Growing a successful web design business with Christy Price

Lex:

When it comes to getting clients for your web design business, I'm always talking to designers who are wondering how they can expand beyond their network and find new business owners to work with. Being a successful web designer is just as much about the client experience that you deliver as it is about the web design itself. For more on that, we turn to web design maven Christy Price. Christy's been a professional web designer for over 20 years.

She started working in house and doing more on the development side. She shifted into design and now she's been running a successful Squarespace web design practice for many years. In this episode, Christy and I took a deep dive into her marketing process, how she found clients when she started, how she finds clients now, some of the things she's tried along the way, and most importantly, the care that goes into her client experience. We talk about everything from Pinterest to podcasts. Let's get into it.

I'm Lex Roman. I help creatives make smarter marketing betts, and you're tuned in to the Low Energy leads show.

Lex:

Christy, I want to start. You have a thriving web design business. You've been in business for a really long time, but I want to take us back to the beginning.

Christy:

Nice way of saying you're very old.

Lex:

Not at all. Not at all. You're great success, and we all look up to you, but we want to sort of trace your steps. So I want to hear how you first got into web design.

Christy:

So I first started doing web design for fun. So I was in grad school and it was slowly killing my soul and I needed a creative outlet. I started building websites. This was back in the day where you would actually code them by hand into tables and rows after you cut up an image. It was very different from the way we do web design today.

That's how I got started, and eventually I left graduate school before I finished my dissertation and web design coding was a marketable skill. I got hired by a startup here in Austin, went to work for them doing coding, and the designers very kindly took me under their wing and they were the really fun people at work. So I hung out with them. They taught me design. I learned a ton, and that's how I got started.

Lex:

I love it. Were you designing and code at that point, or were you doing mockups then too?

Christy:

So we would do it kind of two different ways. The way that we most often did it is we would use Photoshop and actually build out the look of the website, slice it up, and then rebuild that in rows and columns like a table, and we would code it like that. And I remember Internet Explorer was the bane of my existence because you couldn't have any spaces in your code. It would have to all just be touching and then you couldn't find what you were looking for. So crazy days,

Lex:

Internet Explorer remains the bane of everyone's existence really, except for Microsoft.

Christy:

That has not changed.

Lex:

Yeah. When did you start working for yourself?

Christy:

Yeah, so I was working for the startup. Things were going great, the internet bubble burst, we all got laid off, and that's when I started freelancing because there were no jobs to be had. So if you wanted to continue on that path, you had to work for yourself and freelance. So that was a transition that was made for me. So I didn't really have a choice in that, but I did a lot of things when I was freelancing.

I did a lot of SQL database work that actually paid better at the time. I didn't enjoy it, but that's what I did. And then I started looking for web design clients because that's the part that I really loved doing. And I know you're curious about. How did you find your first client and it was through networking. So I met a great graphic designer here in Austin, and one of her clients was looking for someone to build a website. So it was definitely networking, word of mouth for that first client.

Lex:

I hear that all the time from service providers, networking. Your relationships are so key, and I think it's also really common to do what you did, which is to go into web design, professionally, work for a company, and then start your own company having sort of cut your teeth on their projects

Christy:

Right? So I learned definitely that I'm not built for working in a large company. So that was one takeaway for me. I'm so much happier working on my own, not a great employee. So yeah, I definitely found my stride in freelancing. 

Lex:

So when you started your web design practice, what were some of the things that you were wrong about?

Christy:

So two things in particular. The first was that I thought I had to charge based on how much work I did, and so I was custom building these websites because I wanted it to be difficult and hard and time consuming so I could charge for that. After a while of doing that, you start realizing the client doesn't understand what goes into this.

They are paying for an outcome and the value that they're receiving. So that was a big mindset shift for me. It's like, oh wait, it doesn't have to be hard and painful and long for me to charge. It can just be like, oh, you need a website. Here's a website instead of months of coding. So that was a big mindset shift for me, and I think when I realized that it was like, oh, I made life very difficult for myself,

Lex:

Super common.

