The benefits of building slowly are never noticed until you’re farther down the road. When I started side hustling, I’d hoped I’d be closing in on six figures within a year or two. Truthfully, sometimes my eyes are bigger than my stomach. I feel like something is so easy because I can see the finish line. Just because you can see it, doesn’t mean it’ll be easy to get to.
After 5 years of side hustling in the web design space, I’m more appreciative of what I’ve learned and how it applies to growing a stable, strong business model.
In this episode, I share 6 things I’ve learned in that time and how it can help you stay patient and build a business that lasts.
Josh Hall’s Web Design Business Course
Episode Sponsor: Divi By Elegant Themes – Get it here… https://www.keeganlanier.com/getdivi
Keegan 0:35
What’s up friends? Welcome back to another episode of the podcast we’re talking Episode 15 today. Again, this is really like episode. I don’t know 100 and something of me podcasting about Divi, but Episode 15 of the Side Hustle to Full Time Web Designer podcast and today’s sponsor is Elegant Themes because without Elegant Themes, none of this would be possible. Divi has been a game changer. In my business. Divi has really been a game changer in my life. And I don’t take that lightly. The YouTube channel is centered around Divi, the podcast is centered around Divi. My business sites are built using Divi. So if you’re interested in checking out the absolute best website, Page Builder, period, click the link in the show notes below and go get Divi today.
Keegan 1:24
Today, again, I wanted to really jump in to the power of building your business slowly. It is not the sexy thing that most people talk about everybody else’s, how do you scale overnight? How do you 10x your business in a year? How do you become the next Millionaire? You know, and nobody talks about the benefits really, of building your business slowly. Because it takes patience takes time. And in a world where so many people want instant gratification. building a business slowly is not really the sexy thing. And this probably won’t get a ton of listens. But I don’t know maybe it resonates with you, I want to talk about a couple of benefits. Really three benefits that I’ve seen in building my business slowly, not just the business, I’m also doing the same thing with YouTube, it’s very organic, very slow. And I’m okay with that just broke 1000 subscribers, which is a huge accomplishment I feel insanely proud about it means over 4000 hours of people listening to me talk about the thing that I care about that to change my business, I think that’s cool as hell.
1) Grow at a Steady Rate
Keegan 2:32
But to get back to the three things that I’ve seen, that are incredible benefits of building your business slowly. And number one is that you grow at a steady rate. And that has so many benefits, it allows you to protect your reputation because you don’t get an influx and then just really shift the bid as far as the deliverables. It allows you to grow at a steady rate, like I mentioned, so that you have a lot a lot of time to continue to build your system.
2) Build Systems Through Iteration
Keegan 3:01
And that leads to number two, which is building your systems through iteration. Going slowly allows you to look at your projects, see where you won, see where you failed. And you can make the adjustments in real time. And without changing a ton because you’re doing a project to project their one or two projects at a time. That is such a powerful thing. Because you’re seeing the changes you make impact the next project you do and that’s huge. The other thing is that you’re going to learn skills along the way, so that you’re prepared to face these additional challenges. If you just have everything happened at once, and you scale overnight, you’re not going to you’re not going to be as prepared, because when you do things solely again, you get to go and review your projects. And that’s major to major for being able to make sure that you’re ready to continue to grow and take on bigger and better projects.
3) Do Great Work
Keegan 3:54
So how do you do it? How do you scale? How do you build slowly? The first thing without question, there is no substitute for doing great work. If you don’t do great work, you’re not going to scale. You’re not going to scale overnight, when you might get lucky. If something pops, a piece of content pops. You may get lucky for a minute but if you don’t do great work, your reputation will be hit. That’s just that’s just the way it is. Right? You got to communicate with clients. Well, it’s so much easier when you have a system, but you have to communicate clearly. You know, Josh Hall has a systems course, I’m going to link it in the show notes, Josh Hall’s systems course, his or his web design system course is incredible, right? Because it’s going to walk you through the process, it’s going to put a process and a system in place so that you can check the boxes with every client, do them really consistently over and over and that will build your reputation.
