#113 – September 2024 Income Report

Shannon Mattern (00:04.686)

Hey there and welcome back to the Profitable Web Designer podcast. And today I'm bringing you everyone's favorite episode, my monthly income report for September 2024, where I break down what happened behind the scenes of the Web Designer Academy, how much money we made, how much we spent, and all of the money and business lessons I learned along the way. So if you're new to the show, I write and publish income reports on the podcast every month.

even though I stopped offering one-on-one web design services over five years ago now, because how we think about money determines whether we undercharge and over-deliver and burn ourselves out, regardless of what type of business you're in, whether it's one-on-one web design services, like the majority of our listeners, or teaching women web designers how to run the business side of their web design business, like me. So our thoughts about money and financial success and failure.

are often reflections of what we think about ourselves, our worth, and what's possible for us. And these income reports help me examine that for myself and see where I might be getting off course or where I might be getting into some mind trash and creating unwanted results for myself and my business. While at the same time, helping you question what you just accept as fact and start opening up your mind to new ways of thinking about business and money that you might not have thought about before.

So when I am looking at my numbers, I'm always thinking about, how much do I need the business to make to be able to pay myself, my team? And when I say my team, I mean both employees, which are myself and Eric and Nash, our client success coordinator, and all of our subcontractors, the experts that we work with every single month to do very specific things with very specific goals in our business.

All of the tools that we use to run the business, both marketing tools and the tools that we rely on to deliver to our web designer Academy students and next level mastermind members to serve them and make sure that they're successful in reaching their goals. So we have like the operational tools, the marketing tools and the delivery tools, you know, to deliver our courses and coaching and everything to our students. And then just like the costs of running a business like

Shannon Mattern (02:23.394)

bookkeeping, insurance, and paying taxes, and paying payroll services, and all of that stuff. And all of that together is what we call our minimum baseline revenue here at the Web Designer Academy. It's like minimum baseline revenue is what I need to make to run the business and to pay for everything, right? Versus my goal revenue, which is how much I want the business to make, right?

So I always talk about how our minimum baseline revenue here at the Web Designer Academy is $15,000 a month. And that's what it costs to pay me, pay Erica, pay our team, pay for all the tools and administrative costs of running the business as it looks right now today. And how also, if you've listened to our past three income reports, June, July and August,

you know that we exceeded our minimum baseline revenue and we were bringing in about $20,000 a month. And also last month, you know, over the summer I've been exploring like where I've been playing small in my finances and, you know, exploring goal setting and like the brain science of goal setting and actually how it really works. I went ahead and set a new goal revenue of $40,000 with the caveat that I'm not putting a bunch of pressure on myself.

to or getting lost in the weeds of the how or putting a timeline on it, but just like committing to that number and then letting my brain do what it's designed to do to keep me on course to create that, that monthly revenue. Like I talked about in both my July and August income reports in detail, if you want to learn more about that, because when you start to put pressure on yourself, you create a lot of stress hormones in your body, those, those like,

thoughts of pressure, create feelings of pressure, feelings of pressure drive pressure induced actions, which can create unwanted results, right? And so that is why it's like, okay, I'm going to set this goal. And then I'm gonna like let my subconscious mind guide me to it. And so please go back and listen to.

Shannon Mattern (04:45.602)

you know, the past few episodes, you can even listen to the episode I did with hypnotherapist Lauren best about how the subconscious actually works from a brain science perspective versus like a no shame, no shade to my woo woo people out there. I just don't, I always want to know why something works and the universe is never like a good enough explanation for me. and so.

I always wanna know like what's the brain science behind this? Tell me why I should believe it outside of faith and that's what I was like really interested in exploring this summer. So anyway, I set a new goal revenue of $40,000 and we exceeded our minimum baseline at 20,000 a month in June, July and August and here's where it gets interesting. So in August, like I said, our revenue was over $20,000.

And it was exclusively from Web Designer Academy and Next Level Enrollments and Payment Plans without me doing any additional promotions for the Web Designer Academy, without me doing a paid live workshop or selling a course that we've done in the past. Because in the past, we've sold our profit accelerator program and we've sold other things that we'd previously done and bundled together into self-study courses. In August, it was exclusively

Evergreen enrollments, meaning people find us when they find us, they decide to apply. And if I think I can help them, I'll approve their application. And then they have 10 days to decide whether or not they want to move forward. And if they do within those 10 days, I give them bonus pricing. And if they don't within those 10 days, they can still join anytime. If their application is accepted, they just pay the regular price for the Web Designer Academy. And then I also tested a promotion.

and roll a promo and roll open enrollment for the next level mastermind, which I'll talk more about later, but 20,001 month just from web designer Academy enrollments is awesome. Like no additional promotions, no, like no summits, no, nothing like that. That was like, that's a, that's a benchmark, right? That's like a milestone in the business. And that is like proof that we're heading in the right direction.

