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Episode 79: How to Get Started as a Website Designer
161 Plays5 years ago
Today's guest is Chris Misterek, the founder of Self-Made Web Designer and he's here to chat with us about just that: getting started as a website designer. We chat about what's appealing about a career in website design and how to take the first few steps in teaching yourself website design from scratch. Chris also shares with us how he was able to build a client roster and provide some advice for others who are looking for more work.
I have a feeling that Chris is a guest that we will have to have back on the podcast to continue exploring the how-to's around website design. But if you are looking to connect with Chris before that, he is launching his own podcast. The tentative launch date is March 3rd, 2020 and I will be sure to link it in the show notes as soon as it is available.
For the show notes, go to https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-chris-misterek-episode-79/
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Transcript
Transition from Passion Job to Coding Career
00:00:05
Speaker
You know, it's a passion job. It's something I felt called to. And I loved it and had no intention of quitting. But with passion work sometimes comes passion pay. And so
00:00:16
Speaker
you don't get a salary that's like over the top. It was livable, but it wasn't necessarily comfortable, especially as a single dad. And I didn't want to have to pull on the church to up my rate. And so that's where the desire to go outside and find another way to make money became the best option for me. So yeah, I learned to code, and then I just started building websites.
Chris Mistrick's Entry into Web Design
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:54
Speaker
Today's guest is Chris Mistrick, the founder of selfmadewebsitedesigner.com, and he's here to chat with us about just that, getting started as a website designer. We chat about what's appealing about a career in website design and how to take the first few steps in teaching yourself website design from scratch. Chris also shares with us how he's able to build a client roster and provide some advice for others who are looking for more work. I have a feeling that Chris will be a guest that we'll have to have back on the podcast to continue exploring
00:01:22
Speaker
the how-to's around website design, but if you're looking to connect with Chris before that, he's launching his own podcast. The tentative launch date is March 3rd, 2020, and I'll be sure to link to it in the show notes as soon as it's available. Be sure to check out the show notes at davianchrista.com for the resources we've mentioned during the episode, and I want to hear from you. Let me know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands That Book podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, head on over to the Davian Christa Facebook page and send us a message, or DM us on Instagram,
00:01:52
Speaker
at Davie and Krista. Now, onto the episode.
00:02:01
Speaker
All right. Welcome back to another episode of The Brands That Book Show. I'm here with Chris Mistrick from selfmadewebdesigner.com. And he's here to chat with us today about exactly that, becoming a selfmade web designer. And I've been fortunate enough to get to know Chris a little bit this past year, since he also works for Show It and did an incredible job hosting the Show It conference this year. So welcome to the podcast, Chris.
00:02:25
Speaker
Hey, thanks so much for having me on, Davey. Yeah, I'm pumped to talk about the subject because, you know, in 80 something episodes, we actually haven't really talked about becoming a web designer, even though that's something that we do. So I'm excited to have you on the podcast to chat about that a little bit, especially since you've taken as pretty much every every guest that I have on the podcast, sort of a non traditional route in getting to where you are today.
Becoming a Single Dad and Seeking Extra Income
00:02:51
Speaker
You know, that's actually been one of my favorite parts about the podcast. I think in general is hearing people's story. So let's start at the beginning. You know, how did you get into Web design? Yeah. Yeah. Well, my story actually starts from a little bit of a tragedy. So about six years ago, my wife of 10 years decided that she was done with the relationship. And this was after a long battle with some health issues. And so it left me as a single dad.
00:03:20
Speaker
with a job that I loved but didn't quite make enough money to take care of my kids and my family. So I had to find a way somewhat quickly to make some extra income in a way that I could do it while they were sleeping or while I had free time during the day or during the evenings.
Discovering Coding Passion Through Free Courses
00:03:41
Speaker
And so on the suggestion of a friend, I looked into web design and signed up for a free course on Code Academy.
