How to get unstuck in your website design business

This is the show for website designers and website developers who would like to have a wildly successful but also wildly happy website design and development business without working yourself. Absolutely into the grounds. Today we are going to talk about how to get unstuck in your website design business.

Because as designers, as developers, we have all been there. Where, you know, we start out and we have the skills and we think it’s going to be brilliant. And we get referrals, usually our Starts off with friends and family referrals and everything goes really well until it doesn’t. And there are places that we get stuck and we’re going to unpick these here today so that we can move forward in the business with clarity, with confidence and with happiness.

Because if we’re not happy in our business, what’s it all about really?  So the first thing,  look at where you are stuck in your business, or if you’re not stuck in your business right now, look at where you get stuck. You know those times where you find that you’re really procrastinating, that you’re just not picking up that project that you have to do, or you go to market your business, and you’re feeling really uninspired, and yet you know You love your business, but you go to write that post on LinkedIn or on Facebook or whatever it is, and your brain’s just like, uh, no. 

Not giving you anything.  I’ve got you covered. I promise. I have been you. I have been there so many times and the more I recognized where I was getting caught in the same things, the more I was able to access a mentor, or book some coaching, or whatever it was that I needed to be able to get past it and get through it.

And, um, I have got thrown it, thrown it, I have got through it. And I’m going to teach you how to do this too.  So the first thing that I’m going to look at is, is it a process? Because this now, basically you get stuck in either your process or your mindset. And the mindsets are Stuff after years and years and now being mentoring website designers for the last couple of years, the mindset I don’t really get stuck in.

So we’ll look at that afterwards because where I tend to get stuck and where I’m imagining you’re getting stuck in places as well is with the process.  And I’ll often find myself delaying on a website.  And it might be that I don’t get started with it for a really long time. Or I do get started and I pick the website up and I do a certain amount of design work and then I put it down again. 

And I don’t come back to it for a really long time. Or I know and it’ll be sitting there tip tap tapping on my shoulder, You’ve got to do this website Holly, you’ve got to get it done, you’ve got to get it done. I don’t, well. I do always get it done. I always, I will caveat this for saying I am very process driven.

I am very time driven as well. I always pull the website projects in on time. But I once had a website that I was building, but I put off and put off and put off and then built the entire thing in 16 hours just before the deadline. And when I actually got stuck into it, it wasn’t that bad, but I’m. I’m guessing you’re generally in that space as well, if this is one of the spaces that you’re getting stuck, and I want to kind of break down with you what’s going on that’s getting you into that mindset, that stuck part of the process.

So, let’s get started.  The first place we can often get stuck is if we have promised someone a website, but we actually don’t really know how to do a certain element of the website. This can come in the early days, but it can come at any stage in your web design or development career. Because websites  are up and running.

Always evolving. There’s always the next best thing. It is like at the moment, there’s quite a lot of things I’m seeing about 3D websites and you think, oh yeah, 3D websites look really cool, but  I don’t think they look really cool if you want to buy something from them. I think they’re actually kind of quite distracting and stuff, but I know that it’s not gonna be that long until someone says to me, I want a 3D website.

I’m not going to go and build one, not at this stage, but usually it could be that someone wants an absolutely individual calculator on their website and it could be an accountant wants to be able to put a calculator where people can pay different types of taxes, it could be that Someone wants a quiz where it’s running an if this then that formula and we’re running through conditional logic on stuff.

It could be anything that you don’t have any experience with, you haven’t done before, and you’re not quite sure what to do. And the thing is, I work in WordPress. And to listen to this podcast, to work with me, you don’t have to work in any particular software, but I chose to work in WordPress. And there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of plugins out there. 

And so it’s all well and good thinking, Oh yeah, I’ll, I’ll go for a membership site or I’ll, uh, run a directory or I’ll put this calculator on or I’ll do this, that and the other. I will be able to find a plugin. Not only will you be able to find a plugin, you’ll be able to find loads of plugins. And it’s that overwhelming.

Which one do I choose? Which one works better? They’ve all got payments, which, yeah, and you can just find yourself. You know, I always talk about I’m helping people to untangle the online world, but sometimes in doing that, you find you’re tangling yourself up, you’re having to make this decision after decision after decision after decision. 

