#117 – How to Scale Your Web Design Business to the Next Level

Hey there and welcome back to the Profitable Web Designer podcast. Today's episode is a little bit different and I think it's going to be a perfect fit for you if you're an experienced web designer who's ready to take your web design business to the next level. So this episode is for those of you who are feeling the weight of doing it all yourself, juggling way too much, wondering how you can scale up your income without burning out or losing that spark that you started with. And so

What you're about to hear is a replay of a live training I recently held with ambitious women web designers just like you, where we walked through exactly what it takes to build a web design business that's not only profitable, but also sustainable and aligned with your life and your goals and the real reasons why you might be plateaued and not making any progress and not growing.

and feeling like there must be a better way. So after you listen to this episode, if what you hear resonates with you and you're interested in

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So after you listen to this episode, if what you hear resonates with you and you're interested in learning more about how our next level mastermind can help you build the business you've been dreaming of, head on over to webdesigneracademy.com forward slash next to fill out our application and see if it's the right fit for you. All right, let's dive into the training.

Welcome officially to our next level framework training. And I am so excited that you're here because I want you to be in a room with other web designers who are at a similar level as you so that the conversations that are happening are relevant to everyone. And so here's why I invited you to be here specifically today. You're not new to running your web design business. you have clients.

You told me in your applications, you have clients, you're making money, even if you wanna be making way more or keeping more of what you're making, but this is your full-time gig. And you either have a really strong desire to grow your business, but the way it's structured right now is actively preventing the growth that you want. Some of you have a team, some of you want to grow a team, some of you never wanna grow a team, but either way, it feels like it's all on you.

or on the flip side, your business is making the money that you want it to be making, but you feel completely trapped by it. So all of you told me in your applications that you want to work less, you want to have more freedom, but you don't want to make less money. You want to keep more of the money you are making, but you're just stuck and you don't really see a way out of your current workload. Or you may have told me that you know what you need to do, but you're just not doing it. Or you've tried all of the things

you're not really getting anywhere and you're not sure what your next move is. So if any of that sounds like you just pop your favorite emoji in the chat and let me know. Let me know if we're on the right track here. So if you're like most of, yeah, 100, right? If you're like most of the women web designers that we work with in our next level mastermind, you've probably tried one or more or even

things that are not on this list to solve some of your next level problems, hiring or subcontracting. But instead of it taking things off of your plate and freeing up your time, it ended up slowing things down, adding more to your plate, giving you way more stuff to double check and taking more from your bottom line in your bank account, building and rebuilding your systems to try to streamline them, but still running into the same challenges with your clients over and over or with filling your time back up, dealing with clients, trying to...

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use the systems that you built that they won't use. Charging premium prices only to put more pressure on yourself than ever before to deliver ultra premium results to your clients. Piling on the clients and just adding more and more clients without raising your prices because you're worried if you charge what you really should be charging, you won't have any clients at all. And today I'm going to show you why up until now what you've been trying hasn't worked the way that you wanted to, why you're so normal for that.

what to do instead and what to do instead without starting over, without scrapping all of your systems and processes and without settling for things the way that they are now. So what's that like one big goal you've been chasing? Like that one thing that if it happened, if you got there, if you accomplished it, it just feels like everything would change. And I want to share some examples from some of our current next level mastermind members about that one thing.

was for them. So Kayla, her North star, as she calls it, her big goal, it's freedom. But she also felt completely trapped by the way she thought she'd have to run her business to make the money that she wanted to make for freedom. And after going through our next level framework process, Kayla now makes all of the rules in her business. And not only that, she feels connected and rejuvenated and

Caitlin, Caitlin has a big money goal. I'm seeing a lot of money goals here in the chat, like breaking through to consistent five figure revenue months, two people for that, consistent revenue, same Zs, time and money freedom, right? Caitlin has a big money goal, but the pressure that she puts on herself to be perfect was never like, and never make a mistake, was getting in the way of her charging higher prices and landing bigger clients.

because the higher the price support more perfect I need to be. And so it's safer to take on more and more and more lower price clients, except now she has no time in her businesses running her. And so now Caitlin wakes up every day and can't believe that this is her business. Janet's big goal was to start putting herself first, whether it was self care or travel or adventures.

