hour-long call with his producer before you do the episode, right? I'm like, okay, first of all, that's too much work. I don't have the attention span for that. Two, I like I mean I and I love Andrew De Bits. I hung out with him in San Francisco when we're out there. He's a great guy. He's very generous with his time and he's just awesome. And shorter in real life than I thought. Anyway, um, I like discovering things about my guests at the same time as the audience, right? I remember doing one of my I remember doing an episode of a podcast, and this guy was telling me that he was flying uh he was flying internationally and during the flight his father passed away. So when he landed, he discovered the news that his father passed away. And I'm like, holy shit, I had no idea. I discovered this this piece of information at the same time as my audience. So I had an authentic reaction to I mean, I was almost in tears. The guy was being he was like so and it was recent, so he's still pretty raw from it. And I like this, I don't like to know too much about the guest or what we're gonna talk about before it happens because then I feel like my responses are contrived, right? I I just like to kind of go, oh wow, I didn't know that. Let's park here for a second and explore that.
SPEAKER_01Because it's real and it's real time. I guarantee I would prefer to listen to that first hour of you getting to know each other before you hit record than the actual than the actual 100%.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Actually, it's funny. GoDaddy recently, I I did something for GoDaddy. They reached out and requested if I would be interested in doing a feature video uh for their YouTube channel. And I was like, Yeah, I I don't love GoDaddy for hosting, but I use it for domain management, and that'd be kind of cool. So I did it. Same thing, they interviewed me for an hour and we went over all these questions, and I was so much better and like during that interview process, and then they were like, Okay, now we're gonna record and do it all over again. And then I was suddenly like stiff and robotic and things like that. So I hope this is a good lesson that if you do anything, even when it comes to talking with clients and stuff, real, authentic, off the cuff often uh goes over better and is just more enjoyable all around in my mind.
SPEAKER_03I want to come back and talk about that in a minute because I think I think confidence and conviction are the two things that allow you to just kind of wing it or think on your feet and and not have a planned agenda as such, right? Um so let's come back and talk about confidence and conviction in a second. But before we get there, uh who the hell are you and what do you do? And why why are you on the podcast?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I now I am a essentially a web design business coach. So, like I said, similar to agency mavericks, I think where I'm positioned is the in the market is I primarily help freelancers and solopreneurs with small teams, and I just focus on web design. I do not teach digital marketing agencies or really people who identify as an agency. So I'm really in kind of a niche market. I'm basically teaching people where Josh was 10 years ago, building a solopreneur business to six and like multi-six figures in the quarter million range. That's my sweet spot for students. Previous to that, I was, I guess, depending on how far back we want to go, it all started when I was a cabinet maker for a tour bus customizing shop. Uh, got to work on like uh Johnny Cash's bus, one time Metallica's bus. So I literally was for tour buses. That was my job through high school, and then I became a cabinet maker. And it was a cool job, but I got laid off in 2009 when the uh the US economy got hit really hard, as I think everyone did back then. I don't know. I was so young I didn't know what the heck was going on. But cabinet maker by day, and I was also a drummer in a rock band at night. We were playing all over the states, kind of weekend warriors. And because I was in a rock band, we needed artwork and we needed t-shirt design. So I had always had an interest in art and design. So the day after I got laid off from my cabinet making job, I was like, screw it, I'm gonna learn Photoshop. And then I started doing t-shirt designs and artwork and um did it for my band. And the next thing you know, I would we were playing a festival when somebody asked me, like the light bulb moment for me was when they said, Hey Josh, how much would you charge to do our artwork? And I was like, Wow, I can get paid at doing something I enjoy doing. That was the start of my foray into graphic design and website design. I did that for nearly a decade before I started teaching it.
SPEAKER_03Wow, that's great. Um, how the hell did you get the job as the working on the tour buses? Did you know people or would you like we did know the owner?
SPEAKER_01The owner used to be my my family's neighbor, and then turns out where we moved to outside of Columbus was literally I could throw a rock and hit the shop. So he was like, I tell you what, he's like, we need help like cleaning the floors and cleaning the bathrooms, which you want to talk about a terrible shitty job. Cleaning the bathrooms for a bunch of warehouse dudes after a full day of work was rough. So any hardship I've experienced in web design is cake compared to what I went through back then. But uh, in all honesty, like it was literally right down the road. And I just walked down after high school. I worked for a couple hours, and and then eventually, once I graduated, I have a very uh kinship feeling with you, Troy, because I was not an academic. Um, I wouldn't call myself a rebel by any means, but that world was just not for me. I would lose my mind in a cubicle. So I just became a cabinet maker outside of high school and uh started doing that until yeah, getting into design.
