Scaling and pivoting in uncertain times

Join us for a fun conversation with Jessica Hagmaier. With over 10 years of experience in design and marketing, Jessica took the leap to form her own company and has been able to successfully scale and grow her business during a global pandemic. In this episode we cover hiring your first employees, learning when to say no to clients, and knowing when to outsource your weaknesses.

Jessica's company is called Websites by Design, based in Colorado.

https://www.websitesxdesign.com/

Transcript:

Hello friends and listeners Welcome to call me crazy. Today we have on with us, Jessica and she is the founder of websites by design.

00:12

Welcome to the show, Jessica. We're excited to have you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. So Jessica, I think is a

00:20

style first person, I can tell by her appearance, her awesome nails. So I want to hear about how you got into this design business and kind of tell us about your background and your what your company is. Yeah, sure. So I have been doing graphic design and website design for about, I keep getting older. So it's probably like 12 or 13 years now. I get that all the time. Oh, yeah. Just last year, it's like no, you're old, really old. It's been decades.

00:47

But yes, I've been doing that I'm self taught in it. And I just didn't mean that for about 12 or 13 years. And two years ago, I was working for a startup company, actually, in Denver, Colorado. And they kind of decided at about eight months after I started with them, that they just kind of didn't want to be do the whole business owner thing anymore. And so they decided to dissolve their partnership and their business. Oh, so yeah, I just kind of took that opportunity to take a step back from corporate and just kind of try to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. And so that's why I kind of started, I started freelancing. And that same so that happened in November, I started freelancing in January, and then officially made myself a business in August, and then hired my first part time employees last January now. So it was what this was two years ago where you first started right? Or was it 2020? On April 28? Yeah.

01:46

That's a lot to do. Let's get started.

01:51

Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was gonna say the website looks great, too. Like I went to it. And, you know, a lot of times you go the website, sorry. All right, let's see what's going on. But it really I really liked it, the interface, the graphics, everything like that. What, what kind of like drew you to doing, specifically websites? Because I know a lot of people will do you know, graphic design or branding? And it seems like you kind of do it all? Did you learn that technical aspect, by yourself, like doing all the website design? Yeah, I'm kind of I'm like kind of the person that if I want to do something like I'll do it without any kind of forethought or knowledge, which isn't always the best way to go about it. But I just

02:32

when I was I don't remember how old I was. But long story short, and I don't even remember what year it was. Now it was probably like 12 years ago, I started a magazine, just because I was bored at work one day, and I had no money. I didn't know anything about making a magazine or writing or you know, doing any of that kind of stuff. And I couldn't afford, obviously to pay anybody. I didn't have any money. So I just started teaching myself how to lay out magazines, and how to lay out websites, because the magazine needed a website. And that was how I got into it. And from there, I just kind of took it and ran with it. And how have you been able to scale it to actually make this your full full time job after you know being in corporate? Because I think that's the hardest part for a lot of people. They're in corporate, they're like, I hate my job. I'm working from home and got login to zoom everyday. Now, where where was that point where you figured out? Oh, this is how I'm going to get my clients or this is how I'm going to do this? Well, I think I'm still figuring that out. But and I think it's actually a blessing in disguise for the startup to kind of not be in business anymore. Because then it just kind of put the onus on me that I was either gonna figure out how to do this, or I was going to go back to corporate America. And I just got really tired of other people's limitations dictating my success. And so that was kind of what nudged me to be like, okay, let's at least try you know how to do graphic design, you know how to do website design. Let's at least try and see if you can make a business out of it, or at least survive on it. Yeah. And if you do, great, if not, at least you tried. Yeah. And so yeah, that's how I started. And that's how I did the freelancing thing initially, before jumping right down into you know, incorporating a business and doing all the stuff you're supposed to do. Yeah.

04:18

Have you hired any members of a team to kind of kind of scale this a little bit or how has that been? So that was the fun part. I did that in January of last year. 2019. So

04:32

I started 2020,

04:35

literally two months before COVID blew up? Yeah.