Christy:

And I think the other thing that I didn't really understand was onboarding and offboarding clients. So I didn't do that well at all in the beginning. It was very loose. I didn't have processes that I'd nailed down, and it was kind of all over the place. And I think you learn through failure what you need to correct. And so there were a lot of missteps early on about expectations and people reaching out six months after I built the website for edits that they thought were included. And I'm like, oh, no, that's a different project. So you learn as you go.

Lex:

Yeah. Okay. We're going to come back to that because you have become an expert in onboarding and offboarding. You have a really dialed in process, but I think people would love to hear about. So let's fast forward to today. Can you share a bit about how your business works now, some of the things that you offer and who it's for?

Christy:

So the biggest change is that I now work on the Squarespace platform, which makes my life so much easier. I'm not doing tons of custom coding, extreme long projects like I was doing before. Something else that's changed is I now have a steady stream of clients. I'm not worrying when that next lead will come in. And I've also diversified my income, so I have some different income streams now instead of just one-on-one client work.

Lex:

And I think that's a really interesting part of your business because a lot of us think of web designers as mainly doing one-on-one client work. Can you share some of those income streams?

Christy:

Yeah, so in addition to doing custom web design, so I also sell premium Squarespace templates. So somebody wants to DIY their website, and they just want a good starting point. They can look at my templates, find one that's aligned with their business and their goals, and it is strategically designed, so it has the pages, the flow that they need, and it comes with prompts.

So they just plug in the words and the images and launch. So that's one thing that I offer for DIYers. I also offer some courses and education for aspiring web designers. So I have just, if you want to just get started, I have a checklist for a client process from beginning to end. For web designers, it's $17, so it's inexpensive. It has over a hundred points on it, so you can take that and then just make it your own from there.

I've got a workshop about building a successful web design business for people who are new to becoming a web designer. Just things to consider and think about. I share a little bit of my tech stack in there, and so those kinds of courses and templates are one revenue stream. So we've got the custom work or work one-on-one with clients, the templates and courses. And then I also have a bucket that's just affiliate income. So I work with a lot of amazing products in my business, and I share that with other people as well, share an affiliate link. And so I have affiliate income coming along from those as well.

Lex:

I think that's fantastic. You work with HoneyBook and you do webinars with Squarespace, which I think is really cool.

Christy:

I do, yeah. I think they have a really great pro community. So if someone's considering becoming a web designer and focusing on Squarespace, the Squarespace Circle program is fantastic. There are a ton of resources. They have monthly circle live calls, so you can learn a lot from other people.

Lex:

How do you think about the difference in marketing, your custom work with balancing the efforts around being an educator of web designers, the template work and things like that?

Christy:

Yeah, so that's a great question. I think I'm still not great at marketing. I think one of the things that I did early on that paid off was when I moved to Squarespace, I started blogging. So as I would figure things out, I would write blog posts about them because I thought, if I'm learning this or figuring this out, I'm sure other people have the same question, and I actually have a course called "Make Money with Your Blog" that kind of talks about how I did that and how I've transitioned that to be affiliate income now, and it also helps me find clients. So I think for me, that blog does a couple things. One, it sets me up as somebody who looks like they know what they're doing. So I'm kind of a trusted resource. If you Google something and I pop up for it, you follow the steps.

It works. It's like, okay, she knows what's going on. The other thing is that with those blog posts as I was creating them, I started showing up higher and higher in search results when somebody was Googling for a Squarespace web designer. So if somebody is looking for a solution, if they're a DIYer or they're a Squarespace designer, they find my blog. If they are Googling for a Squarespace web designer in general, they find my website because of my blog. So that was really where I put my eggs in that basket early on was blogging and growing my site that way.

Lex:

Interesting, because the blog, it feels like then had multiple use cases for your business. On one hand, it's doing lead generation for custom work, but it's also becoming an affiliate income stream. Like, oh, actually, here's how I solve this. It turns out you might need this tool.

Christy:

Yeah, it's definitely dual purpose.

Lex:

Yeah. Is that how the affiliate income stream came about for you?

Christy:

It is. So blogging was how I started that process, and it was still is. So if there's something that I'm trying to figure out and then I realized someone has created a plugin for that, then I'll share how I use that plugin to solve the problem and include an affiliate link to the plugin, things like that. You mentioned HoneyBook. So I'm a HoneyBook educator, so I provide information about how to use HoneyBook.