SPEAKER_03Wow. And then and so then at some point, okay, so you need you doing some artwork for other bands. At what at what point do you tackle, because you know, building designing and building a website is very different from designing a t-shirt, right? You design a t-shirt, it gets printed, you're done. You design and build a website, it goes live, and then you're attached to it for the rest of your miserable life doing updates, and you know, so at what point did you make that leap into the web? And what what time frame are we talking about? What year are we talking here that you went in got into web design?
SPEAKER_01It was pretty quick. It was less than a couple years. I think it's and I've I've seen this with a lot of my students who come from a graphic design and branding background. It's like all roads lead to the web. All roads lead to websites. So inevitably, I'm designing t-shirts, and eventually I did like brochures and business cards for real companies, and they'd be like, We love our business card. Do you do websites too? Because we need a website. So that's kind of how it started. Uh, and I technically started getting like trained for websites back in the Dreamweaver days. This was 2010, is when I so it was actually less than a year that I started diving into website stuff. I was actually helping out with a church. I used to be a drummer for the praise band at the same time, and they knew I was doing design, and they were like, hey, we don't have anyone doing our church website. Would you like to give it a go? We'll pay for some night classes at the community college. That's how I learned Dreamweaver. And then, man, once I found WordPress, and it was just like everyone was asking about websites, and eventually I was like, okay, I need to take this seriously. And uh then eventually I discovered Divi and page builders, and that's what really changed the game for me. And then I went from essentially doing like half graphic design, half website design to phasing all the graphic design out and focusing solely on website design for clients.
SPEAKER_03Love it. And then at some point you decide that you want to teach, and I've been through this same journey myself, so I kind of get it, but I wonder if you can explain to the viewers at some point you decide that you want to teach others to design websites or start a business as a web designer. Which which is it?
SPEAKER_01It started with designing websites, and now it's the business side of things. So yeah, even the progression that I made as a freelancer going from graphic design to web design, it parallels what I've gone through the last five years as uh I don't know what to call myself, a coach, educator, influencer, I don't know. From like teaching people to build Divi websites. And if you if you search Divi tutorials, you'll probably see one of my videos and WordPress tutorials. I have a lot of those out there. But then eventually I realized that you know what? I've built a six-figure web design business. I'm not doing seven figures, but a lot of people would kill to get to a quarter million. And I undervalued the knowledge that I had accrued and created, and I found out that what I thought was like no big deal were actually some really cool processes that no one else like taught me. I just kind of came to them on my own, and that's what I started sharing. And then that eventually got me into more of the business coaching for web design. Um, so yeah, similarly, it's like it's it goes niche and then it goes niche and niche and niche. You know, I think it's really common with any sort of service, service work.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. And and so did you at some point did you stop doing web design for clients and just go all in on the coaching?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the way the coaching came about, there was a couple different things that I think sparked the the teacher inside of me. One was I joined this after-school program for my local high school for um creative students. It was like a like a media school, uh media program. Most of the kids in there were interested in like 3D design or game design, although I'm sure none of them could hit deadlines like 3D designers need to. Uh, but I did have a couple students they gave me that were awesome and they were so interested in what I was doing. They were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you don't work for anyone else? Like you just work from home and you make like a hundred thousand or more a year. I had a couple of those students who lit the fire in me to teach them. And then when I had some opportunities to teach at scale, and I thought, wow, I don't need to like go to a high school in a room with three kids. I could like do this online at scale at mass. It was a big, big turning point that that really stoked the fire for teaching. And actually, that point came when I found out that the content director for Elegant Themes, the creators of Divi, also lived in Columbus. I found that out and I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna ask him to coffee. No agenda, kind of like this call, no agenda. No, I'm not gonna like ask to be on the team or ask for anything. I just want to hang out and get to know him and share what I've done. And then getting to know each other, he was like, Hey, would you be interested in sharing your experience and writing on the Elegant Themes blog? No pressure. There's like three million viewers right now on the blog. We get massive traffic. Uh so that was that was my foray into getting into like the Divi community and then sharing what I knew, and then then I started my personal brand and started teaching from there.
