309 - From “Me to We” - How I Scaled my Web Design Business with a Small Remote Team

Josh shares how he scaled his web design studio with a small, remote team after being left with no other option while having 23 projects on his plate all at once. He also shares how his experience with scaling changed his mindset and gave him freedom, time and mental bandwidth back.

In This Episode

00:02 - Scaling Your Web Design Business
12:17 - Scaling Through Delegation
20:43 - Scaling and Hiring for Growth
27:00 - Benefits 
35:39 - Pursue Passion Projects
42:18 - Scale Your Way

Get all links, resources and show notes at:

https://joshhall.co/309

Transcript

Josh: 0:02

Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast, with your host, josh Hall, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love. Hello friends, welcome into another episode of the Web Design Business Podcast, just me with you here. In this one, I want to take some time to share with you a little bit about my scaling story and what I learned in scaling my business past just myself, which is why I'm aptly naming this episode from me to we, because that's exactly what I learned to do and also struggled with mightily, I might add. I'm going to share a little bit about what kind of held me back and why I was so proud to be a solopreneur and I don't want to say that the problems that caused for me but they were. They were problems that were challenges that I learned to get over when I started scaling and scaling just it changed my life. It changed the trajectory of my career. It's why I'm here with you today.

Josh: 1:04

Side note, we're going to get into this. But the reason that I have this podcast and that I started teaching is because I scaled my web design agency. There is no way I could teach web design and the business side of web design and run my agency. There was just no way I could do it. So I'm here with you today because of scaling, and I'm going to share exactly the highlights and the most important things that I learned in scaling to help you, no matter where you are in your journey. If you are like, oh my gosh, I'm so busy, I don't know what to do. I need to scale, this is going to help you. Or if you're like, maybe one day I don't want to do everything myself and I'd like to know what that roadmap could look like, that's exactly what we're going to dive into here. Speaking of a roadmap to scaling, talk about a segue. This also is important because the week that I'm releasing this episode is the same week that I'm opening up my brand new course, scale your way. I'm so excited about it. The beta version of this course, the first version, is opening up exclusively inside of Web Designer Pro, my coaching community. So if you're catching this when the episode goes live this week, you can join us and get access to the modules. Every week, I'm going to be releasing a new module for my scaling course inside of Web Designer Pro. Go to Josh Hallco To get access and you can go through the course with us every module once a week, while I release those, and then the course is going to be available, ongoing, moving forward. So if you're catching this months from the release or years down the road, don't worry, it'll be available at the show notes for this episode, which will be Josh Hallco slash 309. You'll be able to get access to the course in some way, but for right now it is available exclusively in pro at the time of releasing this.

Josh: 2:45

So let me share with you my scaling story, starting with why I did not scale initially From you may know if you've been following for a while. If you don't know and you're a new listener to the show, first off, welcome. Awesome to have you here, super excited to be a part of your web design business journey and helping you build a life of freedom and lifestyle through web design. And there may be, honestly, no better way to do that than scaling, ie not doing everything yourself. So the reason I didn't scale initially is because I honestly, I kind of fumbled into web design. You can go back to the very first episode of this podcast to hear my full, my full story. But I was a drummer and a cabinet maker and started doing web design on the side, and then I just started getting jobs. I started getting family referrals and friend referrals and my personal professional network. I started getting work and fumbled into web design. So I did.

Josh: 3:40

Of course, I didn't have a plan to scale initially because I just wanted to, like, make money on the side, and then, when I became a web designer, I just wanted to make enough to support myself and have a business, and I know that this is really common. So for any of you who feel like I just kind of fumbled into this, I feel weird that I haven't thought about scaling or I don't want to have a big business and a big agency. Do not put unneeded pressure on yourself, because your story is incredibly common. It's probably just like me. Again, I fumbled into this, so I was not a business owner, I was just kind of winging my way and then eventually got a little more comfortable into the idea of getting everything off my plate, as I did everything myself for so long. And this was also a problem because in another reason I didn't want to scale initially is I was very comfortable and, honestly, quite good at doing things as a solopreneur and, to my detriment. I prided myself in doing everything all by myself.