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But Janet was also over delivering and prioritizing client work above all else. And she was like, that was getting in the way of her self care. And she was totally, totally burnt out after going through our next level framework. She has been completely transformed. Her confidence is through the roof. She said her spirit and her, her like mind has been refreshed and renewed and completely transformed. So.

What if I told you that there are just four simple questions that you need to answer to reach your next level? What do you really want? How do you get it? Like what actions do you need to take? What's actually in your way? What's really truly in your way? Who do you need to be to take the actions that you really need to take to create what you want?

And those seem like really simple questions, right? You probably think you know the answers to most, if not all of those questions. So like, what's in your way? You might think it's time or it's money or information or capacity or resources. But let's be honest, if you've made it this far in your business, you know you're the type of person who doesn't let anything get in the way of what you really truly want. You are so brilliant.

You are so powerful. You are so talented. You are so smart and you have gotten really, really far. So why is reaching your next level so freaking difficult, especially when you're so smart and capable and ambitious and talented. And it's like you have your foot on the gas and the brake at the same time. And guess what? You do. The reason.

that what you've tried up until now hasn't worked for you. Isn't that there's something wrong with you or you don't have the right strategy or you don't have the right skills or you don't have the right, whatever you think you need to have, what you don't see and what you're not actually supposed to see is that there are subconscious parts of your brain actively at work to protect the status quo. And when I finally understood this, I was like,

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my gosh, I make so much more sense to myself. It makes so much sense why what I have been trying and doing is not working. we have those subconscious parts of our brain, their core job is to keep us alive. And they see the changes that we want to make, those goals, those dreams, those plans, that evolution, that transformation, the action. It sees those things as dangerous.

So the operator part of our brain, that's us, the thinking part, the planning part, the dreaming part, we have all of these plans and dreams. Our subconscious is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, that's gonna kill me. That's gonna cause me harm. That's gonna like make me worse. I don't wanna do that. And so while your conscious mind has one foot on the gas,

your subconscious mind has the other foot on the brake and you don't even realize it. That's what subconscious literally means below your consciousness, outside of your awareness. So if you think things like, I know what to do, I'm just not doing it, or I don't have the time to do it, or every time I try to do it, it never works. Like I've tried to hire before and I could never find the right person, or I tried to raise my prices and people told me no, or...

if I could just be more consistent or whatever you tell yourself when you go for it, when you want to go for it, that's a telltale sign that you have a battle going on between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind. So like whenever your conscious mind thinks, I want to make a million dollars, your unconscious mind who wants to maintain the status quo and keep you safe and protected and maintain homeostasis will like

sneakily remind you in all kinds of different ways that you don't know how, that you don't have the time, you don't have the money, you can't because of all of your other commitments and you have your foot on the brake. And even if you can just in spite of all of this, get yourself to take action anyway and override those thoughts, which I'm a professional at doing this by the way, to be like,

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I'm just going to work harder, work more, get, I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to power through and do it. You won't be able to sustain it very long. You'll either burn out or you'll sabotage yourself because your brain will look to all of the past times it didn't work, that you've been hurt physically or emotionally. And it will correct for that and do everything it can to prevent you from either continuing to do that or from starting in the first place to keep you safe. It will pull out all of the stops.

to talk you out of doing something it thinks will hurt you, it will help you put your foot on the brake even harder. And think about the massive amount of energy you're using to floor the accelerator at the same time while you are slamming on the brakes. If you feel tired, overwhelmed, burnt out at all the work you think it's going to take to reach your next level, this is why you are pressing down so hard.

with both feet expending a ton of energy and getting nowhere. And so imagine if all of that energy was just being put on the gas and you didn't have to press that hard. And that's the work that we do in the Next Level Mastermind. We solve next level problems. The problems we focus on in the Next Level Mastermind are the problems that web designers in our core foundational web designer academy program

would love to have, they are working towards having these problems. Like they're working towards this next level in their business. And they wish they had these problems. They wish they had too many clients. They wish they, you know, were at the point that they wanted to outsource, but the flip side of this that you're experiencing right now, it's like, I have too many clients right now. I have zero time for myself. And if I, I want to grow my business,

But if I do the marketing to grow my business, I don't know, I won't have the capacity to serve all of them and I'm not ready to hire. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or I want to outsource, but I worry about finding the right people and how to pay them. I want to be offline for a month and travel, but I don't have help and I worry everything will fall apart.