00:03:49
Speaker
and almost instantly fell in love with it. You know, like it was like a spark went off when I coded hello world into an HTML check. And I was like, man, this is amazing. You know, like the fact that I could like type something out in a text editor and then see it in my web browser, like that's sad, you know, right? Like that's like anybody can do that.
00:04:10
Speaker
But I totally understand where you're coming from. And I have learned a little bit of code, partly from Krista teaching me and partly from Krista setting me up with some, you know, different programs and stuff like that, that will teach me. I never really get to practice it. One, because Krista is just like, this is way too slow, like you can't.
00:04:26
Speaker
Or you need to focus on the marketing and sales, the stuff that you're good at, leave this to me because you're just way too slow. But I totally get that feeling. One, I think it's almost like therapeutic. Absolutely. But then two, how amazing it is when you start doing it for the first time, you're like, whoa, look at this, it's happening. Yeah, it's like, honestly, it's like the best and worst thing. Because there are times when you feel like you have these superpowers
00:04:49
Speaker
because you're able to do these things and affect the internet in a way. And then there are times where you're like, I don't know anything of what I'm doing because you can't figure out how to get something to work. So there's this meme out there where it shows a guy like huddled over his laptop and the top picture says, I don't know what I'm doing and it's not working.
00:05:10
Speaker
And then the same picture underneath that and it says, I don't know what I'm doing and it's working. And that's what it is to do web design. You're like, one minute, you're still on top of the world and the next minute you could throw your computer through the wall. But I love it. Well, and I should clarify too, my experience, you know, Chris has tried to teach me some things, but even like kind of basic HTML, I fail with so.
00:05:31
Speaker
I should say my learning is not I haven't pursued it as far as as far as you have. Yeah. But not to cut you off here. But what were you doing prior to web design? Yeah, so I for 13 years was a full time the equivalent of a musician. So I was a worship pastor at a large church here, Phoenix.
00:05:50
Speaker
we have six campuses. And so I oversaw all the music teams across all the campuses. So my background was mainly in music and in leadership. Leading a team of volunteers took a lot of work and it was a pretty demanding full-time job. And because of, it was a passion job, it is something I felt called to and I loved it and had no intention of quitting. But with passion work sometimes comes passion pay. And so
00:06:19
Speaker
you don't get a salary that's like over the top. You know, it was livable, but it wasn't necessarily comfortable, especially as a single dad. And I didn't want to have to pull on the church to, you know, or up my pay. And so that's where the desire to go outside and find, to find another way to make money became the best option for me. So yeah, so I started, I learned to code and then I just started building websites. And at first it was for myself, just for fun.
00:06:46
Speaker
And then slowly but surely, I started reaching out to people and contacted my network and was just like, hey, I'm a web designer now. And I really had no business telling people I was a web designer, but I'm the kind of person that if I do something, I just jump in both feet. Eventually, a few people got back to me and were like, hey, I'd love for you to help me. And it kind of spiraled on from there. Other people saw my work and liked it. And then it started reaching out to me.
00:07:12
Speaker
And then after a while, like I had tapped pretty much everybody I knew to build a website for.
Finding Clients and Doubling Income on Upwork
00:07:18
Speaker
And a lot of people let me build websites for them that didn't even really need one, you know, but they were, they were being good friends. Yeah, sure. I had to figure out how to find business outside of people that I knew. So I started going to online platforms like Upwork at the time it was oDesk. So it was a few years ago and it was super slow going. Like I almost gave up on it altogether, but.
00:07:41
Speaker
Slowly but surely, it started picking up, people started interacting with me, and I started getting business. And within about 18 months, I had pretty much doubled the salary of my full-time income at the church. Working about 20 hours or so a week. And so, kept doing that for four years, and then kept getting more and more passionate about it, and decided, you know, I want to give this a go full-time. But I like the aspect, I'm a people person, and so I like the aspect of
00:08:09
Speaker
you know, not having to sit in my house all day by myself, cutting out projects. And so that's, that's when I connected with show it and absolutely love it. And been doing that since February of last year. So almost a year now. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a great company to kind of go back to what was appealing about web design, you know, because if you're going to find some sort of side hustle, you know, another way to make some some money, there's all sorts of obviously things that you can choose. What exactly was appealing about becoming a website designer to you?