SPEAKER_03Got it, no pressure. Uh, love it. And so uh did you so you leverage the Elegant Themes um profile to build your own audience? How did you start? How did you because you know I've not only have we not only are we uh we're now essentially an agency coaching company, but I also had a side line for about th two years called Rockstar Empires because I was where I was teaching other people how to create and launch courses. And the one thing I saw more than anything is people trying to launch a course to an audience of like 50 people. And it's like, dude, like you you need an audience. So how did you leverage your profile there to build your own audience to then launch stuff to?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a great point. I it's so tough because you build an audience. Ideally, you have you would have something to sell just to make it worthwhile on the books. I'm kind of glad I went the opposite way. I literally built an audience with selling nothing. Um, at the time I was still running my agency and scaling it. And by scaling, I basically had a couple contractors. We were doing, you know, the the 200,000 range or so with my web design business, which was totally fine. What I learned was as I was scaling my web design agency, it freed me up to do this teaching, this side hustle, which was basically a passion project. But I was in a business coaching program at the time, and they were like, Josh, I understand you're really passionate about this, but on the books, this is killing you. Like you're spending half of your time now creating tutorials and writing for elegant themes and doing all this stuff, but you're not selling anything. But what I was doing was building an audience. So when I released my first course, I made about it was around $10,000 my first launch. And I was like, I'm in. I am in. If I could do this over and over and do higher courses, I mean it was like I'm done with the agency stuff after that. I uh to answer your question from a little bit ago that I didn't answer, yes, I did eventually stop working with clients. I actually sold my agency in 2020, uh, coincidentally to one of my students, actually, who had been through all my courses and uh he took over all the clients. And I'm happy to go into that. That was not an easy decision. I had a couple tears on that one. Like that was a big life change for me to go full-time courses and coaching. But uh that's what I did. Yeah, once that course bug hit and was slightly successful, it just steamrolled and spiraled from there.
SPEAKER_03I want to come back to confidence and conviction in a second. Uh, but before we just before we do that, what's your team like these days? What how many what infrastructure do you have now to manage your business? And how different is that to the agency?
SPEAKER_01It's different in the way of that's a great question. With the agency, I had to I started small and I teach all my students when you start to scale, scale could be anything from like, yeah, having like in-house full-time staff to just having a couple subcontractors who do the work or take off the tasks that you just don't want to do or they're killing you, or you're just not well suited for. So when I started dishing out and delegating work in my agency days, it was for the design work and repeatable tasks, things that we couldn't automate. Eventually, I brought my lead designer, who was actually based in Melbourne, so uh in Australia, in Aussie, um, which is kind of cool because I worked during the day and then he worked during the night. So by the time I checked in in the morning, the work was done. It was kind of cool. Yep. Um but yeah, I brought him in eventually. He started doing project communication and working with clients. And then eventually I got to the point where all I was doing in my business was sales and onboarding with clients, and then he took over the projects. Um, so that with my team there, it was actually probably less than what I have now because he was just doing projects, a couple other support people. Um, now my team looks like a virtual assistant who does all of the podcast distribution, a lot of my emails. Um, she keeps me on track with all the calls that I do for coaching and stuff like that in my membership. And then I have an editor who edits the podcast, both video and audio, put snippets together. I did recently hire a social media guy who was also one of my students, um, who's dishing everything out on social media. So generally, if anyone follows me, I I'm not the one posting most everything, it's him now. And then uh I have a couple contractors who help out with some web design work and and additional projects I'm doing. So yeah, that's kind of what it looks like now, but it's very low cost. Um, I actually I think I pay more in subscriptions and tools than I probably do with with team members nowadays.
SPEAKER_03And so you're doing the coaching, you're the one that delivers the course material, and then you're the one that coaches the clients through that curriculum.
SPEAKER_01So here's what's weird and wild. I have not created a new course since 2020. That is what really blows my mind. Like I've been able to sustain a multi-six-figure online coaching and course business with materials that were three years old at this point. Now, I have gone in and revamped lessons that need to be revamped, but it has been an interesting case study showing that a course can still do very well if you continue to market it and do things like podcasts, authority building, content, as long as the course is good and is getting results. Um, but I essentially have two different like main products. My income right now, how timely. I literally just looked at the percentages of everything. Most of my income, like 60 plus percent, comes from my courses, my online courses, and then about 30% comes from my membership. I have a web design community, probably not dissimilar from agency Mavericks, and then I have some other money with like affiliates and and random stuff. Um, but those are the two the two biggies, and they kind of marry uh with each other as of right now.
SPEAKER_03Cool, love it. Um thank you for sharing, dude. That's super helpful, and I think is really insightful for people listening to this as well. Because I know there are a lot of people in the agency space who who so there's a lot of people in the agency space who think that they're gonna pivot into the course space because they have some knowledge and then they do it and they realize how freaking hard it is. It's very hard. It's very difficult, man. It's very difficult. It's like it's not for the faint-hearted man at all. I've seen a lot of people try it and fail because they don't have an audience or they just don't they just give up. They just don't promote it enough, they don't do enough marketing, they feel like they've built it and now people are gonna come and they're just they're just not. And also you're up against Udemy and Coursera and Skillshare, where you can I mean, whatever you feel about those platforms, the reality is you can go and buy a really uh mostly you can find really good training on those platforms at the consumer can find good training at Really cheap price points, right? So you have to differentiate what it is your if you're selling a course for like four nine seven or a thousand or whatever, you have to go, you know, this is not Coursera, it's not Udemy. You everything on Udemy is $19, right? How do you differentiate from that? It's a very competitive space these days.
