One of the first questions that comes to mind after you’ve had a bit of success as a freelance web designer is:“How big can I build this thing?” It’s pretty easy to get sucked into grandiose daydreams of having a full staff of employees, maybe an office, and best of all plenty of money to go around. Then reality calls you back to Earth. You realize that getting bigger isn’t as easy as you thought it would be. The bigger you get the more you face the not-so-easy tasks of: Hiring the right people Figuring out the right systems Finding the right clients. In other words, it’s no walk in the park to scale a freelance web design business.
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Chris Misterek 0:02
What's up, everybody? Welcome to another edition of the Self-made web designer podcast. So glad that you are here with me this week. Have you ever felt like you had too much work to do and not enough time to do it? You're probably chuckling, saying, of course, Chris, why even ask that silly question? Well, that's exactly where this week's guest was a few years back. He came to a breaking point, and almost gave up on his web design business. But rather than calling it quits, he worked on some systems to help reduce the amount of time that it took him to work on web design projects. Not only did it allow him to keep going, but from the systems that he created, he was able to scale his web design business to a whole new level. And that is exactly what he's going to be talking with us about this week. I can't wait for you to hear some of the great insight that he has. But before we go into that, I got to ask, have you subscribed? Have you commented, have you left a review on any of the podcast platforms? I'd love it if you would. It helps other people who are looking for good insight on how to be a web design freelancer grow in their career as designers. So want to encourage you to take a second and do that. But without any further ado, are you ready to hear some great insight from Mr. Anthony Tran? Here we go.
Chris Misterek 1:49
Well, hey, Anthony, thank you so much for being on the Self-made web designer podcast. So happy to have you here, bro.
Anthony Tran 1:55
Yeah, man. Nice to be here. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Misterek 1:57
Yeah, so tell me a little bit about yourself, about how you got started and where you are today.
Anthony Tran 2:02
I was working in a corporate environment and grinding away 60 hour weeks, and I was trying to build a side hustle. I was trying to build a business online. And eventually, I decided one day to quit my job. I started a podcast and did that for a couple of years. And eventually, that grew into a web design business and led to other opportunities. So it's been quite a journey since 2013. So we're rocking about seven years now. It's been a lot of fun.
Chris Misterek 2:32
Tell me about the moment that you decided it was time to be done with your corporate job, like how long had you been doing your side hustle? And where was your income level at with the side hustle specifically?
Anthony Tran 2:44
This is gonna be kind of a shocker to you, but I didn't have any income. I had to jump off the web design cliff and build a parachute on my way down. But it wasn't one of those things where I didn't know what I was getting into. It was actually like seven years or so where I was self-educating myself at night, did a lot of courses, read a lot of books experimented with some niche websites, things like that. And I would dabble. I mean, I wasn't doing a lot, maybe two hours a night. And eventually, I said, You know what, if I want to take this to the next level, I have to go all-in because doing two hours a night wasn't getting me where I wanted it to be fast enough. So found a coach John Lee Dumas not sure if you know who he is, he decided that he would take me on and I wanted to learn from him and go all in and my wife said, Hey, you got a year you got one year. So that was the agreement. She said You have one year to make money, replace your income and allow me to make enough money to allow me to quit my job, too. It was 13 months, I was able to be able to get my wife to be able to quit her job and we were both working full time on business.
Chris Misterek 3:51
Tell me a little bit about that because there are so many people who want to get into web design or web development, but they are constantly going through courses and not feeling like they know enough to either just go for it or charge people for what they know how to do. But you were kind of the other end of the spectrum where you said, 'if I'm gonna do this, I need to just go and feet first and figure out how to get it done on the way down.'
