#121 – Profitable Web Design Business Planning Series #2: Timeblocking + Profitability

Shannon Mattern (00:01)

All right, looks like everyone is finding their way to session two, which is a profitable goal setting. So we are just going to take 10 minutes to pick up where we left off in the last session. So where we left off after session one, let me just share my screen.

is you guys were time blocking out your personal time for how you aligned with the vision that you just wrote, how you wanted to spend your time, what your days looked like when you were doing certain things. You are now putting that onto this time blocking calendar where you have Sunday through Saturday

You have morning, afternoon and night and you're just blocking right now your personal time. So we'll give you 10 minutes to finish that up and take a quick break. Refill your water. Do a fluid adjustment as one of my former colleagues used to say. Like use the restroom, refill your water. And then we will take the next step right at 40 minutes after the hour. So 1240 Eastern time. All right. So.

We'll pick back up in it's about eight minutes from seven minutes from now.

And just so you guys know, if I freeze or if you can't hear me, just refresh your browser window. It will refresh you. It's hard for me to tell if it's like on my end or your end. But what I do know is that regardless of if I freeze or if you can't hear me, it is recording. The recording with Crowdcast doesn't freeze. So.

You could go back if you know when you watch the replays and Christina says after we refresh we have to unmute. So I guess you have to unmute me for some reason after after you refresh because y'all are muted. So yeah, just. Like you can you can tell like you can tell me that you're frozen, but there's really nothing I can do about it but to tell you to refresh so.

Cool, so there is a button. Can you tell us Christina where that button is for you guys?

Because I don't see that on my...

whatever my control panel screen. Bottom right for you it's bright teal. Perfect. So if I freeze refresh your browser window then go to the bottom right corner and turn my sound back on. Unmute me and you guys should be good to go. I have no indication on my side whether I'm freezing for you or not so hopefully that doesn't keep happening but

Like I said, we're gonna have tech issues. So five more minutes. We will kick off with the next step. I'm gonna go do a flute adjustment myself. All right, be right back.

So go ahead and keep working on this. We haven't officially started back yet. We will in a couple minutes. Marina says, is this exercise more a, most of the time it should be like this or?

Okay, after that you definitely should do your day like this, which would be too much for me. Marina, this is my vision that I just crafted. Where I want to be at the end of 12 months. I said when I want to be working when I want don't want to be working all of those things. Now we're taking that vision and we're turning it into a plan. So we're we're turning that vision into a plan so we can see on paper.

A. What does my time look like? and B. When am I working with clients? And we'll get to that in the next part. And then it is not like tomorrow you're going to leave here and you're going to do your Friday exactly as you have Friday here on this. You are going to pick the easiest part of your plan to implement and you're going to implement the easiest part of your plan. And then once you've got that down, you're going to implement the next

of your plan. And maybe you're putting things on here that you're already doing and that are already easy for you to commit to and implement and you're gonna like celebrate yourself for being like, yeah, totally like I've got that part down. Now the next part I'm gonna layer that on because you must take intentional action to create the vision. You can't just write the vision, put it away like you said, never look at it again and then expect

to create it and keep doing what you're doing and expect to create it. So this is like your guiding plan and we can't implement the whole entire plan overnight either. I think that's where a lot of you guys get stuck because you try to change everything all at once. Marina, we will get there. We are only on personal time right now. So we're gonna get into marketing, client projects, client work. I'm gonna discuss what all of those are, how much time we think, and then we can talk about.

we can talk about that here in just a second. So no, you're good. You are good. I love that you're like excited to like get it all, get it all figured out. We'll take things one. I said, my husband was like, my gosh, I have all this stuff to do around the house. And I was like, well, how do you eat it? L elephant. He was just like, what? I'm like, how do you eat an elephant? And he was like,

with a fork. It was like one bite at a time. So I know that's disgusting, but one bite at a time. It's kind of a gross analogy. Let me think about it. Okay.

Right, we are back with our time blocking. You all have step one done, your personal time for your general week laid out on your Google Doc. The next thing we are going to block out is marketing your business. your your you time comes first on your calendar. That is the most important thing is like

work-life balance, business-life balance, business-life blend, whatever that looks like for you. There is no wrong about what your time blocking looks like. It should align with your vision for your business and that is unique to you. The next most important thing you can do is not client projects. It's not client work. It is marketing. If you are not making time for revenue generating activities and working on your business and working to grow your business,

You are not going to have a business for very long. Okay. This is why so many of you are struggling to get clients because you're not prioritizing your marketing. So the number one most important task to make time for every single week in your business for your business is marketing. This is how you create clients. You have got to put yourself out there consistently if you want to create clients consistently.

And for the system we teach inside the web designer academy, it only really takes one to two hours per week. that to implement our marketing system, once you get over all the mind trash around it. Okay. And I'm sure our web designer academy students that are here can tell you once I get over the mind trash or, I come to like a coworking time where we're doing this, this together, it doesn't take very long.

And so when I say marketing, I am not talking about posting on social media. I'm not talking about blogging. I'm talking about relationship building. I'm talking about reaching out to people and inviting them to get on a consultation call with you, inviting them to work with you, following up with people in the past, reaching out to current clients and finding out how you can help them with the next thing that's going on in their business. It literally only takes an hour or two a week and it's literally

The one thing that will make it break your business. So how many of you are like, marketing. I don't want to put this on my calendar. May says, I always put it off. And then when I do it, I feel like it wasn't a big deal. I wonder why I didn't just do it. Yeah, exactly. Crystal's excited to put it on her calendar. Yvette dreads it. Here's the thing.

I recommend that you put marketing as the first thing you do in your business every single week before anything else. Get it done. Get it done. Get it done. Arwen says, please don't make us introverts do this. Kim says it's the number one thing I'm not doing. Christina is raising her hand. So I want to offer to you, and we will talk about this in the next session,

You don't want to do it because of what you're making it mean.

So we have to examine our thoughts around marketing. We have to examine the core beliefs underneath those thoughts and we have to decide, are those thoughts empowering us or disempowering us? And we get to create more empowering thoughts around our marketing. So we're gonna talk about that in the next session. So I'm so sorry to tell all of you introverts,

Clients are not just going to magically find you and come to you because you have a website. You do have to put yourself out there, but there is a way that you can do it that works for you and your personality and who you are. So you are responsible for creating clients. Your website's not responsible. Your work with me page is not responsible for creating clients. Your packages and proposals are not responsible for creating clients.