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, there were so many things. So my degree was in business management and I've always actually kind of been business minded. And before I started working the church, I thought I would just be in business my entire career. And then working for the church and being a musician, like there's obviously a creative component to who I am. And so I loved this idea of being able to really stretch myself creatively and be able to use those creative muscles. But at the same time, use those business
00:09:07
Speaker
business muscles and figuring out how to brand myself and figuring out how to do sales pitches and connect with people that I didn't know. It just kind of married both of those two worlds together for me and it just seemed like the perfect fit. Yeah, absolutely. You've kind of told us and that's incredible. I mean, 18 months you said and you had doubled basically what you were making. At what point did you create self-made web designer? Yeah, so that was honestly a recent thing that I started doing.
00:09:34
Speaker
The story is every year show it goes on a staff retreat. And this past year we went to a resort in Mexico and it was amazing. And we were all sitting out at a hot tub and one of the support guys here at the office, he's a younger guy, his name's Josh. We were talking and Josh is actually going to school for computer science. And so I was just asking him, I was like, Hey, what, like, why aren't you doing freelance stuff? Why aren't you doing side projects? You could be building websites and making good money.
00:10:04
Speaker
And his response was like, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'm not going to know what to do. I'm afraid like I'm going to mess something up or I'm not going to be able to find clients or somebody's going to get really mad at me. And then I was like, Hey man, like where you are now is actually farther along than when I started six years ago. And so why don't you let me help you along your journey and I'll just show you the things that I've done. And so from that, like.
00:10:33
Speaker
Josh went on and he's gotten a ton of business has actually gotten like I helped him find a few projects at first, but he's since then found his own projects and is doing his own thing. He's he's doing great. And so I just kind of I figured that there were probably a lot of other people out there just like Josh. And so that's when I started self-made web designer to say, hey, like I've taken this journey and I found success.
00:10:56
Speaker
And it's actually been life changing for me. It wasn't just this cute little side project. This changed my financial future. It changed my outlook on a lot of things in life. So I actually find a lot of joy from helping people do the same. So that's where Self Made Web Designer came from. And the whole goal is to take someone from knowing absolutely nothing about design or development to having a thriving
00:11:21
Speaker
freelance side hustle or full-time career and so I've had so many people reach out to me from all over the world who you know are just like hey like I'm a web designer but I'm having a hard time with finding freelance work or I need to make extra money and I'm in a similar situation as you are I can't go find another job at like a brick and mortar store so can you teach me and so it's been awesome and I've loved it.
Motivation and Time Management in Web Design
00:11:44
Speaker
That's incredible and you know I think that's the
00:11:47
Speaker
That's the holdup for so many people, you know, kind of what Josh had articulated to you. And it's really interesting because a lot of those same things can happen to any person within their more traditional nine to five job. You know, a lot of those same fears, right? There's still customer support things that need to happen. You're still, you know, delivering work to someone, even though maybe it's not your own end client.
00:12:08
Speaker
So it's really interesting in hearing some of those fears, especially around, you know, kind of going off on your own, so to speak, because a lot of those same fears are actually true of nine to five job, I think. And so I think something like a nine to five maybe gives us a little bit of a, of a false sense of security sometimes. Now with that said, of course, you're at a nine to five, you're typically responsible for your kind of narrow,
00:12:30
Speaker
not narrow, but you know what I'm saying, your responsibilities, which may be narrow or not. So you don't necessarily have kind of the burden of doing the sales and doing the marketing and generating clients. But I do still think that a lot of those fears that we articulate about going off on our own, so to speak, are actually true of nine to fives as well.
00:12:49
Speaker
So I do want to chat a little bit about I guess a good follow up question to that would just be are those typically the fears that you hear around website design? Like what's typically holding people up from maybe pursuing becoming a website designer? Yeah, it's a myriad of things. And everybody has their own unique background. A lot of it is
00:13:09
Speaker
People wonder if they can find the time to do it, find the time to learn. Because honestly, those first 18 months, as soon as my kids went down at 8.30, I was staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning.