Josh: 4:45

And you may be in this boat right now where you're like you're feeling pretty good about yourself because you've built a business up as a freelancer or a solopreneur and you may feel like, well, I don't need. I don't need anyone else, I can do everything on my own. But I'm here to tell you, my friend, at some point you're going to get to a place where you're going to feel like I can't do everything on my own all the time and I'd like to take a break. Maybe I want to take a vacation or maybe I want to do something else, but I don't want to kill my business. For many reasons there is a time to scale, and the reason my course is aptly named scale your ways.

Josh: 5:23

Because, as you'll find here, there's so many ways that you can scale. There is not one perfect roadmap or one perfect way to scale. You don't need like for me. I don't know what you think of when you think about the term scaling, but when I think of scaling, or the way I thought of scaling, was that I needed to have a web design agency with overhead and a building downtown and employees and payroll, and I was going to be a project manager, but that's not the case, and what I'll teach you here at Insight of Money Scaling course is that you can scale in a way that works for you. You can do it very slow, you can do it one little step at a time and you can just start to chip away at the things that don't light you up and give you energy in your business so you can focus on the things that you enjoy doing and to get your time and freedom back. So, all that to say, to my detriment, I was very proud and comfortable being a solopreneur until well, I'm going to get to what happened that made me scale, but that was a biggie.

Josh: 6:26

I also like control. I'm sure I'm not alone, as a web designer and as a creative, in feeling like I build my websites, like my clients work with me and there's no way that somebody else could do what I do and this is my thinking, my feeling, and there's no way that somebody could do better than I do for my business. I knew I wasn't the best designer in the world. I knew I wasn't the best developer in the world, but my DNA was in every one of my projects. So I was like how could somebody possibly like I just wouldn't feel comfortable hiring that off in it going well, or so I thought.

Josh: 7:02

So I liked control and then, finally, another reason why I did not scale initially in my business is that it took me quite a long time to become a business owner, and there were a lot of things that helped me with this. Number one was just worthwhile experience and experience in doing freelance and actually building a business. Another was a lot of books that I read, and a third piece to that was actually investing in a coaching program, which was actually one of my clients. I went through a program called Action Coach, which was, I think it's regional in the Midwest and the States, but my clients were a subset of that here in Columbus, ohio, and I knew that they did business coaching and then I eventually went to them for a six month business coaching program and that really helped reshape my mind and think about what I was doing as a business rather than just, you know, a job.

Josh: 7:58

Basically, I mean essentially what I did the first six years of my journey seven years really was. I created a job. I did not create a business, I created a nice job. And then I got to the point where I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't want a job. That only I could do and, god forbid, something happened. My family is screwed and there's no opportunity for anyone else. Like I wanted to make it into an actual business. So that's what I kind of learned. Those are the reasons I did not scale initially Now during that time. So for those who don't know again, you can go back to episode one of this podcast and if you go to joshallcojosh, that'll take you to my about page where you can hear my full story, because I actually have done two episodes on this podcast one with the first part of my journey and then episode 255, not that long ago is kind of a part two, because at the time of starting this podcast, I launched it in 2019. So I had learned a lot from 19 to when I launched that episode 255 last year in 2023. So just go to joshallcojosh to get the full two episodes on this, but I share a little bit about this.

Josh: 9:07

But then I really started with the idea that I wanted to be a business owner and so I started actually delegating, just piecemealing some, some, some work out, probably about 2016 and 17. I was about six or seven years into my journey, when I was, there was things that I was doing that was like I'm just not good at this or I don't want to do this. One was because I went from graphic design to web design. I started realizing I don't want to do all the graphic design work. In fact, I don't want to do that much graphic design work at all so I started to delegate that before I really thought about scaling officially and seriously.

