103: How do I find my next web design client?

In November, we re-opened doors to the Millionaire Web Designer, my group coaching program for helping web designers build a thriving web design business. And I created three live events as part of the promotion for it. Here’s the first one where I share how I find my web design clients or rather how they find me!

Watch the video below:

102: One Big Reason To Create Content

Recently, I hired a web designer + graphic designer, Anna Roszak, regarding creating a logo for Millionaire Web Designer, my exclusive group coaching program. And we had a great chat about that. But at one point she mentioned how she loves my YouTube videos and that recently a client emailed her asking her about something and she sent her my video tutorial as it explained exactly what she needed.

And this made me so happy. Now, of course, I know that designers share links and resources with their clients. But to hear her share with me how my video helped her solve the client’s problem filled me with utter happiness and satisfaction. This one video that I created saved people time and helped solve a problem! Wow. I am myself amazed at how happy that make me feel. Like super happy.

Watch the short video below:

It’s probably because I create these videos and tutorials and then it’s out in the world. I have to let go of any expectations of how well the video will be perceived, whether it really solves a problem, or whether it will be really helpful and viewed by people. That’s not something I can influence. I know my intention is to solve a question that I have faced or seen my clients face. But whether it has a benefit to others is often not obvious or clear. Plus, right after the video is published there’s no instant data on how many people see it or clicked like and that kind of information remains to be seen until a future date. And so, my mindset around creating content is more like - create it and let it free.

That’s why when Anna shared that very specific instance of how she sent off a link to my video to her client, it filled me with an unexpected delight and it gave me such a high. It’s true satisfaction of knowing that your time creating that content was not wasted. It made a difference! That’s an incomparable feeling.

So there you go - if you were looking for a reason to start or to continue your content creation journey, here’s one more reason: the joy of knowing your content makes a difference.

That’s all for today’s blog! I’m always open to hearing more stories of how my videos, blogs, webinars, etc. have helped you in any way - so send them my way via email or in the comments below.

Have an abundantly creative day!

Sophia

101: Learn Squarespace CSS Tricks From These Six Experts

Now, it’s a given that you can build a decent website using the pre-designed layouts and templates from Squarespace. But from time to time, you will want to add a design element to your Squarespace Website that will requires a some CSS code.

I’m self-taught when it comes to CSS and I have many of my talented colleagues to thank for showing me their tips and tricks when it comes to adding that special look to any Squarespace website.

And today, I’d like to share 6 of them with you so that you can tap into the wealth of resources they have created. Let’s get started.

And oh, none of them have paid me to promote them. I am genuinely grateful for these experts for sharing and teaching what they know.

Uplevel Your Squarespace Website with CSS

Click the image below to watch video:

Here are six of the CSS experts that have paved the way for my own learning.

1. Carl Johnson
Not only do I love his accent, Carl teaches CSS specifically for the Squarespace platform and his YouTube channel is fantastic. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/c/MrJohnoCP

2. Inside the Square with Becca Harpain
You may have already seen Becca’s videos on using CSS for Squarespace. I’ve found them easy to follow and very helpful. Check her YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/InsideTheSquare

3. Beatriz Caraballo
Beatriz’s videos are very helpful as well and her blogs have very in-depth screenshots and step-by-step descriptions of how to use code. Check her YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwDJktnCURFGiJdINrDwRcg and her website here: https://beatrizcaraballo.com/

4. Chris Schwartz-Edmisten
Chris not only teaches CSS tips and tricks but also has many videos on the many features of Squarespace. Check his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/SEWebDesign

5. Will Myers
Will creates fun and engaging videos all about Squarespace. I found him when looking for how to build a Mega Menu on Squarespace. Check out his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2pYFwXEwVolfeDumbNAUyQ

6. Rebecca Grace Designs
Rebecca’s channel is very helpful and not just for CSS. Check out here videos on all things Squarespace as well as about running a web design business. Her YouTube channel is: https://www.youtube.com/c/RebeccaGraceDesigns

Let me know in the comments if you have checked these experts out. And also let me know who else you would recommend so we can continue the trajectory of learning and growing together.

To your success,

Sophia

100: Turbo-Charge Your Email Marketing with Evergreen Lead Magnets

Hello my Abundant Creative,

I am celebrating. 🎉 My article just got published on Honeybook's website!!
​
The article is called 7 Evergreen Lead Magnets to Grow Your Email List (link will bring you to the Honeybook/Rising Tide website). And to celebrate, I am sharing an in-depth 45 minute video presentation in which I show you how to implement one of these lead magnets (a digital library) using ConvertKit.

It's called, Turbo-Charge Your Email Marketing with Evergreen Lead Magnets (Within An Afternoon) and I cover:

You’ll learn:
1. why you should go evergreen with email list building?
2. seven types of evergreen lead magnets you can use (many of them without creating new content)
3. 10 examples of these lead magnets in action
4. how to figure out which one is right for your business (my four steps will help)
5. a live demo of me setting up a lead magnet on my website (I show you how l set up Lead Magnet example 5)

Sign up below for instant access:

Do you have a way to build your email list currently set up on your website? In other words, an opt-in form that folks can sign up and then receive a free gift (lead magnets) in return? If not, then I've got a juicy presentation where I show you how to do just that. If creating an opt-in on your website has been on your to-do list, watch this presentation and check it off today!

To your success,

Sophia

099: How to Add Social Media Icons to Default ConvertKit Templates

Hello my Abundant Creative,

In today's video + blog, I am showing how you can customize the default email templates of ConvertKit using some code in the HTML block. Follow my step-by-step guide so you can format the template specifically to add custom branded social media icons and better serve your email marketing clients.

See code below video.

Copy but Customize the Following Code

This code will not work if you do not customize the url source of the image (see bolded text) and if you don’t change up the link of your social media

Table to be added in the HTML block inside the CK default template:

<table>

<tr>

<td><a href="https://instagram.com/sophiaojha"> <img src="put the url of the image here" alt="Instagram" width="150" ></a></td>

<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/sophiaojha"><img src="put the url of the image here" alt="YouTube" width="150" > </a></td>

</tr>

</table>

To your success,

Sophia

098: Millionaire Web Designer Directory has launched

Update: September 2023: This directory is no longer active. After hitting my first $22K/month and then hitting burnout, I had to scale back my activities and refocus. Although the directory is closed, the intention that led to its creation is still alive - Check out the newsletter here.

Hello my Abundant Creative,

Less than a month ago, I had this idea of creating a space online where businesses could easily find a web designer. And now that idea is a reality. 🎉 Meet the 24 Founders of the Millionaire Web Designer Directory (MWD Directory) who are designers from around the world and with a wealth of expertise - including copywriting, branding, graphic design, web design, email marketing and more. Please check it out and find your next project partner in the MWD Directory. I love all your smiling faces, designers; welcome!

How will the Directory be promoted?

1. My email list - which is made up of both web designers but also of online entrepreneurs who are specifically using Squarespace. They will want an upgrade or maintenance at some time.

2. My YouTube channel - I will start promoting the MWD - Directory in new content that I create teaching Squarespace tips.

3. I will promote the Directory on various platforms (such as Squarespace, Inc) where I will be doing presentations/webinars as well as blogs and podcasts where I will be interviewed.

4. My current client feed for my own business - whenever I am asked to do web design projects, the majority of those requests will be passed on to those designers who are on the Directory, as I can only take a certain number of projects per month.

5. The Directory will be the first place where I, myself, will hire from.

Intention for the Directory

I also hope to create a community of designers who can serve each other and whom I can serve with everything I know and have learnt about web design. My intention is that the directory becomes a real source of projects for the designers and where entrepreneurs and non-profits can find wonderful people to collaborate on their projects.

How is this for?

The Directory is for online business, solopreneurs, non-profits and small businesses as well as start-ups looking for web designers. These web designers also bring expertise in various marketing areas including graphic design, copyediting, social media marketing, branding and more. You can use the search criteria on the directory main page to select for your specific needs.

How does it work?

Simple steps to finding your next designer:

Step 1: Search using criteria
Step 2: Note your top 3 choices
Step 3: Contact each via their websites

Step 4: Discuss project details
Step 5: Hire & get that project done!
Step 6: Celebrate!

