How to Become a Freelance Squarespace Designer [Video Podcast - Part 4 of 4]

In this video, I talk through becoming a Squarespace designer, why to use Squarespace, and how to start a freelance web design career on Squarespace. Just like kids learn to speak before they can write, learning Squarespace can be a great introduction to website design.

Transcript

Hello. Hello. Hello and welcome. This is the fourth episode in the series that we're doing right now, how to become a freelance Squarespace designer. And in some ways, this is like how to become a web designer. From scratch. Yes. You could go start with code, but this is a whole different process. We live in a whole different world that I think many people don't see this form and function of how it can work.

And often this is how it works for a lot of people. So basically that's that form and function of if you've ever heard people talk about this, which is the idea that people like, think about children, the way they learn a language, how do they learn the language? The first thing they learn is they learn how to speak.

Then they learn how to read and write those. Come later. Speaking comes first often with website design. We think we need to learn, learn how to code first before we design a website, but truly, truly, truly there is another process. There is another flow to this and Squarespace offers such a great resource for you to learn how.

A website is structured with certain parameters as you begin. And there's a bunch of other tools that you can do this with, but in this podcast, I'm going to talk, I've talked about my journey in episode one and episode two, mainly episode one about how I became a freelance Squarespace designer after quitting my full-time job.

And. A few months later getting landing my first client, talk about landing projects and then talk about systems for design. And I think that's one of the most important things because repetition creates progress in my book, repetition creates progress. So I'd rather do 10 websites in a month than do one set site.

Absolutely perfect. Now, if we're talking about money, that could be a little bit of a different story. If there's a lot of money involved with a site, but basically I'd rather do. 10 projects versus one. So I could scale and get better and more efficient and go through the process more times because basically website designed as many other things.

What is it? It's basically this process of answering questions over and over and over again. How do I structure this content? How do I structure this section? How do I make this look and feel engaging? How do I make this page clear and have a clear call to action? How do I form an and set all these different sections up?

So they go in unison together, and that's the structure of website design that you learn by. Seeing so many different examples of them and going through so many different processes. Anyway, with that said, we're going to start an episode for how to become a freelance Squarespace designer. In episode four, we're going to talk about four or five main questions here, which is number one, getting comfortable.

With client relationships. Second one is finding a design arm quickly and not overthinking it. Third is getting confident on client calls. And then fourth is time and just talking about time and how that helps in this process of basically building confidence. So this fourth one is on, right? Building confidence.

So I think I said there's five, there's actually just four points, but we're going to begin now and thank you for being here. If you want to learn more about what we do as an agency. So I run space, our agency, we help clients and businesses of all sizes, anywhere between zero to 10,000 users, visitors a month, we help you get found on Google.

And so if you're looking for help with SEO or you're looking for quick tips, we have a newsletter that we put out every single week. That you can get involved with, just go to the website, a spacebar agency.com for session newsletter, and you can find us there or just go to space for our agency.com. You could find our guides, our tutorials, eBooks, any of those kinds of resources that are offered.

Um, we're always developing new resources there. So check us out there. That's a great place as they up-to-date with what we're doing and the content we're putting out. But without further ado, let's get into this. Episode. Okay. So in the, in the previous episode, we talked about ways to save time in your process.

Another major time-saver that we didn't really talk about in episode three, that I'm just going to lightly touch on and is involved in this first point of get comfortable with client relationships. So how do you get comfortable in a client relationship? A few things you have to diffuse. Number one, when you have a process predefined, you take the client through the process, rather than the client taking you through their process.

This is huge. You never know who it's going to be. Some people want to do a screenshare to send your edit, to send them for them, to send you their edits. Some people want to do they want you to send 12 designs? And then they review and say, I like design number four, number seven. And if you could put those together with a little bit of number 10, that would be good for me.

Some other people may like other processes. And so in this case, it's really important to start with, get comfortable with the client relationship by managing expectations. And so one of the things I do here is I very clearly communicate where we are with the client. One of the biggest time-waster one of the biggest time-wasters.

If you're a website, designer is going to be client. Because, okay. Some people love doing phone calls. And props to you personally. I, Hey, I'm fine. On phone calls. I mean, I'm doing a podcast right now, so afraid of talking to people, but the thing is with phone calls, sometimes it's just better than an email.

