Creating a Profitable Squarespace Web Design Business with Paige Brunton

Shannon Mattern: Welcome to the Profitable Web Designer Podcast, where we're all about helping extraordinary web designers like you to stop undercharging over delivering and overworking, and finally create the profitable, sustainable, and scalable web design business you've been dreaming of. I'm your host Shannon, mad founder of the Web Designer Academy where we teach the business side of running a web design business. So if you wanna make a consistent full-time income as a web designer, but you're struggling with things like pricing and boundaries and mindset and marketing and you're just tired of going it alone, well my friend, you're in the right place. But before we dive into this week's episode, I wanna invite you to sign up for our totally free profitable pricing framework training that breaks down five mindset shifts to five x your prices without working five times harder. Just go to https://webdesigneracademy.com/pricing and enter your name and email address and I'll send you our proprietary pricing framework that will totally transform what you think about how much you really can charge for web design. So go sign up at https://webdesigneracademy.com/pricing and then meet me back here for this week's episode. Okay.

Shannon Mattern: Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of the Profitable Web Designer podcast. I am so excited to be in your earbuds today because today I have Paige Brunton with us and this is a conversation that I have been so excited to have. Paige is the premier Squarespace web design expert and she has helped over 4,000 students in her two popular online courses to build both Squarespace sites and Squarespace web design businesses. So Paige, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you. Can you share a little bit more with our listeners about you and what you do?

Paige Brunton: Yeah, thank you so much for having me Shannon. I am absolutely honored and thrilled that you invited me. So yeah, my name is Paige. I started a web design business quite a few years ago, a little bit out of necessity. So I met a very charming German guy in college and in a bar and then followed him across the ocean to Germany and realized when I got to Germany I had no job options so I needed to find a way to work online. And so I chose, well I built a travel blog before, that was the extent of my website building experience, but I was like, this is my best bet. So yeah, I decided to become a website designer, completely self-taught, learned all the things the very, very hard way. And so what I do mostly these days is I help other people to start their design businesses with much less trial and error that I went through ,

Shannon Mattern: I am right there with you in terms of like learning everything the hard way, being completely self-taught and all the things. So I wanna kind of go back to those early days when you're like, okay, I'm gonna be a website designer. How did you get your first client?

Paige Brunton: Hmm, yep, great question. I actually started this little like website side hustle while I was still in university. So I had less than no time. I also, I didn't really had no idea how to market myself and find clients, so believe me, I was googling how to find clients as a website . And so I realized like it'd be great if I could come up and Google for Squarespace website designer, but that's a long hard road to get there. And I was like, I don't have time to be blogging consistently. I was doing a master's degree. So I was like, you know what? Etsy, Etsy would be good because there's less people on there and so therefore I could come up in the search results easier. So Etsy was where I listed my services at the very beginning and then where I got my first couple clients from there, a web design agency, they were looking for website designers.

Paige Brunton: They saw some of my work on Etsy and they were like, oh, she seems to know what she's doing. So they got in touch with me and they started feeding me projects, which was very nice except for the fact that I made a fraction of the total like what the client was actually paying. And the timelines were really annoying and the projects weren't necessarily what I would call like ideal client. Like I literally built a website for a retirement home once, like it wasn't the most exciting work in the world. So my very first foray finding my own clients was Etsy. Whenever I found like low pay and not consistent clients and then also really high Etsy fees, then I worked for an agency, didn't love the processes, didn't love the pay again, also the projects not that exciting. So that was how I was very first getting clients and again, that was still when I was kinda like side hustling on side of university.

Paige Brunton: When I moved to Germany, that's when I was like, I'm gonna get serious about this. Well to be honest, I went full-time twice the first time I failed the second time I like went at it . But anyway, so that's an interesting story if you wanna talk about that. But yes, basically, so then the second time when I went full-time properly and stayed full-time for the rest of forever, I chose blogging as my marketing strategy and that really took the business to the next level and did land me the first place when you Googled Squarespace website designer in Google. So that was kind of like the journey of finding clients .