No commissions or kickbacks
Client and designer communicate directly with each other and arrange for payment amongst themselves. Each of the Web Designers has paid to be present on this list. We (Millionaire Web Designer.com) don’t partake in commissions or receive any financial kickbacks from any transactions. Our aim is to bring you and the web designers together.

Welcoming You as You Are
As a woman of color and first-generation Indian American, I often run into designer or tech directories where I do not see anyone that remotely looks like me, leaving me with the question, "Do I even belong here?". And I want the MWD Directory to be welcoming to all people of all genders and all backgrounds from around the world.

So if you are or know a designer who comes from groups that have been traditionally/currently been marginalized, please know and let them know that I welcome you and there is room for you here. (Feel free to forward this message to them).

And I am extremely delighted and happy that we have so many women represented in the directory which is also not very visibly seen in tech/design industries, although there are tons of women working in this niche. I truly hope that you can find from this directory a designer for your online business needs.

To your success,

Sophia

097: How to Record Your Screen and Your Camera at The Same Time (Mac)

If you create video content for your audience using screencast apps or want to do so, today's video will help you streamline your production workflow.

You may have noticed that in my videos, I usually have an intro where I talk into the camera. Then I do a screencast showing whatever it is I am teaching. And then again I jump in with an on-camera appearance for an outro.

I've liked the idea of showing myself on camera for the middle section where I do the screencast, but doing a double workflow process was not something I wanted to add to my task list. But now, I found a way to show up on camera without doing a separate on-camera take.

And I am using the same Quicktime app on my Mac like before, just with a little tweak. Wow! I love it. It amazes me how these little setting tweaks have such a huge impact in my work.

If you are using a Mac and the in-built Quicktime video app, then watch the video walkthrough.

To your success,

Sophia

096: The Poison of Comparison

As web design business owners who want to grow our businesses, we are often on the look out to learn from others. We see successful designers or online entrepreneurs and get inspired. But sometimes, our mind goes into thinking we are not good enough thoughts. Here’s my experience with this tendency and how I help myself get back on the right track.

It happens much less often to me than before but it does pop-up from time to time in my mind. Thoughts that say:

”I am not there yet.”
”I am not good enough.”
”She can do it, then, why can’t I?”

Let’s talk about the last one because it can throw you off when you least expect it. It happens like this: You are working on client projects. You are working on your acquisition goals, creating the content and then some how you land on a post or and email or a piece of content created by one of the entrepreneurs you look up to. Someone whom you admire for what they have built and how they show up in the world.

At first, there may be a sense of amazement and wonder. But out of nowhere you may start thinking, “Ah, man, how come this is not happening in my business. How come I am not there yet! How is it that she can do it and not me? What’s wrong with me? I am not good enough. I am still not there where I want to be!!”

The Poison of Comparison
Let me give you an example. I recently saw something written by someone I am a huge fan of. This entrepreneur has really helped me through her videos, blogs, courses, and her books on up-leveling my business. I am totally inspired by her and uplifted by her. And have been for several years. She has built multi-million dollar business while having a busy life and raising a family and that’s just been awe-inspiring for me.

So, in one of these posts she wrote about the importance of creating content and how she has not missed writing and sending out a weekly newsletter for the last 12 years or so.

When I read that, I was first amazed. “Ah, that type of consistency is remarkable”, I thought. Then, I began feeling this sense of lack. I know that I have created lots of youtube videos, spending hours and hours on creating and editing them. This blog itself is no. 96. But I definitely have not been able to publish on a weekly rhythm for years on end. And this awareness of not having been able to produce such regular content started to gnaw at me, to bother me.

But this type of thing has happened before and I caught myself this time.

And if I don’t catch it in time, these thoughts can spiral downward and can lead to a full-blown pity-party mired in self-doubt and feeling a sense of overbearing burden and struggle.

I don’t hear many web designers talk about this. This is not in our content feed - at least, not in mine. But I feel it is so important to talk about this. Because these types of mindset obstacles set us back more than any gaps in skills or knowledge around web design and marketing.

It’s this mental virus of comparison that often poisons our progress to greatness.

Rebuttal like a Lawyer
So what to do about it?

1. The first thing to do is to simply become aware of the type of thought that’s emerging and the feeling that you are getting in your body. I often feel a heaviness in my chest and a tension in my shoulders. And breathe into it. It’s important to not fight that feeling but step into awareness and acceptance: “Ah, okay, this is not feeling very good. I am having this type of thought right now”.

2. Then, you have to put on a lawyer hat. Lawyers present evidence and they make a case for why they support a certain statement. When you have these thoughts of “I am not good enough” or “why have I not done like so and so”, you must bring out the rebuttals. You present statement to your mind that support the contrary.

For example, you can begin by saying, “I am good enough. Look all the _________ you have created or done (insert success evidence)”.
Then bring up a very true statement such as, “You cannot compare your success trajectory with someone else’s. There are so many different factors involved. And we are each on our path.” Being Buddhist, I also remind myself of Karmic patterns and that often soothes me.

So we need to offer rebuttals to our selves on why we cannot be comparing ourself with another. And also present all the good things we have done and accomplished despite challenges and roadblocks. “Look at what you have done even though you faced ________ (insert past struggles challenges, and roadblocks).

There are other ways to go about it but the important thing is to remember that we need to help ourselves and lift ourselves from thought patterns that are not helpful. And we need to that actively. Catch yourself when you find thoughts of comparison showing up - even if in a small way. We can begin to train our mind on the small occurrences - which is easier to do than when it’s full-blown pity-party!

This is a message for any web design business owner who is driven to create success in her business. This mental roadblock may emerge on your path in different forms and it’s important to address it now with love and kindness.

Well, I hope you found this helpful. Thank you for reading and I wish you a peaceful and harmonious day.

To your success,

Sophia

095: New Squarespace Circle Webinar

Needless to say, I am super excited to be leading a live webinar for my fellow web designers and creatives at Squarespace Circle and I’ll be talking about creating a client onboarding process that wows and helps your client deliver the content you need before you start project.

You are Invited to Live Webinar:

The Complete Client Onboarding Process
Event took place on Aug 17th 11 AM ET

(Recording available when you sing up)

Click the image below to watch video:

What I’ll Cover

In this training, I will share the essential emails I send to clients and my complete onboarding workflow. I'll break down how to give a high-touch professional experience to your clients while making sure you get all the content you need before your web design project begins.

Update: You can sign up to see a recording of the webinar.

To your success,

Sophia

094: How to Connect Squarespace Shop with ConvertKit

Forget Zapier. There’s a direct integration between Squarespace Commerce and ConvertKit!

In this video, I will show you how to integrate your Squarespace E-Commerce or Shop with ConvertKit. So all your transactions and client email info are fed into your ConvertKit account.

I recently was hired by my client afrosexology.com to migrate their email marketing system into ConvertKit and part of the migration project was to also make this integration. This video is thanks to the. Check them out here if you like. So let’s jump right in.

Video: How to Connect Squarespace Shop with ConvertKit

Watch this quick video for a step-by-step guide.
Click the image below to watch video:

Integrate Squarespace Commerce with ConvertKit

Step 1: Generate an API Key from inside Squarespace

Jump into the backend of your Squarespace website and go into:

i. Settings > Advanced > Developer API Keys
This will bring you to the right spot.

ii. Next, Click the Generate Key
This will open up a box. 

iii. Next, Add in a Name for your Key
Often you will be needing several keys when connecting different apps. So name the key appropriately. In this case I am calling it ConvertKit.

iv. Alright, Next Click on Orders
Make sure you click on Read and Write.

v. Then Click Generate Key
You can now click the button that says “Copy Key”

Step 2: Now go into your ConvertKit dashboard

 i.Click on Automations which is the second tab on the top left navigation > then integrations which is on the top all the way on the right of the screen.

ii. Then look for Squarespace which is likely to be squarely in the center of your screen. Click on it.

iii.Then paste the API Key that you had just copied and click Next.

iv. Then click “Sync Squarespace Orders to ConvertKit” and click Next.

v. That’s it. You see the green check mark next to the Squarespace logo which means the connection has been made. The two should be communicating now.

Step 3: Testing

I always like to do tests when I set up things so I can be confident that what I intended is actually happening on the platform. My Web designers who are watching this, I suggest you take a screen cast of you doing the test, that way you can show your clients that things are working and help them feel confident too.