SPEAKER_01That's a great point. I think for me personally, it helped that I had the authority I did in the Divi community. And I was posting Divi tutorials weekly on my YouTube channel. So my YouTube channel blew up around that. Once I started my podcast, interestingly enough, that really brought me into the business realm. Like people were more business centric listening to podcasts. So that's that's an interesting takeaway, too. For anyone considering YouTube or podcasts, they can work well together, but generally the behavior is different for YouTube. Like for YouTube in my space, most people are searching web design tricks or how to build a Divi website, things like that. Podcasts, people are like clients, the you know, the business side of things. So I think all those things married into the value that I had versus some of these Udemy courses or stuff like that. And I think honestly, having a personal brand helped me as well. I was just probably like everyone, I'm like, do I go with a business name or a personal brand? I don't know. What do I do? I eventually uh are you familiar with uh Burden's Donkey? That that that tale. It's uh uh so one of my favorite authors, Derek Sivers. Um he's actually come on to my podcast in a couple weeks. I'm stoked to chat with him. I love Derek. He talks about this though, whereas basically there's this donkey and he's in the middle of like there's hay over here and there's water over here. And he just can't decide whether to get the hay or whether to get the water, and he just stands in the middle and eventually just collapses and dies. And if he'd have known, just go get some water, then you can figure it out, then you can go get some hay or backtrack, like that would have been fine. So I say that to say when it came to choosing a business name or a personal brand, I was a donkey for a while and I was like, screw it, I'm going personal brand. If I want to do an agency name, eventually I can do it. Uh, but it I think in hindsight it was really good because it made it more personal for my students. And I don't mean that disparaging to agency mavericks or anyone who has a more robust type of like multiple you know, team behind it. Um, but I do think that's what may have separated me at that point with some courses. But there's pros and cons to that. Some people want to have more support with more people involved as well. So uh I think it could work both ways. That's just my experience and and what's worked for me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for sure. And I think the personal brand is definitely um more accessible to people. Like I, you know, one of the things about the HubSpot podcast that intrigued me initially and then kind of just bugged me is that every episode I tuned in, I didn't know who was going to host it. Right? It was like it could be someone different every time, and that inconsistency actually really bugged me. One of the things I like about the Entree Leadership podcast was that for years it was it was Ken Coleman, and then they transitioned. And Ken Coleman went and did the Ken Coleman show and he didn't want to do the entree leadership podcast anymore. So they brought in another guy, Daniel, who sat in and kind of co-hosted a few episodes for a few months, and then they transitioned over to Daniel. And by that time, I was used to Daniel and I had trust in in that relationship as a presenter, right? So that consistency, I think, and and the because with it's particularly with a podcast, right? Is it's such an is as we've already spoken about, it's such an intimate personal thing, is that you want to feel an affinity for the presenter. And so if it's just this, well, today we've got the marketing manager from HubSpot, and next week we're gonna have a guy from the production team because the marketing manager's not available, it's like, well, I don't know what I'm getting, and it's a bit inconsistent. Turns out that was my experience as a HubSpot customer too. So um, you know, there you go. I spent seven years I spent seven years wanting to be a HubSpot customer, two years being a HubSpot customer, and and now I'm kind of burnt. Anyway, that's another story.
SPEAKER_01Well, and quick story funny enough, I actually just recently rebranded my podcast from a personal brand to the web design business podcast. Solely because with Josh Hall, it's in there, but solely because when I thought about new people, from a podcast sense, it's like I don't know if they're gonna click on this show that's a personal brand where they do not know me at all. I was Josh Hall web design show when I had you on. And then it's like, well, are they talking code? Are we talking platforms? Or like now it's so clear that I transitioned to business that web design business is the focus of the show. And that has actually really helped. So I'm I'm kind of playing around with both. Like I have my personal brand, but coincidentally, some of the new programs I'm launching this year are like basically their own entities under my personal brand. So I'm launching, I'm revamping my current membership to what's called Web Designer Pro Um TM. It's trademarked. I also just dropped $5,000 on the domain name. So I'm taking that very seriously. And then eventually I'm gonna come out with Web Design Business Mastery that's like the high-level folks who are going to six and multi-six figures, but it's all under joshhall.co right now. So the problem with a personal brand, as you probably know, Choi, it's like you can't sell it, and it's hard to scale at a at a certain point. So unless you're like Tony Robbins. So um basically what I what I'm playing around with is creating entities under a personal brand that could scale in their own right, bring in more people if we need to, or eventually sell if I wanted to as well, keeping that open. But it's again, it's kind of its own entity. Uh, and I still have joshhall.co as my as my main brand.