04:41

Yeah. So the first person I hired was,

04:45

was basically I hate the word assistant. But that's basically and I still have her actually with me, Alicia is amazing. But she's kind of my assistant slash operations person. And then I hired a few times.

05:00

Have Junior designers or design assistance, and one of them is still with me. And he's awesome as well. He's in Colorado these days. And so I've kind of played the hiring and then figuring people out figure, you're not necessarily compatible with everybody you hire, it's not the right fit. I've kind of done that one or two, once or twice. But yeah, that's kind of where we're at now is the solid core of three people. And how, you know, we've slightly hired a few people here and there, like, I have my cousin, like on board, and Aaron has our sister on board. But we have a few other like freelance people that we work with. But I think the hardest thing is finding and training these people, not these people, but like our family members, or whoever, to kind of understand the task at hand, and how to achieve the things we want done and have them feel the same excitement we feel because it is our business. So it means so much more to us. So like your situation, for instance, I was chatting with her through the podcast platform that I you know, we connect with, like, Oh, she got a system like this is great. Like, I want an assistant. So how did you go about finding and hiring an assistant because we've thought about stuff like this, because there's, it's weird when you say I need an assistant for something. But once you start operating your own business, it becomes very difficult to do a lot of stuff for the business, because a lot of it's like, not that they're dumb tasks, but like, I can't email and mail and schedule all these things, because maybe that might take an hour, but that's an hour that I could go, you know, maybe interview, you know, another business owner or something like that. So how did you figure that out? Because that is a, I don't know, I would say a pinpoint for us at

06:46

least I actually I just put an ad out on Facebook, you know, these are resources that we have. And I found on Facebook while I was still living in Colorado, and she's in Colorado as well. And I just knew I was at the point that if I kept i was i was gonna stagnate even though I was busy. And if I kept trying to do everything on my own by myself, then

07:08

it was going basically, you know, I was going to choke the business or choke even the freelancing portion of what I was doing. So it I realized that if I wanted to grow the business, then I was going to have to take some of those more menial or mundane tasks that I don't necessarily enjoy doing, and giving them to somebody else. And I think I just

07:31

kind of word

07:33

the best way to put it. Um,

07:37

it'll come back to me, but

07:39

yeah, you um, what was did it feel like a transition between you mentioned you started as freelance and then the business? Did you? Was there a kind of a turning point? Or what made it go from just freelance to the business? Was it your, like, pipeline of new clients? or What changed? Like, did you kind of approach it differently when you kind of made it more official? Yeah, I think a lot of people do the freelance first, like, even our graphic designer that we used with dope dog, she had a full time job, and was freelancing and eventually transition to adjust her own thing. So it reminded me of that when you told her Yeah, of course. And that was kind of what happened with me is, I realized that there were like, peaks and valleys and ebbs and flows, and I would get really, really busy. And I would get so caught up in the projects that I was working on to get them and get them out, then by the time I have those done, I would look and there would be no more work, no more client, and then I'm like going, you know, two to three, four more weeks trying to figure out okay, where's the next client going to come from. And to this point, I've been very lucky in that I haven't had to do any, like marketing on my own because or marketing for my own business, I need to, that's one of those things that we probably need to keep working on. But to this point, I have used my, the resources that I didn't realize I had until I kind of had to do everything on my own. And my first clients were actually some of my old bosses, and everything. I that was like the core of where I started. And that was where I've got some of my first examples of work and websites, and this is what I can do. And then I moved into Upwork. And between Upwork and just referrals and my old, you know, contacts and bosses and connections like that's where 75 80% of my, my business is actually come from. And I'm going back to this system here, but how how did you? What are the title pain points?