Anthony Tran 4:23
Yes. I didn't initially know that I was going into web design. It was something that evolved. I was doing a podcast, and I was doing YouTube videos and training people online marketing. I was in a mastermind group, and I was just sharing with people, knowledge, and information that I had, like SEO, how to build websites, etc. People were just asking, 'what plugin do I use for this?' And, 'does anybody know how to do SEO?' Or, 'how do I add this domain to my website?'. They're asking very general WordPress questions. And I would jump in and I was on Facebook and I was answering questions and somehow I became the go-to guy for WordPress questions. Eventually, it got to the point where people were asking me like, 'Oh, can you help me with my website? I loved your website, can you build me one?' At first? I was like, 'No, I don't do that. I create tutorials and do my podcasts. And I kept getting asked over and over and over, please, you know, I pay you blah, blah to help me. And that whole year window thing was getting closer and I wasn't making that much money. And I was like, at the 10 or 11-month mark where I was like, it's either I gotta make money, or I gotta go back to work. And I decided, you know what, so many people are asking about this web design thing. Let's give it a shot. What could go wrong? And so I started taking on clients and that opened up the floodgates because once I started taking on clients, other people heard about it, and more referrals came in. I told my wife I'm like, holy crap, I'm making some pretty decent money here. I think you can quit your job now and you can help me with our business. That's kind of how it started. It wasn't like I had originally thought that was I was gonna do. I thought I was just giving value to helping people. And I became, you know, the go-to person in my group, my little community that I had.
Chris Misterek 6:12
What would you say to people who are considering jumping into either a marketing side hustle, web design side hustle, or something like that?
Anthony Tran 6:21
Learn some get some foundational stuff, and then start taking on people that you know. I started with friends and family to kind of like start building my website portfolio. So I asked one of my real estate agent friends, 'Hey, do you need to help with a website?' And I told him I would do it for a lot less than I would normally charge because I'm trying to build my portfolio. I'd love to get a testimonial after you're done. And that is the advice I would give people who first start. Start working with people you know, that they know, like, and trust you that they're going to give you an opportunity. And then that way you can start getting some experience working with people working through the process of getting a client getting paid, going through the project timeline, doing revisions, launching a site, you know, there's a lot of these little steps along the way. Start with someone that you feel comfortable with, that kind of helps you get through the jitters of working with a brand new person that you've never met. That's a cool client. So that's how I started with friends and family first. And then those friends and family started referring their friends and family and then it just kind of grew from there.
Chris Misterek 7:30
So things are going along, and it's starting to pick up steam, and all of a sudden, you figure out like, hey, it's time to bring your wife on board with your business. And then I'm sure some time passes by. And you probably came to a point where you had to bring more people to your team. So talk about that process of like, having too much work, and then figuring out how to maybe offset some of that.
Anthony Tran 7:56
Yeah, so when I was doing it, I was the guy so I was communicating with clients, I was designing the sites, building the sites, and launching the sites. And my wife was doing all the administrative stuff. She was helping with social media, helping me with accounting, helping me with all the human resource stuff, you know, the tax setting up the business license, all this stuff that I honestly didn't want to get involved in. And eventually, she wanted to take on some more creative stuff. And I started teaching her some other web design stuff. So we were both eventually got to a point where we were both building websites. But still, you'd be amazed that with just a half a couple handful of clients, your pipeline can get pretty full pretty fast. And I started having to say no to people and I was leaving money on the table. And so I realized I need to be able to scale up and hire people and teach people our process so that we can take on more clients.
Chris Misterek 9:00
Talk a little bit about systems. In the end, the processes that you ended up coming up with when somebody came to you, and what the funnel looks like, and what an onboarding process look like? I think so many web designers, they shoot from the hip every single time. They have a brand new project, you and I know that can waste a lot of time, a lot of energy and create a lot of tension between you and the client. So what does that look like for you guys?