SPEAKER_03Love it now. Um, so uh the other um strategy rather than selling, because I I have this conversation a lot with agency owners who want to sell. Agencies are really hard to sell, it's a really hard business model to sell because it's usually bespoke custom services, right? And it's people heavy. Uh, or it's like the guy who does the thing. So it's like the Josh Hall who builds the websites, right? It's it's it's they're a hard model to sell. But the other thing that but they but they're profitable, they're usually high profit margins, and so the other strategy is to take the profit out of your business and invest that profit in other wealth-building strategies like you know, property or shares or whatever, or you know, crypto or fucking chat GPT or whatever you whatever rabbit hole you want to go down. Um I'm not a financial advisor, by the way, just a disclaimer there. Um, I want to come back and talk a little bit about conviction and confidence. It's easy to sit in front of someone and not not have an agenda like you and I have no script for this. We're just winging it, we're just jamming. I think I feel I I think of it as like playing jazz. We're just gonna improvise, right? Because we know our shit. And I'm not saying that to be arrogant, I'm saying that because I know I could just about ask you, I know you well enough, and I don't know you that well, but I know you well enough to know that I could ask you just about any question, and it wouldn't be a curveball, or if it was, you could think on your feet because you know your your stuff, right?
SPEAKER_01Also, it's based on experience, just as a side point, it's like I don't really need to think about an answer, I'm just sharing what I did or what I know for for for good or for bad. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, right on, which is which is the point I want to make is I I'm curious, as you've witnessed your students, where do they get tripped up where they m they may try and bite off more than they can chew, or they might sell something that they, you know, and then and then it's like, well now I'm gonna get paid to figure it out, right? I feel like there's a I feel like there's an expectation where uh I feel like people are looking for a shortcut and they j sometimes they're just not aware or maybe not willing to do the work and get punched in the face 150 times and do the hours in the trenches so they can then get on in front of a client or on a show or on a video or on stage or whatever and just have the conviction and the confidence to talk about what they're talking about, and nothing will rattle them because they have the experience.
SPEAKER_01This what a great question. I do get this a lot from students, particularly early on, because they're like, I want to sell, I want to be confident, but I don't have that much experience yet. But I also want to sell some websites and make some freaking money here. So, what I learned personally and what I advise is in the early days, just share what you know. You may feel like you know nothing, but you know way more than your clients do for sure. And you probably know way more than your your like you feel like you know. So that was my that was the the first lesson I learned early on was like, yeah, I don't know that much. Like in the beginning, I didn't know anything about copywriting, nothing about SEO, barely anything about conversion design, but I could design a pretty nice site. And more than anything, I honestly genuinely cared. I really wanted to help my clients. And if there's any takeaway in the beginning when you don't know that much about web design in particular, if you care, you can sell care because clients really what's the old quote? Clients don't uh care about how much you know until they know how much you care. That is super cheesy and corny, but also 100% true. True. And I found that's how I literally built my business. But to your point, like that does not mean that you shouldn't work to feel comfortable about all these areas of web design as much as you can, or at least as many as that you have interest in. Like, I have a ton of students who have zero interest in copywriting. So my advice is to number one, get in a community of other web designers so you can partner with them and become a referral partner. That way it's not just you, it's like you, but then you have this network of people. It's not hard to do that with Facebook groups, with communities like mine, with like yours. Pre premium ones are the best because you're gonna get reliable people who are likely gonna be business focused and minded. Those are your though, they're like an extension of your team, basically. That's literally how I built my business was I said, I'm Josh, I have a small team, and if we can't figure this out or we don't know it, we'll try really hard to find someone who will be a good fit for us. Um, so that's kind of I don't know that answered the question, but that's how there's there's a there's a pendulum between like just starting and having no experience, but wanting to sell, to being 10 years in and being super confident about everything you know, and then there's the middle of like just find people who are really good partners with you. You will learn every day, every week, every month. And then eventually a few years in, you'll you'll you'll sound like an expert and you don't even realize it.