Shannon Mattern (07:06.88)

check that is exactly what we want to have happening. And then in September, I planned to do zero promotions again. I had some projects on the delivery side that I wanted to wrap up, like updating our package matrix modules with like a updated strategy on how to create a package matrix. We updated our Web Designer Academy overall strategy to include our paid discovery strategy and like

showed more examples on how package matrix and paid discovery like really work together to make sales so easy and selling high ticket web design projects so much easier. And just to show more examples to our students of how to package price, position and talk about their services in a way that allows them to charge in the high four and five figure range and how to structure and price

recurring revenue services. Like we always talked about that in the web designer academy, but we didn't have like a formal, formal module on it. So I recorded that for how to structure and price recurring revenue services and put boundaries around those like care plans and SEO and conversion rate optimization in a way that's like profitable and sustainable and helps people hold their boundaries. And so I've been working.

with our conversion rate optimization team at Zainatang consulting on SEO strategy, which is something I've just simply neglected along the way. have zero excuses. It's not like I don't know what to do or what I should be doing. I just am like creating content and going and not taking the time to SEO optimize things. And I know I've been neglecting it.

And Lee over at Zayn-O-Tayn was like, this is a huge opportunity for you. So they've been working on that. They've been working on adding like meta descriptions and just optimizing all of our previous content. They also assigned me some topics to write pillar content blog posts. And so I spent time in September writing an epic 10,000 piece

Shannon Mattern (09:26.254)

10,000 word piece of pillar content, all about pricing strategy and mindset. I tried to use chat GPT to help me and to help me do that. Like I loaded a bunch of my content in as knowledge documents and like tried to give it some guidelines and everything. And I was like, man, this just came out sounding like a robot. And I know.

As my client success coordinator, Erica Nash tells me like, I need to be more patient with chat GPT and train it and give it guidelines and teach it and help it learn to learn to do better. And I'm just really impatient with it. Like I would much rather like right from scratch than try to like put everything I've done before in the chat GPT and try to get it to spit out a blog post. It's so interesting when I do that.

because it will take everything that I wrote and it will spit out like conventional wisdom that actually works against people that we work really hard on undoing inside of the web designer academy, which is so fascinating to me. I'm like, no, that's actually the opposite of what I would advise people to do when it comes to pricing. So it's just super fun to play around with it. But at the end of the day, I'm like,

I'm actually like able to write this pillar content faster just from my brain than trying to get chat GPT to cooperate with me. So I messed around with that for a while. And then I was like, listen, I'm just going to write this myself so much easier. which is, you know, I had, that's a big project. And that's why in September I was just like, I'm not going to like try to do any promotions this month.

Also in August, I mentioned that I had a few family emergencies. One of those was my 88-year-old grandma, like either broke her hip and fell or fell and broke her hip. We're unsure which one it is, but she's in a skilled nursing facility still at the time of recording this. It's been like almost two months. She's recovering and I've been going to visit her three to four times a week just to like keep her spirits up, visit her.

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while she does physical therapy, works on, you know, getting strong enough to go home and you know, that's basically like, I don't know my whole morning, three to four times a week, which not complaining at all. That's exactly why I run the business that I run so that I have the freedom and flexibility to be able to do that kind of stuff and not have to ask anybody. And also it was like,

another reason why I'm just not gonna do a promotion in September because I don't want to put that kind of pressure on my time. And I want to not feel like I need to hurry up and leave the skilled nursing facility because I have to go like write a webinar or whatever. So I also wanted some time to get ready for everything that's gonna happen in Q4 because we have big plans for

October, November, December. So I was like, cool. August was great. $20,000 a month. We did no promotions. we got five new applications for the web designer Academy, four new enrollments. There's no reason this all can't happen again in September. And we actually got nine new web designer Academy applications in September, which was amazing. I accepted six of them. three of them were brand new.

aspiring baby web designers still learning skills. And our program is for women who already have the technical and design skills but need to develop their business sales marketing and how shall we say this, client wrangling skills? Like getting a hold of like bad behaving clients or zombie clients or ghost clients.

shifting out of employee mindset, shifting out of people pleasing, really taking back control of their business. That's really who we work with. And so I welcome every single application. And when I get those brand new aspiring baby web designers still learning the skills, I'm like, okay, like, I love that you're heading in this direction, and you will be ready to come work with us in about a year.