09:35

It is it is how did you

09:39

figure out what to delegate to your assistant? And how did you tell her? This is how we do it? Like, did you lay it out? Did you walk her through it? How give me these details because I really don't know like if I hire an assistant to be like, I don't know what to pay you to do for eight hours a day or four hours, whatever it is. Sure. Well and when I started

10:00

When I hired a leaf, we were only doing like four hours a week, because I was like, I know that I can, that there's four hours worth a week that I can definitely get, you know, get to you, we just recently in September went up to 18 hours a week, okay, because we're again, trying, you know, just trying to grow the business. So when she first started, I think I was looking for someone that actually had graphic design work as well, I was trying to find, you know, experience, and I tried to put that into one person. And I just couldn't find someone that had the administrative side and still had the graphic side. So I think it was actually a blessing that she didn't have grabbed the graphic side. Because I'm the kind of person unfortunately, where sometimes I feel like, it's going to take me longer to explain it than it is to just do it. So then I'm just going to do it, and we can't grow that way. Um, so I started giving her kind of be some basic social media stuff that I wasn't doing that needed to be done.

10:57

I had one or two clients that I was helping them more with marketing type stuff, I don't do that anymore. But that's what I did, like all corporate America. So I heard like, kind of take over some of those smaller items. And then we just kind of grew her tasks from there, her main thing that she's doing for me now is stuff like talking to you guys. And, you know, kind of figuring out what's out there to where we can kind of talk to different people, and see what other people are doing. And then she's also doing a lot of work for me on Upwork and sending out proposals. And, you know, just doing some of that basic initial client contact, and competitor research, where it almost like can be automated a little bit, but it still needs that human touch, in a sense. Yeah, exactly. And I had her, I actually had her take some very specific, like, Upwork tutorials or you know, what, attend certain webinars and stuff like that. And I paid her to do that, because I knew that it would bring value to the company. Because she's, I think, what's my key with her is she's actually invested in the success of the company, she believes in what we're doing. And she wants, she's not just a paycheck necessarily for her. Yeah. And so given that, she's been able to kind of really see opportunities and run with them, or, you know, take information and apply it to, in a way that will kind of continue to grow our business. And it's tough, because when you're in the business, like we're in the business, right now, it's hard for us to see how much not that it would be easier with somebody helping us but we, you know, taking that load of something like, Oh, I need to email all these people, or I need to do all this, having somebody be able to do that could really elevate you. And it's great that you realize that because it's hard to realize, like, Oh, I can take this to the next level, with these people on board, even though I'm going to pay them something, I'm going to still make more money, because I'll be able to get more done with all these. And it's hard. It's like, Well, do you spend money? Do you not spend the money?

12:58

I struggle with that a lot? Sure. And I think that's where you have to identify, like, what your time and your value actually is, like, is your hour more valuable in emailing people? Or, you know, lining up administrative things? Or scheduling? Or is your value more connecting with other people. And I realized that even from a design standpoint, like Dave, my design assistant, he's amazing at certain things. And if those hard to come in, I'm going to give them to him, because he's better than I am. And I own that, and I'm okay with that. And that, but what I'm really good at that other people aren't necessarily and just creating those connections with people and building rapport with people, and, you know, keeping long term clients. So if I can tap into that part of what I'm good at and service a need for a client, you know, create jobs for other people. I would much rather do that then. Not every single time and check out you know,

13:55

yeah, yeah. Every I and cross every T, I'd much rather do that. Because there's only one, Jessica, you can't like duplicate what you're best at. So that makes absolutely exactly the only one here and there's only one Michael. Yeah, that's that's true.

14:10

Yeah. With the company now, what is the future for you look like? Like, how do you project that out? Because I think as business owners, it's really hard, like, New Year, like, what are we going to do? Are we going to triple double? Or we're going to do even better than the year before? How do you kind of lay out this year for yourself? Or how do you, you know, strategize only to seven. I know, I don't know. But I'm just wondering, because I think a lot of people out there, I think that listen to this are people that have what businesses are doing something in that realm? And these are questions that I'm wondering because like for myself, you know, I'm in control all my time. So where do I put my efforts? Or do I you know, sit back here and play video game for an hour and waste some time? I don't know. But like where Where's your balance and where do you think

15:00

going. I know there's a lot in there.