A few of those posts on my blog, not a ton. Most of my blog is Squarespace related, but if you are a Squarespace web designer, you need some kind of tool to manage your client relationships. And so HoneyBook fit that bill really well for me. I moved from a different platform because I wanted something I could manage myself. And so I talk about that on a couple of blog posts and how I'm using HoneyBook, and so that's another affiliate income stream.

Lex:

Can you talk a little bit about, so you mentioned not wanting for leads, which we love for you, Christy. Can you talk a little bit about the mix of where leads come from?

Christy:

Sure. Yeah. So for me, it really is from two places. It's from people finding me through Google search or from referrals from past clients. So those are the two that come to me. And I actually prefer the leads. I mean, I love referrals, but I prefer the leads that come through Google search results because those people have vetted me already by themselves. And so they're sold.

They're like, oh, she's the expert. I've looked at her website, she's showing up in Google search. She seems to know what she's talking about. Whereas the referrals are like, well, so-and-so said you did their website, so here I am. I don't know anything about you. Maybe you'll do a good job. So it's a different experience that they come in with, and I think their expectations are different. And I do love referral clients, but I think the people that find you organically through SEO, they're the ones that are just all in.

Lex:

Yeah, which is interesting because referrals are a huge part of most service-based businesses. A lot of creatives rely on referrals, and I hear a lot of people preferring referrals. So it's interesting you had said that before, and I totally agree, because people, they come in with very little context. When they get a referral, they haven't looked at anything as you just said.

Christy:

Right. And those people, I think the onboarding is super key for those folks, and I'm a big fan of over communication anyway, but especially if they come to you with no knowledge of anything else you've done, how anything works, it really is time to educate and provide a lot of boundaries upfront. 

Lex:

Do you work with any partners? Do you have any partners who send referrals your way?

Christy:

I wouldn't say formal partners, but I do have other designers. So for example, I don't love doing e-commerce websites, so I have a designer that I send those folks to. She doesn't love doing non e-commerce websites, so she sends those folks to me. So I feel like we have a loose network of referrals that exist, but it's nothing formal. Do

Lex:

You think there's anything different about the pro referrals versus the client referrals?

Christy:

I do. Yeah. I think that the pro referrals, they found them some way, and so it's like they've already bought into, they're an expert. Well, that expert must be referring me to another expert. So I think that that does mimic more the people that find you organically.

Lex:

And then as far as your marketing pie, you've added a podcast recently to your suite of marketing activities. I know you also do email marketing. Can you talk about where those two things fit in, in terms of what the purpose is of them, what the expectation is of how you're going to use them?

Christy:

So I started doing email marketing a little late to the game, honestly. So I built my blog and then realized I was getting these site visitors, and then they would just go away. So I realized that I needed to be able to keep in touch with them because if they found my info useful, they might want to eventually purchase something from me. So that's when I created a lead magnet.

So I have a pre-launch checklist that is my lead magnet. So before you get ready to publish your Squarespace website, here are the things that you should do. And that's been a really good generator of emails for me. I've grown my email list significantly in the past couple years. I don't email a ton. I email maybe once or twice a month with updates about Squarespace, things that I've done, things that I'm planning on doing.

So Lex, you and I, by the time this airs, we will have done a workshop together. So webinars, workshops, things like that. It's just a great way to stay top of mind with people and provide value. So that's the plan for the email marketing, the podcast. It's a podcast that I do with Will Meyers. It's called Somewhat Useful Will and I were just like, I don't even remember how it came about. We wanted to do something together. We enjoy working together.

And we started with doing Instagram lives, and we called those Squarespace shenanigans, and it was a lot of fun. And then we realized that we didn't want to limit ourselves to just Squarespace. So we thought about something that would be good for digital entrepreneurs no matter what you were doing online with your business. So we decided to pivot, and so we decided to pivot to a podcast, change the name to somewhat Useful.