You are responsible for reaching out to people, building relationships, finding out who they know, connecting with them, adding tons and tons and tons of value to your relationships so that people can't help but to think of you when they're talking to someone who needs what you do. So marketing is the number one most important thing that you guys are not doing that you get to put on your time blocking.

So imagine you a year from now who has the results that you created in your vision. When is that person who got their mind right around their marketing? When are they doing their marketing? When are they like, know what, not my favorite thing to do, but I'm doing it because I know that it's going to get easier and it's gonna help me create this result. One two hour block in this whole

Timeline and this whole all of these how many of these blocks are there you just need one two hour chunk?

in all of this for the most important thing to do in your business. Can you endure two hours of discomfort a week to create the vision that you want?

So I want people to tell me, when are you doing your marketing? Pop that in the chat.

Michelle says Mondays are for marketing. Awesome. Ronnie asks, can I break it down to two one hour chunks? You absolutely can Ronnie. Nays says Monday morning. Sharon's Monday morning, 10 to noon. Crystal says Monday mornings and Saturday afternoon. Crystal, that after you clean? Is that after half day, half day, whatever you called it. Yep. So you get your office on nice and clean and then you sit down and you do your marketing.

Brandon and Kate are Tuesday morning. Crystal loves marketing. I want to know, you love cleaning and you love marketing Crystal. Like you have some great thoughts.

That's awesome. Ronnie says Monday and Wednesday, nine to 10. Margo is a night owl, Tuesday evenings. See, yep, Tuesdays, Lashays, Tuesday and Friday mornings. Robin's Monday, 11 to one and Thursday, three to four. Yep. So block that time for marketing and then your job.

is to practice every week holding that space for marketing.

That's like your first step. Hold that space for marketing. Don't make excuses for it. If you sit down to do your marketing and you are just having all kinds of thoughts about it, write down all the thoughts you're having about it. Keep the time. Take that time to just write down all the thoughts you're having about it. You get to examine those thoughts and decide, do I want to believe this? Are these thoughts empowering or disempowering me? What else can I think that would be true?

That could be true.

So if you're not seeing me, my camera is on. Go ahead and refresh your browser window. If you can't see or hear me, and then remember to go unmute me at the bottom right corner as you guys get used to Crowdcast, because we're to be here all day. All day. So cool. So I'm going to recommend that you

Hold that space for marketing every week, matter what. If you are still having all kinds of feelings and thoughts about it, use that space that you have held for marketing to write down, what are all the things I'm thinking about this? Do I wanna keep believing this or do I wanna work on shifting this? Okay, so the next block of time is when we are going to have consultation calls, which I realized now I did not.

I have number three is client projects, number three is consultations. So I skipped something. I'm adding this to my doc.

It's a little wonky right now. When are you having consultations and conversations?

So we recommend that you batch these. Okay. Like we recommend that you pick the time that you're going to have consultation calls or cons like project kickoff calls. teach a project kickoff call process in the web designer Academy or design meetings as part of our process or revision calls or project handoff calls or other meetings, just like coffee chats or market research calls. These are all the different types of conversations.

that you might have with people. And we like to have you batch those in like a block of time, depending on your energy and how you like to do things. We like to have you say, these are the times that I do these things. And this is how you really stay in control of your time. So you have a potential client that wants to talk to you about the project. You don't like use your marketing time block.

to do a consultation. That time blocks for marketing. You use the time that you have set aside and hopefully you have some sort of schedule or like Calendly or Acuity or whatever. And you have these different blocks set up where if it's a market research call, they can only book during these times that you have times available. If it's a consultation, they can only book when you have these types available. If it's a kickoff,

Maybe you don't have those on your calendar, but you know in your mind, I only do project kickoffs on Wednesdays between two and four. This is where you get to, if you're like, well, I don't know when things are going to happen. You get to decide when things are going to happen and you get to decide. Like for me personally, I put all of my meetings, I call these meetings. These are times when like I have to be

I have to be at a certain place at a certain time. I probably want to be showered. Maybe, possibly. I don't know. I typically am showered. Like I typically am like camera ready because I'm going to be on camera with with our students or with our clients. I'm not always camera ready, like I want to be like on camp like ready for that in chunks of time.

so that I can prepare and so that the rest of my time is like, if it's like, if I'm working on client work, I can do that from bed with a messy bun and like, you know, whatever, right? That's just me. You could go to a client meeting with a messy bun, like you get to do whatever you want, but that's just me. So I like to block conversations or meetings where I'm going to have to physically like show up.

on a certain day and I like to do it at the end of the day because I personally, I'm most creative in the morning. I have my most ideas in the morning and come about like three o'clock. I'm like kind of done out of my creative mode, but I'm definitely ready to like have conversations and do all of that. So for me in my business, it looks like podcast interviews, live strategy calls with our students.

Like any other kind of collaboration calls or meetings that I'm doing, those happen between like three o'clock and five o'clock, Monday or Tuesdays and Wednesdays. That's it. So I have those two four hour blocks of time when I am actually like letting you on my calendar. Okay. So block those things.

