Welcome to part 1 of 5 in our series Scaling Your Divi Web Design Business where weβre exploring proven tactics and actionable strategies that will help you grow your Divi based web design business.
For many freelance web designers, there comes a point where you need to thinking about scaling your business. This could come intentionally or unintentionally and it can be very overwhelming. The good news is, thereβs help.
This series will provide you with actionable and practical strategies on how to scale your web design business no matter if youβre just wanting to grow slowly from a one man shop or if youβre wanting to quickly build a full fledged web agency with a big team. And the best part is, this series isnβt based off of theory or some dated academic program, itβs a culmination of experience from several established Divi Web Design business owners who are currently in the thick of it.
Before we dive in, hereβs an overview of the full series:
- Part 1 β Preparing to Grow your Divi Web Design Business
- Part 2 β Solidifying Systems and Processes for your Divi Web Design Business
- Part 3 β Finding and Hiring Your Divi Web Design Dream Team
- Part 4 β Effectively Growing and Managing Your Divi Web Design Team
- Part 5 β Organizing the βClient Sideβ of your Divi Web Design Business
Some things to note:
- While many of the strategies and ideas presented in this series are intentionally catered to Divi Web Design, thereβs room for implementation by any sort of web design business as well as those running a Divi based product business.
- Keep in mind that these recommendations are not a matter of βright or wrong.β These are methods, tactics and strategies that have worked for others and are open for interpretation depending on your desires or situation. They can be applied no matter how big or small your business is or how big youβd like it to be.
- Perhaps most importantly, this series isnβt just based on my experience, methods or ideas; itβs based off of several established Divi community members who have successful growing Divi web design businesses.
In preparing and researching for this series, I interviewed 9 active Divi community members ranging from folks who are a βone man shopβ just starting their scaling journey all the way to more established businesses with teams of 20-30 employees. Throughout the series, youβll see references and quotes from the interviews. But thereβs more. I didnβt want to take the chance of overlooking any ideas, tactics or expertise during my interviews, so I recorded every chat for you to refer back to at your convenience! They are as follows:
Interview 1 with Tim Strifler of TimStrifler.com and Divi Life
Interview 2 with Kathy Kroll Romana of Viva Design Studio
Interview 3 with Andrew Tuzson of Evol Empire Creative
Interview 4 with Tammy Grant of Sunflower Creatives
Interview 5 with David Blackmon of Aspen Grove Studios and WP Zone
Interview 6 with John Wooten of Artillery Media and Superfly
Interview 7 with Geno Quiroz of Monterey Premier and Quiroz.co
Interview 8 with Daniel Dye of Gruffy Goat and Superfly
Interview 9 with Sarah Oates of Endure Web Studios
I asked many of the same questions to all interviewees and while I received many similar responses, I also got many varied answers based off of their own experience with scaling their businesses.
Some of the questions were as follows:
- Why did you scale your business?
- How did you know when you were ready to scale?
- Did you have money saved up or account for the extra cost in to be able to scale?
- How do you centralize communication with your team?
- What tools do you use for project management, calendars, due dates, etc?
- What are some of the struggles youβve experienced with scaling your business?
With the variety of answers I received, it affirms what I stated above in saying that there is truly no βright or wrongβ way to scale a web design business. It all depends on where youβre at in your endeavor and your situation.
So now that weβre prepared to prepare, letβs dive in!
Preparing to Grow Your Divi Web Design Business
To start, letβs answer the big question; Why would you want to scale your Divi Web Design Business? Across all of my interviews I learned that there are, among others, 3 common reasons:
- Youβre overloaded and canβt keep up with your workload β In the world of freelance web design, if you do good work, do it on time and provide great communication, youβll likely end up in this situation before long. I imagine many of you can relate if you have found yourself with more work to do than there are hours in the day to get it done. If this is you, then it might be time to start thinking about scaling.
This is one of the most common challenges for successful web designers. Itβs a great challenge to have, donβt get me wrong, but nonetheless it is a challenge. Unless you start charging significantly more and begin saying no to most new business, youβll likely not be able to continue doing it all on your own. And if youβre not prepared to scale, youβll quickly get behind on your projects, not meet your deadlines and run into a potential slew of other issues that will arise.