Shannon Mattern (13:58.368)

you know, after you feel confident in your skills and you've maybe gotten a couple of projects under your belt. And now you're like, yes, I know for sure. I want to be a web designer. I'm committed to this business. I'm in it for the long haul and I want to like get off on the right foot, right? That's when I accept them. But a lot of times it's like, they're so early in their journey that making the investment to work with us is it's going to

their runway to a return is gonna be like much, much longer. And I know that it's not the right use of their time and money at this stage in their business, which is why I decline them. So to that, if you're listening to this and you're like, I'm not sure if I should apply, please just go ahead and apply. You can go to webdesigneracademy.com forward slash apply. I will so kindly let you know.

if I think we're a good fit for you right now in your journey or not. If not, no harm, no foul. We are not mean about it at all. We're not like, you're not good enough to join our program. It's not like that at all. It's like, are some resources or people who might help you at where you're at on your journey. And someday it will be us and we look forward to working with you when it's time. So out of the six,

That applied. But so we got nine applications, three of them did not qualify. Six of them did. I invited all six of them to join. One of them said yes and is already killing it in the web designer Academy. So less said yes in September than said yes in August, which is super interesting. And then we got one new next level mastermind member in September from our open enrollment promo in August. So let's dive in to our numbers for September.

Our inflow was $8,899. Our outflow was $18,418, which removed $9,519 from our reserves. So that 18,000 that we spent in September, that included paying the second half of the deposit on our Airbnb reservation for our next level retreat. So without that,

Shannon Mattern (16:21.066)

our outflow was right at that $15,000 minimum baseline revenue mark. So we got more applications in September, less enrollments, less inflow and more outflow. Right after three months of 20K plus revenue months and right after I declared that my brand new goal is 40,000, we bring in less than $10,000. But here is what is so fascinating to me about this. I don't feel like anything has gone wrong.

like I would have in the past. Nothing's broken, nothing needs to be fixed. I had overflow in June, July and August that added enough money to my reserves more than enough so that when September came along with its lower inflow, it was covered. Our rolling six month average with that $8,899 a month in there is still $17,000 a month.

So the average, you know, inflow in the past six months is on average 17,000 a month. I still got six qualified applications. That is exceptional. Like if you look back at a year ago to get six qualified applications in one month, yeah, we were not getting that many applications. And I know some of those people will take the leap and join us in the future. Old me would have been a freaking out and changing everything.

like so many of y'all do when you market your business for like one or two weeks and you don't get instant results and then you decide that you need to niche down, pivot and redesign your website, right? I used to do that stuff too. Old me would have been freaking out looking at that number and trying to change everything. And I see now in hindsight, whenever I would do that, how it just slowed my results down. takes...

so much time and effort and energy to change everything, to like sign up for a new coaching program, start doing their strategy versus just staying the course and making some tweaks and accepting that there will be some months or some times that you don't get the same results as you got before or as you're building, you know, building momentum behind you. And sometimes you will make less money than other times. And that's why building that reserve is important.

Shannon Mattern (18:46.296)

That's why knowing your real actual numbers is important. I know so many people hate looking at their numbers. feel anxiety, scarcity, fear, whatever. You have to add up what you're spending and look at it very neutrally and make decisions based on that. And also not go pie in the sky like your big sexy gold numbers and acting like you have to have a $10,000 a month every single month or you're failing like,

Do you really need to make 10,000 every single month to run your business and pay yourself really well? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, I don't know. It depends on where you live and what your expenses are. Everybody's business is different. Not to say that a six figure web design business or 10K months isn't totally possible. It absolutely is. But if you are telling yourself that because you're not there yet that you're failing, that's a problem, right?