Anthony Tran 9:27
So when I created my systems, I started taking notes of everything that I was doing, from beginning to end with each client. So I would take notes like 'Okay, first it started with a website consultation call.' Okay, what did that look like? What did I say? What did they talk about? What were the common questions? And then what happened next, okay, I need to provide them a proposal. Okay, what did that look like? Then I needed maybe follow up with them and then actually need to deliver the proposal and then once we deliver the proposal, they signed the contract. Now I need to onboard them and what did that process look like? And then once I work on the project, what does that process look like? And then once I launched the web, the website, what are the things that I had to do step by step to launch the website. So that's the methodology I took. I started documenting everything I created on Trello. I don't know if you ever heard of Trello.com, it's just like little Trello boards, these little cards. And so I created my little CRM system. So every customer that first comes on, that contacts us gets a little card and I move them along through each stage of where they're at in the process. So if I am juggling between 10 and 20 different people, I know exactly where they all are within the process. I created template emails because I started to find that I was kind of saying the same things over and over. So I would draft a thank you email template for people who join Marketing Access Pass. Then, 'Could you do me a favor and fill out this website questionnaire, it only takes a few minutes, it helps us understand your business faster.' And then afterward, we'll set up a quick website tech consultation call. Of course, I was kind of tweaking to each person a little bit to personalize it, but it was pretty much the same thing. And then I had different template emails for proposals and template emails for onboarding. And eventually, once I found these nice templates that worked for me, I took it one step further, and I put it into Active Campaign. Active Campaign is an email autoresponder and you can create these automated campaigns. So for example, whenever a new customer comes on, I always send them the same two or three emails so I created an automated email campaign so as soon as the customer gets on, I would hit that onboard button and they would get a series of emails that walks them through. Thank you for signing up. Here are the things I need. I need your login information. Here's your please send me your picture. Is your graphics or logos, things like that. And then, so these onboarding emails were like automation that I've created, allowing me to scale and kind of create systems. And the same thing when they launch a website. I had also an automated email sequence that would say, you know, thank you for allowing us to build your website, here's what you do next. Can you leave us a testimonial or view? You know, also, did you know that we offer maintenance and support please sign up or you know, that was, if you find your part of your business, you'll see that there's repetition. And if you can take those repetitive things and automate it, it allows you to scale.
Chris Misterek 12:37
So how long was that process? Because I'm sure it probably took you more than just a few days to figure out. What did that look like for you?
Anthony Tran 12:44
I was doing freelancing for about a year. And I wish I had learned and developed these processes and systems earlier because they would allow me to scale faster, but hey, you know what? It's all about growing pains. So after about a year, I started to realize like these are these patterns. Once I started getting that mindset where I can automate and I can scale, I started to identify other things in my business I can automate and scale. So here's one thing that I'm gonna share with you that was very eye-opening for me was when I first started working with clients. I said, Okay, I can build your WordPress website, I'm going to go find a real estate WordPress theme. And I would go theme shopping to find something that would look kind of like what they were looking for. And then I would customize that theme to fit their needs. The only problem with that was every time that I worked on a new client project, I was working with a new theme. And every theme is different. And some themes aren't supported after a while. So themes would break or I couldn't get support. I hit this roadblock, like every single time I'm having to start over. And so I found Beaver Builder. Beaver Builder is a page builder. The wonderful world of Beaver Builder allowed me to use one theme, and one-page builder for all of my client projects. And the beauty of that was, we were learning one theme. And so we could train and create video tutorials for our clients. And I trained my team on how to use it, and they get familiar and their level of efficiency got better so we could create projects even faster. So it was a big eye-opening moment like oh my gosh, okay, if I can standardize not only my emails and my processes, but I can also standardize the software and tools that I'm working with so that I can be good at it and fast.
Chris Misterek
I was the same way when I first got started. You know, it was somebody who needed a website, I would try to find them a theme that matches and it could be anything whatsoever. And then finally, I was like you know what, it's taken me at least a couple of days just to learn all that the ins and outs are these different themes. And so I need to just pick one and stick to it. And that cut my workflow down considerably. When I did that, I think it's great advice. So you mentioned having a process where at the end or after the launch date, you'd follow up and you would say, you know, hey, do you need ongoing support is here's some other things that I offer as a business that might be beneficial to you. And I think a lot of web designers don't realize a lot of the things that they are missing out on if they think of themselves as just website builders. So what kind of things were you finding and what kind of things were clients happy to sign up for? I'm sure you probably tested a few things as far as what type of products or services you offered, but what were home runs and what were some things that maybe didn't work so well.
Anthony Tran
So before I answer that question, let me tell you about a big aha moment too. I was just a website builder at first, and once I launched your site, you're on your own.