So to test the integration of the e-shop and ConvertKit. I will make a test purchase. I will simply create a temporary discount code to do this. If you want to know how to create a discount code, watch the next video and blog No.95. I will skip it here to keep the videos short but you can pause this video, watch video 095 and then come back if you like.

Next I will open up the website on incognito browser on my Chrome. And jump into the shop. I will purchase this workbook to test the integration. I’ll add in my details. The discount automatically is applied to this item which I see here. And yes, I now have the workbook here.

Next, I want to see if this transaction is correctly showing up inside ConvertKit. But don’t do what I did which is to immediately go into ConvertKit, because it takes a couple of moments for the two systems to communicate, especially the first time. So go to the window watch the sky, give your eyes a break or get some water and then come back. When I went right away I was refreshing and clicking here and there but I didn’t see the transaction show up. I just needed to give in a few seconds.

And then, in ConvertKit, under the subscribers tab, you will see in the lower right corner that all the products offered by Afrosexology have showed up correctly. So ConvertKit is pulling all the past product sale data as well which is great.

Now, I will search for the email address I used to make the test purchase. You can do this while still in the Subscriber Tab on the middle right section of the page. It looks like this.

And yes, the email shows up which is evidence that the integration worked. And to further confirm, I will drop into the Purchases tab, and yes, I see the transaction, the product, the date. And by clicking on the drop down arrow below the date, I can see more details such as the price and the discount amount.

So that’s how quickly and easily you can make the integration. In Blog 096, I will show you how to integrate your ConvertKit account to the shop on your new website. This is useful if you already have the integration on your current site but are moving to a brand new website and need to connect the new website to your existing ConvertKit account. Check out Blog 096.

Invitation to Squarespace Web Designers + Circle Members

Also, if you are a Squarespace Web Designer and part of Squarespace Circle, I am doing a webinar on the Complete Client Onboarding Process on August 17th. Sign up to my free Newsletter The Abundant Creative and I will be sharing their sign up page on the 12th.

Well, I hope you found this video helpful. Thank you for watching and I wish you a peaceful and harmonious day. Bye for now!

To your success,

Sophia

093: How to Generate An API Key in Squarespace

Squarespace is a platform that speaks with other apps and systems that you may be using to run your online business. Such integrations often need an API key that’s generated in your Squarespace dashboard. Let me show you where you can create it.

Note: This video was made thanks to my client Afrosexology.com for whom I recently completed a ConvertKit Migration project. Check them out here.

Video: How to Generate An API Key in Squarespace

Watch this quick video for a step-by-step guide on how to generate an API Key.
Click the image below to watch video:

Integrate Squarespace with Other Apps using the API Key

Follow these steps:

i. Settings > Advanced > Developer API Keys
This will bring you to the right spot.

ii. Next, Click the Generate Key
This will open up a box.

iii. Next, Add in a Name for your Key
Often you will be needing several keys when connecting different apps. So name the key appropriately. In this case I am calling it ConvertKit as I was doing an integration for my client Afrosexology’s who wanted their e-shop transactions feeding into their email marketing platform. If you want to know how to do such an integration, watch next video and blog No. 94. Also, Sign up to my free Abundant Creative Newsletter, that way you will get an email when I release a new video or blog article or have a new offer. Last year, I gave away 5 free custom designed websites to lucky newsletter subscribers and I do things like that from time to time. So do sign up at the link on the screen or in the description.

iv. Alright, Next Click on Orders
Make sure you click on Read and Write.

v. Then Click Generate Key
You can now click the button that says “Copy Key” and then go into whichever app you are working with.

That’s it.

I hope you found this video helpful. Thank you for watching and I wish you a peaceful and harmonious day. Bye for now!

To your success,

Sophia

092: 5 Steps to Easily Set Up Member Areas

As you may know, Member Areas is a new feature rolled out by Squarespace that allows you to host an online course, offer a membership or other content behind a paywall, all on your current Squarespace website.

In Blog + Video No. 091, I walked you through the steps for setting up a login page so that your students can sign into your program. But before you can do that, you need five things ready to go. In this video, I will walk you through these five steps.

These five things are:

1. You need to enable Member areas
2. You need to purchase a plan - meaning subscribe to Member Areas.
3. You need to connect your payment processor - Stripe/Paypal or both
4. You need to create your member area  - meaning name your member area and set up your member fee - what your students or members will pay.
5. Then build out the content for at least the first page of your member areas such as a welcome page.

Host & Sell Your Courses, Memberships or Online Workshops through Squarespace Member Areas

Click the image below to watch video:

Let’s get started.

Step 1. Enable Member Areas

First, you will need to enable member areas, in other words activate it in your account. To do that, go into the backend of your website and head over to Settings. Then click on Member Areas and simply toggle it on.

Step 2. Purchase a Plan for Member Areas (Subscribe to Member Areas)

You can purchase a plan for Member Areas from your within your Pages Panel. So head over to Pages and then scroll down to Member Areas and click the blue arrow. It will tell you that it's an add-on feature.

So click the Select Plan button and choose from these three options. You have the break down here so you can make the best selection but a quick summary: if you want simply a single member area go for the Starter plan, if you want more than one and up to three go for Core and if you want 10 or so go for the Pro Plan.

Also notice the difference in the transaction fees at each plan level. After you have a plan that you like click select and purchase.

Step 3. Connect to a Payment Processor (Stripe or PayPal or both)

In your dashboard, head over to Settings and then Member Areas and then click Payments. Here you have the option to set up Stripe and PayPal. You can do both. Click on the Stripe Connect button and it will open up a window. If you already have a Stripe account then you can simply sign in and if you don't have a Stripe account at all, this is where you can set it all up. You can do the same to connect your PayPal. Simply click Connect and follow the instructions.

Step 4. Create a Member Area (Give A Name & Price)

Here you will select a name and set up the pricing. We are now in the Pages Panel. Come down to the Member Area section, click on the plus sign and then Setup Member Area. Here you can add a name for your online course or membership site. In my case, it is Squarespace Fundamentals On Demand Workshop.

You also have the option to set a recurring fee which is appropriate for a membership program or a one time fee or even free. In this case, I'm going to select One Time and add in the cost of the on-demand workshop. It will still say membership fee but we know it's just a one time fee. That's it. Now you're ready to set up the content.

Step 5. Build the Content Inside the Member Area

Creating content in your Member Area follows the same rules that you use for setting up other pages on your website. Simply click the plus sign here to add a new page and build your content area. You can select any of these layouts and add video, text content, audio files, PDFs and anything else that would help your students.

And that's it. These are the five steps that you need to have ready before we can go on and create a login page where your students can actually purchase your program and log into your Member Areas to access the content that you have created. Check out Blog No. 91 to see how you can do that. 

091: How to Set Up Login Page for Squarespace Member Areas

You may have heard about a new feature that Squarespace recently rolled out called Member areas. You may have seen it show up in your Pages panel. And I am so excited that Squarespace released it because all this time I have been teaching the students of my online course, Host Your Course, how to use Squarespace for hosting their online programs or memberships. And now Squarespace has just made the whole thing streamlined, more professional, simplified and just simply beautiful.

Now there’s a lot to cover about Member Areas but for today, I want to address only one thing and that is how do enable a login feature so that your students can sign into your program.

What you need to know is that before you can set that up, you need to have these five things in place.

1. You need to enable Member areas
2. You need to purchase a plan - meaning subscribe to Member Areas.
3. You need to connect your payment processor - Stripe/Paypal or both
4. You need to create your member area  - meaning name your member area and set up your member fee - what your students or members will pay.
5. Then build out the content for at least the first page of your member areas such as a welcome page.

And I say at least the first page because you don’t need to have all the content created in order to enable students to enroll. This is especially helpful if you are dripping content week after week. If you want to give access to content to your students week by week, then they can already purchase and start going through your welcome page content and you can then make the content available as it becomes ready.

But now let’s take the next step which is setting up a way for your students to log in to your program from your website.

Alright, so let’s jump in.