The best thing you can do at this stage is, first of all, map it out. What is it that needs doing?  What is it that you know how to do? What is it that you don’t know how to do? And pull those two things apart, because the first thing in this process is get started with what you do know how to do. So if you’re trying to build a website and you’ve absolutely stalled yourself because it needs this, let’s say, calculator, To pop up on the website.

That’s not going to stop you from building the rest of the website. Let that bit be at the end. So, don’t worry about that. Do what you do really well. And reassure yourself that you’re doing it well. And everything else will come a little bit easier. Because you will be, you know, I always say, breathe out.

You will be breathing out because you’ll be doing your work. And then you can add in this bit towards the end. And, yeah, there are loads of web design groups out there. Um,  Web design groups and communities on Facebook and Circle and LinkedIn and that sort of thing. And you can go into them and you can ask people, I’ve got to do this really individualistic thing.

Is there anyone who can do that for me?  I have coders who sometimes come in and code kind of complex bits of stuff for me because I’m actually much better at the design side. And there are people on LinkedIn who specifically want that type of work. They say, Oh, I’m not very good designer. I’m not interested in design.

I just want to be doing the fiddly coding bits. So do kind of think about collaborating as well and put a shout out on LinkedIn because there are loads of people who will come in. I mean, you will have to sift through the replies. But there will be loads of people who will come in and you’ll identify someone who will be able to work with you on it.

So, that would definitely be the first place to start if you’re stuck. It could also be that you just need a little bit of mentoring through a tricky project. Because often  When we find that a project is tricky,  it’s actually not just that thing that’s tricky. Often we’ve got something going on in our business with our mindset and it could be that we’re looking at expanding and we’ve got that tip tapping in the back of our heads but we haven’t really It could actually be that we haven’t got enough work and so you’re doing that thing that we can all do where we’re working harder and harder and harder to fulfill the  projects that we do have from the clients because we want to have such a good reputation and they want them to come back to us.

Um, but realistically clients will pay for their website and websites are just such a. Big process with having to get the branding, the images, the copy, the this, the that, have to see it through, oversee the design and stuff. That people, you know, while they become repeat clients, they’re not necessarily regular replete clients.

And, you know, as much as referrals are really lovely things to do, everyone’s in a different stage of their business. And they’re, um, you know, they can refer you to everyone, but not everyone’s going to be ready for a website. So it could be as well that if you’re having a little bit of a wobble  in that kind of area of your business, it’s really easy at these times to get hung up in the process part of it.

So I don’t know how to do this. So I’m just gonna, it’s a little bit of a burying our head in the sands approach.  And one of the other times I feel that I get quite stuck in the process side of it is usually there’s something that’s got me stumped about the design part of it and this  Almost invariably is when I haven’t had the content in the usual manner for the clients.

Now, I am a real stickler, and it’s in my terms of service, and um, about  Sorry, Neil, I’m really stumbling here. Can you just cut that out a bit and I will come back. Hold on. 

In almost all cases, it’s when I haven’t had the content in the usual manner. I am a real stickler for getting the content in one go or having it all, um, prior to the build of the design. And you’ll see in my, uh, Terms of service, which is in the web designers contract pack, which I have put together for web designers like you, you will see it’s outlined exactly how we need the content that content cannot be drip fed.

It is only once we have all of the images, once we have all of the website copy that we’ve got all of the branding, once that’s in, then we get the website booked in. We don’t even say, Hey, you know, if we get this in on the 10th, we’ll start on the 11th. We say. You know, it will be booked in within two weeks of that because we want to have time where we go through the content.

We make sure it’s in the proper condition that we want it to be in to build the website with.  Now,  every now and then, that might not happen. I talked in a previous podcast episode about how one of my clients had sent the information in Google Doc and she had hyperlinked pages in there and the website was subject to scope creep and it was really stressful and that was a website that I picked up and put down because I didn’t quite know how to manage it with a client because in theory she had given all the content within the deadline and I’d got started on the website but I had no idea that the pages were hyperlinked.

That’s not how we work in web design. So, um, That was quite a tricky one. Other times, occasionally, if I am working with someone, and I will caveat this and say that this is usually when I’m working with a member of family or a friend, and you can see that they just, they’re having their first website, and their brain doesn’t quite work in that way, around, Gathering the content.