And I didn't realize how much money I was leaving on the table. Because we're taking on big projects and multiple projects. And so if my income was lumpy, I would have seen huge spike months where I make a ton of money. And then sometimes we kind of slow down and go up and down, up and down. And you know, it kind of gets stressful when you feel like your income is not consistent, especially if you have mortgages, bills, and things like that. So I started thinking about services. And in answer to your question, I started experimenting at first with SEO Services. I said, well, maybe I can do it because, after a website launches, people are like, okay, now I want to get traffic to my site. So I started experimenting with social media marketing and offering that as a service offering SEO as a service. I even did Facebook ads as a service. So I was experimenting with different things. Some I liked doing and some that I didn't like doing so I learned what I wanted to keep doing, what I didn't want to do keep doing but ultimately what I ended up settling on was providing WordPress support and maintenance for customers. It's a very logical thing for them after they work with you they want to keep working with you. They know and trust you. They're like hey you built my site can you help me update my plugins? Can you do hosting for us? Can you do small minor tweaks? Hey, I need a new page can you create me another page? And so when I started taking on that it created another second income stream for me which is recurring revenue which is so important for web designers. Because now you don't take you that volatility of you know, big upswings and downswings with client projects. You have a nice base level of recurring revenue coming in from your monthly support program. So you got the bills covered, you can pay your team and you can do everything you know, pay all your software and programs and then projects on I feel like is gravy on top of that. I tried a lot of different things, some work, some didn't. And ultimately, WordPress support maintenance is the one that stuck.
Chris Misterek 18:08
So tell me, you know, like, what would you charge a client for a WordPress maintenance package? And I'm sure it varies depending on the client's needs.
Anthony Tran 18:16
Yeah, it depends on the client's needs, depending on if you know how much support. Some clients want bigger retainers, they want more hours each month. So it typically varied between $100 to $500. Sometimes we had bigger clients that needed more, and we could charge you know, a couple thousand. You know, some of them wanted like, more detailed stuff like SEO and content, publishing, and things like that. So but most of my retainer customers are in the hundred 100 to 500 as far as monthly support. And then like I said, if they wanted additional design pages, membership, add ons, things like that, then we would just charge them per project.
Chris Misterek 18:50
So we've talked a little bit about the automation of the funnel from when somebody finds you, too, you know, working them through the process of figuring out if they're going to work with you, but What did your process look like for finding new clients?
Anthony Tran 19:03
I mentioned I did the podcast and I didn't realize at the time, but that was a huge lead generation thing for me. I was just doing interviews with other online marketers and wanted to share their story and their information, their knowledge. And that's kind of the same thing when I was in my mastermind group, people just through talking and having me on their podcast or vice versa. I became known as the WordPress guy in their minds. And so they, whenever they had clients that needed help with WordPress, they wouldn't start to naturally refer them to me. And so that was a huge lead generation thing. Because when you have someone that you already know, like, and trust, and they refer so you know, you to somebody else, you already have this certain level of trust that goes along with it, right. Let's say, You're my coach, and I go, coach, Chris, I need help with the website and you're like, Hey, you know what, I know the perfect guy. This guy's awesome. He's amazing. already. You have already sold me to this to your friend. I'm already like 50% there, because even without even talking to your web guy, I'm already like 50%, like, bought in, because I'm already bought into you. And I know like and trust you. So I would say referrals are huge. And that and that can go in many ways because so not only was I getting referrals from my network of people that I knew within the community, but I also started getting referrals from others from previous clients. So my clients were also building websites and grow their business and their friends and family. Were asking them well, I love your website, who did it for you? And they say, Hey, I know my web guy. Well, let me introduce you. So I would say 80% of my business was referrals. And then 20% was like, from social media, podcast people, Listen, my podcast, people watching my YouTube video come people coming to my website, found me randomly on LinkedIn or something like that. But 80% of it was referrals.
Chris Misterek 20:59
Talk A little bit about, you know, maybe some struggles along the way. Right now as we record this the country is just kind of upside down. You know we're going through a pandemic the Coronavirus, a lot of people are sheltering in place. I'm sure you've hit some roadblocks in your web design business. So what do those look like and how did you get through them?