Shannon Mattern: I do wanna talk about how you failed the first time cuz I also failed the first time and yeah, like I same, I had like an asphalt company as a client , like all of these things that they kind of happened organically for me like word of mouth through me saying like, oh, and I build websites on the side for whatever. And then kind of like you, it was just like I wasn't making enough money. Like the timelines were never ending. Like I didn't know how to manage projects or anything like that and I was like, this is ridiculous. I can't do this anymore. I'm gonna like wrap up these clients and I'm, I'm done with this and I'm just gonna like stay at my day job. And then the internet had other plans for me but , but I wanna hear. Yeah, I'd love to hear more about like your journey of like trying it out the first time like and it not working cuz I think that's, that's something important for people to hear.

Paige Brunton: Yeah, I think it's very important for people to hear is that like people do this thing where they compare themselves to people like five years ahead of them and they're comparing themselves to say us right now and then they feel awful about themselves and it's like, don't do that. Believe me. We started not hear and yeah, I think it's also important for people to hear like it's not all these people who you see as successful. Were not always just these like, I don't know, wasn't always perfect. So yeah, so I moved to Germany and was like okay awesome. I need to make money on the internet somehow so I'm gonna be a website designer. And so I proceeded to spend the next like two weeks in my living room on my laptop 24 7 and Googling every possible way you could land clients and trying all of those things and not doing a single one of them.

Paige Brunton: Well and my stress level, it was my mindset that literally killed it. It was like my, in my brain the whole time. It was just like a parade of negative thoughts of like you're not gonna find another client, this isn't gonna work. Why would someone hire you? There's so many other better website designers out there, other people have better portfolios and better work and all these things. It's amazing celebrity clients and you don't. And so it was just like constant negativity going to my brain and I just like didn't know how to stop it . And so then I was taking a walk with my husband one day we met a friend of his who just started speaking German to him and at that point I didn't speak German so I didn't have a clue what she was saying. And then at some point he was like, oh this is my girlfriend, she's from Canada.

Paige Brunton: And then she's like, oh you're an English speaker. She worked at a kindergarten and they needed, it was a bilingual kindergarten so they needed an English speaker and they're like, do you have a job? Do you wanna start a job like tomorrow? And my husband was like, yes, yes she does because at the time it was not going well. It was just me crying in the living room not knowing how to run this business. So I went and worked at that kindergarten for three months and that job was a gift. I hated working there with an furious passion. Not only did I hate working there, everyone else hated working there cuz the staff were constantly sick. Like every single person on the team called in sick, at least out of a 20% team, five of them were sick every day, which meant you were always understaffed and it was awful.

Paige Brunton: And yeah, so anyways, not a fun workplace. So I did that for three months and just decided no, like I'm gonna give it a second shot. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to figure out how to get clients, how to run a business and how to stop these negative parade of thoughts going through my mind and like fix my mindset. So I did a lot of mindset work, read a few really good mindset books. I also took a course at the time I took B School for Marie Forlio. It was not web designer specific so I had to fill in a lot of the, you know, bits myself and everything. But it did at least give me me some general direction of what I should be sitting down and doing every day. And it also helped me nail a marketing strategy which brings us back to blogging basically. So that's what I chose and that really worked. It took time, no question. It's not a super fast marketing strategy but it is a highly effective one.

Shannon Mattern: Oh I love hearing that story and I can so relate to . I can so relate to that cuz like my journey is similar in that like after I was like this is not the freedom I was trying to create. This is the exact opposite. I don't know how people do this. I'm wrapping up these fee projects and I'm done. I heard a podcast with Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income. I'm sure everybody in the online business space knows him. And he was talking about like how he makes affiliate income, teaching people how to set up their blog with Blue Host hosting. And I was like, what? I was like, wait, what did I just hear? And in that moment I was like, wait, you mean to tell me that all these tutorials that I have like read online or videos I've watched or all of these things to learn how to do all the things that I had to learn how to do and all the tools that I've purchased aren't just people out of their kind heart contributing content to the internet making money off the back end of this.

Shannon Mattern: And I was like, I can do that too. I can do that too. I can teach people how to do it instead of doing it for them and this is how I'm going to like, you know, replace my day job income and like grow my empire and all of that. And of course like led me, you know, to the Marie four Leos and the, you know, all of the things and I never took B School. It was one of the things that I always wanted to do, but I just, I, it was one of the ones I, I did everything else but not B School . And so I created my training, my D I Y WordPress training and I was like, I'm never working with clients ever again. And then people would be like, Shannon this training is so great, it's very in depth and comprehensive.