Kathy puts it very wisely in interview #2 by saying βIf you find yourself working more than you are living, then itβs time to scale.β
- You want to have the freedom to do what you do best β Iβve found that there are two kinds of people in business; those who prefer to do everything themselves (like me) or those who very quickly delegate what they donβt want to do or what theyβre not good at.
If youβre like me, you probably wear all the hats in your business and for the most part, enjoy taking on all of the roles. But you (like me) probably realized that for all the strengths you have, there are an equal amount of weaknesses. Scaling your business is a great way to free you up to do the work youβre either good at or love to do.
As Andrew Tuzson points out in interview #3, βYouβre only going to be as good as the people you surround yourself with.β
- You want to provide work and opportunities for others β Another common reason you may want to scale is to provide opportunities for others. Recently, Iβve often felt that itβs almost selfish of me to take on work that I could be contracting out. I could be giving others the experience that I wish I couldβve had perhaps 5 or 6 years ago as an aspiring web designer.
And I must admit, your mindset will change in an incredible way when the purpose of your business is greater than just yourself. Having intentions of giving others opportunities and being transparent about that with your clients can bring a whole new level of satisfaction to your work. Itβs also a great way to combat the loneliness that often comes in the life of a solo web designer! While weβre lucky to have the incredible Divi community to interact with, actually collaborating with other designers and developers can increase the feeling of being in community even more.
So now that weβve covered a few reason why you might want to scale, letβs explore 3 important pieces in preparing to grow your Divi web design business.
1) Preparing Your Mindset
Effectively scaling any business starts with your mindset. When youβre a freelance web designer, youβre juggling the roles of multiple people which can lead to multiple mindsets.
These roles may include but are not limited to:
- The CEO/President/Owner
- Web Designer
- Graphic Designer
- Project Manager
- Sales
- Support
- Human Resources
- Administrative
- And yes, even janitor. (If youβre cleaning your home office) π
When youβre juggling all these hats, itβs easy to lose sight of where you SHOULD be and where your true strengths lie. As mentioned above, you may be similar to me in that youβre comfortable in wearing all the hats and that mindset, while very beneficial as a one man shop/solo freelance web designer, must be changed if youβre going to effectively scale your business. It would behove you to realistically self evaluate yourself and find out your strengths and weaknesses. One resource Iβve used in the past and would recommend is StrengthsFinder 2.0 to find your strengths and weaknesses. You might also consider taking a DISC Personality Test to find out what personality types you have in order to effectively lead and work with others.
Perhaps the most important lesson Iβve learned in this area recently is to think of yourself as the CEO/president/owner (or whatever term youβd like to use) first. During the gradual growth of my business since 2010, Iβve always viewed myself as a web designer first, then a graphic designer, then the owner and other roles to follow. Since Iβve begun my quest to scale, my mindset is now as the owner & leader first, then web designer, salesman, etc. The reason this is so crucial is because in order to scale, you have to be the leader unless youβre in a partnership with someone who wants to take that role. But if youβre a solo web designer, more than likely youβre the leader and the βcaptain of the shipβ per say.
From a business financial standpoint, this is even more critical. Case in point, Iβve seen good growth in my business for several years but Iβve always wonderedβ¦βWhy donβt we have more in the account??β Among other reasons, itβs because Iβve created essentially a solid full time web design job but I havenβt put the systems in place to dedicate more time in the other roles to take the business to the next level. Profit margins, baseline costs and other terms of the like tend to get a bad rap in the freelance world but are important to consider if youβre going to scale. The main reason this is important is because once you have enough revenue coming in to hire out, you need to make sure thereβs enough profit margin to sustain you as the CEO.
One practical way to do this is to create an Org Chart (Organizational Chart) with all the main roles in your business. In the case of most freelancers, your picture will be in every role. As you begin to scale, your goal is to fill in those positions with more pictures i.e. β your growing team.
Hereβs a look at my current org chart.