It's sometimes a clear in an email it's sometimes simpler in an email. And so one thing I highly recommend is as you go through this process, define when the phone calls are going to happen with the client. And that way it makes it very clear to them when they can communicate with you. And then if they ask for more or they're excessive, you can call it out and say, Hey, part of the process is a phone call here, here, and here.

However, if you want more phone calls, X number of dollars per 30 minutes or per hour or whatever that may be. I really don't get there, especially if you are talking about a few thousand dollars more for a project, but then also just be very clear with the client that, Hey, we're going to the process like this.

I'm happy to adjust a bit to make this work for you, but just know on my end. This is what I need for us and for this to work out really well. And so you, you give yourself really healthy relationship with the client from the beginning. Also, you can get comfortable with the client relationship by just simply communicating your next steps to the client before they happen.

So the client say, for example, sends you all their content. Once they send the client content, you review it, you take a look at it. Yeah. Then you actively send them the next step, send them what they should expect. Hey, in two weeks, I'm going to send you the website or in 10 days, you're going to get this.

Or in two months, you're going to get this, whatever your process is. I like to work quick. So it's usually two weeks or less in between interactions. But with that said, make it very clear, make it very, very clear to the client for what they could expect, because if it's not clear, what's going to end up happening is they're going to message you halfway.

Through, and they're going to be a little bit frustrated because they were thinking you'd get back to them in a week. And you were planning two weeks and a week in a few days goes by and you're still not done, but they're upset and they're frustrated and now they're rushing you. And so always making it clear what the next step is.

It makes it really. It makes for a really comfortable applying engagement client relationship. And also it may be good at another tool is just having your process listed either on the website or your proposal. So we really haven't talked about building a proposal in these four episodes, but it's great if you're doing any project over $1,500, probably less too, but let's just say if you're starting out.

You don't have to stress it too much, but once you get to about $1,500 or more, you want to have a proposal that details these different things like your process and what that process is, because then you could hold them accountable and they could hold you accountable. One other place where clients can take up a lot of your time.

And this isn't just a Dishon clients. Designers have a lot of places. They screw up as well by not having clear deadlines by taking really long on designs, things like this. But one thing that's really helpful in a proposal I had. Saved me. And I was like, has actually made me money in the process is if the client delays in getting you content.

Or revisions or next steps. There could be a fee incurred. Now, honestly, I don't want to put a fee on a client for stuff like this, but what this does when it's built into the proposal is it makes a very clear marker for the client. And you to say, Hey, if you spend two months on the review and I keep messaging you and messaging you to catch up and see where you're at, that requires an extension of the project.

And that way you could clarify with the client from the beginning, when it happens, you avoid any kind of weird conversation. You just say, Hey. It's been 10 days since I sent you the website, I still haven't received the revisions. And in our PR process, in our proposal, we listed that we would get the revisions back in about a week.

If you want to take another few days to review, that would be great. But by. Blah, blah, blah, date two weeks from that original Sunday. If I don't receive anything from you, I'm going to send you next steps that anytime I've sent that clients are good to respond. So I'm going to send you next steps or something.

To that extent, they've been really good to respond where they're like, okay, yeah, I'll get it to you by that day. Or if they communicate and they say, Oh, I'm sorry. This has happened. My, some things happened in my family. Something's happened in my life. I'll get you all these details by this and this date that works.

That actually works for me. If it's a far out date, we can have that conversation. But again, these are ways to make it a really comfortable relationship with the client. How did I find these methods? Well, it was because. I didn't have them at some point or some part of the process. I didn't have them, a client took advantage of it or a client just did it their own way.

And because of that, it led to just a lot of unnecessary drama. In the last episode, we talked about the 80 20 rule. In a, in a different form or fashion by talking about delivering your 80, but I'm going to talk about what Tim Ferriss talks about in the four hour workweek, which is try to find those clients.

And in the book, the 80 20 principle, the way he says it is try to find those clients with relatively low effort. You can make extremely happy. And those are the ideal clients. You don't have to overstress. You don't have to put your life on hold for the client. You find clients who understand that you're offering a great service.