15:03

So I think what 2020 taught me, like I was always aware of kind of growing too quickly. But I still think that I grew too quickly in 2020. And we definitely took some losses. Because we either missed it not as a mismanaged project, but probably took on projects that we shouldn't have taken on,

15:19

you know, hired too many people to do certain projects and that kind of thing. So, even though I was aware of not growing too quickly, I still kind of drank the kool aid, and I did it. So I think with this year, moving into 2021, using the resources that we have in place, we're in a much better position to know, okay, this is actually not necessary, even our target client, but what our target, like what our target project is, and we want to do X number of websites with a, you know, a certain budget every month, or we want to do a certain, you know, graphic design level of project or have that client, you know, with consistent work every month. Sure, and it having the chaos of 2020 actually helped me realize and narrow down what is actually going to be most beneficial and in growing the company without

16:12

exploding again. And are there any books or people you follow on Twitter or anywhere that you kind of take a little inspiration from to kind of continue the growth because I know we read a lot, but it's, it's hard to keep up?

16:26

And they are?

16:28

Yeah, I read I read a lot. And I'm, I'm like I, I bought like five books and start them all at once.

16:36

So right now I'm actually on on audio. I'm listening to Grant Cardone, you know, 10 times with it. And I'm like, Yeah, I actually really liked that one. And he's good on Audible, because he adlibs from the book, and he like puts in little nuggets here and there. And he'll it's just a it's kind of funny. I'm Grant Cardone. He's the guy that does a lot of real estate. Right. I think I follow him on Instagram. Yeah, he does a lot of real estate. And I don't know if you're familiar with undercover billionaire. It was on Discovery last year. It's an awesome program.

17:10

I think we want no, maybe it was the show with the guy from Houston.

17:16

What's his name? He owns like golden nugget. Yeah, yeah. And the Rockets? I don't know. Yeah, whatever. Yeah.

17:23

I forget his name. And I should know his name. But basically, he's a billionaire. And they challenge him to go to a random city. And it has to be aircons for a random town. And with $100 and a truck. And the challenge was to build a million dollar company in 30 days. Whoa, yeah, it's a really, really good way to do it. He a valuation for the company ended up being like $750,000. And the point of it was if it doesn't hit a million dollar valuation, then he put in a million dollars into the business so that it was a and the business is still there. I won't give away everything that it is. But it's still an area, Sylvania to this day. They're still operating. And so Grant Cardone is doing Season Two of that.

18:06

And actually is on Discovery right now. Okay. Oh, yeah, discovery plus just launched. So it was like a big, big thing. I don't think I'm gonna subscribe to it. But I'm not either. But I feel like I have so many subscriptions at this point. Yeah, sure. All right, that sounds fun. I mean, the 10 x rule, or the TEDx? What, and then any other big get good books that we need to check out? Yeah, so I'm reading everyday millionaires right now, I forget the name of I know, I'm bad with that. But I forget the name of the author. But he's one of the kind of Dave Ramsey's protegees. And so I'm reading that, and it's just basically about everyday people who are who who end up who become millionaires, and it's through things that you wouldn't even necessarily think. So it's just kind of that millionaire being becoming a millionaire is a lot more common than you think it is. I'm sorry. I have a question. I'm surprised Michael hasn't asked already. What are you using for project management? Oh, yeah. With your team and communication? Because you have to be able to communicate. Yeah, and doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a lot. We know. That's a lot. Yeah. Well, and at one point, last year, we were up to six. And so for various reasons, we just we've gone back down to three, which is a good thing. It's a strong three. Um, so internally, we use Asana, but then with my clients, I will pretty much use whatever they have. So I'm very familiar with slack and discord, teamwork, Monday, basically anything you can think of if they said then I'll

19:35

have you liked any of the other ones because we use notion and slack. And that's all we use, because we use a notion. So notion is kind of like a hybrid between Have you ever heard of Basecamp? Yeah, hey.