Shannon Mattern: I don't really wanna do this, can I just pay you to do it for me? And I was like, , what? No, I'm teaching you how to do it for free. Why would you ever pay me? Like I had such bad money mindset stuff going on back then that like, it was just like what was underneath that was like I didn't think I could charge enough to make it worthwhile to work with a client. And so one of those people happened to be a business coach and she was like, please just let me talk to you about this because you could charge way more than you think you can charge for this, you have the process already. And I was like, okay. And like I finally started taking clients again and it wasn't perfect. I still had a ton to learn especially about boundaries and pricing and all of that. But, but that's kind of how I came back around to doing web design for clients again was somehow I magically built this no like and trust through creating content online and showing people everything that I knew, which is I think very similar to what you did too. And then they're like, I wanna hire you. So yep. Tell me how your blog like contributed to you getting clients.

Paige Brunton: Mm-Hmm very conveniently for me just at the time. So I decided, took B-School was like okay, I'm gonna blog to get clients. So I just started pretty articles, those helpful things that you said on the internet of like here's how to blah blah blah inside of Squarespace, here's how to change this on your Squarespace site and here's the things to ask your web designer before you hire them and everything. Or like here's, I dunno, those sorts of posts was what I was doing. Here's like 10 example inspiration yoga websites built on Squarespace, that sort of stuff. And those things slowly but surely. It was really encouraging because once I actually chose one marketing strategy and that's what I advised to anyone, choose one not seven, it's so key . But anyway, so I slowly but truly started to see like traffic increasing to my website.

Paige Brunton: I tracked my statistics every week and I would see like, okay, more traffic than last week. So it was like an encouraging sign that it was going in the right direction. I found the more blog posts I wrote, the more traffic I was getting to the website, the more people in every blog post I would make mention like if you wanna work together, like here's my services, I can build your website for you basically, which people think is kind of, it doesn't make sense cuz like well if you're teaching 'em how to do it for free, then why would they hire you? And the truth is, is that yeah okay, a huge portion of those people will take that information and go do it themselves. And I'm so happy that I can help those people at a free price point. Cause I know when I started my business I had less than no money, like I was just outta college.

Paige Brunton: So happy to be helpful to those people. But then another percentage of people who read those posts are like, well she seems to know what she's doing so screw it, I'll just hire her to do it. Or like I had a post on how to choose the rate Squarespace template brought in a ton of traffic and then from there a bunch of people decided to go pick their own template and go do it themselves. A whole bunch of the rest of 'em got in touch on my inquiry form. Were like please just build this thing for me. Like I can't even . They would dip their toe in the water, realize how out of their depth they were and then just be like, I'm just gonna ask Paige to build it for me. So it took, again, blogging is not a fast marketing strategy necessarily, but it does snowball and growth over time.

Paige Brunton: And so the snowball started building a couple months in, I was getting inquiries then I was landing those inquiries booking clients from it. And once I got the first one it just truly like new inquiry, new inquiry, new inquiry, continued blogging, got more to the point where I did work my way up in Google to be the first actual website designer that appeared when you Googled Squarespace website designer. So before me was Upwork and Squarespace. But then right after that I was the first actual web designer and that led to a inquiry a day in my web design business and I was one person. And so then I realized like I was considering like do I become an agency? Do I hire other designers? Do I run a template shop? That was a very typical thing to do or a course was also the option.

Paige Brunton: So that was the one which I finally went with was I was like, I'm just gonna teach you basically everything which I know about Squarespace, how to make a website which isn't just cookie cutter and where you drop your content in but where it looks nothing like the template. And so that was my first course Square secret and so that's how that came about. But I do wanna say when it comes to blogging second, I say like both of us said this like we left blogging. You don't need to blog if you don't want to blog. Like if you don't enjoy creating written format content, don't force yourself into doing it. So many people come to me and they're just like, I could not imagine writing. And for me it brought me joy. But truly what I tell people is like find the client finding method that brings you joy. I literally created a quiz on that to be like, here's like answer these questions and I will shoot at the marketing strategy you should do. Because for it could be Instagram, it could be speaking, it could be whatever, like it's different for each person. Blogging worked for me and for you. But it doesn't need to be what everyone else listening to this does.