Create a Login Page For Your Squarespace Member Areas

Click the image below to watch video:

Activate the Login Link in Top Navigation
The first thing I want to show you is how to activate the login link on the top navigation of your  website. So head over to the back end of your website. And click into Edit Site Header. And then jump into Elements. You will see four option now and you wanna go to Account and activate it like so. Notice how the Login link instantly appears in the right corner of the top navigation. I am going to click save. And look at my site as a site visitor will see it using incognito. And I can see the login link is activated.

When I click on it a box opens up. And there are two things that a student can do here. 1. they can add in their email and password to login. and 2. They can create their account which will be important to do for new students.

Better Clarity For Enrolling New Students
When I am enrolling new students in my program, this box is not very clear and helpful as to what you need to do as a new student. So I want to make it super clear for my students. And so what I am going to instead is to create a special login page where I can have better instructions to my students. I will show you that in just a second. But I am glad I activated the login link because I can now copy the url of this box and use it on my special login page. This will be used by returning students specifically.

Creating a Special Login Page
So now I am creating a special login page. I’st essentially millionairewebdesigner.com/login. First, I will add a button that says Student login or rather Returning Student login. And place paste the URL that I just copied from the login link. It says millionairewebdesigner.com/account/login. 

So any student that is returning meaning they have already created a new account, can access the member areas by clicking here.

And then what I will do is create a way for new students to enroll. So I am going to choose a content block here that lets me add the Member Areas Sign up. This is similar to a product block if you have used that before. I will choose the Member Area (MWD - Program), and uncheck everything but the Show Join Button. I will call it “Create New Account”.

Now you can see there are two buttons but they are two different content blocks, one is a button and the other is a Member Areas Sign up content block. I can now direct my new students to go to this page so that they can create a new account, purchase and enroll into my program.

When somebody clicks the “create new account”, they can add their name, email and password and be directed to purchase and enroll into the program.

The “returning student button” allows students to login (those who have already created their accounts).

Disabling the Login Link in the Top Navigation
Now I personally don’t want the login button to show up on the top right navigation of my website. And that’s why I created a separate login page for all my students and it’s linked in the lower right corner of my footer. So I’ll just go in and disable the login link so it doesn’t show up in the top nav.

That’s really it. I like how the login page looks. It has two distinct buttons presented with crystal clear clarity so both my new and returning students know exactly how they can get into the program.

How are you using Member Areas?
I’d love to know in the comments how you are using Member Areas in your business. And if you are not, what kind of decisions you still need to make in order to make it happen. Chime in the comments and let me know!

Peace,

Sophia

090: What James Clear's Website Taught Me About Presenting Your One Thing

With the start of the new year, you may be thinking of giving your website a fresh new look. But before you scroll through new templates or change up the font or the color, I suggest you look at your website and ask yourself this question:

Is my website clearly presenting my no. 1 goal to my visitors within seconds of them arriving on the site? This single question will prove to be more effective in using your website to help realize the goals you have for your business.

Do this one thing before redesigning your website:

Figure out the No. 1 goal for your website & display it prominently on your site

Now your website can do a number of things for you. From positioning you as an expert in your field, to growing your email list to demonstrating case studies/your portfolio of work, getting new clients and selling your products. While your website can do all of these things, it needs to have one primary goal which you as the website/business owner need to be clear about. And this primary goal may change from season to season and accordingly your website needs to adapt to it - more on that in the example below.

The reason for this is that once you know the No. 1 goal of your website, all other decisions will come easily - whether it is the font and color choice, to what pages go in the footer vs top navigation, to what third party integrations you will need and so and so forth.

Let me give you an example: jamesclear.com. After reading a recommendation on the blog of my colleague, Sequoia Mulgrave I went ahead purchased the book as it is now on my reading list for 2021.

A beautiful minimalist website example that shows you how to display your primary goal prominently on your site.

Click the image below to watch video:

Let’s say you are an author who has just published a new book and want to sell more copies to the people who land on your website. You will want the new book to be front and center on your homepage, prominently displayed on your top navigation and on your about page for example. Readers of your site need to know about your book within seconds of landing on your page. An author that does this extremely well is James Clear, author of New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits. Have a look at his site:

i. Home Page
On the Home page of JamesClear.com, the first thing you’ll notice right away is that James Clear is the author of the book Atomic Habits. The image of the book is prominent, right in the center. The position is inescapable.

Also hard to miss is the opt-in form which from a marketing-perspective seems to be the no. 1 function that I notice on all pages. From a value-perspective it’s very obvious to me that giving valuable content to the readers is the number one goal of the site.

Also notice the ample use of white space or negative space. The screen is not jam-packed with content, one of the hallmarks of minimalist design. There is lots of margin, as one would say in book design and a healthy headroom, as they say in filmmaking.

Plus notice the short sentences that take up no more than 2 lines each.

On the Home page of JamesClear.com, the first thing you see is the book Atomic Habits and an email opt-in for list-building. It’s prominent and inescapably positioned.

ii. Books Page
Now let’s look at the Books page. Not only is the book on the homepage, it also is the first link in the top navigation. When you click Books and land on the Books page, you recognize the Atomic Habits book and then you learn that there’s another one - The Clear Habits Journal. And both of these books have buttons with calls to action where the visitor is invited to go deeper and learn more.

And that is all on this page - more is not really needed.

The Books page is beautifully laid out with the Atomic Habits and The Clear Habit Journal presented with a CTA (Call to Action button) to learn more.

iii. About Page
Now let’s go on to the About page. I really like the content here above the fold. Notice that instead of diving into a long form bio, what you see is a short bio which does two things:
1. it lets you know that James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits and
2. it invites you to the newsletter signup

Then on the right you see a quick snapshot of some of the things he wants you to know about him. A new piece of info here I see is that he is the host of The James Clear Show - so I am intrigued and want to know more.

And then you learn more about him throughout the page and at the bottom is again the opt-in form.

About page also shows how the main goal of the site to position authorship of Atomic Habits is visible along with the invitation to sign up to the newsletter.

The opt-in form is on the bottom of the About page and displayed in a way that the visitor will not miss it.

iv. The Footer
One final thing I want to point out is about the footer. It’s very succinct and neatly presented. Plus, notice that we only see two social media links which I take as encouragement to pick one or two social media platforms than trying to be on multiple ones.

The footer is crisp and to the point.

If you looked at the other pages like Articles and Events, you will see a similar sense of coherence and simplicity which gives a clean look and has a calming effect. There are tons of good design decisions on this site and I absolutely love it!

So I hope this website example shows you visually how you can 1. get clear about your number one goal for your website. 2. prominently display it on your website.

I am so inspired by this website that I will be incorporating the design insights into my very own website refresh which I am embarking on this year. Stay tuned for that in the following months!

Now, it’s your turn. Have you run into websites that are exemplary in your view? Share them in the comments and let me know what you think they do best and what can other website owners learn from it.

To your success,

Sophia

089: Social Media: To Do Or Not To Do?

Earlier this year as the pandemic was just getting its hold on American soil, I quit all my social media except for my YouTube channel. I closed down my Facebook account, Pinterest and Instagram. I didn’t have a Twitter account so nothing to be done there. Although this is not a strategy that fits everyone, for me it was the right action that I needed to take to make some big changes in my life and my business. And it worked! In this article, I want to share the reasons why I quit, what transpired in my business during the time after I was social media-free and how I am intentionally coming back to social media. I want to share all of this in hopes to help anyone out there who is feeling overwhelmed by social media and is bombarded with mixed messages about both the pros and cons of participating in it.

Al’right, let’s dive in.

1| Why I quit social media in March 2020 and should you do the same?

As you may remember, March was an increasingly tense time here in the USA as the virus was spreading rapidly across the country. In the region where I live, people were still not seeing the growing intensity of the situation and my social media feed was being bombarded with posts from both people who were pro-masks and those who thought that we are just in for another type of a flu. My mind was influenced by this and I was getting obsessed with trying to sharing data to inform. So I took upon the role of information-sharing on my Facebook page. I was stressed by people not wanting to do the bare minimum of wearing masks or keep social distance. I spent many hours researching stats about the virus from University websites as well as various news sources and would post links to “inform” those who were not getting the news about the rapid spread and what we can do flatten the curve. Clearly, this was affecting my focus, my time and results at work.