That's the problem. So old me would have been freaking out and changing everything to be like, my God, we only had $8,899 this month. Like I need to change everything. The sky is falling. It's all falling apart. That is, I'm just like, I feel so grateful that I don't think that way anymore. And I also know that like, you know, looking at those three $20,000 months in a row,

I also on the flip side wasn't like, woohoo, this is gonna continue forever. We all get a raise and we can buy this, this, this and this and that. It's like, no, it means I have enough money for payroll when the fourth month is lower than our minimum baseline that I can stay the course with the plan that we've set and watch the numbers increase over time. So that's why setting that 40K as my goal revenue, like it didn't come from,

like this energy of it has to happen now. And if it doesn't happen, something has gone wrong. It comes from the energy of like, I trust myself to make informed decisions along the way to get there. I can stay the course and make data-driven versus emotion-driven decisions. And sure, those data-driven decisions are still going to have some emotional components to them in terms of what do I value right now?

Shannon Mattern (21:12.77)

and what do I have the capacity for right now and what's important to me in my business and life right now? That's where the emotion comes into the data-driven decisions versus emotion-driven decisions from like the pendulum of like, yes, we're rolling in it, everything's going, like let's just spend a bunch of money or on the other side of it, everything's falling apart, the sky is falling and I have to change everything, right? Making decisions from a place of like,

What are my values? What's important to me in life right now? What's the data say? The data might say to do something that doesn't align with my current life, with my current schedule, with my current capacity, with my current level of energy. But at least I'm still making a data-driven decision to say, hey, the data might be showing us that this is something we could do.

but also based on everything that I have going on right now that I value, I'm going to make an informed decision not to do that versus I'm making decisions from fear or elation on the other side. So it's just a really, I don't know, calm, peaceful place to be in business.

So we did look at the data in September. Lee at Zana Tang Consulting, we have a meeting every month and she shows me all of our KPIs, all of the research, all of the data. And it's so fascinating. And I so, love paying her every month to do this work for me and look at our business through a lens in a completely different, she's on the outside looking in. She brings so much perspective that like I can't have when I'm

running everything, not everything, Erica does a lot, like, you know, when I'm running my piece, she brings so much perspective to the business. So here's what the data told us in September. One, we've been running Facebook ads for the past, I don't, I wanna say since spring, maybe, maybe the past six months, at least three months. And the data says that they're bringing us new subscribers.

Shannon Mattern (23:35.48)

but not new applications. So we're adding to our email list, but we're not getting applications originating from Facebook ads, and especially not in the time horizon needed to make the ads profitable. So I've known this on some level ever since 2020, ever since every time I've tried to run ads for the Web Designer Academy in its current form. And I'm finally glad to have data that says Shannon.

you can stop running ads. My best applications and ultimately students come from searchers and speaking events, not scrollers. People searching for podcasts for web designers, for marketing advice, people attending educational events, people who are actively investing time into learning versus those who are like scrolling for entertainment. if this, if you...

are a scroller. This is no shade to you. This is not to say that none of my students scroll for entertainment and don't find value there. There's a ton of valuable content that lots of people are creating on social media. And so I'm not to say that there's no value there. And many of my colleagues create incredible content for social. I just don't spend a lot of time there. So my ads,

are bringing in people who are like interested, but like nowhere near ready to work with us. And that's cool. That's okay. We decided to just stop running ads. And so that also leads me to, gave myself permission in September to quit my Reels experiment and to quit posting on social media altogether. Now I know that this might sound, I don't, I don't know how it might sound, but

Let me back up. I talked back in previous income reports about how every time I went to like make a reel, I had this incessant negative critical self-talk that was like holding me back from even making it. And I even talked to a couple of my podcast guests. Gigi from 16 Creative, Gigi Davarashvili from 16 Creative, and also Liz, what is her last name?

Shannon Mattern (25:58.272)

I will think of it.

Shannon Mattern (26:17.078)

Liz Mosley. So with Liz Mosley and Gigi Dvarshvili, we talked about, you know, using Reels and social media to connect with my existing audience versus trying to grow my audience and gamifying content creation. And I've also had so many people say, like, talk to me about how they've had a lot of success and growing their audience through creating Reels and TikToks and

just how they think that the kind of things that I'm talking about and what I'm doing, my audience is there, like paying attention to that. And so I'm like, okay, I hear what you're saying. And when I have that many people telling me to do something that I'm so resistant to do, there's something there for me to learn. And so I started to like,

dig in and learn and notice this incessant negative critical self-talk about like my appearance and like just this trash talk my brain was like telling me about how old I looked and how weird I talk and how I blink too much and how my mouth moves weird, just all of this stuff.

