#217 – How To 5x Your Web Design Income Without 5xing Your Workload (Part 1)

Shannon Mattern (00:01.55)

Hey there and welcome back to the Profitable Web Designer Podcast. Today I've got part one of a three-part series for you where I'm breaking down the exact framework I've been teaching inside of the Web Designer Academy for the past six years that's helped hundreds of women web designers go from undercharging, over-delivering, and burnt out.

To profitable, sustainable, and thriving. So this is a replay of a training that I hosted way back in 2022. And in today's episode, I break down the 5P framework for 5xing your income without 5xing your workload. And next week in part two, I'll break down how we help our students implement what I share here in part one. And then in part three, you'll get to hear from some of our students about what their business was like before coming to work with us. and

what it was like after working with us, plus challenges that they encountered during their time in our program and how we helped them navigate those challenges together. And after you listen, if the Web Designer Academy sounds like what's been missing for you, go to WebdesignerAcademy.com forward slash wait list and enter your name and email address so that you can be the first to know when applications for our program open up again. And I'll also be sharing more details about the program

with people on the wait list, like enrollment dates and the investment and all of those things. And so you can plan ahead to join us and fill out the application when the doors open again. So let's go ahead and dive into how to 5x your web design income without 5xing your workload part one.

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Hello, hello everyone. I'm so excited that you guys are here with me today. Welcome to our 5P framework training. thank you guys for being here today. You are gonna walk away with a ton of incredible information that's gonna help you really start putting yourself on the path to reach those big income goals. I'm Shannon, Shannon Mattern. I am obsessed.

With helping our clients build massively profitable web design businesses. And that is why you are here today. So I want to know about you guys in the chat. Let us know where are you from? What is your big goal? I know you guys told me in your applications all of that information, but I want you guys to tell each other where are you from? What's your big goal? Why are you here today? So gosh.

Let me make sure I'm like get some stuff situated a little bit better before we we dive in. So awesome. UK, Scotland, Mississippi, Virginia, Virgin Islands. I mean, we trzech Republic, Columbus, Ohio. That's where I'm at. I'm in Columbus, Ohio, guys. Colorado, Idaho. We literally have people from all over the world watching this training. And if you are watching this training, we invited you specifically.

To be here. Also, if you see me looking down, I have notes. There's no way I could remember all of this training. So I invited you specifically to be here for this training. And so what we're going to do today is I'm going to do the training. I'm going to share a little bit more with you how we can work together. We're going to do a live QA with some of our current Web Designer Academy students. Some of them are here today.

and we're going to answer all of your questions about how to create a profitable, sustainable, scalable web design business. Gretchen wants six figures. Yes. Aisha wants to work from home full time. Awesome. Lisa wants to empower myself and other women to code and build sites, especially immigrants. I see, you guys are all absolutely amazing. Diana wants to make consistent 5K months. Jessica wants to launch in 2022.

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Molly wants to have flexibility to work from anywhere anywhere. Evan wants to work less and earn more. I mean, truly, this is this is why I invited you guys specifically here today, because we all share the same values and goals. And like you guys were chosen to, you know, to be here by me. I went through.

Every single one of your applications. I looked at every single one. We don't teach this training publicly. This training is exclusively for accepted applicants. And if you're here today, it's because you have been hand selected by me to be here. You went through the application process. You told me all of your information. You gave me a link to your website if you had had one. and I

Went through and I looked at every single one and I thought, can I help this person? What opportunities are there for this person to reach their specific goals? Do I think I can help them? And if the answer was yes, I invited you to be here today. If the answer was no, they're not ready for this, they're not here for the right reasons, whatever, I declined to invite you to this training today. So my goal for you is to get so much out of this training.

Please grab a pen and paper. You're going to want to take a ton of notes. I am recording this, so there will be a replay. If you miss anything, you can watch, watch the replay. and it's this is advanced information. This is advanced information that is only for people who we think would actually be successful in implementing this. And so

While you're here, please take advantage of being here with me live. Take advantage of my students being here on a panel. They're gonna be here live. You're gonna get to talk to them, hear from them, hear about their experience. As you guys have questions, as I'm going through everything, go ahead and pop those questions into the chat. My team is here, they're gathering all the questions for me. I'm gonna save them all to the end.