Josh: 9:45

I had a friend of mine who actually we used to go to church together and be the praise band together and he was just a killer designer. He was so great graphic designer and so I started hiring him out occasionally for some graphic design stuff. I also, for those who don't know, again, go to joshallco slash josh to get the full story. But I was doing night classes at the community college here in Columbus to learn digital design and graphics and one of the classes I took was the CSS class as kind of a side class and it was my first experience and learning CSS and I met a guy in there who was really savvy with CSS and we connected and stayed in touch and when I started with this idea of delegating. There was a bunch of small things that I wanted to get off my plate CSS related and I knew he was just a good web designer. So I actually hired him just hourly occasionally to start taking off some some little things that I was doing for websites. So those are my two first experiences and dipping my toe into delegating, and it's honestly one thing I recommend doing.

Josh: 10:53

If you are terrified of scaling and again quote unquote being a big agency, just see what it feels like to delegate something you're doing that you just don't want to do or that you know could be automated or delegated, or something that's low risk. And I don't want to call it low value, because everything you do in your business is valuable. But if you ask me, is it worthwhile tinkering around with CSS for three hours? Or if you were to spend three hours creating email marketing or a sales page or doing three sales calls for your business, you can guess what's probably more valuable on the books for your business and you guessed right it is the latter. Again, nothing against tinkering around CSS, but you get to a point in your business like I learned where I'm, like I either don't want to do this it's draining me or I learned, even though I can do this, I probably shouldn't do this and I've talked about this a lot on the podcast, but when I was balancing doing graphic design and website design, I was doing all of these little business card designs for like 250 bucks and, yes, they would lead to website designs. But I got to a point where I just didn't need to do those anymore and I learned that ever important quote what got you here won't get you there. And that's exactly what I learned.

Josh: 12:17

When it came to scaling, I realized business cards were great for me for a while, but I do not need to keep on doing these. I have plenty enough website projects and I'm known as a web designer now, not a graphic designer and I realized I've either got to drop this service, phase it out or delegate it. And I did all three in reverse order I started delegating it out, then I started phasing it out and then I dropped it completely. So I started to learn to delegate. Thankfully, because when I truly began to scale my business and become a business owner, it was because I was forced to. I was 100% forced to scale, because at one point it was, I believe, february 2018. I had like 20, I'm not saying I shouldn't even say like I know exactly how many projects. I had 23 projects all by myself, and it was just one of those where, like, the wave of business came, and it's kind of I'm actually releasing this episode at the end of January in 2024.

Josh: 13:25

For those of you who have been in business for a while and your momentum is good and the trajectory is trending nicely for you, I'm gonna give you a heads up, because this time of the year is one of the busiest times of year for any service provider, particularly for web design, because clients are back from holidays and new year they've started working on their business, they're setting their goals and their vision for the new year. A lot of them have marketing budgets that are completely re-interdrized and reallocated and so they're thinking about what they're gonna do this year. So a lot of people invest in marketing in late January and early February. That's exactly what happened to me and it was a wave of business. It was even like proposals that I had out months ago. At that point it was like somebody just flipped a switch and everybody was like hey, josh, I wanna move forward. Hey, josh, I wanna move forward. Hey, josh, I wanna move forward and it was awesome.

Josh: 14:20

But then the true challenge came. When I was like, how am I going to do this? Like, literally, what can I do? I found, when you get utterly slammed with business, first of all it's not a problem, it is a challenge. So let's look at a little mindset on this. It is an amazing thing to have happen. You know just as well as I do it's much better to be slammed with work than to have no work. So for those of you who are in this point right now or who have been through this or who will go through this, just a reminder to sit back and just be thankful that this is the situation you're in, because it is really cool.

Josh: 15:00

But it is a challenge, because now you really have three things you can do. You can either well, there's a few things you could do you could either work 100 hours a week and get it all done within a matter of time. But even you have to remember, even if you're working 100 hours a week, you may still be having new projects start. So that doesn't mean that you just have, in my case, these 23 projects to get done. I had these 23 projects and everything that was going to come in over the next few weeks during this, so you could work 100 hours a week. You could stop taking new clients completely, but I don't recommend doing that. That's why I don't love the booked out model for web design personally. Or you could raise your rage so extravagantly high that you're gonna be taking less projects on, but that's generally not gonna be something that you do right away and that would probably include stopping your sales pipeline for new clients, or what I recommend and what I did is you could start to scale and start to get to delegate some of this stuff.