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I want to specialize in this thing I know I'm really good at. Like I'm so good at this thing. And I know I'm worth way more than the work that I'm doing, but what about all my legacy clients that I've been working with for so many years? What about them? What's going to happen to them? And what if I can't make this transition? I'm great at booking $10,000 projects, but now I want to book $10,000 monthly retainers. Who am I to charge that much? And what if I can't deliver? Or I need to hire, but how will I afford to pay somebody? Or I want to stop.

being the one pushing all the buttons and talking to all the clients, I want to have a project manager. But can I trust them to do it the way that I would do it? I want to hand it off to someone else, but the client expects me, right? They paid me to do it. Or yeah, my business is successful, but I'm lonely. No one else gets what I do or why I work so hard or why I love it so much. So does any of that resonate?

with you guys, these next level problems. Liz, all of it. Yes. These are next level problems. These are problems that when you go into other rooms of web designers, you feel like you can't ask for help because people are like, I'd love to have that problem. Why are you complaining? Right. That's not what we do here. And so the other thing is that like strategy.

is almost never the problem. It's almost never what's in the way of your next level. What most ambitious women like us do is decide how much money we want to make. And then we list out all the things that we think that we need to do to make it. And then we get to work and our grit, our effort and our determination, they take us pretty far. And it works until it stops working.

And we might make a ton of money, but we're super stressed out, not taking care of ourselves. We might get a ton of clients and then find ourselves making our lives smaller and smaller and smaller to accommodate the business. might charge more than ever before and then be completely burnt out at the end of the project. We might've hired a team member to take things off our plate only to find out that there was more pressure.

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And have these really big goals, but we just keep bumping up against the same upper limit, the same edge of our comfort zone and just feeling lost as to what's keeping us stuck. And then because we're so smart and driven, we're like,

this must be a strategy problem. And then we get more courses, more tech, more optimization, more automation, and we just try to hammer harder down on the gas. So the key that will unlock whatever strategy you choose to implement, whether it's ours, yours, one you've already tried that you liked, but you couldn't make it work, strategies you've learned from other programs that you've been in is taking your foot.

off of the break, taking your foot off the break. So let me show you how the next level framework works to help you take your foot off the break and channel all of that energy towards your big next level goals, whether that's more time, more money, more capacity, more joy, whatever your more is. So you guys are cracking me up in the chat, by the way, I'm so like in the best way, like.

I'm calling you out because I know exactly what you're going through. I've been there myself. The women that we coach inside the Next Level Mastermind have gone through it and are currently going through it. And so we know, like we know, and it's like, whoa, don't call me out. It's like cracking me up because yeah, like I just want you to know you're not alone.

You're not alone and you're not the only one going through this. And so as I'm going through this next level framework, I just want you to like think about like, how do you work with your own clients, your own web design clients? You don't just start like building a website for them. You do a deep dive first. You figure out what their goals are. You want to know what they're currently dealing with. What's their current business landscape? What's working for them? What's not working?

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What opportunities do you see for them that they don't see for themselves? Like they don't know what they don't know, but you do kind of thing. And then you plan out the project. You start building with all, with, with their goal in mind, right? You, you build with their goal in mind. That's exactly what our next level framework does for you. It helps you take a deep dive into your own business, but you can't always see all of the things.

that are in your way like we can because we've helped so many women just like you. And then you have other people in the mastermind who have been through it or seen other people go through it. And you just have a lot of eyes, you know, helping you see what you might not see. So the first part of our next level framework, starts with your vision. And so maybe you're really clear on what you want, like you all.

think think

as ambitious business owners is that we try to build our business in a vacuum without looking at our life. So we look at your business structure as it is today. We look at your current clients, your current pricing, your services, your business finances. And when I say we, I really mean like you're going to do an audit of this and then we're gonna help, we're gonna give you feedback on all of it and I'll talk more about that later.