Cindy asks, can you include an example of how others who are still working full time while building their business have blocked out their time? Cindy, I would invite you on your time blocking to block out when you're at work. When are you at work? When are you just not able to take calls or do things like that? So I know that like for me personally, when I was still working my day job, I

blocked. What it looked like for me was I would get up super early. I didn't have to be at the office till nine and my commute was about a half hour. So I had to leave by 8 30. I would be up by 5 30. I'd be get shower, get ready, whatever. I'd be at my desk at 6 30. And then from 6 30 to 8 30, I would be working on my marketing or

whatever, like something for my business and then I would leave and I would go to work. And then I typically would have an hour that I could take for lunch. I had a flexible schedule, but like my workload was such that I could take maybe an hour for lunch either between like noon and one or one or one and two. So that I would take consultation calls from my office during that time or from my car during that time because

It was my break. It was my time. I could do whatever I want. I had my own office. And then for me in the evenings, then I would get home from work. I would make dinner, do whatever. And I'd probably pick my laptop back up around seven and work from like seven to nine on client work. And that's what I did for growing my business. And I had clients that I was working with. I was running the five day challenge. I was doing my marketing. So you get to design that for

for you and that, but you have a job, they're paying you. Like that is personal, that I would consider that personal time. And so then you build the rest of the things around it. And do you wanna work on Saturdays and Sundays and evenings or mornings or whatever? So that's totally up to you. So Michelle says, how much time do you leave open for these? I was thinking a two hour block on Mondays for scheduling client kickoffs, but another two hour and four.

four hours for discovery calls. Michelle, put whatever you think and then you can come back and edit. You can come back and edit this. So this is a guiding document. This is not like set in concrete stone. This is like the version of me at the end of the year in 2023, I have integrated this into my life. It didn't go perfectly every week.

I had to move things around. I realized that I didn't have enough time for consultation for consultations and conversations. So I added another block of time or I realized I had too much scheduled. So I removed that. So just imagine yourself. One year from now and you have the perfect schedule. Planet out knowing that as I'm going to test and change and test and change and test and change.

and this will evolve and iterate as you actually put it into action.

Okay so next up is your client project days. So client projects are very different than client work. Okay so I want to make a big distinction here. We'll talk about client work in a second but client projects are days that you spend on like actual web design projects either a longer term or some of you do VIP days or whatever.

It's times that you're spending on client projects. So what this looked like for me, and Cindy, you'll find this interesting. Like when I was still working.

I block the entire day on Tuesday for client projects. So the morning, those mornings, that block of 630 to 830, client project. Lunchtime, client project. After work, client project. My Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings were client projects. And yeah, I worked a lot, but that's what I wanted to do to get my business off the ground. And so when I say client projects,

I don't mean taking care of anything related to any client. I don't mean maintenance packages. I don't mean like a client landed in my inbox with an emergency that they now want me to drop everything to take care of. I mean, someone paid me, let's say, for example, $10,000 for a web design project. And these are the days and blocks of time that I am dedicated to working on that specific project without distraction.

without other obligations, without meetings, without calls, with complete and total freedom to focus on that one client project. So please don't get yourself wrapped up in the thoughts right now of like, what if I have four clients? What if I have this? What if I have that? You're designing from, I have the, from 12 months from now. This is what it looks like. These are days that I do client work. So that also means that like, if I'm scheduling life,

Like if my block is Tuesday and Thursday, do full on, all I do is focus on client projects, whatever my blocks of time are. is just an example.

I know I'm not going to schedule lunch with friends on Tuesday. Like I'm not going to do that because I am setting a boundary that like, hey, guess what? These are the times when I'm working on client projects, but I'm available for lunch with you on these days. So I get to create boundaries within my own schedule and I am responsible for holding them. So Laquila, you said, how many projects do you work on during that time? I have a problem stopping.

I think once we get later in the retreat, you'll start to see an idea of how many projects, because if you're undercharging and over delivering, you're going to try to pack too many client projects into that block. And when you're charging sustainably, it becomes very clear how many projects you can work on in that amount of time.

you get to decide, but you want to make an informed decision based on how much money you want to make. And we'll talk about that in the next part of this.

I just want to say this too, before we move on, for some of you, having this time blocking planned out, this schedule might not feel like freedom for you at all. I'm sure there are some of you here that are like, this feels very constraining. I don't like this. I don't like having a schedule. don't like anyone telling me what I need to be doing when, let alone myself telling me what I'm doing when. And it's all fine and good to fill this out, but...

It feels very constricting to me. And what I want to offer to you is that, yeah, Melissa says, yeah. So again, this is something that you're going to create over time. But I used to feel that way too. I was like, I want to work whenever I want on whatever I want, whenever I feel like it. But what I realized is that having no plan meant having no boundaries and having...

It's a total recipe for burnout. If you don't have a plan for your time, it's really hard to say to a client. My next open spot is because you're always open. You're just like a 24 seven like convenience store that is always open, which means you have to work 24 seven. You have to serve as many clients that come through the door at any given time. You can't you're you're one human. You can't do that. You have to have limits.

And so you get to create those limits. another thing, yes, we need to like put some some hours on on your on your store. Like your store is not open 24 seven. And yeah, so another question people are going to be like, well, if I don't know how long a project is going to take, so how do I know how to like how much time to block every week for projects? Block.

time based on your vision for 2023 when you're working block that time that's how much time you have and then however long a project takes it's going to be different for all of you you offer so many different things.

you fill in. So it's like, if you book a project and this is it, this ends up here's how long this takes. It's like, it's eight weeks of this time on my time schedule. So Michelle says, this feels aspirational to me. I would love to implement this schedule by Q2 so I can step away from other things that I'm doing. Yeah. And we're going to talk in the next session about like, what do you need to, how do you need to think so that you can create this by Q2?

So that's that's your goal by Q2. Other people might have other goals. So.

Client projects are dedicated like web design projects, whether that's a date, like whether that's a VIP day, if you do that model, we don't teach that model in the web designer academy because Sarah Massey is like the queen of VIP days, her system's amazing. We support people who do use that system, but we don't like teach the ins and outs of that, but whether that's a VIP day, a web design project is if you do it the way we teach,

And the Web Designer Academy is basically like a series of VIP days where you are blocking dedicated time to work on client projects and you're not trying to do everything all at once and burning out. OK.

So get your client project times and let's talk about client work times. Client projects are different than client work. This next one of when you're due client work is going to be very tough for a lot of you because, let me come back to that, Kate. Kate, your question of how do you know how many hours the website will take?

Let's come back to that because we just right now want you blocking the time you will be working on those sites and we'll get just an average for the next step. You're in the Web Designer Academy. We can work on like specifics for your specific situation in coaching over there. But right now we just want to get a general idea.

So client work and how that is different from client projects. And this, like I said, this is going to be a tough one for a lot of you because you're used to, how many of you are used to opening up your laptop or looking at your phone and opening up your email. And the first thing you see is all these client requests and emergencies of things that like they need done right now, right away, by tomorrow, by yesterday. This is broken. This isn't working.