These are, among others, the main positions in my business. While I have some team members assisting me in some areas, Iβm still actively involved in every role. The goal is to fill up those positions with other pictures, either subcontractors, part-time or full-time team members, in order to free yourself to do either what you do best or to do the work you love most. Again, it all starts with your mindset!
2) Preparing Your Process
As Tammy Grant points out in interview #4, βIf youβre going to scale, itβs important to get things out of your head and on paper or on file.β
Iβm guessing Iβm not alone in saying that the majority of my processes are in my head. Am I wrong? We all have our own way of laying out designs and building out sites. If youβre already ahead of the game and have a design/development checklist written out or on file then thatβs a great start. Most web designers struggle to scale because their process isnβt laid out in detail. And if youβre a creative type that feels like a process or system will hinder true art, then itβs likely that youβre not the one managing clients, dev schedules and deadlines π
Across all my interviews, I learned that if youβre going to scale, your process MUST be something that is written out in detail and is something that can be replicated. As a practical example, Iβm self-admittedly bad at quickly sketching out my initial design ideas like a 3rd grader then diving straight into design with Divi.
Hereβs a recent example of one of my initial sketches to the final design.
I tend to like diving right into Divi when designing sites but the only reason this has worked out for me is because to this point, I have been designing on my own. My initial sketch just got the ball rolling for the layout that my trained web designer mind was able to see. But, this is not going to work as I scale my business π I canβt expect a designer at any level to look at that sketch and come up with this final design.
So itβs important to get your design and development process written out in detail. Even if youβre still a one man shop, youβd be surprised how getting things out of your head and on paper or on file will dramatically help free your mind up. Weβll dive more into practical ways of doing this in the next post.
3) Preparing Your Systems
Finally, and similarly to preparing your process, is to prepare your systems. By systems, Iβm referencing proposals, invoices, contacts, internal team and client task managers, project managers, etc. All of these systems are at play the moment you start designing websites. If all of these things are disorganized and scattered, scaling will prove very complicated and costly from a financial and time-wasting standpoint.
I get it, the term βSystematizingβ might make you shudder but if you look past the corporate facade that has tarnished the term, itβs actually incredibly freeing. In short, systematizing is all about freeing you up to do what you love to do. More on this in the next post as well.
Closing Thoughts
Well I hope this first post has inspired you for whatβs to come! Again, I intentionally began the series with this concept of mindset because in order to effectively scale any business, it all starts in the mind of the person whoβs running the show. And if youβre a solo freelancer who owns his/hers own business and wants to go to the next level, thatβs you!
Do you any initial thoughts or experience on preparing to scale a web business? If you have any feedback on this first post, feel free to share in the comments below!
Part 2 β Solidifying Systems and Processes for your Divi Web Design Business
Join us for part 2 as weβll be diving further into how to solidify your systems and processes in order to effectively scale your Divi Web Design Business. Till then!
Much enjoying this series of interviews. I’m on the 3rd one and it’s all good. Thanks for the effort put in to make something useful. One minor thing: I did check out the viva design studio site (it’s wonderfully done!) but the contact page has this bit of code showing: [caldera_form id=βxxxxxβ] rather than the actual form. This sort of glitch happens, I know. But perhaps you guys can bring it to her attention. Thanks for everything.
Thanks for your feedback and for checking out the interviews!
Hi Josh,
Thanks for the article. I got stucked on this sentence:
“Case in point, Iβve seen good growth in my business for several years but Iβve always wonderedβ¦βWhy donβt we have more in the account??β”
The question is: how did you define your growth? What does it mean that there was growth in your business without making more money or hiring more people?
Bartek
Hey Bartek, I suppose that segment does appear a little confusing and vague. In short, the growth I mentioned was business revenue going up and more jobs coming in, but it seemed like I hit a wall. And that wall was that I was spreading myself too think by taking on ALL the work and undervaluing my time. This series has really helped me shift my mindset and become the OWNER of the business. Not just the technician who’s doing all the work. Since that mind shift, it’s already started to pay off π
Hope that helps clear up what I was trying to articulate there! “You’re the limit of your own success” is the quote that I would use to sum that up.