Shannon Mattern: I'm so glad you said that because it's like any tactic you choose will work if you focus on it and stick at it and stay consistent with it and don't give up on it right away. I mean, and one of the things that we teach our, our students inside our program is like just be a real human and reach out to people and connect. And that's one of the quickest ways to find your next client. And then once you kind of figure things out, if you do feel called to create content and be creative in that kind of a way, like go for it. Find, find the thing that's going to just like you said, that's gonna resonate with you and like bring you joy. Like if someone tells me I have to be on TikTok to get clients, that would not bring me joy. I would, I just wouldn't do it. And so, you know, I'd be like oh I need a TikTok strategy and then I'd be learning forever and never actually like making or posting TikTok cuz I would dread it.

Paige Brunton: That was me on Instagram. I, I had my official breakup with Instagram. I actually posted on Instagram a few months ago. I was like, this is the official breakup. I've debated this for years but like no I'm a hundred percent done with Instagram. Like I don't enjoy being there . But yeah, I mean for the longest time I felt it just felt like, especially cuz web design is a visual thing, it makes sense to be on Instagram. This is a visual platform and everything and that's where my ideal clients would be cause it was like other women in business and that sort of thing. Yeah. But I just couldn't get myself to show up there consistently cuz I just didn't enjoy it. Like my idea of a good time is leaving my phone at home and going out and living my life and not having it with me and not being connected all the time and not getting in the like comparison trap or whatever. Yeah. Which I find is very common. So like not being on social media has been great and I just wanna give people the reassurance that also if you don't wanna be on on Instagram, you also don't need to do that. Like it's not necessary

Shannon Mattern: . Yeah you can run a highly successful web design business without being on social media at all. It is absolutely possible to do that. So your name is synonymous with Square Secrets in my mind. Like I think of Square Secrets I think of you, I think of you, I think of Square Secrets. So you launched the Square Secrets course teaching people how to build Squarespace sites. When did you add the Square Secrets business aspect onto your training?

Paige Brunton: So pretty quickly, which I did not expect at all because I did not feel qualified to teach people how to run a design business. So I ran Square Secrets and then I did q and A calls with the students and then very consistently they all said like Oh I made this amazing website, I showed it to my friends and family. And they're like, wow, who built that looks great. And they're like, oh I did it myself. And then light bulb went off for them as well. Like I, this is fun, I wonder someone would pay me for this. Like I enjoyed doing this. So they started on these q and a calls, no one was asking me questions but how to whatever in Squarespace. They were all asking like, so how do you get clients after your friends and family? Like what do you do about contracts and what about like payment schedules and all these questions related to serving clients?

Paige Brunton: And I was like, okay well clearly you wanna know how I run this business so alright, if that's what you want then I'll, I created Square Secrets business and that was like here is how I run my entire website business from like start to finish. Here's the things I encourage you to customize for yourself. So that was the one thing which I was a bit stumped when I went to go create the course cause I was like, well I don't wanna only teach blogging because there's other ways to get clients but I also don't wanna speak about something which I'm awful at slash or have never done. Well like say Instagram for example, it's like I should not be teaching you about Instagram but it is a good option to get clients if that's what you want. So then I just asked all my like friends in the web design world and was like, Hey would you mind coming in and talking with me for 30 minutes about like your chosen marketing strategy and how you do it and what the steps would be if someone else wanted to do it and what you learned along the way and everything.

Paige Brunton: So I got in a bunch of guest experts who then all shared their favorite marketing strategy. So that's how I kind of overcame that little hurdle. But yeah, so Square Secret Business came like six months or so after Square Secrets. And then I very consistently had both those courses for years. Now.

Shannon Mattern: One of the things that jumped out at me when you were talking about like, okay, well how do I teach the things that like maybe I haven't tried yet or I haven't accomplished yet, is to not think that you have to be the only one that knows all the things about all the things to be able to, to serve and teach your students. And I think that's one of the hear things I hear a lot from web designers. They're like, but I don't know enough yet. I don't know everything yet. I don't like I've never done that before and I'm just like you, it's not all on you. Like P your clients are paying you to be the one to figure it out or curate the resources or find the solution not to already know.

Paige Brunton: Mm-Hmm . Mm-Hmm . Mm-Hmm . And also the other thing is like you can, I also say my students are always asking me, they're like should I also do brand design? Should I also do copywriting? And my question coming back to like the marketing stretch and think is like, does it bring you joy when you enjoy doing that? And if the answer is yes, fantastic, go learn that thing and then offer it to your clients. But if it wouldn't bring you joy and you actually hate writing or you actually couldn't think of anything worse than designing a logo, then you can collaborate with other brand designers and copywriters and build a collaboration and a partnership whereby when they get a client which needs a website, you have a client which needs copywriting, then you like work together on that project.