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Because I know myself and will be here for a hundred years if I start answering your questions in the middle of this training, but but just pop them in there when you think of them. And everyone is going to be they'll get answered at the end of the training. So you know, I take this, I take the application process very seriously. And I want you to take this opportunity and your chance to get your questions answered.

very seriously. And also I get really excited. I'm gonna end up talking really fast. I'll try to like slow down, but I also have so much to share with you that I want to make sure that that I give you all of the information. That's why we're recording this. If you have to jump off for whatever reason, you will get the get the replay. So today is training.

Is all about how to 5X your revenue without 5Xing your workload. And I'm going to break down my 5P framework to selling premium web design projects to what I call dreaming clients so that you can confidently charge more without working more. And you know, I've I am obsessed with helping web designers create massively profitable web design businesses. And notice I didn't say get more clients.

Because getting more clients when you are undercharging and over delivering is absolutely a recipe for disaster, right? I do not want you getting more clients when you are undercharging, over delivering, and overworking. Like it's it's just not going to solve your your financial problems, right? I want you to have a sustainable web design business. I don't want you to just get more clients. I want you to attract best fit.

premium clients consistently over the long term and have amazing processes and systems to support delivery of those services to those clients so that you can make the amount of money you want to make without having to put in more hours. So if that sounds good to you, put like a thumbs up or like an emoji or something in the chat because that is what we are here to do. And like I said, you

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were invited specifically by me to be here. I saw something in your application or on your website to be like, yep, I can help that person. Yep, I see exactly where the opportunity is for them. So you might be this might, this is one of you. Almost all of you fall into one of these five categories. You're self-taught and savvy. You are completely self-taught and you learned

through doing, you learned through researching. You learned through trial and error. How many of the, how many of you guys are the self-taught and savvy? I would say like pretty much 95% of people here are self-taught and savvy. So your level up today is banishing imposter syndrome and raising your prices because self-taught web designers always think that, if only I could learn more, I could charge more. If I had more skills, I could charge more. What if they find out I didn't go to school for this?

You know, all of that. And so this is how we this is it so many of yeah, PhD from Google University. So we get to work on your imposter syndrome and raising your prices and getting your mind to the place where you believe it's possible. Okay. You also might be the eager employee married 522 in the chat. I'm the computer guru at work. Like this is you. You you might do this for your day job, right? You might be the go to person.

Maybe you work in an agency, you know how to do this stuff. You do it, you get paid every day, but you want to break free and go freelance, have that flexibility, that financial independence, take the cap off your earning potential. And your level up is learning how do I actually market myself and get clients? How do I run the whole project end? How much do I charge? and how do I run an actual web design business? I have the skill, but how do I run the business, right?

You might also be the fearless freelancer. So you're already freelancing. You're already getting clients. You're amazing at what you do. Your clients love you. And your clients love you because you're undercharging, over delivering. You jump when they say jump. And you, on the other hand, while your clients think you're amazing, you're freaking burnt out. You are at the end of your rope and you are ready to work less and make more money for the work that you're doing.

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Right. So you your ability to like freelance is not the problem. Your level up is charging more, managing clients, holding boundaries, pricing is prices, systems, and scalability. Amy is two of three. See, I only invite people here who I know I can help, Amy. You might also be a side hustler, so you cannot be.

working all the time, whenever, you know, you might also be a parent. That's a side hustle. That's not a side hustle. That's a full-time hustle. You might also be a parent. So you need to create the flexibility and the financial, the financial stability to leave your leave your day job or contribute to your household or whatever you want. So your level up is systems, packages, pricing, boundaries, right? Your business needs to work with your life because you're not

probably not about to just be like, I watched a webinar and I'm quitting my job tomorrow. So I can do this. Like that's not how that works, right? You need to be able to do this so that you can ramp up and then go full time with web design like you, like you'll see from some of our our students. And you also right now might already be a five figure hustler. We have people in this audience who are like, I'm already making five figures, but I'm working like crazy and I want to

make more money. I want to keep more of the money I make. I want my life back. And I want to figure out how to do that. So your level up is really like leaning into raising those prices and putting those systems and boundaries in place. So you're here because you're ready to increase your current income significantly. You're ready to create freedom, flexibility, and financial independence. You're ready to make that transition from side hustle to self-employed without taking a pay cut.