And so I committed to figuring out a process and to stop crap talking myself. And I'm proud to say that I did both of those things. I figured out a process to make creating the reels pretty fast, chat GPT massively helpful to help me like boil down what I wanted to talk to, to fit within the timeline of a reel, teleprompter.

to put scripts in so that I didn't ramble, which I have a tendency to do. can be long-winded, which is why I love podcasts and blogging and email and other long-form content. Just a process for like recording them on Zoom where I'm most comfortable editing them, whatever. So I figured out this process and I was able to like really quickly produce a lot of content in a short period of time.

Shannon Mattern (28:24.908)

And I did it for two to two and a half weeks, maybe three. And I didn't crap talk myself, which was awesome. I'm so proud to say that I figured out a process. I stopped like degrading myself basically, or like not degrading myself, but just tearing myself apart. And I still did not like doing it. The whole process end to end was a grind.

I didn't really dread it, but I was just like, I'm not, I don't feel authentic here. I think that's the biggest thing that I can say is like, I don't feel authentic here. I feel like I am quote unquote faking it. I feel like a robot. I don't feel like myself. And the data shows that that didn't really move the needle for us, right? So.

I know that I didn't do it long enough to move the needle. Like I'm sure that I did not. But my thought process is why am I doing something that I don't like where I don't feel authentic and it takes me that much mental energy, mental capacity, effort and time when there are so many other things out there that I could be doing that I like doing.

that feel natural, normal, and authentic to me that I'm really good at that don't feel like work to me that create the results that I want to create. And for me, now that I did it and I didn't just write it off, it's not creating content for social media. It's just not. And guess what? That's okay. It's okay. All the other marketing strategies we teach in the Web Designer Academy don't involve social media either.

Why? Because I don't use it. And so it's an alignment for me to be like, I'm putting up some kind of clever message on all of my channels about how we teach marketing in the WDA that doesn't involve social media and link to our free course and just piecing out on creating content and posting for social. And the only thought that I have that like keeps one toe in the social media pool is, am I leaving money on the table?

Shannon Mattern (30:44.31)

Am I leaving money on the table by not being on Instagram or LinkedIn or TikTok or Facebook or YouTube, like whatever? Am I leaving money on the table? And I really contemplated this and then I just decided it doesn't matter. I don't want that money on that table. There is other money on other tables that I like better.

I don't need all the money on all the tables. There are other tables with money on it. And so if you're making decisions to do things that you don't wanna be doing because you're worried about leaving money on the table, I want you to question that thought. Really, truly question it. Is there only one table with money on it? If you leave money on that table, is it possible that there's another table on it with the same amount of money or even more money on it?

What is it really costing you to pick up money from tables that you don't wanna pick up money from? The tables you don't like, right? It cost me a lot to put time, money, energy, capacity into trying to pick up money on a table that I'm not even interested in. And it feels unauthentic, it comes across as unauthentic and I don't like doing it.

I am happy to leave that money there for someone else to come along who is better suited for it. There are other tables out there with money on them for me. For me, the tables that have my money on it, writing epic blog posts, because I have a lot to say, recording podcasts, because I have a lot to say.

meeting new people and interviewing them on this show, speaking at summits and conferences, teaching, being on other people's podcasts, collaborating with other cool people who are creating content on lots of different channels, and being there that way without having to commit to like creating the channel myself. There is an abundance of other opportunities out there. So many tables, so many tables that I like that don't feel like work to me, so much money on all of those tables that I couldn't possibly pick it all up.

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It is never ending. I don't need money on tables that I don't like. And isn't that what it's all about? For the people that are good at social media, that it comes naturally to them, that they love it, that they feel so connected there, I'm guessing most of the time it doesn't feel like work for them, which is part of the reason why they can do it so consistently, why they come across so authentic, why it works for them and why it feels so natural to them.