00:13:21
Speaker
And so it was it was a lot of work. And it took me being really calculated about my time and making sure I was intentional. But my response is that most of us have more time than we actually realize. And I was actually I was at a conference and a speaker asked how many people
00:13:41
Speaker
felt like they didn't have enough time in the week and like everybody raised their hand. And then the second question was how many of you have watched a show on Netflix this last week and everybody raised their hand, you know? And so I think it really comes down to that motivation of like, why are you doing this? You know? And for me, like you have to come to a point of
00:14:05
Speaker
a feeling like you have no choice, you know, like to make such a big change so drastically in a circumstance where like you've got a family and you've got stresses and you've got to provide, but you also want to figure out how to keep growing and keep moving forward. So I felt like I had no choice because
00:14:22
Speaker
If I didn't make money, I wasn't going to be able to support my family. So there was this have to. But I think the better motivation would be that you see your future so clearly. You see a vision for what could be so clearly that you still feel like you have no choice. I heard that there's a rapper out of the UK that
00:14:45
Speaker
Was like talking about how he sold twenty five thousand physical albums which is actually pretty astonishing today in the world of online streaming and he was like no you don't understand i sold twenty five thousand albums.
00:15:00
Speaker
meaning he went to someone individually and handed them a physical copy. He must have talked to hundreds of thousands of people in order to make that happen. He just knew he was going to be successful. He had such a clear vision
00:15:18
Speaker
of what it could be like to sell that many albums that he felt like he just had to keep going. And I think it takes that. I don't want to paint a picture like it's impossible and you've got to break your back to do it because I don't think it's that hard. I wasn't killing myself. But there does have to be
00:15:35
Speaker
a little bit of a guttural like I'm gonna figure this out or I'm gonna die trying. Yeah. You know, and just go for it. Mm hmm. Sure. Yeah, 100%. And you know, I would agree that I mean, one of the things that Krista had encouraged me to start doing is tracking my time. And so she's not really responsible. Like no one's going to her and checking we use a program called toggle to ggl.com.
00:16:01
Speaker
And it's super helpful just to track the time that we're providing on certain projects, but she uses it for everything. And so she encouraged me to do the same thing. Pretty astonishing when I actually tracked, you know, everything that I'm doing throughout the day and finding how much time that I'm wasting on certain things or just being inefficient in certain areas. So absolutely, I do think that a lot of people have more time than they actually realize that.
00:16:22
Speaker
As far as taking that, like for somebody who is ready to take that first step and they want to learn website design, what does that first step actually look like?
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think you have to have a certain amount of the basics, you know, and so getting things like HTML and CSS are important. So that's on the development side. Then on the design side, learning how to mock up a web design layout in like Adobe XD or Sketch is important to
00:16:54
Speaker
Do you have any recommendations for the HTML CSS side of things, you know, as far as development goes, and then learning something like the Adobe suite or
Learning Resources for HTML, CSS, and Design
00:17:04
Speaker
sketch?
00:17:04
Speaker
Yeah, so I started out on Code Academy and back in the day, it was all free, but now they have certain courses that you have to pay for. There are still plenty of free options. I did actually the Code Academy, HTML, and CSS1. I thought it was helpful. It may have been free back when I was working on it as well, but I want to say even since then, the stuff they have, it's pretty affordable, relatively to certainly signing up for a college class or something like that.
00:17:33
Speaker
And my guess is that it would actually probably be more up to date than what you would learn if you went to like a community college to learn it. Absolutely. Yeah. The thing I love about Code Academy is it kind of interacts and steps you through the process as you go. So you get a task and then you have to finish that task before you move on to the next one. And a lot of times like online courses,
00:17:57
Speaker
You're coding along with somebody who's saying, okay, here's what you do. And that can create a false sense of learning to where you're actually just copying somebody. And that doesn't really engage a part of your brain where you're putting it to memory and putting it to heart. So that's what I love about Code Academy.