And to level up to the next level after you do that, you're just ready to slide right on over and then start making more, right? And this is what we help our students do every single day. I mean, truly, like, I don't know. I don't know. It should not blow my mind, but it does. Every single day, I'm like, my gosh, these people are amazing. And you're gonna get to hear from some of them later today. So today I'm gonna show you exactly how.

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To get started on the path to make this transition in 2022. And you're here because you're a unicorn, right? So I am obsessed with two things when it comes to my clients. I am obsessed with making sure that they are in love with their web design businesses and know without a shadow of a doubt that they can make as much money as they choose to make with the skills that they bring to the table.

And I'm also obsessed with helping them create a business that helps them empower their clients to live the life of their dreams, right? Because we do such a unique thing as web designers. We help other people have the business and life of their dreams with the work that we do for them. And we just have this ripple effect, and it is so powerful. And it breaks my heart when I see web designers close up shop.

Because they don't have these systems in place, or they go back to corporate because they couldn't get this piece figured out. That takes away from all of the people that they were going to end up helping. Okay. And I our clients like are so passionate about their clients. That's the kind of web designer your clients deserve to work with. Our clients are unicorns. You're here because you're a unicorn. And I just want to share with you.

introduce you really quickly to some of the people that you're gonna meet later today. So Barb is her company is called Infinity Brand Design. She joined us. Her business was like she really, it was kind of a hot mess. Lisa, I'm sorry, didn't make you cry. Lisa said, shoot, I started crying already. Yes, this is, I mean, truly like we're you guys are life changers, right? And your life, your life changes too.

So Barb consistently is making 10k months now. When she started to work with us, she like, she was like, I don't even know what to do, right? She was she was working in corporate, she was doing web design for corporate, she's coming out on her own. She took the took the leap to work with us. And now she's consistently making 10K months. She knows how to market herself. I'm gonna let her talk to you later because she's just

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Just the tr the transformation Barb has gone through just has been incredible. Ruha booked 11 projects, had her first five figure month. She literally just emailed me last week or posted in our Facebook group. I get to take the last three weeks of December off because as of December first, I hit my Q4 revenue goal for the whole quarter. and she she booked a dream retainer client. Lee,

Is booking five figure clients and having five figure months. And the moment she joined, we worked on raising her prices with her current clients. And she thought she would lose some clients, but we but they all agreed to stay with her. And she's going to be here to talk with you today about her experience. Erica joined us, zero clients, zero dollars, zero web design business.

And now she is booking $7,500 projects and creating 10K months. And she's not even been in our program for a year. And she's here today. She's gonna talk to you. She's just yeah, exactly. Erica's amazing. And I'm I'm so excited for her to be here to talk to you. Alex, Alex just she joined, right? She casually just drops into the into one of our live strategy calls. and I quit my job last week. And I was like, wait, what? Like, wait, what?

She was like, yeah, I am making more than I was making at corporate and I finally quit my job. And I'm like, she did that four months into joining us, was able to replace her revenue and quit her job. So you're gonna meet a few of these people today, but this is what is this is what we do. Like we are super serious about helping our clients create these kinds of results.

in in their business. So I have more and more and more. I'm gonna let Elise is going to be here today. I've worked with Elise for a couple years. she's gonna be here today to share her experience. and so how you're here because you want to create these results for yourself, right? So how do you create these results for yourself? And I've seen this happening in the chat already. So I love that you guys are like

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Way ahead of me here. I want you to write down how much are you making every single month from your web design business right now? How much are you making right now, today? So get out a piece of paper, write that down, and put that in in the chat. Or you can put it in the chat if you want. You don't have to put it in the chat. So some of you are at zero. Some of you are starting from Erica, right? Okay, Diana, 1500.