They’ve never had to do this before. And this can often happen if someone is just setting up a business and they’ve been quite successful selling on something like Instagram or Facebook and their brain just works a bit differently for it. So I say to them, okay, we’ll work together to get the content.

Often this will end up drip fed because they will need to see some of the structure of the website, how it’s going for their brain to kick in and get the rest of it  as well. And.  I can find sometimes as they see the website be built, that their thought process around their offering or what they’re offering starts to change and it can be a really difficult experience for both the designer and for the person who is having the website built.

And again, I think As I say, I often think, Oh, it’s fine. I’ll do this for a friend. You know, I’ve got the experience to deal with it, and I do have the experience to deal with it. But my experience also tells me just to map out for them what it is they need. And that could be that they have a checklist for, uh, you know, that they check off as they go with everything or, Something that getting them to stick as closely to those terms of service, and getting me to stick as closely to those terms of service as well, is what’s going to make the best experience for everyone as well.

So When it comes down to process,  I’m going to say this. I, um, have it from, I had it in one of the other podcasts. I have won two awards. I won Website Designer of the Year in 2023. In 2024, I won Website Design Services of the Year, and it was particularly noted. About my how I handled clients and what experience that the clients had and the happier experience the client has usually I find is the happier that the designer is as well and it’s one of the reasons I put together the web designers contract pack so that you too can have that experience because it’s Transcribed by https: otter.

ai Absolutely miserable trying to hold boundaries with clients and trying to really kick ourselves into that process of saying, no, we are a professional service. This is what we deserve. We deserve to have our content in one go. We deserve to have our invoices paid up front. We deserve all of these things.

And the Web Designs Contract Pack will really help you to get that.  So the next thing is mindset. People often get stuck with their mindset with their web design businesses. And there are a couple of reasons for this. One is, web designers often feel that they’re winging it. I mean, small business owners feel that they’re winging it.

Especially when you, um, Set up is a small business. You set up to do what you do really well but you don’t necessarily set up to become the accounts department and the marketing department and the this and the that. It’s pretty exhausting and so it can lead us to sometimes kind of question and doubt our skills because we’re wearing all the hats and doing all the things but we’re having to do all of in the same time scale in our working day that we previously did.

Just had to do our job. So it could be that you were doing web design or development for a company and you just went into work and you were working. I don’t know, like nine till six or something like that. You came in, you did the web design, web events, whatever, and you went home and now you’re working those same hours.

But you’ve got to spend, you know, two hours a day marketing and half an hour a day doing your invoices and extra time doing this and replying to emails and suddenly it all stacks up and it can stack up to the point that you just think, I don’t think I’m very good at this. I’m not making very much progress or, you know, I’m, I’m getting a part wrong.

Clients aren’t liking the way I’m communicating or I forgot to send those invoices, the amount of web designers who do not get their invoices out on time because. I mean, come on, we’re creators, so like, we just want to be creating, um, but in order to create, we need to be able to make sure that we’re paid as well.

So it’s really important. Again, things like the processes from the web designers contract pack will totally nail this for you. So the other thing that we can really get stuck with in Mindset is there’s not a lot of formal training in the web design and development industries. I mean, obviously you learn your skills and there are so many ways of learning your skills, you know, and.

Whichever way has been it for you, there’s also the fact that there’s, you know, like I was saying at the beginning of this episode, there’s lots of different trends going on, you know, whether it’s 3D websites, whether it’s this, I think I did a blog post for 2023, I think it was, what you can expect, and Brutalism was really popular at the time and stuff, but actually all of these trends just tend to really affect a handful of websites, It could be like a handful of companies that said, yeah, let’s throw loads of money at the website and let’s do this really cool thing.

Or it could be that, you know, there’s a couple of designers who’ve decided to really specialize in a particular area and they’re churning out a lot of websites at the time. But, you know, all the work that you are doing is valid and it’s worthy. And every time you build another website, So you’re either embedding or growing your skill set there as well.

So don’t not design, don’t worry that actually you don’t really deserve a seat at the table because I can tell you with the web design industry, the table’s big and everyone deserves to be there. And whether you’re working in Wix Drupal or Magento, you know, all that sort of thing, you deserve your space at the table.