Anthony Tran 21:24
Wow, I feel blessed that the Coronavirus hasn't impacted our business too much. We're pretty busy. I feel like a lot of people who are in quarantine right now have always wanted to work on their side hustle or focus on their business. This is their time that they're like, Hey, you know what, I'm at home, I have to have the time to be able to work on that website that I've always wanted. But as far as challenges and obstacles throughout the years, as I said, I've had many. I've hit burnout. Good two years into it. So after two years of just going hard trying to do it all by myself, I hit a huge roadblock where I couldn't even do anything for a couple of months, I was just so burnt out. And that's where the light bulb came on where I said, You know, I need to find a way to scale my business and get help. And that's when I started as I said, I started hiring teams, team members to help me. And so I say struggle number one was making the mistake of trying to do everything myself. I think it was good at first to do it because I had to teach myself the process to understand the process and build my confidence. But once I knew the process, and I could systemize it and create processes than I could hand it over to other people. And so that's where I knew the next growth phase. I would say the other big aha moment was I was undervaluing my wife's work in the beginning and a coach said you're charging right now, double it. And then in a few months, double it again, and a few months to double it again. And it was one of those things where I had to like, feel confident that what I was offering was valuable to people and that people would be willing to pay for it. And, amazingly, the thing with money is it's all about confidence. It is. Like, what I was charging people to create a website in the beginning. And what I'm charging people now is exponentially higher. But the process was the same. It was just my confidence in overcoming that fear of asking for more because eventually, I started to realize like, if I don't ask for more money, then I'm not going to pay my team. I'm not going to be able to scale my business and grow it more. I had to overcome that fear. And I slowly started asking more and I started realizing that people weren't saying no, so obviously, they find value. In my mind, maybe my prices were so undercut compared to the market. And so I think that was a big aha moment was valuing your time and effort and knowing how much you know that you're worth the money essentially is what I'm trying to say.
Chris Misterek 24:15
I think a lot of freelance web designers or people with a web design business, especially when they're first getting started, they struggle with that confidence. They're kind of half-heartedly saying yes to projects anyways. What happened that changed that for you? Was it just going for it? Or was it that you had a few websites under your belt and you're like, I know that I can do this, and I know that I could add value, or was it just a mindset shift?
Anthony Tran 24:55
I think it was both. Yeah, I think over time, you start to realize how much time and effort you put in these projects, and then you start thinking back, and say, man, I only got paid that and you take out taxes and software and all these other things. How much am I making per hour? Holy cow, I'm making peanuts! And so you start to realize, like, gosh, I need to charge more. So that's number one. You start to value your own time, and then you start to realize how much value you bring to other people. I created websites for clients who are making well into six figures. So I figure they invest that much into their business, then they can get to that income goal. How much value have I provided them? So sometimes with money, it's not trading money for hours, it's trading for like, how can you help them if let's say, someone pays you, I don't know. 567 thousand dollars? But they're able to use that website to make it $100,000 business you tell them like, hey, using Best Buy $6,000 but in the end, you might make 100,000 people will be like I buy that all day. Right? So it's a value proposition there.
Chris Misterek 26:17
So you've built an agency essentially and things are going well. And it sounds like you made a transition about a year ago and you're actually on staff with Beaver Builder. So talk about that transition of even handing the company off and working for a corporation again, what did that look like for you?
Anthony Tran 26:41
It's been a couple of years, I was working with the agency with our agency and my wife continues to get better and better and she became a better designer, better builder than me. And she enjoyed working with clients and we had already streamlined the process. We had automated things and we brought in like designers and other builders and so it's just kind of one of those things where I started to realize like, Okay, well, where do I fit into all of this? Right? It's weird because you kind of work yourself out of a job type of thing. Right? And I'm, I'm just now like, the client consulting guy, the face person. And I'm like, you know, I want to continue to challenge myself. So, I sat down with my wife one day and I was like, telling her I feel like you got this and I want to do something. I want to do some other stuff. And so I started kind of self-exploring like what does that look like and I love the marketing side of it. I love content marketing, doing SEO, creating campaigns, I love you know, public speaking you know, things like that. So I loved all these things and I felt like I needed to find that outlet that creative outlet to and we had been working with Beaver Builder using their products. for, I think, four or five years already, so I was we were already big fans. And one day my wife got an email newsletter from them saying, Hey, we're looking to grow our team, we're looking for a marketer to join our team. And I kind of sat on it for a couple of weeks, kind of think like, do I want to do this and eventually I just had this burning voice inside of me says like, go apply, do it, it's going to be awesome. And it's been one of the best decisions I've made recently. And I just love working with the guys. It's been so much fun and it's so complementary to what I'm doing and they love the fact that we had already been using their stuff for so many years. So obviously I can speak about it so when I'm doing marketing, I understand because I was the ideal customer I was the customer using the product so I understand who their customer basis I understand the product. So being able to talk about explain it create video tutorials blog about it was so natural is to natural progression.