Tabitha less than 1K, other inconsistent about 2K, Evans in the 2K range. So we so how much are you making right now? Awesome. What is your big revenue goal? What is that like monthly number that is realistic for you? That like when I get here, I have enough to pay myself a full-time income.

I have enough to invest in my business. I have enough to pay taxes. Right. So Lisa's 10K, Rob's 20K, Amy's five to six every month consistently. Aisha's 7,000, 4,000, 3K, 6K, 10K, 15K. so and Evan says five or more would be huge in South Africa. 20K. So listen, here's the thing everybody's goal is unique.

Right. Everybody's goals unique. Everybody's life is unique. Everybody's cost of living is unique. Right. So we get to help you create the revenue that's going to be life-changing for you. Right. And the mindset's all the same behind it. The strategies and structures are all the same behind it. So what's the gap for you? What's the gap? You know, is it going from zero to five? Right.

So I would say how many, how many times, you know, is it 5x? 5x times zero, zero. So obviously, like what's what's the gap, right? If you're going from where you're at today to where you need to be, what's the gap? So and then what's possible for you when you get there? What does your life look like when you get there? For me, it was I got to quit a day job that I hated. I got to stop.

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Like sitting in rush hour traffic every day, feeling like I was wasting my life. I got to have a bigger impact because I got to have like see this ripple effect happen. for Alex, who quit her day job just four months in, she gets to go on field trips with her kids and you know, be in pick them up, take them to school and pick them up from school. Allison just said, I get to pay my kids tuition without borrowing. Michelle says, no more 40-hour weeks, time for hobbies in life.

Rob says quit day job, freedom of choice, more kid time. Yeah. Erica. Erica who started from zero was just like, I'm actually looking forward to 2022 and I've never looked forward to the future ever. I mean, this is the kind of thing, yeah, bills paid in full, all of the things. So, what is possible for when you do when you get there? It is worth it. Worth it, worth it. So, for the sake of this example, I'm gonna use $10,000 a month because it's easy math for me.

But like do this for you. Okay. Like use your number in these examples because this is unique to you, right? So at $10,000 a month, let's say you want to make $10,000 a month because like this, I and I'm basically giving you my example from 2018. I wanted to pay myself a paycheck of $6,000 month.

And I wanted the rest of the money for to invest back into my business and to be able to pay the IRS. Now I am not a tax professional or a lawyer or anything, but this is how I'm like, I pay myself first and then I figure out, excuse me, how much taxes I need to set aside after, you know, making my money, pay investing back in my business. I used to call that expenses.

I call it investments now. We'll talk about that in a in a little bit. And then what do I need to set aside to pay pay my taxes? So I'm not worried about that at tax time. So $10,000 a month at your current pricing, at the current rate that you are charging for a website right now today, how many projects at what price do you have to complete to make that happen? Right? So what I see most people do.

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Is they're like, I charge two thousand dollars for a full website. So I need to get five clients every single month. How many? Yeah. So Tabitha says seven. yeah, so you guys can pop that in the chat at your current pricing, three, four. and some of you are still charging hourly. Those of you who are charging hourly, if you take nothing away from this training, stop charging hourly. You're no longer selling your time.

And you will we'll talk more about that in a little bit. So yeah, four to five, three to five, four. So think about how much marketing you have to do to generate five clients every single month to create ten thousand dollars. So if you if you think that like for every three people that you actually get on a consultation call, one of them's gonna book.

That means you have to get talk to you have to get six people on a consult consultation call. So this, this is this is like I need to connect with 30 people a month to even get six to pay attention to me. And if let's say 50% of those are even interested in talking to me, this is how much I need to get three. That's that math did not work out right. I did something wrong with with.