But you're going to look at your pricing, your inflow, your outflow, your reserves, what you're paying yourself right now, how much you want to be paying yourself, how much you're currently working, what you want to be working, what you want to be paying yourself, your future business goals, how you want to be spending your time. And we look at like that in your business and also in your personal life, your family times, your personal commitments. And then you create a full holistic 360 degree vision of what you want all of that to look like.

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in the future because getting really clear on your holistic vision and the places that you have conflicting goals will start to appear. And that will start to reveal places where you might have your foot on the gas in the break at the same time when you actually put it all on paper and you see, I want this in my personal life, but I'm doing this in my business. And these things appear to be mutually exclusive, right?

So we want you to map all of that out so we can look at what do you want, but where might there be some conflicts in that so that we can solve them. And so what I mean by that is like, talked about Kayla while running her web design business supports her vision of freedom in theory, having clients that need her also felt like a threat to her vision. And so how does that play out for someone like Kayla? Faced in famine.

So you need money to create the freedom. So the scale tips toward it feeling a lot safer to have clients need you. So you can get the resources that you need for freedom. But once you have the resources, then clients become a threat to your freedom, which results in not marketing, not responding to client inquiries, procrastinating on keeping projects moving forward. And then there's this, crap moment where now the threat becomes, I don't have money, I need more clients.

And so when not having clients is a threat and having clients as a threat, you have your foot on the gas and the break at the same time and you are completely stuck. And you might think, well, the solution's easy, just hire. For Sarah J being responsible for a team member made her feel even more trapped.

She was making bank, but she wasn't able to enjoy it. She was constantly working. didn't matter where, where in the world she was. She tried hiring. It never worked out. She was always redoing work and it just felt safer for her to just do it all, all the time. Even if it was from beautiful Costa Rica and she resented having to pay someone when she could do the, do the job herself. And so, yeah, she was, making all kinds of money. And the irony is, that.

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No matter where, where you are, you never really feel free. So you could be making all the money in the world and you never really feel free. You're in self protection mode and you're trying to maintain that home. Your brain, your subconscious is trying to maintain that homeostasis. Like you can get used to this as like it doesn't feel good, but it's normal. You know it, it like you're, that's just what you do. Like Courtney said, Hey, that's my chart. Right.

So your brain is so powerful. We just need to give it non-conflicting instructions. We need to calm that. We need to create safety for ourselves so that we can put both feet on the gas. And the way that we do that is we identify what we call a domino in the next level mastermind. So if you're like most high achieving women web designers that we've, we met, you probably have a ton of goals.

for a lot of different areas of your business and life before coming into this room. After you do your vision work, you'll have a ton of different goals that you could choose from. And the problem is that when you try to do all the things, just activates, you just press your foot on the brake even harder. And it's because your brain is subconsciously actively maintaining the systems and behaviors that you actually need to change to reach your goals.

And so in the next level mastermind, we lead you through a process to analyze all of those different goals and all of those different areas of your life and business to identify one area at a time in a, in a time period. So typically one area per quarter, it depends on how quickly you make progress on it, how many, dominoes you might choose to work on, but you're, you'll be working on one area of focus, one action, one consistent behavior.

that when actualized will make achieving all of your other goals on your list faster and easier. So if you imagine all of your goals that came out of your vision chart lined up in a long line of dominoes, all you gotta do when you focus on, you choose your domino and you focus your energy on that, all you gotta do is knock that first domino over. And the momentum from that one knocks the rest

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of the dominoes down. You may have heard this called a push goal or it's been called other things, like prioritizing your goals in that way helps you make progress on a lot of goals with a lot less effort. And selecting the right domino is what can help you create a year's worth of progress in a fraction of the time. Cause let's face it for most of you here, time is one of your biggest challenges.