Chris Misterek 28:56
So let's backtrack a little bit, you know, back to back to those days. When you were first starting to hire people because I actually started to go down this road, and I and I looked for some talent overseas, but I never quite was able to bridge the gap. So what did that process look like for you when you first started looking to bring people onto your team or to maybe take over some projects? Who you know weren't a part of your family? You didn't know that?
Anthony Tran 29:24
Well, it was definitely I would set give them one-off projects. I would never hire someone for me this I never hired someone like full on and just have them start working. I definitely wanted to test to see if they were a good fit. Did they have the right skill set? Do they have the right design? I did they had the right experience and knowledge with Beaver Builder and WordPress? How much did I have to train and teach them? or could they just hit the ground running? So these are all the questions that I had. And the only way for me to feel comfortable was to actually test the waters. Let's give them a project. Let's see. But it was trial and error, you know, I got some that were really bad, so bad were some they messed up a client project so bad that I am having to refund the customer because I was just horrified at the end result, you know. But you learn, what works and what you're looking for and what skill sets and then eventually we found the right people and once you find the right people, it's awesome. It's a really good feeling.
Chris Misterek
You're now at a place where it sounds like you found like the right place for you to work like everything is going well for your agency. So So what's on the horizon? What's next for you guys? You know, we're continuing to build. I have one other side of the business that I didn't talk about which was access to BP. It's an unlimited WordPress support business where any person who has a WordPress site can come to work with our team. It's $99 a month to get unlimited WordPress support customers. You can send an email support ticket, and our team will take care of it within a reasonable timeframe. They send emails as needed and will continue to help them. And so that part of the business is great because it's another recurring revenue, source of income for us. It definitely aligns with what we're doing, it definitely helps the WordPress community and still continues to position us as brand ambassadors when it comes to WordPress and helping people with their websites. We talked before the show. I'm planning to reintroduce the podcast again because that was a lot of fun. And now I feel like I'm in a better position where I could be able to do that again.
Chris Misterek 31:43
What final words of encouragement can you leave everybody with people who are in the middle of it, just trying to get started and having a tough time getting going? What would you say to them?
Anthony Tran 31:55
I would say don't be afraid. Definitely start smaller than you can work. As I said, this has been a growth journey for me for many, many years. So it wasn't like an overnight success story by any means. But I had to start one thing at a time and just try it out. Start with one customer and then one client. And over time you build confidence, you build systems. Just keep stacking over and over and over and you're going to learn. You're going to get better. And to those trials and errors, you're going to be able to continue to grow your business. You know, some of the best advice that I had when I first started as an entrepreneur, which sounded funny to me at the time was someone told me to fail forward fast. He's like, you have to understand as an entrepreneur, failing is not bad. It's, it means that you're learning. And if you can learn and make a lot of mistakes quicker, you're going to move your business forward faster.
Chris Misterek 32:58
There's a guy that I looked up to as a designer and he said that winners lose a lot more than losers do. And you know the idea that losing is a part of winning is such a key to success, such a key to you know growing and figuring out that next step, so love your story. Anthony, I am grateful that you came on and shared your expertise with the Self-Made web designer community. If someone was looking for you online, where would they be able to find you?
Anthony Tran 33:30
Our website marketingaccesspass.com, definitely check us out there, feel free to reach out, send me an email and I'd be happy to help you out in every way I can.
Chris Misterek 33:40
Man such great insight from Anthony Tran on how to scale your web design business with automated systems. I once heard it said that you can trace pretty much every problem back to a system that hasn't been developed. And so I want to encourage you to take some of this information, take some of this insight to heart, go and create systems for yourself. Not even as it relates to web design, but in your life. Do you have a system for how you're doing things? Do you have a system for when you wake up in the morning or when you go to bed? Creating systems will help you to accomplish the things that you are trying to accomplish in every area. I'm glad that you were here with us this week on the self-made web designer podcast. I can't wait for you to be with us again. Next week. It is happening Tuesday night, midnight, it's gonna be fantastic. You're not gonna want to miss it. Set your alarms, set something on your phone, set something on your watches, whatever. Make sure you download the episode. As soon as it drops, you're not going to regret it. Have a great week. And don't forget, if you don't quit, you win.