I did something wrong with my math. It's shocking. but you can see that when you are undercharging, the volume of marketing that you have to do increases exponentially. It increases exponentially. And I tell and this is another tangent, but like the lower your prices are, the more people you have to get in front of and convert to to make that happen. More.

Clients is not the answer. More clients is not the answer. Increasing your prices is the answer. So if you're like, Shannon, that's your whole webinar, just raise your prices. Okay. Well, I'm just going to leave and go back and change, tweak that on my website and I'm good to go. Right. It's like, no, not quite. Like it doesn't just work like that, that you could just go change your prices and you'll be able to like sell more projects. So hang with me here. If you're like, I signed up for this, she just told me to like do some change my math.

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but you can see that, you know, if you have all of the pieces of the framework in place that I'm about to share with you, and you you can in five extra price from 2000 to 10,000, you have to do way less marketing to make that happen, which saves you a ton of time. So that's what I want to to share with you is break down how.

This 5P framework works because literally, if you just like go change your price with how I've seen almost every single one of you who has a website that you submitted to me through your application, how you're packaging, positioning, and pricing your services and presenting them right now. If you go and change the price on that, you're going to prove your thought true that people won't pay that much because that's your first thought, right? I wanted.

I want to make $10,000 from a web design project, but no one's going to pay that much. And so this is the framework to put in place to be able to 5x your prices, 5x your revenue without 5xing your workloads. So the other, yeah, and the other thing that will happen, yeah, exactly. Sky said self-fulfilling prop prophecy. The other thing that will happen is you'll you'll walk away from this training, you'll go change your prices.

You'll hear that you're too expensive. You'll hear that people can't afford it. You will put your prices right back to where they were, and you will just continue undercharging and over delivering. So you have to have all of these five pieces in place for people to say yes to premium prices. So definitely get out your pen and paper because we are going to dive into the 5P framework to 5x your revenue without 5xing your workload. Because

We want you creating services that clients value and are happy to pay you for. We want you to spend less time delivering them. We want you to have a steady stream of dream clients coming in. So we don't want just people who are paying you premium pricing. We want you to like those people and actually like enjoy working with them and believe in their mission, right?

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and we want you to do this without you having to spend a ton of time marketing. So that's why our framework consists of these five key pieces: positioning, packaging, pricing, pre-framing, and product or premium client experience. So we do not want you undercharging, overworking, and maxing out your time anymore. We don't want you making zero dollars from your web design business anymore, right? We want you to believe in.

Like banish that imposter syndrome because we want you to truly believe in the value that you bring to your clients and make your marketing easier when you do that. So when you're undercharging and over-delivering, overworked and stretched thin, you don't want to market yourself, right? You can't take on one more client. You know, when you're doing that, it's a you're doing a disservice to yourself. You can't show up as your best self.

And you're doing a disservice to your clients because you can't show up as your best self for them either. When we're like resentful and burnt out, like that is just it's not good for anybody, right? So let's dive in to this 5P framework. I'm gonna take a breath and a sip of water and give you guys a chance to like get your notebooks out.

I could like go on. Okay. So the first piece of the framework that you need to have in place is packages, right? And you're like, stop charging by the hour, have packages, web design packages. And a lot of you do this. I mean, a lot of you have packages, you charge by the package. I didn't see hourly pricing on very many of your websites, so that's awesome.

But what I did see on a lot of your website is packages based on the time it's going to take you to do the project or deliverables. So what you get, what I see is like you look at what everybody else does and you're like, okay, a five-page website with this many revisions and this many logos and this turnaround time and the scope of it, or if there's a membership site, like all these pieces and parts, and you put the deliverables all together and you're like, this is how much I charge for this. So $2,000 or

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$500 or $10,000, whatever, whatever it is that you charge, right? And that's what everybody else does too, right? That's what everybody else does too. So the result is that all the client is doing is looking at your website and another person's website and another person's website and comparing all the deliverables, apples to apples to apples, and trying to figure out, okay, well.

How do I even know which one to pick? This person's charging 500 for all this. This person's charging 5,000 for all this. I guess I make my decision based on price, right? And you limit how much money you can make when you do that. yeah, yeah. Kate, $25 Wix websites on Fiverr yesterday. Yeah, exactly. Like.