You offer a great service. You show up to do the service, but you're also not on Beck and call for them. Is that how you say it back in call? Whatever it is, you're not. On your end, we're spending all your time and energy trying to get their needs met anytime they want it. Those types of relationships don't work out well because they're very unhealthy.

They're just very unhealthy. So get really comfortable in the client relationship by trying to find those clients that you can see from the beginning, try to start to find those identifiers that you can see this client is going to be a headache, or this is going to be hard to work with, or any of those things.

One of the markers. I think for clients that you want to stay away from is if the client is never following a process or like a system, you send them a message and then they send you questions on something completely different than you send them answers. And then they send you questions on some completely different, but they don't really acknowledge what you're saying.

And before you know, it you've said 10 things and it's not really working. Another one is if the client goes around, And continues to, it's almost like an endless circle where you say, Hey, can you put all your content in this document? And then they send you seven documents out of nowhere that are cluttered and they're not even organized.

And they're all separate. And some have information from the other that have info from the other. It doesn't connect with what you're actually trying to accomplish. It's really confusing. And you have to somehow wrap your head around that the only time, those types of clients, I'm kind of like. I have a caveat for is if they are respectfully older, because sometimes technology is hard to use.

And so I have like space for that. I have a space for someone who, who I can understand. They're, they're asking for my help on building a website or help on any kind of digital service because they struggle with computers in the first place. So that totally makes sense. But being very clear of, Hey, let's try to work this way and get the process done in this order.

And we'll get you where you want to go. I'll make sure you're taking care of the whole way, but let's just try to follow this system as we go along. I remember I had this really, really nice. Older lady she's in Hollywood or she's in Culver city, her candle, she makes candles, her family has been doing it for years.

They've been making, I think three generations, their candles are in over like 700 movies. So I don't even know how you become that person, but apparently she is that person and she was the nicest lady. She preferred to do things over the phone. Phone. She liked to do things over email here and there, but she preferred to do it over the phone.

And she was working with another, another person that she's known for decades. And he was helping on the project. I was fine working with both of them. I had an understanding of what was happening, but when you have difficult ways to tell different quotes, Clients number one is if they're never really connecting with what you're saying, it almost feels like they're on their own planet.

Number two is if they're not following the directions, you give them the process. You give them. If they're starting to take everything and put it into their process, I've worked with some other firms, smaller firms and teams where they take everything and put it through their process. And I'm not getting paid to go by Europe.

Process I'm, I'm getting paid to go by this process that we agreed to in the beginning. So if they start taking different formats, different parts of the process and making it their own and completely changing it, unless they're paying for it, then I'll work with it. But if they're not paying for it, we're working on this system now getting comfortable with client relationships.

It takes us to this another piece that I really want to talk about. Design on a website is really important, but design also can become like, Overly complicated, especially if you're not a designer. So if you do struggle with design or you're not comfortable with design or design is something new to you.

Maybe you want to be comfortable with it. Find tools and tricks that you, you can use to make life as easy as possible. Now in project is a great place to get icons. Flat icon is another place to get great icons for design. There's a bunch of websites out there that give you starter animations or starter graphics or starters for any type of graphic work that you may need.

Another tool may be finding some type of service that you could pay for whether it's like something like design pickle, I've never used design pickle. And basically I think they outsource all their work to the Philippines. You could try that it's three, 400 bucks a month, but if that doesn't work for you, you could try something like 99 designs, or you could try something like online jobs.ph online job.

Stop pH is a really good resource to find graphic designers or, or anything really in the Philippines. The big thing with working with someone in the Philippines. I have a lot of experience with this at hired, maybe 10 different people from the Philippines and had every title. I've had so many different types of experiences with hiring from the Philippines specifically.

But one of the things I would, I would quickly point out is you have to make the instructions very clear on what you want. Initially, if you've only really great person, they'll be able to follow that perfectly great, amazing video editor. He is gold. I am so happy. I have him. On the team, he has been great to work with.

There have been some cases where instructions are not followed, right? I've had to put systems and processes together where I clearly identify this is how we're going to work. This is how things are going to flow. These are the different pieces of the project, but if you do find a good designer, they could put work together for you.