I just found your blog, i can see already so much of good content π Waiting for a part 2 of this series π
Awesome. Appreciate the feedback!
Thanks, Josh. Amazing concept! Great interviews… for common problems,
useful thoughts 100%.
Waiting for part 2…
Love it. Thanks John!
Great information as usual, Josh… Thank you for the effort. This is what makes Divi community great! π
Thanks, Aldin! Really appreciate your feedback. No doubt that the Divi community is, in my humble opinion, the best there is online!
Thanks, Josh. I am nowhere near even considering scaling, but this is awesome information and inspiration to hopefully one day be able to quit my day job and build up my web/graphic design business instead.
Thanks so much for your thoughts and insight, Sharon! Yeah this series, while intended for those thinking about or ready to scale, is also hopefully some inspiration for those not quite ready. But when the time comes, hopefully this will be a resource you can come back to!
Great article Josh! When do the following articles get published?
I am in the midst of trying to find more team members.
Thanks, Alex! Sounds like this series will be right on time for you π Part 2 and 3 come out 2/17 and 2/18. Then parts 4 and 5 come out next week 2/22 and 2/23.
Thanks for the feedback and I truly hope this series helps you out! You’ll have to keep me posted and let me know how it helps.
Yo, Josh! Are these interviews available in audio only form (podcast maybe?) so I can listen to while driving or running or something on my iphone? Thanks a bunch.
Hey Blake, yep you’re in luck! I saved all of these interviews as downloadable MP4’s which can be downloaded from my site here: https://joshhall.co/scaling-your-divi-web-design-business-interviews
No podcast yet but I’ve thought one day about doing one if time permits. Perhaps after I’ve scaled my business enough π
I canβt say enough about this series. The advice and insights have been invaluable. I feel I can relate to so many of these people and itβs great knowing that at the end of the day we are all so similar – thatβs a wonderful feeling for people who mainly work remotely and on their own. A big thanks to Josh as he just has a knack for interviewing people well and keeping listerners interested, such an awesome job ????????
Thanks so much Amanda! I’ve appreciated all your input since day one of releasing the interviews! Looking forward to getting your thoughts on the full series as it comes out π
Awwww… Now I can’t wait to see part two! It’s nice to see how other business owners have scaled and continue to scale.
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah doing these interviews and putting this series has been a GAME-CHANGER for me. Learned sooooo much from everyone that it was hard to condense in a 5 part series π
Wow, it was so great to hear from all these awesome designers and Divi business owners! I particularly loved hearing from Sarah since she is in a similar position to me. It was awesome to hear her goals and how she plans to achieve them. Thanks so much Josh for putting this together, its a really valuable resource!
Thank YOU for the great feedback, Jen! Sounds like this series will hopefully be just what you need! Since putting it together, it’s nice to realize that so many of us are in the same or at least a similar spot π
Nice Josh! amazing job.
Thanks, Pedro! Appreciate the feedback π
Josh
Just a thought
I founded a Non-Profit Organisation in 2013, we have over 60,000 registered students, many of whom are tech savvi. If we can equip some of them with Divi, they could become a massive resource for a project such as this? i.e. anyone wanting to scale has access to a pool of undergrads / distance learners / new graduates. Pre screened by us and equipped by you?
Not sure if this fits your model, but if you or anyone out there wants to discuss, please email me [email protected]
Thanks to ET – great work as always!
John.
Super! Un articolo importantissimo che tratta un argomento che noi designer teniamo in un angolino delle nostre teste ogni giorno.. π
Had to translate that one π Thanks, Pablo! It is a very important article that deals with a subject that we designers keep in a corner of our heads every day like you said.
Thanks Josh, My English is a little rusty.
Anyway… every day, I think these subjects.
Woah.. lots of interviews with great designers within the Divi community.. thanks for putting this together! A lot of golden nuggets to glean from! π
Thanks, Andrew! No problem. Yeah every interview is absolutely jammed packed with pure GOLD wisdom and experience. I have literally followed all of the advice from these interviews since recording them last month and am already seeing the benefits π Can’t wait to hear how this series helps others as well.