And you think, I can just take it. I just, I can just take care of that really quickly or, my gosh, this is an emergency. I have to drop everything I'm doing to help them because they've told you it's an emergency. Or you just feel super overwhelmed and like it's another thing on your to-do list. So you just might as well do it now to get the mental relief of it being done. And the kicker is that like 80 % of the time you're not even being paid to do this stuff.

How many of you can relate to that here?

I'm wondering if I'm frozen because okay cool yeah Sarah's like yep Kim's like yep R1 so much yes yes so

You have got to stop treating your clients requests and emergencies as like your top priority. I know it sounds crazy, but it is not. And the way that you do this without it rocking your whole schedule and taking all your personal time and all your client project time and all your marketing time so that all you're doing is working on these client requests that you're 80 % of them you're not even charging for when you should be.

is you pick a chunk of time on your schedule for when you do client requests. And then you let your clients know, hey, guess what? Starting next month, any requests submitted to me by, let's say you do them Thursday afternoons. Just for example, I block from whatever, pulling this out of thin air, noon to four, on Thursday afternoons for client requests.

and I let my clients know, guess what? Starting next month, anything that you submit to me by the end of the day on Monday gets in my queue for Thursday and I will take care of it then. So just FYI. And then they email you on Thursday morning and you're like, great, I'll put that in my queue for next Thursday. And then they're like, but no, I need it now. And then you can be like,

Awesome. I'll give you a quote to book my next VIP day or my next half day or my next exclusive booking so I can take care of that for you. Right. And if you're in the web designer Academy, we give you packages and terms and conditions and scripts to roll this whole process out to your existing clients to let them know, like, guess what? This is how this works now. So even if you don't have all of, you don't have a plan yet to roll that out to your clients.

put that time block on your schedule so that you're batching all of these client requests and that you know in your mind, yeah, this is in my inbox, but I'm not doing it right now. is not my top priority right now, okay? So.

If you had a block of time that you knew you just set aside to work on this stuff and it lands in your inbox and it collects there all week long, then you'd have the mental relief already that you seek when you just do it to just get it out of the way so that you don't have to think about it. Crystal asks, is that something you charge like a container? You should be charging for anything that you're doing for your clients that isn't under a maintenance or agreement or within a project.

So if you're not charging, that's a huge, huge opportunity for so many of you who have an employee mindset who think, just because I worked with this client once now I'm beholden to them forever. If they want something changed or something new, I have to do it because they paid me however much six months ago. Like, no, you don't have to. And that's, we work on that so much in the web designer academy. So, Jenison, my example, I just said,

I said you have to get me your changes by Monday night to get them in the queue for Thursday. So I can plan. You get to decide whatever you want. Like this is your business. You get to decide whatever you want. We give our web designer academy students like frameworks to work within, but you get to do it however you feel like doing it. We give you scripts to communicate however you decide to do it to your clients. So your client projects are like the big chump.

chunks of time for like building websites, doing branding, whatever it is that you do for your client, client work is all of the requests that come in that aren't part of client projects or maintenance. It can even be already pre-existing maintenance agreements. I would recommend that you do your maintenance agreement stuff that way. And if it lands in your inbox and they haven't already paid for it, you get to be like, great, I'd love to get that in the queue for Thursday.

Would you like me to send you a pricing, an invoice, whatever? So that's what that looks like. And they'll be like, I didn't think that would cost money. OK, well, why did you think I would? You have a business. You don't do stuff for free. Why would you think I do stuff for free? We tell you how to handle those. All of those weird conversations inside our program. have scripts for all of that. But like. You should just always assume that they know that they're paying for work that they didn't pay for.

Like, why wouldn't they? Okay. So that's your client work, client requests. The next block is your admin stuff, right? That's your contracts, your... As we call it, we'll talk about this tomorrow. So if you have not applied for our private training tomorrow just for accepted Web Designer Academy applicants,

This is where you put together your irresistible package matrix and you send that off to your client and you explain to them your packages and your pricing. That's your admin stuff. Your admin stuff is following up on invoicing. Your admin stuff is getting the contract prepped for when someone said, yeah, I want to move forward with you. Your admin stuff is not like, I'm like, let's talk about, we always have to talk about email.

Email trips you guys up all the time. In a perfect world, you would be like, I do email responses like one day a week. And this is what I've gotten to in my business kind of. Like what I do and my team member, Allie also helps me in my inbox is like, she'll leave everything for me that needs to be responded to. And then I do those like middle of the day, Friday. So.

anything like I needed to take time to respond to. I do that on Fridays and I do that once a week. So I know some of you guys like cannot stay out of your inbox. I can't stay out of my inbox either. Decide what times of day you're going to actually like respond and handle emails. I am still the biggest inbox addict. It drives Ali crazy because she's like, hey, stop, this is my job. But it's a habit I've created and

I, what I have changed is like, even though I'm never going to break the habit of being in my inbox, I don't worry about what's in there. I don't like write responses in my head to them when I'm not doing it. I'm not ruminating. I'm not getting overwhelmed about it. Like all stacking up. I just have a day that I handle it. I get through as much as I can. And if I can't get through the rest, it's okay. And if I have a plan for all these client requests, it makes it really easy to be like,

Boom, here's what's going to happen. I'll follow up with you when it's done instead of like dreading responding when you have boundaries, when you know when you have your time planned out, it makes it so much easier. So I also invite you guys to put up an automated response so that just automatically replies and says, here are my business hours. Here's when you can expect a response. If you're a current client, here's what you can expect. If you're not, here's what you can expect.

It can wait. It can wait. The health of you and the health of your business is a top priority over email. And then I play what I call the inbox game on Fridays where like when my inbox starts to get too out of control, I'm like, you have to start at the bottom and work your way up and you have to do something with everyone, every single one of these. So that's what I do. So I don't know if I put this in here. I didn't. I had I had like a line where I was going to have you guys make a commitment.

on when you checked email, but I'm not gonna do that to you. And then your next is your own working on your business, your training and your mentorship.