Shannon Mattern: I love that. So one of the things you mentioned earlier was your mindset in those early, early days. Mindset has also been like my biggest, I would say opportunity not, not necessarily challenge, but my biggest opportunity and growing my business all the time. There's always some new shift or transformation or breakthrough that I, that I'm working through. What are some of the most common mindset opportunities you see with your students? Things that you're consistently like working with them on?

Paige Brunton: The pricing. A hundred percent

Shannon Mattern: . Same. Same .

Paige Brunton: Yep. It's interesting when you work for yourself all of a sudden. So let me explain something which happened to me, which I think will explain this situation. So I was charging $2,500 for a website. I would do it in two weeks. I would wrap up the project, I would work with one client at a time and just give them a really exceptional experience and project at the end. And so again, that agency which I had been speaking of, I was talking to one of the guys and he was like, Paige, seriously your work is incredible. You are so reliable and do such a good job and the experience with you is fantastic. You could charge twice the price and not change, like not add more deliverables, not whatever. Like you could literally just double your price and that would still be worth it. And I was like, you're completely insane .

Paige Brunton: But this like seed in the idea had been planted. And so I literally went to my website the next day and I changed it from 2,500 to $5,000. No like increase in the number of pages or anything else I was delivering. And I was again tracking every like week how many inquiries I was getting, how many of those I was booking. And then I realized like, yeah, okay, there's been no difference in the number of inquiries and the percentage of them that you've been actually like locking down and everything. And so that for me really, so I just got way easier clients to work with, with better content and better photos. . That was the difference. And so coming back to this, like I had always worked in jobs where people, the boss would tell you and now you make this much money or now you get a raise or whatever.

Paige Brunton: And so I was, I like just didn't know how to give myself a raise. Like I, I kind of needed like outside permission in order to increase my prices. And so that's what that guy basically did for me was like you should probably do this. And from having done it and having a good experience with it, I was like oh okay, I can do this again. So then I would increase my prices again. But yeah, so coming back to the mindset in students. So it's definitely, I think one thing is it's a confidence aspect like that will that it, what your price is is pretty much based off your confidence and yes also to agree the quality of the websites that you're building. Like that's also definitely a factor. I don't wanna ignore that but I would say 90% of it is probably the confidence problem.

Paige Brunton: And so I think what I find is the students, like when they go through a course, whatever course that is, I find that that's very beneficial because they're like okay, I know all the things which I need to know now. So that is just like gives you a huge leg up in increasing your prices. We actually did a survey in my business we were really curious to kind of get like a overall view of the web design industry. So we surveyed over 700 website designers and we noticed when people take courses they charge significantly higher prices than if they don't take courses on the field. And again, I'm I a hundred percent put that down to okay, yes your skills are slightly better and everything and yes your process is better. There's a huge number of benefits but mostly it just gives you the confidence. So I would say whatever way you can build the confidence is important, whether that's taking a course or alternatively I found when I was having my mindset problems some really good books. So like You Are a Badass, fantastic book The Miracle Morning what were the other ones? Those were the two most major ones which really helped me get my mindset in the right place when I was like failing and then trying to get back , get back out there and do it again. So yeah, that's what I would say.

Shannon Mattern: I could not agree with you more like in terms of pricing being like the big opportunity for people and like the underlying thoughts that I hear all the time is like, well it's so easy for me to do this. It's not hard therefore it doesn't take me that much time so I can't charge that much. And what I try to like the mindset shift I try to instill in people is like your pricing is not about you. Your pricing is about, is about like the value that the tool that you create can help your clients create. Mm-Hmm , it's has nothing to do with how much time it takes you. It's your in the intellectual property that you use to build this thing is very valuable. All of your ideas, experiences, skills all the time and money you've invested into courses and trainings and and building your skill is like the culmination of that is you doing that really fast and really well mm-hmm and so that makes it worth more, not worth less. Yes. And so it's like of course it's fasted for you of course it's easy of course it doesn't feel hard and you get to charge a lot for that.