And so we've got one season completed. I think we have eight episodes, and we talk about how to go out of office, what steps do we take when we're going out of office for vacations. We talk about how to automate things in your business. We talk about imposter syndrome. We talk about why is marketing so hard? So there's a lot of fun topics now. When we started that, it really wasn't, I don't think either of us had an end game for how that was going to move our business forward. It was more just something creative and fun and a way to share value. I don't know how that's going to turn out in the marketing world, but we're having a lot of fun with it. And I think that sometimes in your business, you just need to lean into what feels fun and easy and see how it plays out.

Lex:

Yep. We hear that a lot on this show for sure. Sort of follow the thing that you're interested in this moment and that will lead to the thing that you want to happen. 

Sponsor:

Today's episode is brought to you by Inbox Zero Hero. Are you tired of drowning in an endless sea of emails? Are you using your inbox as a to-do list? Do you worry you'll miss important emails? Do you have $16 inbox Zero Hero is the ultimate mini course designed to rescue you From the clutches of email chaos, say hello to a pristine inbox and the power to reclaim your time and productivity. Don't let this opportunity slip through your fingers like an unread email. Join the ranks of the inbox Zero Heroes today by visiting devinlee.com.

Lex:

I'm curious how you, you have such different audiences. I see at least three distinct audiences. You have clients who want your help doing work, you do it for them. You have clients that are maybe more done with you, which is you have, I forget what you call them, but you'll do strategy with them for an hour. You've done this with me. And then you have templates.

Christy:

So I have a screen share that's like a one hour help. And then I also have a designer for a day service. So we're on Zoom for five hours during one day. And that can be leveling up a website, it can be figuring out processes, strategy,

Lex:

And then you have the web designers, the up and coming web designers who are either just getting into web design or expanding their business. And then you also have these businesses that are essentially sponsors or business partners like HoneyBook and Squarespace and things like that. So when you're doing your marketing, do you think about which audience you're targeting or are you trying to hit them all?

Christy:

In my email marketing, I do try to hit them all because that's something I don't want people to feel overwhelmed hearing from me. So aside from something I have planned for toward the end of this year, that's going to be some fun Sales. People don't hear from me that often. It's like once or twice a month because of that. And because I don't have time to create different emails for each of those segments, I try to roll everything into one email that everyone would find something helpful from.

So I really do try to hit them all with that for more specific targeting. So LinkedIn is somewhere that I will also post, so that has more of a feel for other designers or aspiring designers or potential custom clients. Those are kind of the people that live in that space. And then I have Instagram, which is also more aspiring designers or web designers and then DIYers. So I definitely mix up my messaging a little bit depending on the platform. But overall, I don't spend a lot of time trying to whittle it down to or distill it down to just this message is for this subgroup. It really is for everyone, and they can kind of pick and choose what they listen to. It's

Lex:

Impressive. Christy. You make it look effortless. We aspire. We aspire to it.

Christy:

It's not effortless, but thank you.

Lex:

You didn't mention social media before, but this is a good point. What's the role of social in your business?

Christy:

It's very little. So probably two to three years ago, I spent several months and a lot of money throwing things at Pinterest. I spent about a year posting religiously on Instagram, and those experiments taught me that that's not where I'm converting sales. And so to spend time there, it's not worth the effort. So Instagram I still use when I feel like it, when it's fun, when I have something, I want to share something silly. I post reels in my vacations. It's not really where I'm doing true marketing. It's more of a, hi, we're a community here. Here's what I've been up to. Pinterest I gave up on. So that was in the two hard pile. I didn't really see any traction there, done off the list. LinkedIn is something I've just been dipping my toe in this year, really, and it's just a little bit here or there, seeing what happens with it, and I'll learn from that.

Lex:

It's interesting about Pinterest because I hear a lot of good feedback on Pinterest from other creatives who use blogging a lot like you did. So it's interesting that you found that that was more work than it was worth.

Christy:

I expected it to just be things would fall on my lap from Pinterest based on what I'd heard from other people. And for whatever reason, it did not work for me. It might've been that my blog posts were a little bit too educational or how-to based instead of, look at these pretty fonts, look at this pretty website. It may have been that I didn't leverage the platform the way I should have. It could have been a lot of things, but it was, I've put in some effort and some money and it's not paying off time to move on.