Do what you love and the money will follow. And that's not just the thing that you do for money, it's your marketing too. So we've dropped the ads, we've dropped the reels, we're putting intentional effort into SEO, speaking, podcast guesting, other types of collaborations. And I am so down with that, which means that I get to do the exact same work that I teach our students, build relationships, meet people, tell them what I do, see how I can help them.

research people who serve my same audience, build a relationship with them, find creative ways to serve them in their audience, and explicitly ask for what I want, put myself out there, be willing to be ghosted and rejected and judged and do it consistently. And that consistency part is something that so many people struggle with. So in September, we actually started adding an outreach segment to our weekly live strategy call. I want to pull one script.

from our library, our catalog of relationship building scripts in the Web Designer Academy, our students pick one person to send it to, and then we spend five minutes customizing it and sending it. Five minutes, that's it. We try to make marketing like so big, but it doesn't have to be that big. Small consistent actions over time add up. And I love it when we'll be on our live strategy call and someone will be like, my gosh, I just heard back.

during the call from the email I sent at the beginning of the call, or they'll share the following week, they have a consult scheduled from the outreach they did the week before. And it's so perfect to do it on the call because like their stuff comes up and then they can get coached on it right then and there. Like, I'm too busy right now. And if I send this outreach, what if someone wants to work with me now and I can't handle it? Or what if they tell me that they actually hated working with me? Or what if they get really angry with me and tell

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tell me like to never email them again. And we can coach on that stuff and clean it up because that's the gold. That's the clues. That stuff is everything that's standing in the way of you and your revenue goals. And same for me. Like I asked my podcast students or my students what podcasts I should pitch. And they said, the marketing made simple podcast from Storybrand. And so they gave me several. I've pitched them all.

but I really noticed all kinds of stories I was telling myself about pitching the Marketing Made Simple podcast. I probably need to be a certified Story Brand Guide and I'm not, or I should ask them to be on my show first, or I'm not quote unquote big enough to be considered and I get to pay attention to that and then do it anyway and let them tell me yes or no and find out. Maybe all of my assumptions are right, maybe they're wrong, but I will never know unless I ask. And so by the time you hear this,

I will have reached out and asked to be a guest or I literally just had an idea. Right now, as I was saying this, I know someone who is a certified Story Brand Guide and I might reach out to her and ask her if she could make an introduction for me. And then we'll see what they say. But for me to talk myself out of it because I'm intimidated is exactly why I need to do it. So there's this difference between I'm not good enough

and I just really don't like doing this. So when I say I need to, because I'm intimidated, that's why I need to do it. That's why I needed, my intimidation and negative self-talk was why I needed to get over it and make some reels and then gather some data to decide whether I wanted to do it or not. Such a huge difference between not doing something because you think you're not good enough.

versus deciding not to do something because you just don't like doing it. So there's the distinction. And I can tell when I'm operating from, I'm not gonna do this because I don't think I'm good enough. I'm afraid I'm gonna be judged versus I just don't like doing this. I don't feel like me. This doesn't feel authentic. Huge difference. And that's, I'm following that true North when it comes to how I'm marketing my business.

Shannon Mattern (37:48.428)

And so I love meeting new people. I love getting to know them, learning from them, seeing how I can support them, seeing how we can create win-win-wins together, meaning they win, I win, and our collective audiences win. And I'm not gonna wait for people to come to me. Like if you know me, you know that if you tell me no, I'm like, get out of my way. You know that I go after what I want. I create my own opportunities. I blaze my own trail. It's something that my husband,

particularly he loves it about me, but he doesn't love it about me. But that doesn't mean that I don't have mind trash that gets in the way. And so like I said, my first hurdle with reels was negative self-talk. Cleaning that up was just necessary for my mental health, regardless of if I ever make another reel in my life, right? There's a difference between...

stopping yourself because you don't feel like you're good enough versus deciding not to do something because you just don't like to do it or it makes you feel unauthentic. So another thing that happened in September is that I made some financial decisions based on the criteria that I talked about in episode. What episode was that?

Shannon Mattern (39:10.264)

Gosh, that was like a while ago, back in episode 107, how to make financial decisions with confidence in your web design business. So I made some financial decisions using that set of 25 criteria to do that. So one of the decisions that I made was to hire someone to do all of the tech and anything related to our website for the 2025.

Simply Profitable Designer Summit. Like it is crazy to think about, but that summit's only six months away, which means right now I'm pitching speakers and getting my speakers booked. So save the dates. It's happening March 17th through 21st. And this year's theme is recurring revenue, which is one thing everybody wants is consistent recurring revenue that they can count on in their web design business. So that is going to be.

the theme for the 2025 summit. And there are so many awesome summits out there for designers and simply profitable is in its ninth year. And we're freshening things up this year by focusing all the sessions around a single hot topic. And like I said, there was no hotter topic right now than creating consistent recurring revenue you can count on in your web design business. So in thinking about like the lift of the summit, I've done it for myself for two years.

done all of the tech and all of the stuff. And I was like, you know what, there is an opportunity cost for me to be doing all of the tech. And when I say opportunity cost, I'm saying it is costing me, even though I am not paying someone else when I do it myself to do all of the tech for the summit, it costs me because I don't, because spending my time there means I'm not spending my time marketing the web designer academy.

like doing all of the things to grow our business. And so I decided after using our financial decision-making criteria to outsource it. And one of our web designer academy grads is a like specializes in summit setup. And so I hired her to do all of the tech for Simply Profitable so I can focus on promoting the web designer academy next level, our paid discovery course.