And so you can marry some of those resources go to now and project find a couple of things you like design wise. Yeah. Put that together, or just find someone local that, you know, that can help you put graphics together. The more you could put that part of the business into your work, especially if the companies you're working with don't have a logo or don't have a brand or don't have colors, or don't have fonts.

Those things are really helpful and use Google as a resource, as much as you can identify. Good font, pairing and good color schemes. A website. I absolutely love for colors is it's called coolers. Yes. C O O L O R S dot C O. That website's beautiful. The guy who's designed it has made it really easy to put colors together.

You basically just hit the space bar and it'll give you different matches until you find something you like, you save what you like, and then you have it. Forever. It's really easy and it's free. So for design, this is really going to help you with your client relationship, because if you don't have a processes for putting fonts together or seeing how fonts go together and design-wise you feel, let's just say like, not confident in that in the beginning, try to copy or duplicate things that you see.

From other websites and in the process of co you're going to make it your own. So don't worry too much about that, but try to use systems that are already predefined and that will help you so much. Okay. Number three. So this whole episode here is really about the client relationship, because what we just talked about with design is going to be really important for how you deliver a project to a client and how you really shine in that process.

But the third one I'm going to talk about here is getting confident on client calls. Is so important. You want to go into client calls and be the one asking the questions? What do they say? The person leading the conversation is the one who's asking the questions, not the one who's answering the questions.

So in this part of the process, you really want to get on the phone. I try to be, I personally try to be very personable for the first few minutes. So, Hey, how are you? Where are you located? Where are you from? Tell me more about yourself. Tell me more about your business. Try to find out some of those details.

Not 10 minutes of that. Two or three minutes. Once that's settled and we're friendly. I want to start the relationship. With value, a value of friends, like connection before going into all the business stuff. I don't want to go directly into the business stuff. In most cases, then from there we go into the questions.

So tell me what even brought you to this point for, to look for a website design, depending on how they found you or whatever the process is, ask some type of question that forms in that way. Then you're going to get an idea of what they're looking for. Are they looking for a website designer? Are they looking for someone to build their site?

Are they looking for something to be built quickly? Are they looking for design help? Are they looking for confidence? A lot of clients are looking for confidence. They could build their site, but they don't know if it looks right. Feels right. They don't know what questions to ask. They feel insecure. So they want a professional like you to come in and, and support.

Um, And show them clear direction. This is great for website design. This is great for your business. This is great for what you're trying to accomplish. And those are really helpful. Those are really, really helpful in the process. As you get confident on client phone calls, to understand and ask questions that you're going to get answers for at this level, but you can read what they're saying below that.

On top of that, you could also clarify a few things. Who's leading the project, what's their timeline. So I personally, when I'm working on a smaller project, want to work with one person, I don't want to get looped into an email chain with seven people, because what ends up happening is those seven people don't all know what's happening and where things are at.

And one person sends their own notes and another person sends their own. I don't do that. I have a clear process. I have a clear system and I have one point of contact that is the ideal. Sometimes it deviates a little bit, so it's not like a perfect rule, but in these cases, you really identify how to make this process work in the smoothest way.

One of my biggest failed projects was once I got. Into working with the team. Seven people were contacting me. It was actually four, but a bunch of people were contacting me and they all had different expectations and they didn't understand the platform we were building on Squarespace. They didn't understand the platform and how it worked.

And they said our call that we finally ended the relationship. One of the things I said was, well, it must be a stupid platform if it doesn't work that way. And it's like, Hmm. Yeah, you could say that, but it's just because you have no clear sense of how it works, that you're judging it by this one thing that you just discovered because it's not there for you.

And there are a lot of things that don't work perfectly on Squarespace that work on different platforms and things like that. But in this case, What we were building too, was just a disaster of a project because no one had clear expectations of where the project was headed and how it was going to get there built on the flow that we were building on.

It was like they were on one river and we were traveling another river. So I really emphasize that in the beginning, trying to very much so identify these things. And you could also identify if it's a client you don't want to work with. They could sound over demanding. They could sound very like audacious.

They could sound like they've never done this before. And so they could have a lot of questions. They might not be ready to start yet. And so there's a lot of factors and this is a great way of filtering through those things. And one of the questions I love to ask, they're going to say, so how much does something like this cost?