Lex:

I think that's a really important thing to take to heart because we hear from other people like, this thing worked really great, or this is working great, or this is the thing you need to do, and it's important to try it out and to give yourself guardrails. So it's commendable that you do that, Chrissy, and it's one of the reasons why you're still in business probably.

Christy:

Well, I think for me too, I went in with this expectation that it would work for me, like it worked for other people. And I think you really quickly get disabused of that notion that what works for someone else is not necessarily going to work for you because you run your business differently. You talk about different things. You're a different human. So your audiences and the way you attract them are going to be a little bit different too.

Lex:

Okay. So going back to, you mentioned early on that one of the things you were wrong about was onboarding and offboarding, and you've really dialed this in at this point. Can you share with us the highlights of the things that you do in onboarding and offboarding clients?

Christy:

Yeah, so I think that the highlight, the main thing would be I over-communicate in many forms. So one of the things that I learned early on is that some people, when you tell them, it registers some people when they have a printout in their hand and they're looking at it, it registers some people when they're reading it in an email bullet point, it registers. So I think you have to hit all of those different modalities for people. So I have a PDF that I send reminder emails with things broken down in bullet points. I tell people multiple times in conversations how the process will work, what penalties there are if they don't get their content to me on time. Gentle reminders around that. And then for onboarding, a couple of things that I think work well for me that I would want to share with other web designers are, one thing that I do is I ask them to look at my portfolio and choose a project from my portfolio that they like.

Christy:

So I know that something that I've done is aligned with something that they have in their brain because I think there are people that come to me for websites I know that are not a good fit because they're like, no, I don't want anything like this. I want something like this. And I'm like, well, that's really a web flow website. It's not something that I can build for you. It's a lot more involved than what I do in my two week process. So that helps whittle things down. The other thing that I do, because I work in a really quick two week build process for my websites is I only take on clients that have one decision maker and one or two stakeholders in the project. So during the onboarding process, it's as much for me as it is for the client. I'm selecting based on their answers to discovery call questions, questionnaires, and I'm ensuring that they're selecting me based on my work as well.

Lex:

Can you talk a little bit more about that? You really do have a very clear picture of who your client is and who your client is not. Can you talk more about how that came about and how you assess that in what's probably not that long a sales process?

Christy:

Yeah, it's not. So I do have a questionnaire that I send over in HoneyBook for them to fill out before our discovery call and during the discovery call, we go through those points together. So that's when I'm asking questions about, what is your business? Tell me your elevator pitch. What's the goal you have for this website? What are your inspiration websites? Pick a website that I designed from the portfolio, how many stakeholders? Who's going to be the decision maker?

All of those questions together help me get a really good picture of one, are they going to be happy with my work? Two, are they the kind of person that I want to work with? Do I feel aligned with their values? Three, is it going to be something that would work in my two week build process? So if there's one decision maker, but 10 stakeholders, that's probably not going to work for a two week build.

Cindy's going to be on vacation. John had surgery, we got to wait for them to get looped back in. So those are things that I've curated to fit a process that I enjoy. Now, one of the things that's different about my onboarding process is I'm not looking for a particular niche. So I don't work just with interior designers or just with photographers. I'm open to working with whoever fits this pattern, who fits my process and would be happy with the work that I create. So that keeps it interesting for me. So this month I'm building a website for a hydro seeded company in California. I've learned all about compost socks and fiber rolls, and it's been a lot of fun. My next project is for an events company, so very different and a lot of fun for me in creating a website that matches what they need if it's their goals, but I'm selecting it based on is it a fit for my process and how I want to run my business. So that kind of onboarding is really both for the client and for me.

Lex:

Yeah, important, right? Because it sets you guys up for success, you know that it's going to go smoothly,

Christy:

And all of that is based on lessons learned from past nightmare scenarios that I won't bore you with. But yeah, I mean, after every project I do, I look back and it's like, well, what were the sticky parts here? What's something I could do in the future to avoid that?