On top of that, I also felt that if I wanted to succeed in business, I needed to be on all social media platforms, well, at least on the big ones - FB, Insta, Pinterest, Twitter. But as a solopreneur, this was just a bit too much to handle. Plus, I was not really good at any of the platforms, let alone all of them. And I also wanted to publish on my blog weekly.

Enter: overwhelm!

What I found out was that although social media was a way clients were finding me, when I looked carefully at my stats, it was really only my YouTube channel that brought me paying clients (many of them actually mentioned that that’s how they found my website). So I knew that YouTube was working but everything else was just creating a sense of overwhelm for me. Besides, I was spending way too much time scrolling my social media feed.

I am inspired by what immense successful folks do and there are stats noted in this Business Insider article that show that millionaires spend on average two and a half hours a week on social media versus 14 hours that the average American spends on it. My situation was less than 14 but enough to drag down my use of time in an effective way.

I considered just doing a social media detox and go off of it for a couple of weeks. But I had a feeling I needed to do something more drastic to send a clear message to my brain. Finally, I decided that I had to quit cold turkey. This may be what you need to but I won’t make that as a blanked suggestion for everyone because your needs may be different. But for me it was the right thing to do at that time because without any social media accounts to “waste” my time on, I found other rather useful ways to use my time which I will come to next. I also re-watched a Ted talk on why you should quit social media by Cal Newport, author of Digital Minimalism and I was inspired to make the leap.

Question: How is your relationship with your social media accounts and activities? How is it affecting your results in your business and your family life and your relationship with yourself? Is it time to reassess how you use it? How can you be more intentional in using social media for your business?

2| What was the impact of quitting social media?

There were several positive changes that transpired when I quit social media in March 2020. These changes were both in business and personal and here are a few of them:

1. I read 20 books last year, more than I did in 2019.
2. I opened up to new opportunities for my business that made a tremendous impact.
3. I substantially increased my business revenue in 2020, markedly more than 2019.
4. I actually connected with a lot more friends than I have, not just compared to 2019 but in the last few years even!
5. I was more present with my husband and my kitties.
6. I took care of my home in a way that I now have the most organized home and belongings I have ever had.
7. I had greater peace of mind as I was not incessantly worrying about the world and focused on my zone of influence.
8. This peace of mind allowed me to be more present with my clients and serve them generously.
9. My focus was not drained by distractions. More focus, less distraction.
10. Learning to say “No” to what was not good for me or was not working for me.
11. Being in touch with real people in more meaningful ways.

I’d say generally I was much more conscious and present in my day to day activities, had more focus and less distraction.

One of the most important side-effect was that my sense of belonging increased. The friends that I would have lost touch with by dropping Facebook, actually found other ways to stay in touch with me: via whatsapp video chats and Facetime video calls. It seems that on Facebook, we felt that we kinda knew what was happening in each others’ lives because we were watching and reading the posts. This sadly superseded real communication and real connection. Having no Facebook account, meant that we had to reach out in more meaningful ways and that has been especially powerful and a real solace during the lockdowns and the forced isolation due to the pandemic.

This connection was immensely important for me as it build a sense of belonging, friendship and sisterhood which helped to keep a happy mind when serving clients. And serving clients when in a happy mind is much more fun, right?

Question: What could be the benefits of a social media detox (or on the extreme case like me - quitting social media)? How would you show up in the world differently? How would you show up to your family and friends (your animals) and in your business to your clients differently?

3| How I am re-instating my social media portfolio in 2021?

Having such positive results not having social media, why then am I even considering to reinstate it in 2021? You see, I needed to quit social media and get to tabula rasa, a blank state, in order to remove the thing that was in my way (distraction) and to understand what I wanted.

Now that I know the benefits of not having social media, I am in a better position to strategically use it for my business goals as I know there are certain benefits of it that I do want to take advantage of. The benefits include building a brand identity, connecting with clients and colleagues, gaining search engine visibility to name a few. Plus, I am putting into place better structures so that it will not consume my time and attention.

How will my social media activities look like then?
I will be active on just this social media platform:
1. YouTube.
2. Twitter Update September 2023: I am now adding Twitter (link in the footer).

3. Pinterest and Update August 2021: I am dropping out of Pinterest again.
4. Instagram Update August 2021: I am dropping out of Instagram as well again.

YouTube is a huge source of client projects and it allows me to serve meaningfully to people with useful content. I will continue to post tech tutorials around web design and email marketing with a focus on Squarespace and ConvertKit. I will also be posting content that will be specifically serving budding web designers who want to build a successful web design business. As of August 2021, YouTube will be my one and only social media platform of choice.

Pinterest is a search engine powerhouse and your content is quite evergreen. Instagram allows people to more closely connect with me on a human level and I will use it specifically to present the person behind my business (me) on a personal level, including the occasional business tips and announcements. Instagram is also a wonderful way to build relationships with my colleagues in the web design field as well as other entrepreneurs that I admire and want to connect with.

Update as of Aug 2021: I am leaving Pinterest and Instagram to focus on YouTube. I want and need to declutter and focus my activities.

Question: What would a newly crafted social media strategy look like for your business so that it’s helpful and beneficial to you and your business instead of a source of overwhelm and burden?

I will be reassessing my social media engagement periodically and I am certain there will be refinements on how I show up on social media. But one thing that will continue to guide me is the question: how can I best use my time and resources to serve my clients, grow my business and grow as a person, so that it creates greater peace and harmony for myself and others.

I hope that this article has been helpful to you in how you approach the question of social media for your life and business. Let me know in the comments what your experience has been as I’d love to know!

Warmly,
Sophia

088: Success Habit of Millionaires That Will Speed Up Your Business Success

Do you know how many books you read in 2020? I am asking this not to make you feel bad if you didn’t - hey, 2020 has been tough on many fronts, needless to say. But the number of books and what type of books you read can be a key indicator and a key contributor to your financial and business success. And when you borrow books from the library, this reading habit doesn’t cost you a dime.

In this article, I will share some data on how many books millionaires and billionaires read, what my reading list is for 2021 and some links to blogs on how you help us build a reading habit ⏤ all of this to inspire you and myself to read more books in 2021, in order to learn, grow, and make a bigger positive impact in our world.

Let’s get started!

Let’s look at some research on how many books Americans read. According to the research done by Pew Research Center, the average American reads four books a year while 25% of Americans surveyed didn’t get their hands on even one. Compare that to immensely successful and influential billionaires such as Bill Gates who was mentioned article in this Inc.com article, and you get 50. Yes, he reads 50 books a year or around one book a week. If you want to know which 5 books he just recommended, check out his personal blog, GatesNotes.

Correlation between wealth and reading books
In this blog post, Sam Klemens lists ten data points that shows how many books the highly successful read. Now there’s no causal relationship established to show whether reading books led these people to become immensely successful. But in his article, you’ll see that Mark Cuban reads three hours a day while Warren Buffet reads 500 pages a day. Also, just think about Oprah and her love for books and one starts to wonder if indeed there is a causal relationship between wealth and reading. Plus, what type of books you read is equally important, right!

Making Reading a Daily Habit
To make reading part of the actions you take daily, it is important to make it a habit. Building a new habit is a skill and there’s research that says that it generally takes about 21 days to build a new habit. There are tons of books and Ted talks about how to build good habits. One trick that I learnt some years ago from Shawn Achor in his book, “The Happiness Advantage”, was to create positive triggers to help you build that habit. For example, if you want to practice the guitar everyday, keep the guitar in the middle of the living room instead of tucked away in a closet, so that it’s right in front of you. There’s less of an obstacle between you and the guitar. Using that example for reading then, one can keep the book next to your bed on the nightstand, carry it with you so you can read whenever you have to wait, and carve out a reading hour in the day where nothing else will compete with your attention. If you want to learn more about building a reading habit, read this book by James Clear called “Atomic Habits” which is all about building good habits (it’s was recommended by Sequoia Mulgrave of the DailyMode Studio and I’ve purchased the book and added it to my reading list for 2021). James Clear on his blog wrote on how to build new habits which you can read in a snap and use the tips he shares to easily implement right away.

Question: What strategies or tricks can you use to help yourself build this new daily habit?