And actually, before I start talking about this, one thing I do want to say is, okay, If you're looking for help on this, there's a ton of great content by the future on YouTube. So just go to YouTube and type in the future without an E F U T U R, and look up videos on how to manage client relationships.

This is where I learned how to ask this question. And it's a really good question. It's a really good question. And also you start in a very confident tone when you come with this, but when you come on the phone and you're asking all these questions and you're going through the process, You have to ask on this first phone call, not later first phone call.

So what's your budget for this project? Now, some clients may come back and say, Hmm, I don't really know. I've never worked on a project like this. How much does something like this often cost? And there's a few ways you can take that conversation. One of the ways is you can go back to the client and say, well, let me ask you, have you ever worked on.

Anything like this before. Have you ever done a website, a logo online before? Have you ever worked with a freelancer like this before? Yeah, maybe once or twice. And, Oh, tell me how that went. Learn more about that part of the process. See what they say about that, but overall you want to. Get the client to talk about money before you talk about money.

It's very much like how they do jobs and salaries. Sometimes they show the salaries and I think more and more jobs are showing the salaries, but it's very healthy. It's a healthy relationship to say, how much are you looking to be spending on this? Because the thing with website design, and this is the example I use is it's kind of like chandelier.

I actually think I got this from the future, but it's kind of like a chandelier. Say you're redecorating your home and you're going to get a new chandelier for your kitchen. You could go to home Depot and spend $200 on a chandelier. Or you could go to a really boutique store and spend $20,000 on a chandelier.

Both of them are going to do the exact same thing, exact same thing. Both of them are going to light the room. However, one of them, the finish, the touch that elegance is going to. Out shine the cheaper one. And so with that in mind, you want to keep yourself ahead of the curve by asking the client, what are you looking to spend on a project like this?

What is your budget? Because when you have a sense of budget, you could then identify what the project scope is going to look like for that client. Now, let's say you have your pricing on your website. The client may come to you and say, I was looking at your second package or I was looking at your third package or something like that.

And so you have that conversation identified, but you want to make sure you find out what package you're looking at so that when you send a proposal, you know, how much to send them in the cost. So the cost is not a surprise. One of the tricks that I did was if a client said their project was about 10, like they're a budgets nine K they'll just say it's like 9,500.

What I would do is I tend to proposal. That would show them a range from, let's say 7,500 now probably 79, 50, right. Under a K to 9,500. And so I'd put range in between there. And then I put the ideal number that I wanted for the total project. And so it would probably be 89, 50, so right below 9,500. So again, it just kind of shows like a deal almost.

So if they said, Oh, our max is 9,500, well now I'm saying, Hey, it possibly could be 89 50. Then when we're in the project, I'll get a deposit 50% or whatever to begin something that like 50% I'll get the deposit. Once a project begins and we're flowing depending on what the client needs and how many revisions we do and how the process is.

I may go through the process and the client may finish the project easy and it might be simple and I might charge him less. Or the client may be so satisfied and in different cases, We work really hard on it. We get the right setup, look, feel everything. The client loves the website. They have no problem paying 9,500.

So you give yourself a little bit of flexibility by putting up to 9,500, but then putting in the actual dollar amount for the project a little bit lower. And at the end of the day, it gives you flexibility on deciding that final price range with the client. I'd never had a client question that I've never had a client see it and question it.

So right before that bottom line where it says. The total price I put range is between this number and this number. And then in between those two numbers, I find an ideal number that I liked that I'm comfortable with. And I placed that in there. So now it gives them a range of different numbers to play with.

It's all the psychology of money, right. You really clarify to yourself where you're willing to work, but also to the client that there's some space. That, Hey, if we do this project quickly, efficiently, and like there's not a lot of back and forth, seven Ks actually are 79, 50 is very doable and you might save $2,000 on this project that you can invest in advertising or an email marketing campaign or, or something else.

But in this entire process, you know, in a very fun way, it made it very clear on how this is going to work, how it's going to operate, how things are going to form, how they're going to feel all of that with the client. And you're, you're coming from a very. Confident place. One other thing on this, in this episode, and we're going to, this is the last part of this episode building company.