When you're like, how in the world could I possibly make a full-time living as a web designer when this guy over here is charging $25 for a whole website? Like, this is how. So because you're packaging based on time and deliverables. The way you attract premium clients is when you have packages based on ROI, right? So package, we are not selling time. We're not selling deliverables. We are selling a revenue generating asset.

For our clients. We're selling the long-term value of that website that the that that the long-term value that that website can create for our clients over time. Because every moment that your client does not have the correct website in place, and and what I mean by correct is correct for their business, it's a missed opportunity for them to get a client. So you have to got to stop selling lists of things that you include in.

Your website. You create premium packages that solve client or solve problems for your dreaming clients and price that based on what's possible for them, regardless of how fast you can build it. Right. So you you have got to stop, you first have got to stop thinking of your of websites as like this package of things that I deliver and start thinking about it as an asset for your clients.

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So that's the first P of the 5P framework. whoops, what did I do? There we go. So the second P in the framework is positioning. And I've talked about, I've talked to all of you guys. Like I'd say something like, I can help you like with your packages, pricing, and positioning. What I mean when I say positioning is so many of you like have you you.

Talk to a client, you get them on a consultation, and then you're like, here is my package of, you know, five pages, five revisions, you know, logo, branding, all the things. Here's how much it costs. Yes or no. Right. So you are basically saying, hey, go out and compare what I just gave you with this one price that's like you take it or leave it.

You are now putting them in a position to go figure out if they're getting the best deal. Right. So now you're competing on price with other designers. How are they going to evaluate like what this option is? Right. You make one recommendation, you're giving them a choice. The choice is yes or no. You have a 50-50 shot of getting it. When you have positioning the way we teach positioning in the Web Designer Academy, we call it

The irresistible package matrix. You we teach you how to give your clients choices. We teach you how to give your clients choices that help you test out your pricing. We teach you how to give your clients choices that empower them to make a decision on how they want to work with you. We teach you how to give your clients choices so that they're choosing their boundaries so that you prevent scope creep. So we teach you how to position your offer.

For your revenue generating asset for that package that's a you're marketing it as a revenue generating asset and not just a list of things that on a to-do list that you'll check off. We teach you how to position that offer as, you know, here are the ways that we can work together. You choose the one that's best for you. And you stop leaving money on the table because when you put a price on your package that you think

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Is what a client can afford or what a client will pay. And then you give them a yes or no choice, you are taking all of the room for movement off of the table. So we help our clients put together an irresistible package matrix that is going to empower your clients to make a choice. It's going to position you as the only option. And it's going to help you stop leaving money on the table because of your.

busted mindset when it comes to pricing, which we'll talk about in just a second. So how you position your offers is so critical to how your how to like how you can play with your pricing and test your pricing and getting clients. So we like to create what I call an empowering pricing experience for our clients so that you become your own competition.

So the that takes me to the third P, which is pricing, right? So this is the secret sauce of a truly profitable, sustainable, scalable web design business, right? Like you did the math. You know, we talked about your package price. and we we saw what it looked like for you to go from charging like 2,000 to 10,000. Like what's in the gap? I need to raise my prices five X. And like I said, you can't just like go and change.

change the price and expect the current clients that you're speaking to to want to pay that much, right? So it takes the same amount of time to build a $2,000 website as it does to build a $10,000 website. What I see a lot of people do is they're like, if it's going to cost $10,000, I need to put $10,000 worth of stuff in it. So instead of

These things that I do for my client and do really well. Now I need to go learn SEO. And now I need to go learn all of this other stuff so that I can put enough stuff in the package to make it worth $10,000. Yes, Janine just said, yes, this is my mind trap. That is not what I mean when I'm talking about 5X in your prices. What everybody's tendency to do is like, well, now I need to put 5X, 5X more stuff in the package.