Josh: 16:05

Now I should say these 23 projects that I did they were not all massive website designs. Some were. A big bulk of those were. I'd say half of those were like good-sized web design projects, but some of them were still some graphic design. But I would still count that as a project. Like a business card was still a project. It's still required starting and then working with client revisions and off-boarding, et cetera. So some of these were smaller. Some of these were actually parts of web design projects that we had already done on, like a previous site, and then they were adding new pages or whatever it was.

Josh: 16:39

But I was 100% slammed and luckily, at that time I had started to teach because I had started to begin delegating. I had started to do YouTube tutorials about Divi because I started joshhaulco in the late summer of 2017. And even just by delegating and putting off a few things from my play, that allowed me to kind of start this brand and teaching. But I still wasn't fully committed as a business owner until I got slammed. So it was kind of two things at once. I was going through that business coaching program that I mentioned and at the tail end of that program is when this wave of business came. So really all kind of the stars aligned for me, if you will.

Josh: 17:28

But here's the big question is like, how did I scale and how did I scale fast? Well, the reality is I did not scale quote unquote fast, but I was able to chip away at enough of those projects to get them through the door in a reasonable amount of time. Now, I did talk to a lot of my clients and kind of push back deadlines if I knew that clients and these projects weren't absolutely time sensitive. I did, and this is something I teach in my business course. You can space and stagger projects accordingly and I just did a better job. Well, I did raise my rates at that point and I just didn't market as much as I was Like I wasn't intentionally asking for work from previous clients or my networking group, I just really went head down and got as far as I could on these projects. This was also the time at point where I learned that instead of getting a whole project done and trying to do things in a month, you could get part of the project done in a couple of weeks, for example, and then stagger things out the rest of the way. So what I teach in my business course is what I like to call the space and stagger technique, and this is where I kind of learned it. I was forced to.

Josh: 18:36

But anyway, the question is, how did I start scaling? How did I find people to help? And what was interesting is because I had just started joshallco. I had started my YouTube channel doing mainly Divi tutorials. I always knew I wanted to get into like some of the business side of web design because I had been doing it for seven years and I did an interview series. It's still up now. I'll have it linked in the show notes for this episode, but I did a whole interview series on interviewing other business owners web design business owners on how they scaled their Divi web design business. So this was Divi specific but it's actually just web design business in general.

Josh: 19:14

But I did this whole scaling series which again I'll link to in the show notes for this episode, and that series brought me the first two people who I started hiring out for my business when I started scaling, and one which I'm actually going to feature in my scaling course was Jonathan, call him JD. He came to me and just sent a wonderful email that I still have to this day which again I'm going to share in my excuse me, my scaling course. But he saw that Divi scaling series and just sent a note and said hey, I heard that you're interested in potentially scaling and delegating work and this is what I'm up to and I would not only love to have a chance for mentorship but I'd love to be able to do some work for you if you get to that point. And this is what I am interested in, this is my skill set and experience and this is what I would love to do moving forward. And so I got to talking with him and, long story short, gave him some very small tasks to see what he could do, and he was able to figure out some CSS stuff and he figured out one thing that I was stuck on and I learned all right, jonathan is the real deal. I think he could definitely help and that's who became eventually. My lead website designer and developer was Jonathan. So it started because I actually put some free content out there and did kind of a mini podcast, this interview series that brought people to me.

Josh: 20:43

Now there's a lot of different ways to hire people, which I'm going to get into in depth in my scaling course. I'll tell you right now. It's good to have a good idea of a job description and what you want to hire out before you find people. There's tons of groups there. You can hire people in so many different areas now, in person and online. I recommend and in short, I recommend looking in like if you're using Divi. I recommend looking in Divi groups If you're using certain tools. If you can find tool specific help, that will make things a lot easier than finding somebody who has to learn Divi, for example, if they're used to using Elementor or Bricks. So that helped because he was already learning Divi. But yeah, that's how I hired.