Shannon Mattern (41:34.862)

in Q1 of 2025, that sounds so weird to say, and then after the summer as well. I also hired my copywriter, Sarah G, of Sarah Designs.com. I always get her. Sarah Design, no Sarah Designs, just SarahDesign.com.

I hired her again to do two more copywriting projects for me, a sales email series for our paid discovery mastery course. We hosted that as a live workshop back in June. It was a massive success. We got such good feedback from the students who attended the workshop live. And we're just seeing massive success with those students, with our web designer academy students.

They're using the process to shorten their sales cycle and book projects at higher prices than ever. So we're actually launching that in October as a standalone course that anyone can buy. And so I hired Sarah to write the sales emails for me for that. And she's also gonna design my slides for our year end application only training, because it's not like just design, it's strategic design. It's almost like designing a sales page in a slide.

format and it's also it's not a lot of copywriting but it's kind of copywriting because it's taking a presentation that I've written and pulling out the key points and the messaging and so that's just important as the designs and I am not a designer. Slides are a really time intensive project for me and I also I have this like in the back of my mind

I'm like, I'm not a designer. I'm not great at this. And yet I'm trying to sell the Web Designer Academy, which is not a design program. It's a business marketing and sales program. But still, the people who are my students, my clients, they're way better designers than me. And I always have this thing in the back of my mind, like, these slides look like crap.

Shannon Mattern (43:53.548)

Who would buy this from me when my slides are terrible? Like stuff like that. I have mind trash about it. And because I have mind trash about it, it takes me a long time to design the slides. And yes, I could spend time cleaning up my mindset around it, but that doesn't improve my skills. It really doesn't improve my skills. And I'm like, I've done these slides so many times.

I know how long it takes me. I just feel like my time is better spent promoting the training and maintaining my capacity for all of the other moving pieces and parts of this year end live private training that we do. So based on the criteria that I set for making those financial decisions, these three things, Summit Tech support,

emails for paid discovery mastery and slides for our final open enrollment event for the year. They checked the boxes of investing in revenue generating assets for our business, meaning that I'm gonna reuse them again and again. They're already tested and proven, meaning I've done all of this before, we've gotten wanted results, and so I'm making an informed decision.

I'm making an informed decision to hire someone to do the next iteration. And I have other revenue generating things to spend my time on while those things are being done for me, like marketing. Now, do I know for sure that these investments will pay off over the long term? No, because no one can know the future, but I have data to back up the decisions. And so I feel really good about them. And also I have past history to show me that when I hire Sarah G to write sales,

related think create sales related things for me, I get a return on my investment. Like every job that we've done together so far has resulted in me making more than I paid her. And so that's not a fluke. So that's just something that I have data on. So the other thing that I promised that I'd update you on is

Shannon Mattern (46:03.298)

the results of our very first official open enrollment for our next level mastermind. And our next level mastermind is for experienced women web designers who have plenty of clients, but the way they're running their web design business is unsustainable because their business is running them. And I wanted to test out an open enrollment for next level because historically it's only been open to web designer academy students.

but I suspected that there are plenty of women in our audience who are more advanced than our target market for the web designer academy and would be a great fit for the next level mastermind. So hired Sarah G to help me write a sales page and sales emails for next level. I concurrently wrote a training outlining our next level framework and how it works to help advanced women web designers identify what's really in the way of their business and life that they want. It's usually not systems or processes or like anything like that.

and really helped them reverse engineer custom plan to reach their unique goals. And I did a promotional campaign to our email list, inviting people to fill out the application. And then if they met the criteria for next level, I'd invite them to the training. And during that training, I officially invited everyone who qualified to join the next level mastermind. And I shared in my August income report, that by the day.

of the training, I'd received 14 applications. And I had one person join live right then and there on the training. Almost everyone came live. One person joined live on the training. And that's how I know that like, yep, this is totally aligned. My messaging was aligned. My mindset was aligned. All of the people that suggested to me over the years to open up.

next level to people outside of the WDA were onto something like whenever I have someone just enroll right then and there, I'm like, I'm onto something, right? Then we always send out the replay to everyone and there's a timeline to make the decision. Usually 10 days we send a seer 10 days to two weeks just depends on the like the level of investment. There's always a series of emails that are that go out after the training daily.