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And you just 5x your workload. I said that we were going to 5x our revenue without 5xing our workload. And this is the shift. This shift happens with your prices. Yeah. Kate says higher prices feels like more pressure. We'll talk about that, Kate. so think about a client at who's willing to pay $2,000, right? so $2,000.

This is a beginner client. They're probably early on in their business journey. Someone at this stage is still figuring stuff out, right? They, this person doesn't have their whole business together. They don't understand the return on investment. They maybe haven't sold things yet. They maybe aren't working with clients yet. They're just getting started. Everything's in flux. They're still figuring stuff out. How many of you guys have worked with clients like this where they're like,

They can't get you any content to finish the site because they don't know what to put in the content. Yeah. Amy's like, right now, actually. Yeah. And people at this level, a lot of people at this level, not everyone, have an expense mindset, right? Not an investment mindset. So all they think about is what they can and can't afford. They don't think about the money that they're spending on their business as an investment.

They don't think about their website as a revenue generating asset. They're thinking about it as an expense. So we want you to shift who you're talking to and who you're working with and who you're who you're providing services for and who you're marketing to and how you're talking about web design to people who are in the investment stage of their business.

Right. Because people who are in the expense stage, your pricing attracts people who are in that stage of their business when you have low prices. Right. So we want you attracting clients with an expense mindset. So people who are seeing this as a revenue generating asset in their business. These people, they they value different things than people at the expense level, right? They value their time.

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And they are willing to spend their money to save their time because they understand that their time is better spent in other places, right? They think of their website as a revenue generating asset. You know, when they're presented with a price for something, their first thought isn't that's expensive. I can't afford it. Their first thought is, how long will it take me to make this money back? Right. Like, is it possible for me to generate 10 times more than I spent?

On this website during the lifetime of the website. They make decisions about their business completely differently. And those people are your dream clients and they are out there and they are looking for people to serve them at a high level. And unfortunately, what they're getting is people who charge high prices but aren't serving them at a high level. And then they end up with something that they cannot that they cannot use.

So we help our clients identify their dream clients, position, package, price their offers to appeal to dream room clients, but also going back to this empowered pricing, empowered pricing paradigm that we give people, also we don't know. So we are going to make it so that the client makes their own choice about how they want to work with us. So

I can promise you that there is so much mindset stuff that comes up as you increase your prices that if you don't deal with it, you actually will not raise your prices. and and you'll hold yourself back from marketing because you don't believe in the value of what you're selling. You won't believe that people are willing to pay and you'll continue to undercharge, over deliver, and 5x your price and put 5x more things in your package, which actually overwhelms clients because they're like.

I don't have time to deal with all that right now, right? And when you put all kinds of crazy stuff in your package, it creates more work for you and it creates more confusion for your clients. So we want to speak to clients that are thinking about ROI and not money gone forever. And Kate, you mentioned something that higher prices feel like more pressure. Clients who

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Are ready to pay higher prices can give you so much more information about what you need to build them the kind of website that's going to support them than clients at a lower price point. And also remember, our job as web designers is to like give the client the product that we know is going to meet their needs because we've done the work to find out what their needs are. It is the client's responsibility.

To do their part, right? A website, we all know this. If you build it, they will not come. A website is not going to magically create clients for people, right? But when you work in collaboration with premium clients to create a website that meets the needs that they have told you that they have, you are handing them the best circumstance possible for them to create the results that they want. And that is your only job. Your only job is to create the tool. It's their job to use the tool.

Right. And we help our clients educate their clients on the client, the client's responsibility. Right. because if someone's trying to sell a client a website that's going to do all this magical stuff, they should not waste their money. And we see so many people waste their money with web designers that don't deliver or or overpromise and under-deliver. So that's not what we're talking about here. So

I could talk about that all day, but I need to move on because we have so much to cover. But I just wanted to I just wanted to point that out. So the next piece of our framework is pre-framing because you could have all the packages and all the positioning and all the pricing. But if you don't pre-frame properly, they're gonna have sticker shock. So a common mistake that I see happening is when you're marketing your business and you're talking about web design, you're talking about all the things.