And that's why we want to get you focused on your one thing, your domino, that's going to make the biggest impact for you. Not my one thing, not my systems and processes and strategies that I teach in our core web designer academy program. You know, your one thing, because where, where things have maybe slowed down for you is that you're trying to apply someone else's systems, processes, and strategies.

And it's not the thing that's going to knock over all the other things for you. So you, have to find this thing for you and then help you put your effort towards it. And so, one of our next level mastermind members, Sarah G her vision was to step a hundred percent out of design and go full time into conversion copywriting. And what do most of us do when we want to make a pivot, whether it's in services or niche or clientele.

We hammer down, we redesign, we rebrand, we rewrite everything. We make new packages, new offers, update all our social profiles, redo all our backend systems, start a whole new content marketing strategy, right? Like we're like, hey, we're pivoting. We're going big. We're deciding we're going to switch businesses. So this is what we do. And without our next level framework, Sarah might have embarked on that journey, which would have taken months of something that feels like progress on the outside.

but it's really procrastination masquerading as progress. Or on the flip side, all of that work would have just been backburnered and she never actually would have gotten around to making the switch. And she would have continued to work with web design clients waiting for the magical time when like the clouds parted and she has finally time to build this new copywriting business.

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But after going through our domino selection process, we helped Sarah zero in on the one thing that she could do now that would make realizing her whole entire vision for her business or her life happen much, much faster. And it was such a simple thing to let people in her network know that she is available for their web design projects. I am laughing because the chat with

I put the pro and productive procrastination. Like you guys are cracking me up. Yes. We, we work so hard, right? We really do. We have it in us. It's like, let's focus it all on things that are going to like create momentum for us. So for Sarah, that thing that we like landed on through our, our, our next level domino process is to just let people in our network know that she's available to write copy for their web design projects.

And it sounds so simple, doesn't it? Like so obvious. And maybe it sounds simple to you. Maybe it sounds simple to me, but it did not sound simple to Sarah. And one sentence I consistently hear from the next level mastermind women when they land on their domino is, it can't be that easy, can it? And it's because our brains.

who want to maintain that homeostasis because it thinks change will harm it, who fear change because change is unknown even if the change is good, overcomplicate, procrastinate, or create really noble excuses for why we can't take action on our goals. Author John Acuff calls them noble obstacles if you've ever read any of his books. But what's really going on is that we have a core belief about ourself.

or about the way the world works that keeps us from not only taking the simplest actions, but from even being able to see those simple actions for ourselves in the first place. And those core beliefs, they keep us in black and white or all or nothing thinking, they close off other possibilities, they keep us productively procrastinating as Michelle in the chat said. And so that brings us to the next question to answer.

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To break through to your next level. And perhaps the most important question of all, what is really in the way of you taking. New actions and creating new results. So where is your subconscious putting on the break? Because even the simplest solution can feel quite dangerous to our brain, as you saw with Sarah G.

You've got the goal, you've got the plan, you've done the research, you're doing all the things all at once, or at least you're thinking about it all the time. The desire is there, the drive is there, and the intention is there. And your other foot is just as firmly on the brake. So even if you've figured out your vision, you've selected your domino, it's never ready, there's never enough time, not enough money, too many other commitments, always something else that needs done first, too many other people needing you, too many what ifs and unknowns and too much risk and too much.

too much uncertainty. you procrastinate perfectionism, noble obstacles, you reprioritize your resources. So maybe you're not putting your time and your money towards these things. You know, there's always a better, better thing to do with that. So in other words, it's too unsafe to take action, even if the action is that easy. So what's why would Sarah still have her foot firmly on the brake?

when all she needed to do was just tell people that she knows who are in her network that she's worked with for many, many years or met over the years that she's available to write their copy for their sales pages, for their website, for their email marketing funnels. And this is where my BFF Alicia St. Germain comes in because to find out why Sarah would have her foot on the brake so, hard, we lead.