Josh: 21:29

My first big kind of hire was he came to me out of releasing that scaling interview series that I did. That also brought another person to me, amanda, who was kind of a jack of all trades and magician. She was like the ultimate definition of figuring out anything. She also came to me through that series and she said that she's got a lot of experience with Divi and LMS systems and even VA and tech work and she helped me with figuring out all kinds of stuff in my business that were in and outside of even Divi a lot of WooCommerce stuff and all sorts of stuff. So those were my first two kind of quote unquote hires as I really started chipping away at delegating in my business and then starting to scale.

Josh: 22:18

And again I started very small. I learned, and what I'm going to teach in my scaling course for you when you join is I'm going to teach you how to do what I did, which is to scale small and scale non-risky, meaning you don't need to find a junior designer, try to get to know them in one day and then give them an entire website build and expect them to talk with clients and do client communication and project management and off-boarding. You can start small. Generally that looks like what I did with JD, which is giving them tasks to see if they can figure things out and where their skill set lies. And then in my case, what I learned to do was to start the website designs but then have Jonathan finish the website designs or do parts of pages and then eventually do full pages. Then eventually I started just handing off full builds. I got to the place where I was primarily just doing the sales and onboarding and then I made it very clear once we get to this point, I'll hand you off to Jonathan. He will do the entire website design, or all. What I generally did was he would do the first website design, the part of the website, and then I would show that off to the client and then hand it over to Jonathan to take it off from there. I wouldn't even be involved again until the website was done after revisions and feedback and responsive design, and then close things out. It was a lovely setup and something I recommend for those of you who are interested in scaling, but that's how we did it. It was very small to start and then, as soon as I felt like JD was competent and comfortable with taking more on. I just started adding more to his plate. Same with Amanda.

Josh: 23:56

And then, probably about two years into scaling my agency, I had a nice little studio going, a nice little team. I had met some other web designers and developers who were doing things that I didn't really have an interest in or who were just better than me, like Noelle, who's a member of Web Designer Pro. She was really good at WooCommerce and I was stuck with WooCommerce in a lot of ways, like for advanced stuff. I had met her through my Divi group, divi Web Designers. So that's where I met her. We'll get into this. But I actually met our eventual graphic designer through JD. It was somebody that he knew. So it's another tip when you scale, you can increase your network and expand your network.

Josh: 24:38

I also had another designer who I went through like a talent agency. That was a part of my networking group at the time and I got to the point where this was before we met JD's friend. But before that I was like all right, I got to get this. I was doing a lot of print stuff and design stuff. I wasn't ready to drop it, but I was like I can't be doing this myself. So I had them find me a great graphic designer, jackie, who was also local in Columbus, ohio. Man, was she awesome. I miss working with her. She was so great and, yeah, I hired her to do all that. So I had really kind of developed a nice little team, which you can actually see if you go to joshintransitstudioscom. That is the freelance version of my agency website before I scaled it and before Eric became the CEO and before I sold it back in 2020. So you can go to joshintransitstudioscom. But that's how I scaled. That's the overview and the summary of how I scaled.

Josh: 25:41

And then when I over the course of about two years between 2018 and 2020, I really went quickly over scaling up in those two years, but it started small. I started very small. We're learning how to attract people who are a good personality, fit and understood my business and the meaning behind my business and also knew my tools. I didn't have to convince somebody to learn Divvy. They were already in the Divvy community, so it made it a lot easier for me and because I had a fairly small tool stack. We only did WordPress. We only did Divvy. We only did WooCommerce. We only used Basecamp. We only use SiteGround for hosting. It didn't require somebody to know like a hundred things, which is also a really important point. When it comes to scaling, if you're using a ton of different tools, it's gonna be way harder than if you have a fairly humble tool stack. So that helped as I continued to scale up, and then that got me to the place where I was able to do this and focus on teaching and be here for you to help you do the same thing. I also became much more profitable per hour because I wasn't doing everything myself. So I wanna close this out with the top lessons that I learned from scaling.