You're making it all about you and your skills that you bring to the table. You're like, I know how to do this. I work with these things. These, this is my portfolio, all of the stuff. And of course, you're amazing. Your portfolio is gorgeous. Maybe you don't have a portfolio. That's okay too. And this is for those of you that don't have one because you're just getting started. Your clients care what's in it for them. So when you're talking all about you and

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The deliverables and all of in the skills and all of the things. The result is that they see the price and they're just like, How am I gonna pay? how why am I gonna pay you that has all these same skills this much when I could go over here and pay this person $500? Right. So helping your client understand the value of working with someone like you is another key piece.

Because you can be totally sold on yourself. But if you cannot communicate the value of having a revenue generating asset as a website to your clients, you'll have a hard time attracting premium clients and you'll have a hard time turning them into customers. So we teach our clients how to pre-frame the value of the sites that they build for their clients from the very first interaction. So that by the time you're talking about pricing, it's

You can mitigate that knee-jerk, sticker shock. I can't afford it. It's too expensive reaction. And not only that, you'll understand how to coach your dream clients through the decision to work with you. So pre-framing the value, help your clients understand the long-term value from the first interaction. The premium price isn't a surprise or a deterrent because you're already talking to people in terms of what's in it for them when they work with you.

Right. And they don't know what they don't know. You know, they really don't know what they don't know. So you get to educate your clients on what's in it for them. So the fourth P that ties all of this together is the premium client experience. So this is a common mistake that I see. So let me let me just back up. so selling the premium, the premium project is the first step.

Right. Like getting to the point from marketing all the way to someone like signing a contract with you, that's huge. That's the first step. But where other people, but where a lot of people's businesses fall apart is in the execution. Right. And so you book the project, but you have no process, no solid project management system in place for taking that project from start to finish while holding your boundaries.

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While not overworking, while not doing work that you're not getting paid for, without scope creep, without zombie projects that never die. You guys know what I'm talking about. You have like the project that someone paid for, and yet their content still isn't, you still haven't gotten it. Or the revisions go on and on and on forever. And you have no framework and no boundaries in place with to navigate all of that stuff. So

You your business starts to leak money, right? So even though maybe you charged premium prices, now you're and if you add it up all the time that you took on this, you're like, I'm actually not making that much money an hour, right? Like for what I put into this, it is not worth it. And so you start thinking, and this is this was me in my early days of my web design business. It's like, it feels like I have 10 bosses right now that suck.

And I would rather just have one at my day job, right? And so we help our clients set expectations and boundaries from the very first interaction with potential clients. And all of this stuff, the packaging, the positioning, the pricing, the pre-framing, all of that stuff plays into it, into the premium client experience. But then we also help you set those boundaries and navigate them in a way that it's easy to enforce.

Right. A lot of us are introverted. We're non-confrontational. We, you know, we don't want to be punitive and feel like, if I tell them that this is going to cost more money, it's going to damage our relationship and it's going to be horrible for the rest of the project. So I'd rather just do it and not ask for more money and just get it done and get it over with. So then we can be done. And I don't have to deal with them anymore. Right. We want to create a premium experience for you.

And for your client, right? And we want you to have be able to clearly communicate when something's gonna cost more. We want you to confidently communicate when something's gonna cost more. Lisa said, get out of my head, Shannon. I've been you guys. The reason that, well, not only have I been you, I have helped like over a hundred of you at this point like shift out of this. So we help you.

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Do all of this in a way that feels like a win-win for you and your client. I am not like a hard like person when it comes to boundaries, right? I am very much like I want to create a premium experience for you, but it has to be a premium experience for me to create that for you. So it's a shift from being an overworking, undercharging people pleaser to being someone who can deliver.

A premium experience to your clients. And that keeps things on track. Okay. So that one is so important. clear communication and win-win boundaries. So we help you define those win-win boundaries and we help you like communicate them all the way through the project because so many people are like, I can help you sell premium web design projects.

But you're on your own after that. And we're like, no, no, like the this part is almost the most important part of okay, how do you keep it together after the fact?