Paige Brunton: Mm-Hmm and that's interesting. So on that same line of thought is at the very beginning, yeah it probably takes you longer to build the website but you're probably not gonna charge your client more because it took you longer because you didn't know how to do the thing and therefore I spent seven hours researching it. Like you'll be like oh no feel guilty for charging for that because I had to learn the thing or whatever. It's like okay yeah so but then you've spent years learning, I mean it doesn't take years, months maybe learning the skill and learning how to do things and then when you could take five seconds to do it later because you know from that past project how to do it also. So like again, whether it takes you a really long time at the beginning or really quick at like years in or something, again the result to your client is the same regardless of how long you spent and you're probably not gonna charge them. That's what people always say. It's like oh no I would feel guilty to charge for the whatever. It's like okay well then you also should not feel guilty to charge for the fact that you did learn that before. And so, yeah.

Shannon Mattern: Yeah absolutely. What are some of the other challenges beyond pricing that you help your clients with?

Paige Brunton: Definitely I think the big one which I have to really work on is again, not trying to do every free marketing strategy and just picking the one which brings you joy. So that brings me back to like why I created this quiz because it was like everyone was having the same problem and I was like, I felt like I just wanted to like ask some bunch of questions and then it would just like shoot our response. I was like perfect, I'm gonna make a quiz on that . So it's called which Client Finding method matches your Personality type. You can get it at https://pbcourses.com/quiz but I think the thing with that is like once you're told like okay this is the thing which would fit you just again know that like from those guest experts, which I had in the course for example, they all had one or two maximum and these were people in business for a long time, one or two marketing strategies that fully booked their calendars that they were doing really premium price projects.

Paige Brunton: So again, I think letting go of the, I have to be everywhere, I have to be on Instagram, I have to be blogging, I have to be whatever it is. Like you don't have to do that actually. You just need to get the like 20 to 30 clients that you need in a year and that's all you have to do. And if you wanna scale your business later okay perfect then maybe we choose like another scalable marketing strategy for you in the future. But for right now, if you just wanna do one-to-one services, like it doesn't require you being everywhere and you are definitely going to do worse at everything if you try to show up everywhere.

Shannon Mattern: That's such good advice. So tell me more about Square Secrets business. How often does it open every year? What is the program like? What can people expect to learn when they work with you?

Paige Brunton: Yeah, so as Core Series business has helped thousands of people to build website businesses, our students blow my mind. Like it took me a while to start and run a design business cause I had to learn everything but these bunch just consistently like blow my mind. People are going on to do like $11,000 projects and $30,000 months and one girl hired a team of seven within two years after she took the course. So basically it shows you start to finish how to set up and run a web design business. Most of the people who take it build websites on Squarespace, but we've actually had people now who take it and they build WordPress web design businesses or show a web design businesses or Shopify web design businesses. So it's more Square Secrets business is about here's how to set up and run a web design business. So going from like setting your packages and your prices and figuring out your process and making sure that your client projects stay on time every time. Finding clients, managing the onboarding and offboarding of clients legal and taxes. We also actually cover that too, which is nice. But yeah, so Square Secrets business opened about twice a year. We just finished up an enrollment so our next one is gonna be probably spring 2023 would be the next one. But yeah, we tend to open it for enrollment twice a year.

Shannon Mattern: Where can people go to learn more about it?

Paige Brunton: Yeah, you can go to Paige Brunton, p a i g e b r u n t o n.com and then you can find all the information on the different courses there.

Shannon Mattern: I love it and I see like, you know, I think one of the biggest things that web designers need but like don't know they need . You know, it's like they know they need processes and contracts and they know all of these things but like when they have those things now they have a set of boundaries that they can operate their business within. Right? Whereas you said, you touched on this earlier, it was like oh when I worked at a day job my boss told me what to do and how to do it. And I don't know if you experienced this, but when I started freelance web designing, I had a mindset that my clients were my boss and I was their employee and I just did anything and everything they asked me to do within whatever timeframe they told me it needed to be done.

Shannon Mattern: And that's why I was like, oh this doesn't feel like freedom, this is not worth it. I might as well just have one boss at my day job instead of 10 bosses in my web design business. And when you don't have these processes and systems and everything, of course that makes your business more efficient and it makes it easier and it makes your client experience more amazing but it also gives you a set of guidelines and boundaries within so that you can like become the boss of your clients instead of the other way around. Mm-Hmm . And I think that's the thing that people, it's like one of those things that's like oh I didn't even know I needed that. That all of this is now going to create massive amounts of freedom for me that I didn't realize that the reason I didn't have that is cuz I didn't have these guardrails or these lines in the sand or that I was operating from an employee mindset instead of an entrepreneur mindset when I was running my business business and I was letting my clients call the shots and run the show even if they were paying me.