Lex:

Oh, yes, yes. I made this mistake when I was pretty far into my web design career where I took on a tile website, and when I got the content, I was like, oh, no, this is a lot of tiles. I was like, I really made a mistake here. Can we touch on offboarding a little bit and how you hedge off fusion at the handoff point?

Christy:

Yeah, so if you want to link to, there's a YouTube video. I'll send you a link for where I go through my offboarding process in detail that I did at Circle Day, Squarespace Circle Day. But the highlights of offboarding are I'm really clear about what's happening next. So when the project is launched, that's usually on a Friday and I let the client know you have two weeks of included support. And then I'm really specific about what that support is, because support means if there's something broken, I will fix it.

It does not mean you've changed your mind about the way you've written the content on about page and you want to completely redo it. It doesn't mean that I'm going to set up all your email addresses for you. So it's very specific as to what's included in that support. And one of the things that I started doing a few years ago is I create a help page that's embedded on the backend of their website.

So it's only for them. So they can only see it when they're logged into their website, but they go to the help page and right up top it's like, Hey, do you need a hand? You can book me here. And there's a link to my hour screen share. And then I have videos that I create as I'm building the website. So if they have a portfolio, for example, I'll record myself adding a new portfolio project. And so if they need to do that in the future, they have a video there that takes them through those steps.

I have a series of videos for them. I have a little note about the style, the fonts, the colors, that sort of thing. I have a section about what to do after the site launches. So next best steps for SEO. And so anytime during the offboarding process, during that support window, if they have questions, I refer them back to there. So if they have questions about something that I didn't create a video for, I'll create a video, I'll add it to that page and then refer them there. So it's like they're always coming back to this one place for resources. So hopefully their go-to will not be email Christy. It will be, oh, let me check my help page first.

Lex:

Yeah. Do you find that that's true?

Christy:

Yeah. Yeah, I do. And typically if people do reach out, they're like, I looked at the help page and there's this video, but the menus look different now, so I'll just record a quick little video for them to update. But people are pretty good about once you've trained them to go to a certain place, they'll go there first and look at that. It's

Lex:

Interesting how people will modify their behavior. We think, oh, we need to really support our clients and they're going to be a mess. We need to react to that. But it's like if you are like, Nope, this is the deal, they will fall in line with that.

Christy:

And I think that people understand, especially when they see that, oh, do you need help in the future? Here's how to book me. That's another clear indication that future help is not free. So just nods to that along the way as well. It's like in six months when you want to add a new portfolio project and you don't want to do it yourself, you'll need to hire me for that.

Lex:

Totally. And you'll be glad that you weren't paying WordPress maintenance this whole time. So I've saved you a ton of money by putting

Christy:

You in this space.

Lex:

Yeah. How do you stay in touch with clients after the projects are over? You do anything to stay in touch with them? I

Christy:

Do. So I put them on my email list, so they're getting those Squarespace updates that I send out every month as well. So that's how I stay in touch with them. And it really is interesting. So it's typically after one of those emails, I'll get an email back from a past client who's like, Hey, I need help with this thing. And so it's another one of those staying top of mind.

Lex:

Yeah, it's amazing. It seems like not that much work, but I find a lot of people are not emailing their clients. In fact, it's one of the first things we do in growth trackers is email past clients with an update, because as you just pointed out, it reminds them like, oh, there's a person that can help me with this. There's a business that can do this service for me.

Christy:

I tend to follow past clients. If they have an Instagram account, I'll follow them on Instagram too, because I've enjoyed getting to know them at that point in their business, so I want to see how things are going. And so that's just another interaction point as well. But it's not anything difficult. It's kind of fun. Do you

Lex:

Ever look back at their websites and they've ruined your creation?

Christy:

That's a great question. So I have in the past had a couple of clients who have done things on the homepage, and I'll have it in my portfolio and I'll reach out and be like, Hey, I just noticed you updated this. It looks really great. Do you mind if I make a little adjustment here? Because I know that it's in my portfolio and they're actually always happy to have me go in and tweak things a little bit, but I feel like it's not my baby anymore. It's theirs.

So I'm creating something for them to run with. I'm not the designer who feels sad if I see they've made changes. I'm actually really happy that somebody's gone in and updated their website themselves. And I think giving people that ability and that power is one of the beautiful things you can do as a web designer if you don't want to have maintenance plans.