Setting a Reading Goal for 2021
I want to read a lot more in 2021 and one thing I am doing to help me accomplish this is to create a reading goal. Earlier this week, I set the goal of reading 21 books in 2021. But then I made a list of all the books I read this year and it totalled at 20. So I am now changing my goal to reading 30 books next year. Seeing the stats of successful entrepreneurs who read up to 50 books a year, 30 is just a bit more than half, but for me this is a good goal and it’s both exciting and challenging. That’s roughly 2.5 books a month. I’ve also made a section in my bookshelf where I have placed some of books for the first half of the year. Seeing all these books in one place is motivating to me and I can’t wait to read them and gain golden nuggets of wisdom from each one of them.

Question: What will your reading goal be for 2021? And which books will make the list?

Sharing What You Learn
When working towards a new habit, not only sharing the goal can be very helpful but also sharing what you learn from them can be motivating. I’ve done that in the past on my personal development blog some years ago and I know that it greatly benefitted me when I shared some insights I gained. In fact, my very first YouTube video back in 2010 was a short book review where I shared 3 insights I gained from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are. I will get back to doing this in 2021 writing blogs or making videos about what I learn from each book.

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This is my lovely little bookshelf. Books from the 2021 reading list marked and set aside. Let’s get reading!

My Book List
It’s good to track what books one has read to encourage oneself to read more. So here are the books I read in 2020 and you’ll see a lot of them are about success mindset and motivation. It just so happens that the list totals at 20 books however, I had not made a goal of reading 20 books in 2020!

1. The Secret Door to Success by Florence Scovel Shinn (This was written in 1941. It’s in the creative commons and there are legally free PDF versions you can find on the web).
2. The Game of Life. Ibid.
3. The Power of the Spoken Word. Ibid.
4. Your Word is Your Wand. Ibid.
5. Dollars Want Me by Henry Harrison Brown (An old book written in 1903!)
6. The Abundance Code: How to Bust the 7 Money Myths by Julie Ann Cairns
7. It’s Not Your Money by Tosha Silver
8. You are Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero
9. The Ending of Things by Ajahn Brahm (freely available from the Buddhist Publication Society’s website).
10. Meditating on No-Self by Ayya Khema (freely available from the Buddhist Publication Society’s website).
11. The Decision: Overcoming today’s BS for Tomorrow’s Success by Kevin Hart (Audiobook)
12. Miracle Morning Millionaires by Hal Elrod, David Osborn, Honoree Corder (Audiobook)
13. Goodbye Things by Fumio Sasaki
14. Making Space Clutter-Free by Tracy McCubbin
15. The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley
16. Stop Acting Rich by Thomas Stanley
17. Become Your Own Banker by R. Nelson Nash
18. Building Your Warehouse of Wealth by R. Nelson Nash
19. How Privatized Banking Really Works by Robert Murphy and Carlos Lara
20. The Anapanasati Sutta: A Practical Guide to Mindfulness of Breathing and Tranquil Wisdom Meditation by the Venerable U Vimalaramsi

To Read in 2021
(Update Dec 2021 - I read 25 books in 2021 which I’ve indicated below as Read. See complete list of books read in my 2021 Books Read Post).

1. We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power by Rachel Rodgers - Read
2. Chillpreneur: The New Rules for Creating Success, Freedom, and Abundance on Your Terms by Denise Duffield Thomas - Read
3. Everything Is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
4. Profit First by Mike Michalowicz - Read
5. Atomic Habits by James Clear - Read
6. 10x Marketing Formula by Garrett Moon
7. Invested by Charles Schwab
8. Weekend Millionaire Mindset by Mike Summey and Dawson
9. Playing the Matrix by Mike Dooley - Read
10. Show Your Work by Austin Kleon - Read
11. This is Marketing by Seth Godin - Read
12. Traction by Gino Wickham
13. Being Nobody, Going Nowhere by Ayya Khema
14. Why Not Me? By Mindy Kaling - Read
15. How to American: An Immigrant's Guide to Disappointing Your Parents by Jimmy O. Yang
16. Thought Vibration or The Law of Attraction in the Thought World by William Walker Atkinson - Read
17. Everyday Millionaires by Chris Hogan
18. The Millionaire Mind by Thomas Stanley
19. The Next Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley - Read
20. Millionaire Women Next Door by Thomas Stanley
21. Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day by Jay Shetty
22. Becoming by Michelle Obama
23. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal
24. Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals by Rachel Hollis - Read
Six more to add to this list and I am sure I will be inspired next year to complete this list.

Until then, please do let me know in the chat what your book reading goals are for next year, and which books you’d recommend, especially those written by women entrepreneurs as both me and my book list need more woman power!

You have a dream to build a thriving web design business? You can make it happen!

Peace,
Sophia

087: 5 Traits of A Successful Web Design Business Owner

You want to run a web design business that is successful? Of course, you define what success is and it will be different at each stage of your business. And to create that success, you need to develop the traits that will help you get where you want to go. These are the traits that will not only help you achieve that revenue goal you are aiming for but also help decision-making easier, serving your clients better, and even articulate yourself better in both client communications and content creation. It’s a win-win-win!

So let’s get into some of those traits that I believe have helped me tremendously to move the needle in my business in recent months.

Here are the five traits:

1| A Successful Web Designer Actively Generates Clarity
2| A Successful Web Designer Cultivates Patience
3| A Successful Web Designer Keeps An Optimistic Mindset
4| A Successful Web Design Business Owner Cultivates A Resilient Mind
5| A Successful Web Designer Knows She Is A Force For Good

Traits for a Successful Web Designer:

1| A Successful Web Designer Actively Generates Clarity

This is not the easiest one to start with but it’s been very important for me in the last year especially. Clarity, I realize, is not something that just exists. I have found that I have had to generate clarity in my business through a combination of thinking deeply about things, journaling, discussing with my coach or mastermind buddy and most importantly, by doing.

It’s like knowing the path that leads to your home from your favorite cafe or a place you frequent. You don’t need to follow a GPS or read instructions on how to get home. You just know it because it is clear in your mind. Such clarity is something you actively need to generate about your life, about what you value, about what you aspire towards (both in personal and business life), who your business serves, what your business offers (as services, products, programs), what design guidelines you hold valuable, how you want to communicate to your clients/students, and how you want to build relationships with your peers, and so on and so forth.

For example, if you are a parent and being present with your kids each evening is important to you, you then know clearly at what time you need to shut down your computer - without fail.

As you can see that this clarify goes beyond simply knowing your niche. It’s about what is important to you. Not all parts of you business and life are completely lined up neatly in a row at all times. But if you can take some time to get some of these overarching things crystal clear for yourself, you will find many other decisions and projects and actions will fall into place neatly. Also, once you get clear it seems that with regular reflection and journaling, you enter into a deeper level of clarity!

2| A Successful Web Designer Cultivates Patience

This is something that I am continuing to cultivate and patience is certainly a virtue. Patience is needed at all stages of starting and growing your business. Patience in gaining that clarity (mentioned in point 1), patience in acquiring clients, patience in building a portfolio, patience in crafting your voice, patience in seeing your bank balance grow, patience with your own design skills, patience with your business skills and so on and so forth.

One of the most important aspects of patience we need to cultivate is towards clients. As a self-employed web design business-owner, you are most likely dealing with clients directly. And your clients will come from all types of backgrounds and regions of the world and they will have various levels of intra-personal and communication skills. Plus, even the nicest, kindest person may have a bad day which will lead them to do certain things that could potentially trigger or upset you. Moreover, we may be having a bad day and could misinterpret a completely innocent comment of a client. (I have sadly done that one time and I know that he would never want to say anything intentionally hurtful). So the more we can cultivate patience for our clients, the easier the projects will be and our own experience in creating a successful result for them.

3| A Successful Web Designer Keeps An Optimistic Mindset

There’s a proverb, I believe, it’s an ancient Chinese saying that goes like this: “Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps, a singing bird will come”. What I understand this means is that if we keep a positive mind, green and untainted by dirt, then we create a welcome home for a joyful singing bird, or opportunities and goodwill. Now being optimistic doesn’t mean being unrealistic and throwing facts out the door. But cultivating a positive mindset that is uplifting and focuses on the good is very important for persevering. You see, too often, our mind follows the line of what’s wrong: What’s wrong with my marketing, what’s wrong with my client acquisition skills, what’s wrong with my design skills, what’s wrong with me. And this is a very dangerous path. This tendency of the mind to notice what’s wrong puts a dark filter on our eyes through which we only see the “mistakes” and “errors”. And that can quickly drain one’s energy and self-confidence.