00:18:12
Speaker
What about on the design side? Because to a certain extent, and I've never tried to really learn the design side, as far as within Davy and Krista, Krista is taking care of most of the design. And my contribution to that is generally in terms of user experience and usability. So the closest I'm going to be able to get to design, the closest Krista would ever let me
00:18:31
Speaker
to design would be in wireframes, talking over calls to action, going through maybe what she's mocked up and saying, hey, listen, you know, this and this is unclear and trying to figure out, okay, what's the next next best step for the user, that sort of thing. I would just think that learning the design side of things would be more challenging. Was that was that your experience? Or are there tools out there that make it, you know, easier? Yeah, no, that I mean, it's a great question. And I think
00:18:58
Speaker
for a lot of creative people, the opposite of true is true of the difficulty. Really? Yeah, we I know for myself, like, I have to take a step back from being super creative and making this beautiful, like, you know, innovative design to going, OK, who's my audience? And is this speaking to them? Is this going to help convert for the client? You know, like, is this clear? All the things that
00:19:25
Speaker
Sounds like comes natural to you. So that's awesome. And I think a lot of web designers like struggle with with what you're saying more than so the creative aspect of it. But for me, creativity is like any other skill you practice and you learn and you get better from the doing. And I think there's this this misnomer that you're either born with it or you're not. And it's just not true. There's a great book by a guy named Anders Erickson called peak.
00:19:52
Speaker
And he talks about how every skill that someone has is a learned skill. If you see somebody that's good at something, it's because they put the effort into it.
00:20:01
Speaker
and they developed it. And so the same was true for the creative aspect for me. I kind of did it grassroots. I scoured the internet for months and months, like making note of web design that I liked and had a Pinterest board that I just filled. In my free time, I would just go search for cool designs that I liked. And then I tried to copy that. So when I was doing like a concept piece, I'd be like, hey, I'm going to try to copy this and then I'm going to try to make it my own. And honestly, I think that's the best route to go for anybody getting started because I think
00:20:31
Speaker
Say for instance, like I've got my daughter's learning guitar and she's not starting out by writing a song. Like she's starting out by learning someone else's song and then hopefully later on she'll be proficient enough to start writing her own music. For some reason we don't look at it that way when it comes to like web design or any kind of illustration or creative elements. We're just like if I can't think of something off the top of my head then I must not be creative which is just not the case.
00:20:59
Speaker
So even today when I'm making like we just recently did a redesign on the show website and my first task was going to find inspiration. Yeah. Where are their SaaS companies doing and what works and I took a lot of cues from a lot of other people. You know what we have is unique but you can definitely when I show you like I got inspiration from this site you'll go oh okay you know like yeah.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think that's I think that's such great insight. And I don't think I've ever really thought about that, you know, how it really every other skill we learn, we're often learning it by copying what others, you know, tell us to do or what else is out there and really becoming proficient in the sort of the rules. And then only after that, are we able to really, you know, bend those rules or create something of our own. I think the music analogy was was a great one.
00:21:48
Speaker
Oh, and the other thing I want to say was I've seen the show at redesign. It looks great, by the way. Thank you so much. I don't think it's been rolled out yet, though, right? No. Well, by the time this airs, it might be rolled out. We're just doing a few fine tuning. And like I wanted to come at it, not just from the creative standpoint, but looking at data and the analytics and doing some user testing, you know, because
00:22:11
Speaker
This was really the biggest street design I've ever done. If I were to roll out something that wouldn't convert as well, it would be drastic for our company. I tried to be careful and me and Nate Sees, who's the director of the product team here, really labored over all the little fine-come details. It was a fun project and I'm really proud of it. I'm glad how it's turned out.