SPEAKER_03That's right, a hundred percent. And and you know, it's interesting because when you have when when this weird thing happened when I started coaching, and I had massive imposter syndrome when I started teaching other people, right? Huge imposter syndrome. And I coach agencies now who are much larger than my agency ever was, right? And so I still have I still get imposter syndrome sometimes, not so much these days, uh not not as bad as I used to, because I've because I have the years of experience in success stories and case studies and testimonials, and I if I'm ever freaking out, I just go look at our testimonials page and I go, Well fuck, we're doing something right, you know. Beautiful, beautiful. And you know, and that's a confidence booster. But I I s everyone has imposter syndrome, and I had it a lot when I first started out, and what I realized, and I I remember teaching this to the guys who were then following me into the course creation thing when I did Rockstar Empires for a bit, and I said to them, Listen, this is a two-year play, at least, right? Like 10 years, I can't I who knows what's gonna happen in 10 years? Who's no who knows what's gonna happen in five years? A year I don't think is enough. Two years for me is a sweet spot where if you can if you're not prepared to commit to something for two years, don't start. Like that as far as I'm concerned, right? If you're not if you're gonna if you want to start a YouTube channel and you're not a hundred percent committed to making videos for the next two years, maybe one a fortnight, probably one a week for the next two years, don't start because it takes two years, I think in my experience, it takes two years to have meaningful impact and to get meaningful experience under your belt so that you can become seen as someone who is helpful, call that an expert, an influencer, whatever you want to call it, right? But what's interesting is when people see you as an expert, they start asking you to help them with other parts of their life that you fucking know nothing about. Like, people think I'm a life coach. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. My wife's a psychologist. I will not help you unblock your painful childhood memories and get you moving in the right direction. Go and have therapy. I don't want to do that. I will help you with your business. If you're stuck, go and see another expert. I have people tell me all sorts of stuff, and I'm like, why do you think I can help you with that? Like, just because I can help you with this.
SPEAKER_01Every web designer listening knows the feeling of like doing a website for a client, and they're like, Oh, will you also do my email marketing and social media and logo design? And like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I just do the website. Like that is very, very common. Yeah, and I've experienced that as a freelancer and now, you know, what I do now. Yeah, because I get pitches for like business coaching too. And I'm actually just last week, one of my old friends from school was like, I know a sales guy who's growing their team from like two and a half million, they want to get to five million. Would you like to consult with them? I'm like, I I don't know anything about that. Maybe some things I know could help, but I I pass because that is not my cup of tea. Sounds cool, but no, not interested.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's interesting when people see you as an authority, they think you're an authority across everything. I I've had I've had clients ask me what they should buy their 16-year-old niece for their 16th birthday.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow. Make getting personal.
SPEAKER_03I'm a gift consultant now, ladies and gentlemen. That's right.
SPEAKER_01There's probably so there's probably a mark a market for that, a nice niche consultant for that. The other thing that I'll say too, when it comes to imposter syndrome in the early days, is a quote that you told me, Troy, when I interviewed you on my podcast. So I want to make sure everyone, I recommend everyone go check out episode 159 of the Web Design Business Podcast, because yours truly, Troy Dean was on that. You told me one of the best quotes of the year, and that was that you don't need to be the best web designer, period. You just need to be the best web designer in your client sphere. And I don't know if you thought about that much. You said it kind of offhand, but I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that is that is good. Yeah, quote it, quote it. Toy Dean, Abraham Lincoln, quote it, whatever. But that that really that really boils like like that's the end all to imposter syndrome, because in the case of working with clients, you should stack your quote unquote expertise up against what your clients know, which is basically nothing. So you will look like the expert. Now, if if you're a year in and you try to figure out how much you know against you, Troy, or me, yeah, you're not gonna know a fraction of much, but we're not your competition. Like, yeah, you're and you don't need that many web design clients to get to six figures consistently in web design now. I actually, side note, sorry if I'm taking us on tangents, but please do it. I I would love to get your thoughts on this, Troy. I feel like there's a resurgence and a bigger need than ever for webmaster. And I don't know if that term is gonna catch on, but do you know what I mean? Like there is a there is a need for most all businesses, particularly small businesses, who just want one trusted person or a very trusted small team to help them with as many things as they can. So it's kind of like a digital marketing agency, but more more of a webmaster. I that's what I see in the market as a trend right now. They want that trusted person who can help out with as many things as they can.
SPEAKER_03Definitely. I so we uh in my world, uh just go back to the the oh man, late 90s, early 2000s, like webmaster was a thing. In fact, a lot of companies had an email address that was webmaster at you know, oh I forgot about that.
SPEAKER_00I totally remember that.
SPEAKER_03So any problems with a website, email the webmaster. Any problems with the emails, email like the contact form didn't work, email the webmaster, like everything went to the webmaster, domains, hosting, everything, right? Um it was they're basically like the online IT guy, right? The IT person who looks after the online thing. Uh I nowadays, so I full transparency, I don't do any client services, I do a little bit of private coaching outside the agency space just to keep myself sharp, right? So I've got a handful of clients who are not agencies, one's a lawyer, one's in the education space in Canada, and I position myself as a fraction, either one of two things, either a fractional chief marketing officer. So I basically help them with their marketing, but I don't implement anything, neither does my team, they have to do with implementation, or a fractional digital strategist. And the fractional digital strategist is kind of like again, I don't do anything, but I'm the one source of information they come to to get advice. They have to figure out how to implement. They either have another agency or they have an in-house team that implements everything, but I help them with the strategy. Yeah, and I'm the I'm the one source of truth.