You are going to always be learning something new. You're going to be upskilling our Web Designer Academy students. Set aside time to go through our modules, attend our coaching calls, attend our co-working, attend the genius chats. They set aside that time to do this intentional work. You guys are here today doing this really intentional work on your business. This stuff is critical.

It can't be that I do this work and then I close the dock and I just go back to doing what I was doing before because you will continue to create the same results that you create. So a commitment to your business and your business development and managing your mind and doing the things that you need to do to to move your business forward, making time for that every single week uninterrupted quiet time for that every single week.

So this is the concept of time blocking, and I'm going to pull up that slide again for you guys, just so you can kind of see an example of like an example that we use in the Web Designer Academy. I'll walk you through it. Yours does will not look like this and does not have to look like this, but I just want to show you just an example of what it can look like. So here we go. Where's my slides?

I don't think I have this slide in here because it was in the last presentation.

Session two show.

You pull this up really quick.

Share screen.

Chrome tab, copy. Nope, that's not what I want.

Try that again. Share screen.

Down the rabbit hole. This is what I want to share with you guys. This sample schedule, right? So everyone's going to look a little bit different. So you have client work days. We have client project, like client admin days. We have

Business building on Fridays, have marketing. We have lots of different marketing blocks, more marketing than you need. And we have like times for conversations and time for admin. And all of this is just like one example of what this could look like. know, we're like every Monday, the end of the day, I'm like preparing for any marketing that came through over, like any yeses that came through over the weekend and all of that.

Yours doesn't have to look anything like this. It doesn't have to. It is going to be your unique thing and it's going to align with your vision for 2023 and you're going to work over the next 12 months to create that or revise it because you're going like that. You're not create. You have to take action on it to see if it's going to work, right? So just wanted to share that with you. I'm gonna stop sharing my screen.

How do I stop?

I I stopped. I think I figured it out. So we're going to take just a break. Let me come back to our chat and make sure that we're there. And so we're going to take a quick break. And I want you to have, when we come back, your time blocking is done as you can have it now. And then...

your January, February, March, your next three quarters, I want you to have at least transferred your project client work blocks like your sorry your client project blocks like time for actual web design projects booked. And it to let me let me pull that up again. On to your calendar. For January, February, March.

So if you're like, cool, was every Tuesday, every Tuesday and Thursday, for example, except for the days that you already pre-blocked, then you would be like, client work, client work, and transfer those for the next three months. Because what we want to figure out is how many actual, sorry, client project, project, project, project, how many spots do we have on our development calendar in the next quarter for client project?

So when we go to figure out what does our pricing look like, how many spots do we truly have available? You can figure out like reverse engineer, what is sustainable, profitable pricing for me? And then most of you are going to freak out. We'll take care of that in the CEO decisions section. So we'll give you some time. I don't think I shared when I was pointing out. I do that sometimes. So if you are.

Like I said, if you're gonna do your client project days on Tuesdays and Thursdays, just as a random example, who knows what yours are gonna be. Block all the ones that you're doing client work except for the ones that you already have stuff blocked, and you're gonna do that for the first quarter of the year. And then we will answer.

We'll go into that and then we'll answer any questions that you guys have too. So, Lisa says, it's so important to take time to work in our businesses and ourselves. So, training and mentorship, I want to block more time for that in 2023. Yeah, absolutely. Kayla asks, a little off topic, if I wanted to apply for the Web Designer Academy, but I'm not finding the price anywhere, do you know what the investment is? Yes, I do, because it's my program. When you fill out the application and we either approve you or let you know what you need to do to be approved in the future.

When you come to tomorrow's training, we will talk about all of that. So we only share the price with accepted applicants after they join because we, well, you'll learn more tomorrow. teach a concept called pre-framing where we get you really like thinking about the value. Cause remember I shared with you value equals business outcomes, personal amount outcomes, emotional outcomes, minus the price.

If you're thinking about the price first, and that's all you're thinking about, you lose sight of the value conversation. So we present things the same way we invite you to present things for your clients, and you'll get to experience that if you come tomorrow. So if you're interested, zero obligation to join if your application is accepted, go ahead and fill out that application. And then we will share all of those details with you.

in the training tomorrow. So if you're just curious to see what we do and how we structure things and all of that, that is that's the place to go to go find that out.

Great question.

Alright, so we will at. We'll give you about 5 minutes to finish like blocking transferring your client project days to Q1 January, February, March and then we're going to reverse engineer some money stuff.

So I'm gonna just mute myself while we do that. And you guys feel free to ask any questions in the chat or the Q &A box while you are making this transfer. And I just also wanna invite you, please take the time to do this now, even if you're feeling overwhelmed, even if you're feeling like it's not possible, even if you're feeling like the schedule will never work out and you close this Google Doc and you're like on reading, like you're scrolling Instagram, come back, come back.

do this work, notice your thoughts about it because in the next session those thoughts are going to be so important to whether you create this vision in 2023 or not. So if you've drifted away, come back, transfer those client project days on to Q1 and we'll go from there.

So Arwin says,

I'm in the overwhelmed category. ran out of hours in the week before we got through all the categories, but I'm still doing the work because I know how important this is. So what I would invite you to do Arwen is we don't harvest time out of our personal time when we run out of hours. And we don't harvest time out of our marketing time when we run out of hours. So where can you reconfigure your

blocks for client work? Is there opportunity to shorten blocks for client projects? And is there opportunity to shorten blocks for client conversations? And if you're thinking like, how in the world will I get it all done? This is where your pricing gets to be sustainable so that you don't have to work with so many clients to create the result.

And then what do you, we're going to work in session three, like, what do you have to think to create the courage to change your pricing for it to be sustainable? So I'm really glad that you're still doing the work because you know how important this is. And I'm really glad that you're here taking this time to do it.

Okay, next, okay, Michelle has question. So I'll ask this because I'm sure a lot of you do too. And then we'll dive into what's next. So Michelle says, probably overcomplicating this. But if you're doing half days of client projects versus full days, it doesn't matter, right? Correct. Let's put client work on the day and month. You could just put like four hours. Like I would just put a dash to be like four hours or AM or whatever. Something that you know for you.

that is like, it's Tuesday afternoon. Awesome. You just want to have clarity. It doesn't have to be super specific. And then Lisa says, have time set aside for project calls, consults, et cetera, that I have overlapped with client projects when I don't have any project calls. Is it okay to do that? Or am I better off shortening up time somewhere else? I would not try to overlap your time, And because then it becomes,

Like.