19:49

Yeah, it's like a hybrid between Basecamp and Asana, and then like Google Docs, so you can kind of do it all but you can manipulate it any way you want. And I think that's the overwhelming

20:00

Part of it is that you can literally do whatever you want. So like Asana has the boards and similar to Trello. And I think notion does it also, like, we have a ton of stuff here just on notion. It's also like it kind of has like a wiki vibe, like almost like a little file, document that, like, it's unique in that way to me, like you can build like a booklet of your company, like all the information and have it organized. Yeah, so it's it's pretty robust, but it is like, overwhelming. Like it took us a long time to jump into it because we use Basecamp for a while, but it was too like insular. Sure, right. And then Asana I never I couldn't like, I didn't vibe with it. I tried it for a little bit. I could never get it going. I got I guess I gotta like really bad notions freeform. So Michael basically can build an Asana function within notion and he can build a base camp within it. Yeah, so I built an Asana, like version, like, if you like the Trello version board, like you can build that in notion and use it any way you want. Or trigger it with, you know, Slack, so it just has like, more function like more connectors. And that's kind of what I like, I like to be able to, like expand whenever I want. And a lot of these weren't, you weren't able to do anything else. You should see if no should sponsor our podcast.

21:16

I really got to reach out to it. Why I get like really into it because you could spend hours just like cleaning it up and making it good. Like, oh, yeah, this you can put formulas and you can do whatever you want. So you had a system for that. I really, I really should I know. I mean, God actually, I wouldn't even want to touch me because there's a lot of stuff in here right now I even bill I mean, this is really random. But I built us a recipe box where all our recipes live in notion for like my personal motion. I have a tracker all this stuff. Really fun. We like take a picture when I'm doing dry January though, so no, no pictures yet.

21:54

But yeah, we take a picture to remember the wine and like where we drink it and write notes about it. It's kind of fun. Yeah. So you you like Asana and why do you think that it's like, do you want to use their software do not get be easier to streamline who is juicing like Asana, like Asana is free login, right? Like you don't have Yeah, yeah, no. So I use Asana because that's what my old boss used when I worked with him. So I knew it. Yeah, I can. I can learn other systems. And I'm totally cool with doing that. But I sometimes like, I feel like it's one less thing that I don't want to tackle it right now, if that makes sense. So, yeah, I would love to, I've had even Elise a couple times, like, hey, let's see what functionality we can do. And let's start making these projects continued on each other. And let's see, and, and then it just, you know,

22:50

eventually check out notion,

22:54

though, because it's basically like a webpage that you can send people easy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

23:00

Yeah, notion. So I think, Okay, cool. But I do think Asana has more structure for project management, like with their, their strict like they're designing the project from start to finish, we're like doing, we're doing more Well, basically, the whole business lives inside notion. So whether I need to make a work space project or a task, or write down notes, instead of using docs, instead of using whatever, we just use Dropbox, Slack, and notion. And that's everything. Links go in there. You can embed links. It's nice. I mean, I could go on all day, if you really want.

23:37

Well, we're here for you. So tell us the the next step for you. Are you going to be trying to hire more people? Or is that something that you think that you can still expand? Because I'm curious on how the growth happens? And when and like, how that happens? Like, is it just like, I'm so overwhelmed, I need to hire somebody so they can take over these projects? Or do you kind of get where it becomes more of a, you know, we're good at what we're at. And we don't need to really expand too much. Maybe we'll take on one larger client to kind of fill the needs of what you know, money reasons, but because sometimes we don't need all this extra work because there's no need for it, but we're making money. We're good. Yeah, I think with me, I think I do eventually my 100% goal is to be like, you know, completely financially stable, and my actual passion since I can't play in the NFL. My passion outside of that is actually into like house flipping and renovating and stuff like that. So I think for me this business is it serves it My goal is to get to the point where I can pay myself enough from it obviously doing the work. I pay myself enough from it so that I can kind of explore some of my other creative outlet. Okay, so the goal is first full year in business, we you know, we

25:00

hit our This is what we've made last year, we pass that next year, I want to, you know, this year, I guess now, I would love to cross into that, you know, six figure mark, like well into that six figure mark. But I don't

25:15

I think the most important thing for us now is understanding, yeah, we know who our target what our, what our target projects look like. And I want to attain three to four to five of those have those in the pipeline. And then once that's sustainable, and we're kind of refilling that, that's when I want to start bringing on another designer or another web designer, developer, something like that. Cool. I think it's really smart that you've identified your ideal type of client versus just like, let's just take all we can get like, you know, what works for you guys, and you're gonna get that much more, you're gonna be more fine tuned in your deliverables, because, you know, that's really smart. And I think we've struggled with that too. And realize, okay, you know, it's like the 8020 rule, like, our best customers are fun to work with. They bring in the majority of our business like, I don't we just want more of them and less of the others. Yeah, exactly.