4) Master a Platform
Keegan 4:51
Something else that you really need. If you want to build like this and build well and go slow and build really effectively is fine one platform mastering talked about it in the show open Divi is that platform for me build websites on Divi have templates set up for Divi. I do things in Divi, because I’m a beast and Divi, like, I’m really good at it, I know enough coding, I can bend Divi to my will, I can make it do what it’s not designed to do, and do that effectively. So that’s a huge one, find that platform, master it, put the time in, don’t jump at the next shiny page builder. And don’t go back and forth. Because there’s no such thing as a perfect anything. No matter what theme or page builder you decide to use, it will have issues it will have shortcomings, Divi is not perfect. But it is great. And it’s the best one I’ve ever found. And it has the fewest shortcomings, and it has definitely the most upside.
5) Personal Referrals
Keegan 5:48
Something else that’s a real huge, great thing that allows you to build slowly, is when you do that great work, you’re going to get those personal referrals. Those personal referrals are going to be such hardcore business, you’re not going to have to go out and cold call or cold email people because those those referrals are going to come in hot, these people are going to be ready to work with you because someone that they know and trust has referred you. And that’s it, you can’t put value on that, well, I guess you can, you can put it out here, you can literally value it at the amount of money you make off of that referral. So there you go.
6) Testimonials
Keegan 6:25
And then something else is to make sure that you’re getting testimonials from every single client that you have. I’ve done recently on the YouTube channel, a way to generate a Google review link. Google reviews for your business are huge. If you don’t have Google My Business setup, you need to do it now. Do it for your business. And in that tutorial that I will link below, there is a link to the video. And this video is super short, super straightforward. And it shows you how to do a one click, somebody can say you can put leave a review, leave us a review. When they click it, it will go to your Google listing, like your Google business listing and pop up. Leave a five star review type in your review. And it makes it really easy for somebody to leave you that review. So that’s huge.
Bonus – Keegan’s Resources
Keegan 7:13
And then one bonus, I do use a platform you can find all of my resources at Keegan Lanier.com there’s tools that I use, and you can save money, they are affiliate links. But you can save money as you sign up for these things, because I’ve got some pretty cool deals that have been set up with those partners. But it’s this platform called Warm, Warm Welcome. I’m sure you’ve probably heard of manjaro. And warm welcome is very, very similar. I love it. They’re constantly growing and adding new features and making the platform better. But it allows you actually if you do go to my website, if you go to redefined creative agencies website, you’ll see it in action in the bottom right hand corner, you click on that there’s a video video of me and it allows you to just ask questions, someone can reply directly to me with a question they have. And this is where it ties in the testimonials. You can use warm welcome to get testimonials, you send a client, a video thanking them for working for you, or working with you. And you can say hey, look, just hit the video record button or the video Reply button. And send me back a testimony of how you feel the project went. And now that would be incredible. If you feel so inclined, I would love for you to do that.
Keegan 8:25
Then you can save that video, put it on your website. And there you go. Instant, instant testimonial. So that’s an amazing thing that’s possible. And it’s a way to build your reputation. And all of these things take time, right building your system, getting those reputation or getting those testimonials to build your reputation, doing great work, the systems to communicate with your client, the referrals that come from doing great work, all of them take time. That’s an effective way to build loyalty and really strong business. So I’m interested to hear any of the tools any of the steps you’ve taken, or any of the questions you might have about some of these things I’ve talked about. So if you have anything to add to the conversation that we’ve got here, click the link below KeeganLanear.com/e15. It’s going to take you to the podcast episode on my site, drop in the comments. And let’s continue this conversation. I hope that you have an amazing, amazing week. there’s anything I can do for you. As always, feel free to reach out and we will see you in the next episode.