And if there are areas where you feel that you’re falling down or that you would like to grow your strength in or something like that, um, some mentoring could really help with that. And obviously I do offer mentoring. You can come and find me at thisdemandinglife. com. Um, or there might be some other web designers who you’ve worked with before or found on LinkedIn who you really admire and they will.

Absolutely. I’m sure be happy to have a chat with you at some points as well. Um, but it can be hard because  There don’t seem to be a lot of kind of web designers mentorship groups. I mean, you can go on Facebook and you’ll find groups where you can jump in and ask questions and stuff. But there’s not a lot of community for website designers as well.

So, if you’re  feeling a bit like, Oh, it just feels like it’s not, it’s not going great for me.  I mean, it could be your processes and your mindset. They do need that tweaking, but remember there’s not very much community. And it’s one of the reasons that I started this podcast was so that we could develop a community and you could feel supported.

And as I say, you can always reach out to me through my website as well at this demanding life. com and we can find out where it is you need to get unstuck as well. And the other thing is we can feel. In our businesses, like, we’re doing all of the things, and we actually only want to do some of the things.

And some of the best website designers I know outsource a lot of stuff. Like, I have a technical specialist. Shout out to Stu here. Stu and I have worked together for about eight years now. He is brilliant. I do love the design stuff. I know kind of the basics of doing, you know, a lot of the kind of domain mapping and that sort of thing, but I would rather not be doing that.

It’s like also with my admin, I, I do do some of my own admin, but it’s,  Sometimes places I drop the ball and it’s some of the stuff that I would rather not be doing. And so I outsourced that to a VA, a virtual assistant, Sharon. She is fantastic as well. And if you feel like you’re dropping the ball on some of your areas,  Or you’re not getting started with some of the areas and things like that.

It could be that you’re better off collaborating and outsourcing some of that work. I was working with a brilliant photographer last weekend.  She is the photographer who  did my website photos. She’s incredible to work with. We’re working on a client’s website and she said, do you know Holly, all I want to do is just be shooting the photos.

And she said, so now I outsource everything else. I’ve got an editor, I’ve got VA. Yeah. And I just go and do the bits I like best. And don’t even think about it. We all want that for ourselves. And so I really implore you, I know sometimes it thinks, Oh my gosh, if I had a virtual assistant there, Yeah, 35 pounds an hour, I don’t want to lose that out of the website projects.

Trust me, you know when I say, I hear you, I’ve been you, I’ve been there. When I started working with Sharon a couple of years ago, I wished that I’d started working with her a couple of years before. Because yeah, it’s 35 an hour, but on the flip side, I’m making more money because it’s freeing me up from having to do all the Other bits in my business that was taking my time, that was taking me away from my website designs and my builds, it was taking me away from my marketing.

It wasn’t serving me as well. So it’s just, um, you know, the old adage about you have to spend money. You have to spend money to make money. And it is absolutely that. So, Have a look at your business. So if you’ve been feeling a little bit hung up on your business, that it’s not quite going how you want it to go, I’m sure it only needs a couple of tweaks to get there.

So have a think. Is it process? Is it mindset? Is it Is it both?  Grab a pen and paper or grab your notepad and start just to write what’s coming up for you as you do this. Say, you know, I don’t like it when, I procrastinate on website builds when,  I’m worried about dot, dot, dot, I pull myself back from marketing or advertising because dot, dot, dot, and you’ll learn a real lot about yourself in this process as well.

And say, if you want to look me up for mentoring, you absolutely can do.  This is such a big subject. I am going to leave it here because we’re already 20 minutes in. I always wanted this podcast to be bite size, and I’d really love it if you go away and do that work for yourself, where you go and you note what you’re struggling with in your business. 

If there is anything you would like me to tackle on this podcast that is bothering you, that’s coming up for you, then absolutely get in touch. There is a contact for on on my website, but also on the podcast website, which is websites made simple.co.uk. You can voice note it, you can type.  Drop it in there and I will have a look at creating some content just for you. 

So that’s it for now. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for staying with us and have a brilliant time in your web design business and I will see you next time.