It's like, let me show you how to do this, and you can run with it. And I think I'll say this being a web designer, but I think that a lot of times we put too much stock in how a website looks, and it's more about is it serving its purpose? And so if a client goes in and they change out something and it's like, well, I think it looked better before, does it really matter for their end goal? Are they still going to get that contact form filled out? Are they still going to get somebody booking time with them? And if that's the case, it doesn't really matter.

Lex:

Yeah, I love that detached. Let the bird leave the nest, let it live. Its life in the wild.

Christy:

There's another designer whose term is bless and release, so it's just...

Lex:

I love that

Christy:

Yeah. Janine, thanks for that. Bless and release.

Lex:

Christy, if you could give one tip to our audience about how to connect with their best clients, what would it be?

Christy:

I would say figure out what makes someone your best client. So for me, do they fit my process? And then ask questions of that person or whoever comes to you to see if they are in fact that best client before you work with them. And so either they are and it's going to be a home run or they're not, and you're going to learn through failure, or you're going to learn to expand your business a little bit. So I think that that's one thing to do. I also think once you've figured out who that perfect client is, your ideal client, I think that you create content for those people so they see you as an expert.

So I really love working with DIYers in my Squarespace help screen share. And so a lot of my blog posts are like, Hey, how do you do this thing? Here's how, because the DIYers are looking for that. And so they find me and they're like, ah, I see what she's doing here. I don't really want to install this plugin myself. Let me just hire her for an hour. And that's, I think, creating content for those people so they see you as an expert asking questions to figure out if they are in fact your best client. And yeah, I think that's all I've got for that one. But yeah, those two things.

Lex:

Fantastic advice. Can't recommend that hour with Christy enough. It really packs a punch.

Christy:

Thank you, Christy.

Lex:

Overhauled my whole blog with me in an hour is amazing. Game changer.

Christy:

I had such amazing things to work with there though, so I think that was mostly you. Lex,

Lex:

Would you like to share anything you have coming up, things that folks should know about?

Christy:

So if you think you might be interested in any of my templates or courses, I'm going to be running some holiday sales, so you can sign up to my email list to find out more about that. It's subscribe.christyprice.com, and you'll be rolled into an onboarding sequence. If you don't want that, just email me and say, take me out of this. I don't want to know any more about you. I just want the sales.

Lex:

Happy to do that. Christy, thank you so much for being on the show and sharing all of your experience and expertise with us. 

Christy:

Lex, thanks so much for having me. It's always so much fun talking with you. I always learn stuff from you. It's just always a blast. 

Lex:

What I love about Christy is that she doesn't copy other people's playbooks. She always makes sure that what she's trying on makes sense for her and the way she wants to operate in her business. It means that when you hear from Christy, whether it's a podcast or an email or a landing page, you know that it's authentically her and it's not something that she's just copying and mimicking from another business owner.

I also really appreciate Christy's focus on education as a marketing engine. So things like her blog and her podcast and her webinars. She's always adding value as a way to get her name out there while also contributing to the design community and contributing to the small business community. When you find things like that that play in more than one way, that's how marketing becomes more sustainable and fun, and that's how you stay in the game as long as Christy has.

I've linked some of the resources she mentioned in this episode in the show notes, and I would definitely go to christyprice.com and get on her newsletter. Follow her wherever you use social media. She's constantly got leading edge tips on Squarespace and web design.

If you're interested in finding your best clients, you're going to want to tune in to my live show, Fridays at noon on YouTube.

The live show is a taste of what we do inside my marketing experimentation program, growth trackers. Every Friday. I show you how to make smarter marketing betts with exercises and tools that you can use right away in your business.

Learn more in the show notes and get on the Low Energy Leads newsletter to get notified about those. If you liked this episode, you might also like the interview I did with Eleanor Mayrhofer. Eleanor is also a Squarespace designer, and she's based in Germany, where she focuses on working with German expat business owners. Eleanor and I talked about her professional background in design and how she pivoted to working for herself and what kind of client base she's been cultivating.

Until next time, keep that energy low until the value will be high.