So you say you have time set aside for project calls consults that I have overlapped with client projects when I don't have any project calls.

I'm trying to think if you feel confident that you can navigate that with boundaries, right? Like you're in the web designer academy. So you have like a insight into where all of the boundaries are that we teach about and that we talk about. If you feel confident that you know what's priority and what's not and how to navigate making the decision.

of what's going to happen during that time block, I'm cool with you overlapping it. But for most people, I would say try not to overlap your time blocks. Tighten things up as much as you can because for the purpose of this exercise, we need to figure out like how much time do we actually have available for client work.

So that is my answer for you. And if you want to discuss that further on a live strategy call, we certainly can do that because you're in the program. It's funny, funny, right? How you have sometimes you already know what I'm going to say. Cool. So the next thing I want you guys to do is I want you to go through and count up

how many full project days you have on your calendar for the next quarter. So January, February, March, you know, if you did half days here, two hour blocks, whatever, I want you to tell me how many eight hour chunks of time you have in for our client projects in the next three months. So go ahead and add that up and then say if it's

40 hours, it's five days, right? Like five days for client work or whatever, whatever that is, right? How many eight hour blocks do you have available for client work?

And you can pop that in the chat once you've figured that out.

Anshin says 10.5.

Michelle has six in the next quarter, six days in the next quarter, three months.

Kate has six full days in the next three months for client work. Days.

How many days over the next three months?

Eight hour eight hour days. So Brenda has 24 Michelle says days are weeks so it's days and then event says should I be calculating a number of what is free minus my existing dedicated client work. I want you to take the blocks that you have set aside for client projects. And calculate how many how many eight hour chunks do you have for that.

So don't know if that answers your question. We don't need to necessarily know what's free minus existing client work. I just want you to tell me like how many, yeah. So Michelle says 30. Michelle has 30 days.

of time for client work. Sharon has 25.

Okay, awesome.

Kate, is there still six?

That seems for 3 months. I'm just curious.

Okay, 30. has 30. Lashay has 32.

Melissa is 35.

And so Kate says, yeah, so Kate's almost booked out already for the first quarter. So Kate, if you wanna do this for your, if you wanna like apply this to your next quarter, like if you wanna count up, that's awesome, Kate. If you wanna count up like what you have, what you put for projects, whether it's spoken for or not, count that up and just be like, okay, so for Q2, that's probably about what I would have.

Just so you can kind of get an example of, like, on average, how many hours a quarter do I have for month?

So that says 43, but that seems high. Does that seem high in relation to what everybody else has? Like yours is you. Everybody's is different. There's no right or wrong here.

That's okay. You're good.

So it seems like the average is about 30 days and that comes down to like on average 10 days per month to do, to dedicate to project, to client projects, right? And some of you might have 10 over the whole quarter because you're still working part-time or whatever. So that's okay, right?

So I want you to keep that number in mind and we're gonna move on to doing some math. And some of you, you've already, if you have already like taken any of my other trainings and we talk about your minimum baseline revenue, maybe you've heard me talk about your personal profitability formula, we are gonna do some math right now. We are gonna figure out not just like what you say you want to make every single month.

That's great if you're like, want to make 10 grand a month. That's awesome. I'm here for it. If you want to make 20 grand a month, I'm here for it. And we also get to figure out what you need to make a month versus what you want to make a month and start working towards what you need. And then once you've gotten what you need down, working on what you want. And you'll see how your time comes into this.

So in your Google Doc, I have the personal profitability formula and I have a calculator that you can make a copy of. It's called the minimum baseline revenue calculator. We give a more beefed up version of this calculator to our clients inside of the Web Designer Academy. kind of getting the...

the one that's just going to help us with this exercise today.

So I want you to just take some time like on your own. If there's not a spreadsheet in this for that, like literally take time to think through like, what are my needs for the month? Like what's my mortgage or my contribution to my mortgage? Cause literally like, my rent or whatever. Every single person here has a different situation, right? They have a different situation.

they might not be responsible for paying any part of any rent or mortgage. No person's situation is right or wrong or the way to do it or not the way to do it. But what I want you to do is think through what money am I responsible for creating and contributing to my life every single month. So for example, that could be your rent or your mortgage payments.

car payments, student loans, credit card payments, contributions to health insurance premiums, 401k stuff if you're doing that, groceries, gas, utilities, like basic budget stuff. What does that need to be for you to pay? How much money do you need to create to cover?

your portion of that, whether your portion of that is 100 % or 70 % or whatever, everyone's going to be different. That's why I can't give you like a prescription for that. So go ahead and pull out your own notebook and just start jotting that down and adding that up. Okay. For me personally, I have figured out that my contribution to our household needs to be about $8,000 a month to cover all of our

obligations and our lifestyle. And that is because right now my husband is unemployed. So his job ended in May, they closed his office due to the pandemic. And he's not working right now. He has severance, which is awesome. And I like, I'm covering everything. So that's about $8,000 a month, where I live in Columbus, Ohio.

the Midwest of the United States. That's not what our business's bottom line is. That's what I pay myself after all of our investments in our business, our team, our payroll, our training, all of that stuff. So Anshan says, I have a team now, so I'm wondering if I did this right. Is this my time or all time on projects? Ooh, Anshan, that's such a good question.

let's just do this right now as if you don't have a team. Let's do it for your time and then we because you're in the Web Designer Academy we can talk about what this could look like. How you could do this exercise with your team's time as well because honestly it's like I would if I had a team and I could clone myself

You just get to make double the money that you could make if it was just you. So if you're just doing it for you, then you can just you just get to like multiply that by two. And that does not mean, Anshan, that you don't get to charge what you need to make on your own without the team. Does that make sense? Just because you have a team doesn't mean you're going to charge less because you have double the amount of time you're going to charge the same and make double because you have double the amount of time.

So I shared my how much I want to pay myself each month after taxes, which my personal one is $8,000. The one I have in this example is $5,000. You guys get to yours out. Figure out your basically your contribution to your household or if you are the only one or whatever.