Shannon Mattern: Well you know, it's like it's not worth it to make that much money when you don't have freedom.

Paige Brunton: Totally. And the thing which I find is that like newer web designers are terrified to give their clients deadlines or to tell them they need something from them. Whereas more experienced web designers are like, all right, this is what I'm doing, this is what you're doing, this is when it's due. Like this is the process you need to meet deadlines, . And so anytime, anytime free win for everyone here, if you can't get your client's content on time it that's a hundred percent you thing and it can be changed. So that's great . So you need like if people are like, oh I can never start the project so time and therefore they're always going on longer and everything to say never get the content. And it's like okay well you tell your client what you need and when you need to buy and you give them a genuine deadline and then you give them reminders of that thing and then when you give them a reminder and you're saying Okay, it needs to be done by this date in order for me to start it on your project, otherwise this project is like you're not getting your website by when I promised you I'd get it to by and that was my thing.

Paige Brunton: I could guarantee people an end date but I was like, I can guarantee you an end date and that's not normal because most web designers won't do that for you. But like I'm going to guarantee you an end date but you have to get me your content by this date and this is what it means to get me your content. Like here's a whole guideline on like how to get photos and how to write the copy and everything. And so that's the thing is do know that like you are fully allowed and if anything it's gonna make you look more professional and more legit because I can tell you the really high-end amazing designers out there, they are doing that for their clients or telling them this is what it needs to be to mean by. And that will significantly solve your problems of not finishing your projects on time or not knowing when you can book the next one. Cause you don't know when this one's gonna finish.

Shannon Mattern: I'm so glad you said all of that and and it like also ties back to what you said earlier about when you doubled your price, your projects were easier. Like when people make a bigger commitment to the project, they are way more invested in making sure that the project is successful and they are way more willing to follow through on all of their end of the deal. And so if you're struggling with that, consider raising your prices. In our program we talk about investment minded clients versus expense minded clients and they operate differently in terms of like what they value the most. And all the things like I started my business back in the day, we were kind of talking about this like I didn't have the budget to do things like, so I had an expense mindset. I would rather spend my time versus my money.

Shannon Mattern: I would rather try to get things as cheap as I possibly could. I'd try to reverse engineer what I'd see other people doing instead of just hiring like the person to help me like all of the things versus now I, I have an expense mindset and I'm like I am willing to pay someone to lead me through this and I'm willing to like pay a premium for that person to make it as easy on me as possible because I value my time so much. Mm-Hmm and I understand that like when I spend this money with you, it's not actually going away forever. It's going to come back to me tenfold because I'm fully committed to the outcome of this project. And so it's just operating on a completely different caliber. When you shift that mindset and you shift your prices to match up with that and those prices call in clients who are ready to work with you at that level versus people who, and there's nothing wrong with it, they're just not ready to work with you at that level. They don't have the clarity or whatever.

Paige Brunton: And I understand like when people are afraid to raise their prices they're like I would never spend $5,000 on a website. It's like okay, yeah. Like at the beginning of my business I would never have spent that money on anything cause I didn't have it. But just know that there are people, there are businesses out there with money who are just looking for like someone to do a fabulous job and to really care for them in their project and to create them a fantastic website and they're literally looking to spend the money and when you see people getting 10 K projects like that means there's people willing to pay for 10 K projects. That's what that means. So I know that when people are like, oh well I could never spend there, I would never spend it. It's like okay, yeah but you're maybe different from actually the client who's gonna be hiring you and that's totally fine. And I feel like I've seen that progression of like I started a business with genuinely no money and now our business makes fantastic money. And so we hire things out all the time and I'm like, oh thank you, thank you for doing this. Like I'm so grateful and I'm so excited to pay you this money. So there's clients out there who are gonna be thrilled to pay you the money and again, there tend to be a lot easier to work with as well. ,