Josh: 27:00

Number one I did not feel alone, and this is the one that caught me off guard. I didn't realize how lonely I fell to my business until I scaled and suddenly every project problem or client challenge it wasn't all on my shoulders. I literally felt lighter, like I felt like there was a weight off me because it wasn't all absolutely on me. I was able to share and vent if needed to, to like JD and to my team, instead of venting in a free Facebook group and spreading negativity for other web designers towards your web design clients, which I do not recommend you do. So stop it now. Stop bitching about your web design clients. But case in point there is a time where you need to vent sometimes, and it's much better to do that with the team who understands you, and even if you're not in a good mood, they may be like okay, josh is a little moody right now, a little fussy, have a bad call, a little fussy. So be fussy with your team. Don't be fussy in public, because clients can see that too, if they were to join a web design group.

Josh: 28:04

So I didn't feel alone, though. More importantly, I really honestly, I just did not feel alone, and, gosh, it was an awesome feeling that I'll never, ever not go back to, even with my personal brand, by the way, joshallco. I started scaling from day one because I knew how important it was for me to go further, faster. So and I scale my way, which we're gonna dive into here in the course. So I didn't feel alone. You won't feel alone either, and you'll be shocked at how proud you feel as a solopreneur. And then, when you start to share the wealth and share the hardship, you're like oh, this is nice, we're meant to do it together, guys, we're meant to be a team. People work better in teams and that's why, even like tennis, players have teams. It's them on the court but they have a team behind them. So very, very important.

Josh: 28:52

I also realized that expanded my network. Like I said, we brought in Robson, who was JD's friend, to do graphic design. Jackie eventually took a full-time job. I always had her just kind of doing contract work. I knew that she was gonna go full-time and I knew she was gonna get nabbed up pretty quick and she did, but gave me plenty of time and did some stuff on the side for me and then I would have had to like go through that whole process again If JD didn't let me know. Hey, I have a good friend who does graphic design and he does great with branding and he became our like graphic designer brand specialist and he was awesome there for a little while. So you expand your network. Like think about how many people you know in your network as a professional, as a business owner, and then times that by two or even a half If you have a junior web designer. But they happen to know a lot of people. You've just saved yourself so much time when it comes to hiring additional people and help because you don't need to meet people all over again or from ground zero. You can already have a good trust in relationship there, just by the folks you're working with. So it expanded my network greatly.

Josh: 29:58

I also learned and I don't have a note on this, I'm gonna make it now I learned that it's more about the business than me personally. I mentioned in the beginning, I'm a control freak, just like probably a lot of you are. So I was like how could I possibly hire this out? Well, I learned that the output of our designs are now about the business. It's not personal, it's not about me personally. And I found out that I'm a good designer.

Josh: 30:25

But at that point Jonathan became better than I did. He was a really good designer. He was popping out designers, the designs, faster than I was and it was way better. I was like, oh my gosh, screw my mock-up, let's go with that, this is way better. So the apprentice became the master, as you will. So it becomes about the business and you can be proud about what your business kicks out and it's not as personal and this is a mindset shift, because there's pros to things being personal and having your day in it, dna in it, but you can still create brand guidelines and styles and still have a business that kicks out similar website designs and stuff. So don't worry, it doesn't mean that if you scale, your designs are gonna look way different. You can still set the bar for what you want designs to look like. But my designs became better only because I wasn't limited by myself. I allowed somebody to flourish in that role Speaking of when JD and Amanda and Noel and Rob said and everyone started taking more off my plate and I actually started hiring out SEO and referring out SEO to Pat, my SEO guy.

Josh: 31:34

I got so much time back and that's when it really clicked for me. The power of scaling is I was able to really free up about 20 to 25 hours a week of time that I was dedicating to doing all this stuff and, thank goodness, because I was able to take this brand of teaching seriously. Like I mentioned, I had started doing it on the side just cause it was a passion project and I've always loved teaching and I really enjoyed sharing what I was learning with Divvy and having my YouTube channel in the early days and then, probably at the end of 2018, well, that's when I released my first course. That's when I took joshallco very seriously, and it was because of scaling. Scaling allowed me to become a course creator and it's what allowed me to start developing a suite of courses. I could have never done this if I didn't scale, and I started this podcast in the fall of 2019. The only reason I was able to do that is because, by that point, I had saved even more time in my day-to-day and week-to-week to where at the really at the beginning of 2020, I was only spending about 15 hours a week on a transit on average. Some was less than that, some was more than that, but that's what allowed me to be a course creator and to build this brand to teach you to do the same thing all because of scaling. So thank you scaling, thank you to JD, thank you to Amanda, to Noel, to Robson, to Jackie, to my gosh Pat, to everybody who helped out at that point, got so much time back.