We led her and all of our next level mastermind members through a carefully mapped out process called immunity to change. And it's facilitated by Alicia, who is a certified immunity to change coach. And the process was created by two Harvard university professors who are experts in adult learning and behavioral psychology. And they designed this process to find out like, what is that super sneaky place in your subconscious?

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where your foot is on the brake. And this immunity to change mapping process brings that to the surface because you cannot see it. You can't really see what's in the way without like going through this process because your subconscious doesn't want you to see it because part of maintaining homeostasis is keeping it from you, is keeping that hidden.

And so it makes so much sense when people say it's like, you can't see your own blind spots. That's by design. Like it's by design that you can't see your own, own blind spots. And so what Sarah's map revealed is that she believed that her core, that she was only qualified to be a designer. She'd only went to school for design. She'd only ever been hired by huge companies like T-Mobile, Microsoft and GoDaddy to be a designer. So.

Even though she's an incredible copywriter and her vision is to pivot and she knows that her domino is so, simple. Just tell people I can help with their copy. And even through all of her work at GoDaddy and T-Mobile and all the sales page design experience that she had, she learned more about writing conversion copy than she would have anywhere else. For Sarah to tell you she could write your sales page copy for you felt like she was lying to you.

she had not been anointed by anyone as an official sales page copywriter. So in her subconscious, she was not aware of this until the mapping process revealed it to her. If she took your money, she'd basically be committing fraud. So if Sarah subconsciously is committed to never being a fraud, to never being revealed as a fraud, to not harming her clients, you can see how this belief would cause her to not do

The most simple, easy thing she needed to do to pivot to copywriting and to cause her to do all the things she thought she'd need to do to prove she wasn't a fraud and then keep herself overworking, frustrated, unfulfilled and burnt out and no closer to her dream of being a copywriter. Like our brain is so powerful. It just needs to be given the right instructions and non-conflicting instructions. So Sarah's break was her fear of being found out as a fraud.

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which would result in no one ever hiring her ever again. My particular break, flavor of break is that if people don't like me or see me as smart, then I could lose everything. It causes me to delay tough decisions and conversations, avoid conflict, not delegate, over explain, over teach, maybe obsess over this presentation up until 10 minutes before starting it, maybe possibly. Other breaks we've seen are things like it's all on me.

or if I make a mistake, I'm worthless. Or if I prioritize myself, everything else will fall apart. And if that's what's at stake, why in the world would you ever put yourself in that situation? Your brain thinks that's what's at stake. And even if you don't realize it, it's trying to protect you from it. I would have never thought in a million years that I worried about people liking me or seeing me as smart. And that drove a lot of the work that I.

And so once we find out what your break is, then we have to make it safe for you to remove your foot from the pedal.

And so in the next level mastermind, everybody has a different vision. They're running different business models. Everybody, they have different family lives. They have different goals, different dreams. Like they're all doing different things. Their dominoes are different. Their breaks are different. and everyone will have a different path. That's very personal to them for creating safety to take their foot off the break and the women.

web designers that I invite to join the Next Level Mastermind, they've taken strategy, systems, and processes as far as they can typically, and that's usually pretty far. Like you all have built businesses that you should be really, really proud of. And your strategies, systems, and processes will always be evolving, but with our Next Level framework, you will be able to make data-driven decisions and create a project plan for your own business.

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using a map of your own mindset to guide you so that you'll know ahead of time. If you choose this goal, here's where I'm likely to put on the break and create a plan for yourself to not do that or to know, to realize you're doing it and to be able to ask for support. And you will be doing that out loud alongside other ambitious, brilliant, compassionate, and generous web designers who are doing it right along with you, who understand

your business, your challenges who have been in your shoes. You all know what each other's breaks and dominoes are. And so you can kind of spot it when someone's putting on their break and they don't realize that they are, because we never know when we're doing it. Our subconscious is sneaky like that and doesn't want us to know because it wants to maintain homeostasis. Right. And so, so you're all we're, we are all supporting and sharing with each other.