Shannon Mattern: Oh my gosh, I could talk to you forever about this topic. I like totally geek out when I get to talk to people who also coach , coach web designers, just on all of the things that we went through in the early days of business that were like so dedicated to helping other people not have to go through that pain and just realize their value faster and create freedom and flexibility on a shorter timeline than maybe what we figured , what we figured out going it alone and not working with. I assume that you did not work with the business coach to help you. Nope. Run your web design business. Yeah, me neither. And so it definitely, I don't know why we think we have to figure it out on our own like, cause sometimes I didn't know business coaching was a thing when I started my business. Hmm. And so it's so amazing that there are people out there like you who are dedicated to helping web designers really create the life and business of their dreams. So yeah. I just have one more question for you before we wrap up here and I ask this to everyone that comes on the show. So what is one belief about yourself that you had to change to get where you are today?

Paige Brunton: Ooh, that's such a good question. Lemme think of one, one second. Gimme a minute. I wanna give you a really good

Shannon Mattern: Answer.

Paige Brunton: , there was a lot ,

Shannon Mattern: As many as you wanna share whatever comes to your mind.

Paige Brunton: So I had to change the belief that I could make great money. So when I was younger I assumed if I was ever going to be wealthy it was gonna be because of my husband. Like I, in no realm of my mindset of possibility, would I make good money That just didn't like all my examples just, it was always like, oh, if someone was wealthy it was because like they were a housewife to a some rich man. And yeah, that was a major thing, which it kind of came with time. Like it, the belief changed as I started to realize, oh okay, no, I can book 5K projects, time, fork projects, whatever. It's, so yeah, it came over time. But I think that was something which really changed for me is like I make these significant amount of money in our relationship and yeah, it, it is possible even though I hadn't seen any examples of that growing up necessarily. Like that is a thing which can happen these days. So yeah,

Shannon Mattern: I love that. Like it's so powerful to realize that like our mindset and like how we grew up as like a really important part of, of our business journey, I didn't know that. I thought I could just like power through and try all the things and learn all the things and I didn't realize that like the the biggest lever I could pull was just identifying those things that I thought to be true and never questioned and then start questioning everything about what I thought to kind of unlock, unlock that next level. Yeah,

Paige Brunton: I agree with that. I think that's so key for getting to the next level. Like is changing the belief because if you don't believe it, like I forget what the, some example, I wish I knew the exact details, but it was like someone had never run a mile in some timeframe and then the first person did it and it and it was like, I think it was a four minute mile. I don't even know, I have no idea, I'm used kilometers. But anyways, the first person ran this mile in like literally record time. Something that people were like, no, that's physically humanly impossible. Once the first guy did it, then like 20 people did it the next year and they could all do it because suddenly everyone believed cuz the guy had proven it was possible that it was possible. And so it just goes to show if for years and years and years and years, no one could do it. Then one guy does it and then 20 other people can, it shows you how important your belief is in like you're not even gonna go for it if you don't think it's possible. So finding examples around you and not looking at them as competition, not looking at them as like one more for her, one less for me, but looking at it as like, well she's just showing me what's possible so that means I can do it too. Like look at it in that sense. And that really helps.

Shannon Mattern: That is the perfect place to wrap up this episode. Can you tell everyone where can they go to connect with you, get all of your amazing content, learn more about your courses, trainings, and all the things?

Paige Brunton: Yeah, so my website is https://paigebrunton.com. You can find quite literally hundreds of blog posts on there helping you build Squarespace websites and a web design business. So if you want some fabulous free content head there. And again, if you want that quiz to figure out which client finding method matches your personality type that you should be doing, that is at https://pbcourses.com/quiz.

Shannon Mattern: Awesome. We'll link everything up in the show notes, so go check that out. And thank you so much for being here.

Paige Brunton: Thank you Shannon. I really appreciate it.

Shannon Mattern: That's it for this week's episode and we've linked up all of the resources we talked about today in the show notes. So you can go to https://webdesigneracademy.com/podcast to get your hands on those. And we'll be back next week with another episode designed to help you uplevel the business side of your web design business. So be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you're listening. And if you like today's episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it with all your web designer friends. And if you're feeling extra generous, we'd love for you to leave us a writing in review so we can get in front of even more web designers and help them transform their businesses and their lives. So simply scroll up on this episode and your podcast player and tap that, leave a review link or go to https://webdesigneracademy.com/review and it'll take you to the right spot. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you right here next week. Bye.

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