Of course, we can look at things that can be improved and tightened and refined in our business and I have shared in Blog 084 with the BBB method how to spot the bottleneck in your business and resolve it.

But we need to cultivate a habit of noticing progress made so far. We need to be aspirational for future opportunities. We need to cultivate an optimistic mindset so that when we face dire times, we can rely on our positive mindset to lift us up and out to the path of joy, peace and success.

There was a moment in my own business when I was lamenting how slowly my business was growing and how revenue was barely just trickling in. That’s when, sitting there in the middle of the living room, with tears flowing down my face, my husband brought up the spreadsheet that I had built to track my revenue. He took the data and made a graph out of it. And lo and behold, I was shocked. The graph showed me how my average monthly revenue was on the rise. I could not read the date on the spreadsheet to see that, but once I saw the graph, I was uplifted. That was the turning point in my business mindset. Now when thinking about my business revenue, instead of the voice in my head repeating “It’s growing so slowly!!!”, the voice in my head now said, “It’s on the rise!”.

4| A Successful Web Design Business Owner Cultivates A Resilient Mind

This is about being resilient in the face of rejections. And this trait has to be cultivate as well over time. Especially, in the early years of your business, when the momentum has still not picket up, you are likely to hear things like,

“You pricing is beyond our budget”
”Thank you but we have decided to go with another designer”
”We like what you have presented and at this time we have decided to stick with the site we have”
”We would love to work with you but right now we are swamped with projects”

And that’s if you are lucky. Often there’s just crickets - where the client seems to have fallen off the face of the earth and is no longer responding to your follow-ups. They could have run into personal challenges or just gotten busy with the million other things in their lives.

Also, if you are building an email list (which I highly recommend you start asap), you will notice that with each email you send out, somebody or the other will unsubscribe. And may be because we are so excited for the people in our email list, or we are just too sensitive as a starting business owner, I don’t know what all the reasons are, but that unsubscribe can hurt real bad. It’s like someone breaking up with you over the phone or worse just falling off the face of the earth (see earlier reference to people falling off the face of the earth!).

Yes, I have been there in both scenarios. Your fledging new business has not yet built the strength to withstand this kind of rejection. But the key word here is: yet. Soon, you will realize that clients who don’t want to work with you are creating room for you to focus on those who want, or creating time in your schedule so you can work on parts of your business that still need some care. Soon, you will realize that when people unsubscribe, it’s really nothing against you. They may even like you and follow you elsewhere but right now they are simply overwhelmed and want to streamline their inbox because they are working on their own sense of clarity. And you will realize that they are self-selecting themselves out of your email list and in that they are really doing you a favor because otherwise you would have to pay for an email subscriber who is not really your ideal client. How kind of them - you will soon thank them for their thoughtfulness!

And finally, the rejections from clients will not ping your heart that much. Soon, you will be focused on serving your dream clients and then when a potential client project doesn’t work out, you will know that divine timing is in play and they may come back to you at a later date when the stars are better aligned for your collaborative project. So, no big deal!

5| A Successful Web Designer Knows She Is A Force For Good

What do I mean by that? A force for good! Yes, a force for good. This is what I mean:

When you have cultivated the clarity in your business that you exist to serve and to help your clients, that because your business exists you are making a difference in someone’s life, then you know that you are a force for good. When so many clients are struggling to get their business become visible online, when they are striving through their own mind viruses of “I am not good enough” and still trying to make something happen, when clients have kids at home from school lockdowns and ailing family members, and find time at midnight to respond to your emails and make something moving in their business, when clients are trying to make a dream come true with their business while working a full-time job, when clients are afraid of technology because when she was a little girl some male-figure told her that she will break the computer or mess it up, and then she puts all her faith in you to help her navigate the scary online world, then you know that your business is needed and is making a difference for all of these people.

When you know that your business is helping people, you build a sense of confidence in your ability to make a difference. This confidence shows up in how you write client proposals, how you convey to them your design process over that virtual zoom meeting, and in how you deliver the work and work through challenges. When you know you are a force for good, all good forces come to uplift and support you.

What Traits Have Helped You On Your Journey?

So these are the five traits that a successful web designer needs to cultivate. And you may already have these and many other such traits helping you along the way. Let me know in the comments which other traits you’ve cultivated that made a difference in your business journey for the better!

You have a dream to build a thriving web design business? You can make it happen!

Peace,
Sophia

086: Inner-Circle Method of Finding Your First or Next Web Design Client

Finding your first client as a new web designer might feel like climbing Mount Everest - an arduous, unfamiliar and challenging endeavor. But once you have the right approach and strategy, it doesn’t have to be. In this article, I will share with you one of many (web design) client finding strategies that you can put into practice today.

If finding your first client or even your next client is what you are trying to solve, then I’ll guess that you are working on solving through the bottleneck in the first quadrant of your business. I highly recommend that you read through blog article No. 84 which outlines the four categories of your business (quadrants) as well as introduces you to the Business Bottleneck Breakthrough strategy that you can use over and over as your business grows.

See that article here: 084: How to Grow Your Web Design Business Using the BBB Strategy

So this category you are working on solving is Marketing which includes any action you take to create traffic to your site and to build visibility of your business and specifically of your services. You need to start getting the word out about your web design business and let people know what your business is about and that you are ready to serve new clients.

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What do Web Design Clients Need?

Now, think about what do clients need before they can hire you? And here we are talking about people who know they need a website and are in the market for a web designer. These clients are already informed about what they need (their pain point) and have some sort of an urgency to get the website made.

They first need to:
1. know that you exist. They need to have seen your website or your content online or seen you in person or seen your business info in print somewhere.
2. they need to see that you can deliver what you say you will deliver. They need to see a portfolio or some kind of a qualification and expertise.

So let’s target the second need first - the need to see a portfolio. We address this first because if you don’t have a portfolio, then even if they know that you exist and find your website, they are less likely to hire you without a proof of your expertise. So let’s prepare your business to receive those clients by building a portfolio, building that credibility factor first.

But as soon as I said that, it sounds like a catch 22, right? How do I build a portfolio, if clients don’t hire me, and if they don’t hire me, how will I build a portfolio?

Don’t worry. Here’s my solution out of this dilemma:
Build a portfolio that you can then use to find your ideal clients in the future.

Reach Out To Your Inner-Circle

As a brand new web designer, what will be the quickest ROI (return of investment) of your time so that you can quickly build out a portfolio? The answer: reaching out to your inner-circle. You can reach out to your family, your friends and close relatives and let them know that you are doing web design and offering that as a service.

Now reaching to friends and family may not sound that exciting. But I am not talking about contacting every friend and family member. Consider a handful of close people at first whom you feel comfortable of reaching out. It’s quite likely that they may have a side-hustle or a project they would love to have a website for but they never told you about it.

Bank On Your Existing Social Capital

Why do I suggest reaching out to your inner-circle? Because these are the people with whom you have the greatest social capital. In other words, they already know, like and trust you. You don’t have to convince them of your skills. They know you and are familiar with what you are capable of and can trust you even without you showing them a portfolio. Plus, they know you can’t run away - they most likely know where you live. LOL.

That’s why you can very likely convince them to give you a chance to build a website so that you can create your first or second website and build out a portfolio. And this is what you need ⏤ a portfolio of websites to showcase that you know what you are doing. This is what will help you get out of your inner-circle pretty quickly and start getting clients outside of friends and family.

How many sites to aim for? My suggestion is to aim for minimum 3 and maximum 6 for your starting portfolio.

And just because you are building sites for friends and family, doesn’t mean you’ve gotta do it for free. You may not charge your full going rate that you are aiming to be hired for but a nominal fee will help them be invested in your project and value your work. You may feel the need to undercharge enormously for your first website and hey, if it’s for your mama or papa, don’t sweat it. There’s so much they have done for you that very likely that cutting them a deal won’t be a big deal! Most important is to get that portfolio of 3 to 6 websites created and under your belt.