Josh: 33:09

I also became 100% more valuable and more powerful because I didn't limit myself. One thing I found is, when you're a solopreneur and a proud freelancer, you don't realize how limited you are. But you're limited to your time, you're limited to your current skill set and expertise. And because you're doing all the things, it's very unlikely you're able to learn a lot at a faster pace and especially those of you who are parents or have more obligations or maybe side hustling, you don't have much time to run your business and grow in all of your skill sets and grow in your professional development and your personal development. So you're limiting yourself drastically by staying just you, quite honestly.

Josh: 33:54

And I learned I was way more powerful at design because JD was a better designer. I was way more powerful at development because I had Noel and a few others who were helping on the development side of things. I didn't even mention Amar, my email guy, who's in Web Designer Pro as well. I could finally figure out email migrations and DNS and domain stuff because I hated that stuff and found Amar through my Divi group and I hired him out completely under the roof sometimes of Intranja and then a lot of times just referred out to him for email stuff. I couldn't ever have done that if I didn't start scaling and feel comfortable doing that. I became way better at graphic design because of Robson, became way better at SEO because of Pat, my SEO partner. All of these things made me and my business so much more powerful because it wasn't all on me. I could focus on what I wanted to do.

Josh: 34:48

Now let me be clear about this. As we wrap this up, I could have taken Intransit Studios to a seven figure agency 100%, could have gone from a few hundred thousand dollars to seven figures. But the reason I did not scale at that level is because I started this and I love teaching and I love coaching you and being your guide and helping other web designers. So that's what allowed me to do this. Because you may wonder why didn't you take Intransit to a bigger level? It's because I was teaching and I wanted to teach and do courses and have a membership and do this podcast and on my YouTube channel. Absolutely no way I could do all of this at any level of excellence and do everything I was doing. So that is what led me to my final point here, which is that I made my business sellable.

Josh: 35:39

I sold Intransit Studios in the summer of 2020 to Eric, who is now my CEO, who was, if you didn't know, a student of mine. I saw Eric take his business to six figures in one year and when I was looking around at who may be a good fit to take my clients on and take care of them. Well, he was the best fit that I felt at the time and that's where we started the conversation. And I could not have done that and my business was not worth anything if I didn't scale it, because I essentially created a job for myself until I started scaling and had processes and systems. All that to say, if you are interested in one day potentially selling your business, if you do everything yourself and everything's in your head and everything is relied on your fingertips and your designs, you do not have a sellable asset. You have a job and you can't sell a job. So the only reason I was able to get to that point, to be able to sell Intransit and teach full time, was because of scaling.

Josh: 36:42

And for those, if you don't know, I'm still a consultant for Intransit Studios. I still see all the ins and outs of what's working. I give my insight. Now Eric is the CEO and he runs with it. Gonna let him do his thing. But I am still very, very much in the know on what's going on and I get to see what's working within transit, which is at a full blown agency level now. So it's really fascinating for me to see the trajectory.

Josh: 37:08

But all that to say, my scaling story going from me to we allowed me to be here for you, and that's what I wanna end on. This is the beauty about scaling when you scale, you can scale your way. You can do it small, you can do it slow, you can do it fast, you can do it big, you can do whatever you wanna do. And when you do for your time up, what are you gonna do with it? So I wanna end this off with a challenge for you. What are you gonna do with more time?