It takes time. You could take, it could be done quicker and sooner. I'm very much on the approach. And it's, as I've spoken about before is number one. If you land a $2,000 project, but the client is pushing you work like a $3,000 project. Sometimes it's okay to bite the bullet because you know that you can show off that website and that project to the next client and say, Hey, this is worth three K.

And so they'll pay you the three K that project's worth because they see that you could accomplish it. So sometimes it's good to bite that bullet and do that work. Now, if clients are breaking boundaries and going beyond and crazy, like I'm not about that. But I am about doing the work to prove yourself in that process and maybe prove isn't the right word, especially in this world today and how we talk about these things.

But in many ways, it's a good stepping stone to show. Hey, I've done a $5,000 project. I've done a $12,000 project, even though I only got paid eight, it's actually a $12,000 project because we added this to the scope and these other items, because sometimes clients just don't know. They just don't know, they don't realize that this extra work or these extra pages or these extra sections or these extra things with the domain chance for that come along in the process.

And, and it's hard to scope that in the beginning. So you try to make a little bit of room for that, but at the same time, if it goes over a bit, you know how to work with it, it's going to help you on that next project. So in the same way, I think time helps build confidence. The more you can get on the phone to talk to clients about future projects and do consultations, the more comfortable you'll get with it.

The more, you do websites and deliver websites and deliver revisions and go through client headaches and all of that, the more you can get comfortable in the process. I remember from my first client, the confidence level I had to, what I have now is a completely different paradigm. I can talk to a client even today, and I haven't been working on websites for a few months.

And even before that, it was a good few months where. There's this whole year of 2020, probably a 10 months, or you've worked on a few sites, maybe 10 max. And last year I worked on 70 so 50 to 70 easily. So you can see there's a big difference there, but in that process, every one of those conversations, every one of those things brings me to this point of confidence now, and this confidence.

Has come over time to really deliver an exceptional experience for the client, making sure things are moving in the right direction, but it's all come over time. So take your time, take your time in the process to find the right things at work and just know that every day you keep up and you keep moving forward, things are moving in the right direction.

And that's really my goal here is like, I never thought I would become this. I never thought I'd be building businesses and softwares and blogs and newsletters around Squarespace and Squarespace SEO. But that's what I do now. And that's how our team manages. And I even talked to someone on my team yesterday last night after we had dinner and he's like, thank you.

He's like, thank you for bringing me along on this journey, his trip. We never really thought it would be this big and it's continuing to grow. But thank you for taking me this far. And that's like, that's so cool because what was just an idea? Let me try to build a website or two on the side and pay off some debt has now turned into a profitable business that was helping families pay for their living.

It's helping people purchase big items in there, like cars and things, and they're in their house and their, their livelihood and those things I just never really imagined before. And so confidence comes with time and I really think in this process, get comfortable with the client relationship, get comfortable with the client demands, get comfortable seeing now get comfortable talking to the client saying, yeah, that isn't in the scope or.

I would love to do that for you, but it will be in a new proposal or in a new scope and clarifying those things as you get them on, don't get bitter things, get difficult with clients it's going to happen from the beginning. I've had difficult clients come. Some that projects ended. Some that we finished the projects and some where the client relationship turned around, where the designer thought we have all these cool ideas.

No, it should fit like this and look like that. And that, and it's like, it's a website, it moves it shifts. It's not perfect. You can't like, keep it in a little box. It moves around and it's a responsive template. So there's just some things you're not going to be able to control that way. And the client understood that.

You got the point he got, he got the feel for it. Yes. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening again. This is so four of our podcast, this new podcast. The question, this is how I wrote it. Title in my notion account. Is it, am I starting a podcast question Mark. And the name of the podcast is how to become a freelance Squarespace designer.

So thank you for participating in episode four. If you want more, if you want to stay up to date with what we're doing with anything Squarespace or anything, SEO related. Please, please, please go to spacebar agency.com forward slash newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter and you could get all, any type of PR products we're pushing any types of information we're giving out.

We give a lot of information out for free. So anything we're putting out there will be through that newsletter and you can join us there. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening and I'll see you again. Next time. Peace.