Feel free to share it in the chat. know people get super weird about money and comparing against each other and like whatever, so you don't have to share at all. But jot down that number because that's the number that you're gonna put into your own calculator to figure out.

what your minimum baseline revenue is based on your expenses. So I'm going to come over here and I'm going to put 8,000 in here. This is just, this is my responsibility. So I get to make $14,000 a month because

I spend 1500 a month on tools, team and training. This is not anywhere close to what we spend, by the way. I have team, have payroll, all of that stuff. So if this was like my business, this would be a way, way bigger number to pay everybody. But let's just say I'm a solopreneur, solopreneuring it. Let's say I'm solopreneuring it, my husband's working. That's what this looks like. my minimum baseline revenue that I needed to create every single month.

was $8,750 to pay $1,500 for all of my tools training, tools training team, or whatever, whatever you have. This calculator assumes a 22 % tax rate. So this is not legal, financial, or tax advice. I don't know what your tax rate is. Everybody is different. We all live in different countries. Please consult your tax professional. 22%, 25%.

is a good estimate for people in the US and then that figures out your net profit. So if I'm charging, so if I want to pay myself $5,000, I need to create 8,750 a month to be able to pay this, pay this. This is what I end up with and I actually make $655 more than I need. So you can play with these numbers a little bit.

to to figure that out.

So Marina says, I don't get the calculator. have money I invest business side and I have money I invest personal side and I have a wish for monthly payment to myself in addition to the I need to survive money. Where should I put what? So what I would invite you to do is,

Think about.

The money you invest business side goes here, estimated investment.

You said I have a wish for a monthly payment to myself in addition to the I need to survive money. So this is this tab is this personal profitability formula. This is the I need to survive tab. We have another tab down here. That's the goal revenue. This is where you're going to figure out like the this is the twenty twenty three and the twenty twenty three number.

Okay, I don't know if that helps. And then Sarah says I'm not seeing the calculator. It's a link. Let me share this tab instead. Back in your workbook under the time blocking section there's personal profitability formula. There's a link. Click here to make a copy of the calculator.

Okay, so let's come back here and I'm going to share this tab instead.

So Marina, don't know. So personal profitability formula tab down here at the bottom. This is what I need to make to survive every month. The goal revenue, which we'll talk about a little bit later, this is how much, this is my wish. This is like my big goal revenue. So I know how much I need to create every month to be able to pay myself this much.

and you get to play around with this number and adjust your taxes to see what your net profit looks like. So let's say I have $2,000 a month. How does spending $2,000 a month affect my net profit? Still in alignment here if I'm bringing in $15,000. So this is just to give you a rough idea of what that looks like. And this is every single month.

So let's say, for example, you wanna pay yourself $5,000 a month. Does anyone wanna share what their number is? And I can use an example. You don't have to, but if anyone wants to share, I'd be happy to use you as an example for this.

Crickets, crickets, okay. So Kate is $10,000 a month. is, Kate, is that your, that's your minimum baseline to live.

So we're going to use Kate's example of $10,000 a month is her minimum baseline. That's how much she wants to pay herself after taxes.

Why is that different than the other sheets?

22.

E8 D13

D13 times .22, what's the difference here of the taxes? This is 1.75 times the minimum baseline, whereas this one is 1.5 times the minimum baseline. So we're gonna change these to match in the goal revenue. We're gonna make that 1.7. You guys can make that change too if you want.

I didn't realize this were showing up different.

Okay, so.

If Kate wants to pay herself $10,000 a month, her minimum baseline revenue, and our rule of thumb is like one and a half to two times how much you want to pay yourself to create that. Escape, escape. Estimated business expenses. Kate, do you have an example? 8,500.

Yes, 8,500 after taxes. Okay. So that puts your minimum baseline. If we're kind of being generous here of 1.75. So we're saying Kate needs to about $15,000 a month to get 1875. Let's say we can actually make that a little bit lower because we see that we're still 2,000 over.

So we can go, let's go down to 1.5.

So Kate needs to create $12,750 a month if she's spending $1,500 a month in her business expenses. Do you have an idea, Kate, of what your monthly expenses are off the top of your head for your business, what you spend on your business every month?

I think fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars is probably.

ballpark if I'm if I had to guess. And so because that net profit is lower than that 8,500, we would need to play with this number and get that up a little bit to get these all to match, right?

So let's say 1.55. So Kate needs to create 13,000. If she's spending 2000 on her business, she's setting aside 2,500 for taxes. This is what's left over when she makes this much. So Kate, how many, you spend $1,000 a month on expenses. Awesome.

So that makes your minimum baseline even lower.

So let's knock that down to like 1.3.

Nope, we got to go up to 1.4.

Kate needs to bring in $12,000 a month to be able to pay herself 8,500 and have enough leftover for her other obligations. So Kate, how many spots did you have on your...

How many days did you have over the next quarter? On average, how many days a month for client projects?

You

That's pretty much the response everybody's gonna have. Whoa, I'm undercharging.

So how many days do you have?

10 days a month. So on average, and I know that you asked this, you're like, what if I don't know how long a project is going to take? But on average,

How many days, like in your perfect world, right? In your perfect world, would that be 10 days on one project a month?

would it be over six weeks? We have our process in the web designer academy, just so you guys know. We have some project plans, right? And I was gonna share this with you and I didn't have time to get it pulled together. We have a four week project plan, an eight week project plan, and a 12 week project plan, right? So the eight week...

or the four week project plan is probably on average about 10 days of client project work. So you say six weeks per website ideally. Imagine that you're kind of overlapping a little bit. So you're kicking off a project and as you're winding it down maybe you're onboarding the new one. So there could be a two week overlap from project to project.

So your minimum baseline revenue, so basically the value of a spot on Kate's calendar is $12,000 for her to create her minimum baseline revenue, right? And so she said, whoa, I'm massively undercharging. So let me come back over here to this. The value of a spot on your project calendar is like how much you wanna charge

per month versus how long it takes you to complete a project. So let's say on average 10 project days a month for a four week project plan when you're using our processes, right? When you get it down to that, because it takes you a while, it takes you one, two, maybe three times to do it until it get the boundaries right and to get the communication right and to get all these.