Josh: 37:38

Do you want to just be the business owner and take your business to multi, six or seven figures, or has there been something brewing inside of you to do a passion project? Do you want to do something that's more web printer related? Do you have a course inside of you? Do you have a book inside of you? Do you have a side business that you've been sitting on that? You're like gosh. I would love to finally do this business. I was trying to think of an example. I have a tie fighter behind me.

Josh: 38:07

Let's say, you wanna make Star Wars tie fighters, you wanna make models, but you just haven't had the time because you're dang web design business. I want you to create your tie fi models. I want you to. I want you to make X wing and Y wing and A wing models, star destroyer models. I want you, my friend, you Star Wars model makers out there, I want you to make your models. So scale your web design agency to help you do just that. What will you, in all honesty? Well, maybe some of you do wanna do the models, in which case I wanna see a picture of those. Please Send me one. Maybe I'll put one in my office. What are you gonna do with your time? Because that's what you're gonna get back, and my course Scale your Way is gonna help you with all the intricacies. We haven't even talked about SOPs and task inventories, flow versus friction lists. We haven't talked about in-depth where to hire, how to hire, when to hire All these things and more. I'm gonna guide you through every step of the way. Again, it is a roadmap to scale your way. It is not the roadmap, it's not the only way to scale, but my course is gonna be the roadmap. It's gonna guide you through the best way to scale that works for you, and I can't wait to help you do it, friends, even if you feel like I'm good at being a freelancer, if you are at all close to the point, like Sandy was.

Josh: 39:24

I recently had Sandy on the podcast, who I helped scale. Recently she got to the point where she was so slammed with work and she went through battling cancer and the only way she was able to do that effectively with scaling her agency and go through this life-changing event with battling cancer for her was scaling her agency Because she was able to get help and scale with other members of Web Designer Pro and keep her business going and have a ton of time off for her battle with cancer, which, if you have not listened to that episode, go back to episode 298, was just a few episodes ago with Sandy Burns. It is like a case study masterclass in how to scale. That's episode 298. So maybe after this, go to that one, listen to Sandy's story. Oh my gosh, it's so good, so important for scaling. But, my friends, I can't wait to help you. So if this has piqued your interest, join me in my new scaling course. It is launching January 24th 2024. So if you're listening to this episode as it goes live it will be live this week.

Josh: 40:34

Module one Go to joshallcoco to get access to the first module. If you're listening to this episode, months or years down the road, the show notes at this episode, joshallco.309, will have a link to where you can get the course, either inside of Web Designer Pro or separately. I'm intentionally and purposefully launching this course inside of Web Designer Pro, first because we are going to be referencing a lot of other resources and systems and processes that are in other courses. So you kind of need my business course, my maintenance plan course and a few other things in order to do this roadmap really successfully. I mean, it'll be applicable to anybody. But if you wanna get the biggest bang for your buck and go fast as far as scaling your way, then that's why I'm doing it inside of Pro, because I also wanna help you do this your way. So that's why I recommend join us in Pro.

Josh: 41:28

If you have not yet joined my coaching community, web Designer Pro, now is the time. Listen, you can go month to month, so you can go for one month. Join us right now. You can go for the core. You can even just check this out joshallcococo To join us in Web Designer Pro. You can go through this course as I release modules once a week and if you feel like it's a great fit and you wanna have continued access to it, you want coaching with me directly and you would like access to my full suite of Web Design courses all inside of Web Designer Pro. It's part of your membership. Go to joshallcocococo, try it month to month, see if it's a good fit. If after 30 days you're like I got my fix, I'm good, all good, no problem. You can always get my courses standalone, one off at full price. That's totally fine. But if you want everything coaching with me, that's where you can go.

Josh: 42:18

Joshallcoco, and I will see you, friends, in the first module this week of Scale your Way, your complete roadmap to scaling your Web Design business. Let's get your time back, let's get your energy back, let's get your fun back in your business. I wanna help you love your business and love the work that you're doing in your business. I want it to not be draining you but exciting you, and that's exactly what I'm excited to help you out with in my scaling course. So I'll see you inside of Web Designer Pro, joshallcoco. I will see you there. Cheers, my friends, to scaling your way and I'm excited to help you to go from me to we See you there.