Shannon Mattern (48:16.038)

to help people make the decision one way or another to join the program. And each email talks about a different aspect of the program, goes deeper on what's possible, who it's for, the types of problems we solve, all of that stuff. And there was a series of 10 emails just really walking people through the decision to join. So we had 14 qualified applicants. Two of those were actually already people in the Web Designer Academy. And they were just curious for when they...

graduate whether or not next level will be the right next step for them. So really we had like 12 people who could join right then and there. And we had two enrollments for the mastermind out of those 12 for a 16.67 % conversion and a 5x return on my investment in copywriting for the next level mastermind once I've received all those payment plan payments and

Old me would have secretly wanted all 14 people to join on the very first day, right then and there on the webinar, even though I didn't have space for 14 people. And old me would have operated like something went wrong when that didn't happen. And I would have changed a bunch of things that did not need to be changed. New me is like, awesome. That worked really well. Let's ask for feedback and see why the people who joined, joined and why the people who didn't join made that decision.

and let's see if there's anything that we can, we want to change on our end in the future. And I got lots of insightful feedback. And then I get to look at that feedback and decide, is there anything I want to change based on this? Because for both the web designer academy and next level, me approving the application is just the first step of the process. I look based on the information you've given me, which is usually not all of the information.

based on what you've given me and what I'm seeing on your website, that's how I make the decision. But it's the first step of the process. It might turn out that even though I think you're a good fit, you didn't give me all of the information and you actually don't think you're a good fit. Or after getting more information, it turns out that you're not a good fit and that's okay too. That doesn't mean that I need to change to fit you. And I also don't feel like you need to change to fit me.

Shannon Mattern (50:38.892)

I don't feel like I need to convince anyone to work with us. I trust you enough to be able to decide for yourself after going through our sales process, which is all about giving you all of the information that you need to decide for yourself. And I trust myself enough to know based on our interactions and feedback, if your feedback is like, yeah, that's a great idea, we should change that or.

actually that feedback means that you're not actually quite right for this program and that it's all okay, right? It's all okay. Neither of us needs to change anything in a lot of those situations. And so it's just really interesting to look at how now I see two out of 12 as like validation and let's keep going. And if, you know, the...

Any of these other 12 people want to join in the future, they are more than welcome to, and I understand why they didn't right now. And that doesn't mean I'm going to make any changes to the program. but we'll just keep opening it up and keep repeating the process, which is awesome. And we'll also look at how can we increase this conversion? Like what are some things related to feedback and just technical that we might want to change? So it's just really fun.

to look at business that way. And then I made the Next Level application evergreen, which means you can go fill it out right now at webdesignerecademy.com forward slash next if you want. And if I think you're a good fit for the mastermind, I'll send you the replay of the training and all of the details about joining Next Level. And we're gonna do an open house for Next Level in December of 2024 as well. So honestly, I think the most important thing that happened

in September, as I reflect on the month, is that I'm sitting here thinking like, what a huge difference it is for me to see our revenue in September at under $10,000, not at all be worried that it's all falling apart, to be confident in our plans going forward, to be making data-driven decisions about marketing and outflow and inflow and investments and how I'm spending my time and just to have data to look at, to create and test new theories. And one of which could be...

Shannon Mattern (53:01.57)

We don't need to change anything. Just stay the course and keep doing what we're doing and other, and just giving myself the permission to stop doing things that don't feel natural and authentic to me and give myself permission to really like lean into the things that feel super fun and good. So that's all I got for you for my September income report. I hope you heard something that helped you. And if so, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a rating or a review.

It helps us get in front of other web designers that need help with their web design businesses. If you're listening on Spotify, you can just go to the show page and tap rate show. And if you're listening on Apple podcasts, you can just scroll up on this episode. You'll see a link to webdesigneracademy.com forward slash review. And that will take you to the right place in the app to leave us a review. So thank you in advance for taking the time to do that. And I'll see you back here next week. Bye.