All these things right? So this does not happen overnight on your very next project. Just FYI. But the value of a spot on Kate's calendar is $12,000.

So Pete could try to what most people try to end up doing is working with way too many clients at the same time to make that up and they can never, they can never keep up. They can never get ahead. So you need to know this number. This is what you're working towards. Okay. Because I bet this number like completely freaks a lot of you out. You think it's not possible. You think you can't do it.

We've literally had clients book projects at this price and higher.

So whether it took them one month or two months or whatever, they're working their way towards that. So what is the value of a spot on your calendar? If you're just gonna assume that 10 days that you have a four week project timeline and that takes 10 days to complete that project, what is the value of a spot on your calendar? And this is just an estimate. Everyone's gonna be a little bit different. This is just to get you like,

a baseline for what we're going to do next when we're talking about like CEO decisions.

Is everyone thoroughly confused?

If I've lost you, come back.

So go ahead and put in the chat. What is the value of a spot on your calendar? So Kate said, can I repeat that last part? So let's assume, let's make an assumption that you can do one website a month in the number of days that you have available that month.

How many days do you have available? You guys told me on average you had about 30 days a quarter or 10 days a month to work on a project. Let's say if you had systems processes and all of those things down, you worked your way over a few times of doing it to one website project complete in a month in the 10 days that you have with your

with our minimum baseline revenue calculator that showed us how much you need to create to pay yourself what you want to make, what is the value of a spot on your project calendar? So for Kate, Kate wants to pay herself $8,500. The value of a spot on Kate's calendar for one month for a one-month project is $12,000.

Erica, the value of a spot on her calendar is 13125. So Marina's is 6,500.

So Lisa, the 1.75, she's wondering about the 1.75. So when you click on this spot of your minimum baseline revenue, depending on how much you're spending every month on your business, this number could either be up to 1.75 times how much you wanna pay yourself to create enough money to cover your expenses, your investments in your business, right?

Or if your expenses are lower, like Kate's were a thousand, she doesn't need to make she doesn't need to make fourteen eight seventy five because you can see that she's making ten thousand here. She only needs eighty five hundred. So we get to come down here and tweak this number. To get these two closer, I know it's a little confusing, but I just want you guys to.

to get these two numbers as close as you can.

So Sharon's value of spot on her calendar is fifteen thousand seven hundred fifty dollars and twenty six thousand at her goal.

Marina is a little confused and Melissa is struggling with this. So Marina, how much money do you want to make every single month in your web design business?

to cover life.

How much do you want to pay yourself?

Melissa, how much do you want to pay yourself? How much do you... Okay, great question. How much do you need? First we figure out how much we need, then we figure out how much we want. How much do need?

So Melissa needs 15,000.

So Marina needs for personal. for what, so let's talk about, let's split this up Marina. And I don't know, I don't know, cause you're in Germany. So maybe you don't do it this way in Germany, but in the U S we keep our business stuff and our personal stuff separate. So how much of that, how much of that 6,000 is for business and how much of it is for personal?

Yeah, and Kate also pays subcontractors. So if you add that you need 3000 more, so 15 K. Yes, you don't pay subcontractors out of your own pocket. That said, as of right now, I calculated 2875. So your goal number is 6000, but I subtracted the revenue I had for dedicated retainer clients. Nope, don't do that. Leave that in for the purpose of this. For the purpose of this, just go ahead and leave it in. OK.

So for you, for so Marina, what I'm looking at for you then is 4000 is how much you want to pay yourself and 2500 is what you're spending on your business. So in order to create that, see how these numbers don't match, I'm going to come here and I'm going to bump this number back up.

I need to bump it up a little bit more.

This is where it can come not 1.2. This is where it can go up to two times. I'm gonna be saying so Marina, you need to create 8000 in order to pay yourself 4000. And spend 2500 on your business and I have no idea what your taxes are in Germany. You're going to have to play with this number. I know in France we had one student in France where it was 50%. So.

it made this number a lot higher for her. She had to almost make three times her minimum baseline to create that.

Just everybody is different. So I just wanted to show you what that looks like. I know it can be confusing, but what we're really trying to get to.

sorry, I was doing all kinds of stuff in the dock and not showing the doc share this tab instead. So for Marina, four thousand. Twenty five hundred four thousand for herself, twenty five hundred for her business. We changed this to to two. Two point five.

So she needs to go up to making three times what she wants to pay herself. In her business, she needs to create 12,000 a month, but that's only if her taxes are super high. gonna back that back down to .22.

So that can actually be less because.

There we go. So Marina needs to create 8000 to pay herself for spend 2500 on her business, pay her taxes unless they're higher than 22%. That's what's left over. That's what she pays herself. That's the value of a spot on her calendar.

So Sarah says, what about the money I bring in monthly for past client support? Five to six can average. Awesome. So look at your goal. Do you want to look at your goal revenue, Sarah? So like, what's the gap, Sarah, between what you want to pay yourself now and that five to 6,000? If you're good there, awesome. Amazing. Let's go look at your goal and see what's the gap between what your goal is now to figure out like, okay, so I need to raise my price by this much to make it happen.

My main problem is that I don't have enough time for client projects right now. I have to work on my time blocking. So I want you guys to walk away from this with what is the value of a spot on your calendar. This is what you are working towards. In the next session, we're going to talk about like you guys have a lot of thoughts about this number and

whether it's possible to create this number and whether it's possible to create this in the time we have and logistically, what do I do with the money we already have? We're going to sort through all of that in the next session. So we're going to leave this room. We're going to go into the next room. We're going to take a little bit of a break at the beginning of the next room so we can all get reset. And then we're going to move into making decisions like the CEO of your business and what that looks like and how to think.

about all of the things that we are doing and how do we think about our time? Because I'm seeing not enough time. I'm seeing so many things in the chat that we get to address in the next section when we're talking about like how do we make decisions like the CEO of our business to start executing on our time blocking and work our way towards creating charging.

the actual true value of a spot on our calendar so we can have a sustainable business. Okay, so we're gonna leave here. I'm gonna meet you in the next room. I'll get that room going and then we will kick off over there. So, all right, I'll see you in the next room.