SPEAKER_01I do think that's also another really common niche that's expanding right now is the strategy side of websites. I do feel like more often than not, that's gonna be at a more experienced level. Like, I don't know anyone who's gonna dive into web design and in six months be a website strategist. That generally is gonna take a lot of real-world experience, real results, and more high-level training, probably. But that's definitely something to aspire to. And I have some students who are adding that in to their like services as we do website design, and strategy is either a part of it or it's an upsell, like an upgrade once we do some basics. So, yeah, there's a lot of that too. I just I have seen things shift over the past few years, almost going to our to our conversation earlier with like the podcast of just people craving authenticity and craving loyalty over anything. Like the problem that most businesses have with web designers is web designers flake out or they don't get back or they just disappear. It's worse in the graphic design world for some reason, from my experience at least. That's how I that's how I built my graphic design business at first was I actually hit deadlines and showed up on time. So I took all those things over to the web design world and I wasn't the best designer, but I cared and I showed up on time. And kind of leading us to where we're at now with this conversation, I did become like the webmaster to a lot of my clients, even though I didn't know jack about email. I didn't want to touch security, I didn't know anything about SEO. I just tried to surround myself with people who could do that. So I don't want to say there's a need for webmasters and say that everyone needs to be an email expert because probably not many people want to do that. But it it just goes to say that there is a need for a lot of companies to have their trusted web guy or web gal. So it's open. Like, let's go, guys, be that person, get them on retainer. You could build a six-figure business or multi-six-figure with with not that many clients.
SPEAKER_03That's right, 100%. I in fact, uh, we did a live stream this morning, and we I'm always talking about recurring revenue uh packages and retainers because you know it's the holy grail of business models. You break down the math, two and a half thousand dollars a month is thirty thousand dollars a year, right? You get three of those clients, you're at ninety grand a year in recurring. You get four, you're at a hundred and twenty. Four clients, you're at a hundred and twenty grand, right? You get ten, you're at three hundred grand a year in recurring revenue. Can you manage ten clients? I think you can manage ten clients. Now, a lot of people listening might go, well, how the hell do you charge two and a half thousand dollars a month? You and I both know to sell a website for five thousand dollars or sell a two and a half thousand dollar a month package to someone is the same amount of work, it's just different words out of your mouth and a different calibre of client, right? Yeah. So I guess to tee you up, to teach something that you know is if you're just starting out, right? I I started out in the I started out at the cheap end of town and then spent the rest of my career trying to go upstream, right? If I if I started out again now, I would just go to the Paris end of town from the from the get-go, right? And I'm not talking about enterprise clients, I'm talking about I wouldn't go for I wouldn't try and sell websites to broke people, right? Or like entrepreneurs who had don't have any money, right? Have got an idea, which is where I started because I was an idiot. I didn't know what I was doing. I'd sell to established small to medium business who are already doing two to five mil a year in revenue because two and a half grand a month for them is nothing, right? If you can, if you can demonstrate value in return. If you're just starting out, what advice would you give to someone who is struggling with the kind of mindset around what they can charge? And so therefore they're gonna go after the cheaper end of town because that's where they're comfortable and that's where they feel like it's safe.
SPEAKER_01In this case, this per it would depend on like where they are in their journey and what they know, I would say. Um, if you are in a community where there's people who can help you, then there's no reason not to charge at least the middle of the road pricing, like say $2,500 to $5,000 for projects, and eventually you want to get to $10, $15,000, $20, but you're not in the $500, $1,000, $1,500 range like I was for the first three years of my business. So I would say number one, we all devalue ourselves as web designers, especially in the early days. We have no idea or comprehension generally how valuable our little measly website design actually is. And I often like to frame it in the context of like leads for a client. So, okay, so for example, if you're really struggling with this and you're early on and you're thinking, like, maybe my prices should be like a thousand dollars. I feel like that's a lot. If you're working with, say, an automotive client and you just ask them how much does your client, how much like your customers, how much do they pay you generally every year? And they say most of our cover customers are like a thousand dollars per year on average. If they were to invest five thousand dollars in a website, why do I get myself into live math? I hate when I do this. But how many, how many customers would they need to get to make up that five thousand dollars? Five. That's all the website would need to convert. So that little exercise for both you as the designer and the client, if they're not understanding the value, they're like, why can't I just spend 500 bucks on a website? It's because all these things you can do, even if it just converts five people, that's gonna, and if you do that in one month, then you've made up that investment, it's all profit from there. So that little exercise really Helped me and has really helped a lot of my my folks early on with the mindset pricing and all that. It really is just about like what is this website? What is the goal? What's it gonna do? And if you can frame it, if I were to give any piece of advice on like how to sell when you're a little unconfident, it would be to sell results over everything, even if you're not sure you can land them. Generally, a halfway decent website is going to get better results than I'm sure whatever they have now, like some GoDaddy Builder site that they have right now that they built themselves. So sell results, don't just sell the pretty design. Because something else that you said in uh when you're on my podcast was the trick is most web designers now are viewed as commodities. And honestly, in my view, the way to get out of the commodity space is to sell the results and put a financial figure behind it.