26:10

And that's something I really, we definitely did that last year, especially if I was, you know, hiring more people. It's like, Okay, well, this person be graded this, let's go ahead and take this on, let's take this on, let's take this on. And I've come up with a rule that if I can't execute it myself, if everything hits the fan, and it's something that I can't then complete myself, we're not going to take it off. Because at the end of the day, I'm always if I say, if I tell a client, we're going to make this happen for you, we're going to make it happen for you. And I'm never going to walk back on that. So if I can physically deliver it, then I know that it's not, at least at this point, it's not the right client or project for us. That's a good rule of thumb for sure. And use your name on it. So I told you

26:58

I'm dying to hear your call me crazy story, Jessica. So Tell, tell our listeners, maybe an inspirational or creatively kind of silly story, that may be a decision that you made more, your friends and family thought you were completely crazy. But you went ahead and did that anyway, because, you know, in honor of our podcast, Common Core, I think the craziest thing that I probably did was,

27:23

I guess outside of having a kid at 18 and figuring that whole thing out.

27:29

It honestly was probably starting the magazine. It was a sports and hip hop magazine. And you know, you can look very hip hop right now, I'm sure. But I've always loved you know, r&b and hip hop, even when I was little, I don't know how it happened because my parents are very country and journey and air supply. But for some reason I was drawn to it and I didn't listening to you know, r&b, rap, hip hop all that since I was little. So I decided that I was going to start in sports and hip hop magazine in Denver, Colorado, of all places. So, um, and yeah, yeah, I did. And I want to say I was 22 or 23. When I did it.

28:04

Again, I knew nothing about it. I was a single mom at the time. I remember, I had an apartment on my own. But I literally had patio furniture, like in my apartment, because I had no money and the overhead on the magazine is absolutely insane. So and this was right before the blog phase, like blew up. So I had a physical magazine, and we had a website. And so we created you know, we I mean, I managed to grow the magazine to be in 13 different states and I had it for four or five years of an award. Yeah. Right. And it was awesome, but I had no clue what I'm doing like at all. There were many ramen nights for sure. I became a ramen connoisseur. Like, I'm the best recipes for ramen, and not the good ramen, like the 17 cent. Yeah. Yeah. I can't say that. He thinks it's the best thing like the best food group ever is wrong. It

29:01

was the magazine called I was gonna it's called the fusion magazine, but it was spelled su capital sh Iowan for sports and hip hop, but fusion bringing the two together. Oh, cool. Did you frame your first one on the wall anywhere? They're not framed. I have. I don't care if I can chip that up. So that was my most proud one. And it's actually autographed by bunbee UGK. You know, living legend.

29:32

But I don't put them out because they're embarrassing.

29:37

Real magazine, I know. But in terms of I looked at them and like I'm proud of them. But I laugh because I'm like, I can't believe at any point that anyone not that this was like a good night.

29:49

But what year was 2008? Two

29:54

things we're dealing

29:55

with when it first launched I started in 2017. But I think the first magic

30:00

In 2007, but I think the first magazine was the end of that year, the beginning of we were in college, right? Yeah, we're in color. Listen to hip hop. I mean, that just goes to show you can literally literally do anything. Yeah. That's great. I love it. I was fired.

30:15

Well, Jessica, thank you so much for joining the pod. Your website is a website x design.com. We'll put it in the description as well. And then we'll send everybody to you go check out the I mean, everybody has to go click this link about your website is great. Like the the functionality the the videos, it looks really good. So it was a tough critic. Yeah.

30:38

This is not good. But this is a really good one. So everybody, just go at least go click the link. So Jeff, thank you so much for joining. Yeah, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate y'all. Yeah, thanks.