This strategy of reaching your inner-circle is a great one for starting web designers. But it can literally be used any time in your career. Of course, as you become more established you will want to get paid like a business-owner ⏤ appropriately. There are other strategies that you can put into place once you have exhausted the friends and family inner-circle. And I will be sharing with you those ideas in my upcoming blogs and videos.

Action step: Think of 3 people whom you can reach out to today and offer them to build a website for your portfolio. Jot it down and see how that feels. Then write or call the first person you feel inspired to reach out.

Peace,
Sophia

085: How to Connect A Parked Domain to Your Squarespace Website

Did you purchase a domain name on Squarespace just so that you could secure it now and use it later when you are ready for a new website? Or you have a website already with a it’s own domain but now you want to direct to it a second domain that you had previously purchased on Squarespace?

In either case, if you have a “parked” domain name, a domain name sitting in your account but not being used anywhere, and want to connect it to a new or existing website, then this blog + step by step video will help you get that done.

Click to Watch Video:

To connect a domain you’ve already purchased, the first thing you might do is go into Settings and Domain and click on “Use a Domain I own”. You might then type in your domain name and click continue. Then you realize, “huh, what’s going on? How do I connect it. All I see are these instructions but now button to click.”

But because you now are watching this video, you will know that you don’t start at the website that you want the domain to go to. Rather you start with the domain that you’ve already purchased with Squarespace.

Step 1 | Go to Your Parked Domain in Your Squarespace Dashboard

So you go to your Home Panel, then click on your avatar on the very bottom and go to your Squarespace dashboard. This is where your website and your domains can be accessed from. Now you see on the upper left corner of the screen, you see the tab called Domains. Click into it and you should see your parked domain.

In my case it’s this domain: millionairewebdesigner.com which is a training program for new Squarespace Web Designers (Update 2023 - this program has been retired. Checkout the latest courses and offerings in the top navigation or drop me a line). Now you see the three dots on the very right of your domain name. Click into it and from the drop-down, select “Manage Domain Settings”. You should then see something like this. Again, this is for a domain name you’ve already purchased from Squarespace and it was just parked until you are ready to use it.

 
Now I see here that the there is a red line next to my domain and it’s tell me that email verification is required. So I know that’s something I will need to take care of and later I will show how to do that. But first I click into it and then scroll down to click on “Move Domain to Another Site”.

Step 2 | Select the Squarespace Site that this Domain Should Connect to

What you will see next all your Squarespace Sites if you have more than one. Now what is left to do is select the site where you want your domain name to connect with. Next, you will see a screen like this one. Where it will ask you to confirm that you want to move your domain to the Squarespace site you just selected. You can double check that it’s the right one by looking at the Name of the Site and the internal url of that site. Next click confirm.

You will see this notification that your domain has been moved.

Step 3 | Make It A Primary Domain

Next, click into the domain name here and select “make primary domain”. You wouldn’t do this if you have another domain as a primary domain obviously. But in my case this is the only domain connected to my site and I want to make it primary - the main domain name for my site. And you can also check the Lock Domain circle here so this domain cannot be transferred unless you want that in the future and then you can uncheck it.

If you want to look at the Advanced Setting, you can click here but you don’t have to do anything here. And if you want to look at the Registration Information to make sure everything looks correct, you can do that as well.

Step 4 | Verify Your Email

And finally, I see that there’s a red line next to the domain and it is informing me that an email verification is required. So just click into that now. And click resend verification email. I then go to my email and see this message has come in. All I need to do is click “Verify Now”. And return to account dashboard.

Now I am quickly going into incognito to check if the domain is loading correctly. And yes, it does. As soon as I purchase a plan and publish the site, it will no longer say Private Site. And that all you’ve got to do.

I hope this was helpful and easy to follow!

You have a dream to build your web design business. You can make it happen.

Peace,
Sophia

084: How to Grow Your Web Design Business Using the BBB Strategy

On your journey to building a successful design business, you will inevitably run into challenges. These are the bottlenecks to your progress. Each challenge, once you overcome it, brings you to the next level. Solve for the bottleneck and you unlock the next level. Knowing what kind of a challenge you are facing will help you tremendously in breaking through that bottleneck. In this article, I will share with you how to spot bottlenecks and ways to solve them using the Business Bottleneck Breakthrough Strategy.

Business Bottleneck Breakthrough Strategy is all about understanding what the four main business categories are, how they apply to your specific business model and then learning to assess the revenue bottleneck through this lens. Read on to see my examples and explanation.

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Four Categories That Need Your Attention

As an online entrepreneur, these are some overarching categories in your business that need your attention:
1. Marketing (Content Creation, List Building, Public Relations, Ads - long term)
2. Acquisition (Short-term Client acquisition)
3. Production (Serving Clients)
4. Administrative (Accounting, HR, Taxes)

To make the distinction between Marketing and Acquisition, think of marketing as all the things you do to create traffic to your site, to create inquiries for your services. And acquisition is everything that you do to turn that traffic/inquiry into clients. So that means responding to client requests, writing proposals, doing complimentary consultations, these all fall under Acquisition.

Production is the actual delivering of the task you are hired for, so in your case the web site end result. Things that can be a bottleneck is your workflow, how you set boundaries, communication with your clients, scope creep where the project included x number of things and now it has grown to include several other things, delivering the launch training, domain transfer/redirect process, and so on.

Administration includes everything you need to keep the business running. Keeping records of income and expenses, doing the tax work, managing your team, taking care of legal aspects like establishing an LLC, privacy policy, and so on and so forth.

You need to find out what that bottleneck is, solve for it, and then move on to the next level. At each level, you will find a new bottleneck, either in the same category or in a different one. Round and round this goes!

Example of My Bottleneck

Let me give you an example of what I am currently facing in my business. I have a web design business where I am serving clients in a variety of ways. There are full website builds, smaller redesigns, quick fixes and tweaks, third-party app integration and one to one trainings or hourly packages. My previous marketing efforts are paying off for my design business as I have clients who find me and hire me. And now I am running into a bottleneck.

My bottleneck: hitting a revenue and time ceiling with 1 to 1 design projects.

The bottleneck is that I can only serve so many clients in the number of hours given. My time is limited and with 1 to 1 client projects so is my revenue. I am working for dollars in exchange of hours and so this is to be expected. I can continue like this and that can work fine. But I aspire to create more breathing room in my schedule. I aspire for more time and I want to find leveraged ways of serving so I can earn more as well. That’s where my bottleneck is.

That’s one of the reasons I created the Millionaire Web Designer Program so that I could serve more people in the limited time that I have while increasing my earnings. But now I am running into a new bottleneck.

New bottleneck: I am still building an audience base of web designers and I am at the early stage of marketing.

So my new bottleneck is marketing and finding the budding web designers for whom my offer can be really valuable. Once I can find them, build the like, know and trust factor, then we can work together in building their web design business.

This type of bottleneck is typical of any new business where you do not have an audience or a client base. So your first step is to find the right marketing tool that will help you find the clients for your product or service. New web designers face this problem where they have the skills and the desire to serve but don’t know how to find the clients who will hire them. Once you solve for this bottleneck, then you have made it to the next level. Later on that new level, you will solve for the next bottleneck such as communication, workflow, finance management, leveraged services/packages and so on. But for now, you have made progress!

So if you are new web designer working on creating a consistent income stream with web design projects, there’s one question I want you to ask yourself:  

What Bottleneck Am I Facing In My Business Right Now?

Is it that you don’t have your first client? (See blog 085 for a Client Finding Strategy you can put into place today.) Or you have clients but you are not scheduling them properly and finding that you are overbooking your calendar. Or you find a client, work for them, then you have no clients and you are in acquisition mode again. Then you get a client, deliver their website and after the project is over, you are back in search for the next client. Tell me in the comments what your bottleneck is. I will be happy to give you laser coaching in the comments to help you forward!

If marketing is a bottleneck for you, I want you to brainstorm ways you can get more eyes on your business. What kinds of things can you undertake so that you can get seen? There are many different options from creating content on your site, to guest-posting, to finding platforms where you can present your services, connecting with your existing network.

This is how you apply the Business Bottleneck Breakthrough Strategy to open up the revenue flow. Use this strategy and unlock the next stage in your business.

You have a dream to build a thriving web design business? You can make it happen!

Peace,
Sophia