SPEAKER_03Yep, 100%. Because the value is not in the pixels, it's not in the colors, it's not in the CSS, it's not in the logo, it's not in that. The value is in what all of that stuff delivers to the client, which is in a lot of a lot of the cases is leads and customers.
SPEAKER_01And what's funny is, and I do not want to devalue z design because design is very important. However, one thing I've seen over the past few years and in my personal experience is that words and copy are so important. And in fact, I think they trump design in a lot of ways. Case in point, I partnered with an SEO guy for a few years in my business, and he was terrible at design. And he offered design services for web design clients. I'm like, dude, you need to stick with this SEO and words and database stuff. But he designed this poorly designed site for this customer, and it did really well. And two years later or so, these guys got their site redesigned to this fresh, modern, I'm holding up air quotes, uh super snazzy, like you know, like trendy website, and their conversions tanked. So they literally took that new website that was probably like a ten or fifteen thousand dollar site down and put back up this terribly designed but well copywritten site that my friend Pat did, and it worked. So it just goes to show you to say that like yes, design is very important, it can help, but don't devalue the things like copy and messaging and some of the other things that I I think a lot of designers particularly tend to tend to overlook.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, 100%, 100%. And I I do agree that design is valuable at a certain point. Design builds trust, which then does lead to conversions, um, but it won't it won't uh you can't outdesign poor copy or or poor structure or a poor offer.
SPEAKER_01Um so yeah, that is a much more eloquent way to sum up what I just said.
SPEAKER_03Uh hey dude, this has been amazing. I'm conscious of everyone's time. I know this is called the agency hour, but we're trying to keep this to less than an hour to give people a bit of time before the hour rolls around. Uh where can people find more of Josh Hall and hang out with you online and get connected with what you're doing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, my website is joshhall.co. Uh there'll be links to all the things there. Hopefully, my site is designed and uh the UX is good enough to figure out where you want to go from there, whether it's choruses or just connect with me. I'm most uh active on Instagram right now and Facebook. I don't have the bandwidth for anything else right now. But I would I would say the number one resource since we're on a podcast is I would definitely recommend checking out my podcast, the Web Design Business Podcast. Not because of me, but because of the awesome guests. I mean it. Like I've had some amazing guests. Again, I mentioned Derek Sivers is coming up soon. You've been on the show. I've recently had Amy Porterfield, Pat Flynn, like some incredible minds that have just filled this podcast with like crazy richness of goods. So yeah, dive in. It's free. It dive in and have at it.
SPEAKER_03So love it. Uh go check it out. Uh final question what are you most excited about for 2023?
SPEAKER_01I am most excited up. So professionally, I'm most excited about the new offer that I'm creating literally right now called Web Designer Pro. It's rebranding my current membership and I'm gonna be adding my courses in there. It's gonna be a little, a little high, more of a high-level community and really bringing like awesome web designers for networking, for coaching, for community, all my trainings. I'm gonna be able to just support people better than one-off courses. So maybe a follow-up episode will be uh one-off courses versus courses and memberships. I'd be happy to share what I'm learning here as a case study with what works and maybe what doesn't work. Um, but right now things are a little bit scattered, so I'm excited to kind of bring it all in a little more controlled environment under Web Designer Pro. So I'm super excited about that.
SPEAKER_03Love it. Awesome. Well, look forward to uh keeping in touch and getting you back on the show at some point to hear how it all goes. Josh Hall, thank you for joining us on the Agency Hour.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks, Troy.
SPEAKER_03Hey, thanks for listening to the Agency Hour podcast and a massive thanks to Josh Hall for joining us. I could just chat to Josh for days, and I'll definitely get him back at some point in the future. Don't forget to subscribe and please share this with anyone who you think may need to hear it. Now, are you getting paid to close clients? Right now, we're guaranteeing you can get paid to close eight new clients in the next 30 days. If you'd like to chat with our team about how you can get paid to close, click the link beneath this episode. Let's get to work.