And we never shame ourselves for having next level problems. Right. And it's magical. And there is nothing else like it out there, which leads me to the last question. Like, who do you need to be to take action, to create what you really want? Because if it were just about knocking over the domino, it would like, everyone says it can't be that easy. Can it? Like it looks easy on the surface. And you might think, you know what your domino is by being at this presentation today and.

What your break is. And you might think that you can do this work yourself, but you are missing so much if you do, because your break is sneaky. It's probably going to throw up a decoy break so that it can remain hidden because even good change creates uncertainty and your brain wants to keep you safe. And the work, the real work, the deep work is like finding that domino that's really going to move the needle finding.

that unique break that you put on that unique domino and then letting us help you take your foot off the break. And so to do that, you get to develop your next level self concept. So who do you need to be at your core to safely take your foot off the break? What do you need to believe about yourself? What do you need to believe about your clients, money, the world, your family, your safety net, the people that you can, that you can or cannot count.

Shannon Mattern (37:23.545)

We lead you through a process, not only to figure out what you'd need to believe about yourself, but then to intentionally start taking action from that place. And that might mean a lot of different things depending on where you're at today. It might mean setting boundaries with clients, might mean hiring, it might mean firing. It might be changing how you delegate, raising your prices, changing your schedule, letting clients go. And you just gather evidence

and pay attention to evidence that calls your break into question. So what happens when you tell a client, no, what happens when you are on vacation? What happens when you make a mistake? What happens when someone doesn't like you? How did you feel? How did they react? Did you lose everything? What happens if you ask someone for help and you start to deconstruct your break and release your foot from it? And maybe you never take your foot all the way off of it.

but even a 50 % release gets you at least moving forward and things start to get easier and easier. And then the rest takes care of itself and your brain's no longer trying to protect the status quo. You get to this point, this is where like the momentum shifts and it starts to see the status quo as the problem. It starts to see staying where we are now as the dangerous thing, right? And then it starts to automatically move you to.

And it starts saying, maybe you should go ask for a support in the group for that. Or maybe this isn't what I really think it is. Or it gets you to start being curious and questioning and it will stop looking at the past.

and making decisions from the past to try to protect you and start looking at the present to guide you and looking to guide you like toward the future that you have predefined for it.

Shannon Mattern (39:30.019)

And that massive amount of energy that you've been using to floor the accelerator while the same time is slamming on the brace will be freed up to just knock over that first domino, which will knock over the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one. And eventually you'll find another place. You'll grow. You'll something you'll, you'll reach your limit again, and you'll find a place where you have your foot on the gas and break at the same time. And you'll go through the process again. We'll take you through it again. You'll do a vision check.

Did life change and now your vision is different. Did you outgrow your original vision? You'll do a domino analysis again. You'll map out where you're going to put your foot on the brake. instead of trying to press harder on the gas and hoping you can just like override the break, you'll take your foot off of the break. And so that's the work that we do together in the next level mastermind. And that's why we have people renewing into their third year into the program, because there's always the next level.

You cannot outgrow this process. And what makes it an even richer experience is that it's all women. It's all web designer or web designer adjacent, meaning that you don't have to offer web design per se, but it's not for coaches or course creators or brick and mortar. And it's not just me coaching you. It's a collaborative experience that I'm facilitating and I'm absolutely like deeply involved, but you also end up.

And they're also like incredibly smart women doing really cool things in their businesses and sharing their strategies and their systems and their processes and their tools with each other to collectively enhance each other's businesses.

So that's it for this week's episode, taking you behind the scenes of the process that we do inside of the Next Level Mastermind, our Next Level Framework. If what you heard today was like the missing piece for you in everything that you have been doing up until now to reach your big web design business goals, I invite you to go to webdesigneracademy.com forward slash next.

fill out our application telling me more about your business, where you're at, what your goals are, what's been in your way. And if it feels like a good fit and if I think we can help you, I will invite you to take the next step and learn more about joining us inside of our next level mastermind. So again, that's webdesigneracademy.com forward slash next. And thank you so much for listening and I'll see you back here next week. Bye.