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. You know, I think it's the user experience side of things, you know, that I mean, even those things that you kind of mentioned seem like they come natural to me. I mean, those are all learn things to for sure, some from past experience where maybe, you know, I had an idea and we launched something and it just didn't work out, you know, and trying to and trying to sort out why so for sure, a learned skill. But it's also interesting to just like some of the conversations that Kristin I have where I'm like, Hey, we need to we need to make an adjustment here. And she's like, No,
00:23:01
Speaker
that will look super ugly." And I'm like, well, I don't care if it looks ugly because people aren't clicking here or people aren't seeing this or whatever it might be. So it's always interesting, especially working with your spouse, trying to work through that and come to a compromise that both looks good, but then also gets the end user to where you want them to go. So we've covered getting into learning the development side, learning the design side of things.
Starting Web Design Without Deep Coding Knowledge
00:23:24
Speaker
One question that I had about the development side of things for people who are listening and thinking about getting into website design
00:23:29
Speaker
We're not really in a world anymore where you have to where you absolutely have to know HTML and CSS in order to build or PHP, you know, or whatever, you know, framework that you want to you build on, you don't necessarily have to know those things to build a beautiful website anymore. So for instance, show it for instance, takes out pretty much a lot of that coding know how that that you used to need to know in order to build a beautiful website. I guess what I'm trying to say is,
00:23:55
Speaker
First, do you think it's still important to learn HTML and CSS and some, you know, some of the basics around development? And two, would you recommend that people get started with a platform like a show it or some sort of alternative as they're building? Yeah, great question. My recommendation is whatever you can do to get started and gain momentum, do it. And because I think what I see a lot of times is people fizzle out in those first few months of getting started. And so
00:24:25
Speaker
If you are motivated by the HTML and the CSS and you're like me and you're just like, this is amazing and I could do this all day, every day, then I say do that. But if, if you get caught up in that, but you still want to pursue web design, there are plenty of low code or no code website builders that you can find that will absolutely get you to the place of being able to have a good side hustle as a freelancer show. It's a great example.
00:24:51
Speaker
In WordPress, there's Elementor, there's Webflow, if you're more UX-oriented, there's really no excuse to not get started. For me, what I found was I needed to cut to the chase of making money.
00:25:06
Speaker
Honestly, other than messing with CSS, I used WordPress for a long time in building websites and only rarely did a pure code website built. But along the way, as I was working with WordPress, an issue would come up or a feature would come up that the client would ask me for and I would just say yes without even knowing if I could do it.
00:25:35
Speaker
forced me to have to learn PHP and the WordPress codecs. And, you know, honestly, working for show it has been great to have developed a few plugins here, but it was, it was all as a result of starting with
00:25:49
Speaker
what I knew would push me down the field. My encouragement is the method doesn't really matter how you get there. It's just as long as you get there. You and I know people who are using Showit that are making six figures. I know people who are making six figures from doing pure code, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Whatever it is that you can find that gets you to that place, just go for it. It doesn't matter how you do it.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah. And I don't know how you feel about this statement. So, you know, feel free to push back on it if if you disagree. But I do consider web development and web design as, you know, two different disciplines, really, at the end of the day, don't get me wrong, I definitely think that some basic at least a basic understanding of things like HTML, CSS are necessary for a website designer.
00:26:38
Speaker
And just kind of an understanding of the limitations of a platform. For instance, you can't just design anything for any platform and just expect it to work or look like it's going to in your sketch file. So I do think that if you want to be a web designer, but you do find the programming side of things hard, just like you said, there are so many platforms out there that kind of take that out of the equation.
00:27:00
Speaker
And you can still probably find a good partner in a web developer for projects maybe where it requires some more manual, so to speak, development. Yeah, 100%. There definitely is that distinction. Over the course of the last 10 or 15 years, there's been a lot of change in definitions when it comes to
00:27:20
Speaker
what a web developer versus a web designer is, you know, like web designer used to encase just anybody that did anything on the web, you know, but now there's a distinction. And then there's even since then been a further distinction between UX designers or visual designers or interaction designers. So I I've always loved both worlds. And so and the people that I'm I'm trying to help
00:27:45
Speaker
wouldn't know those distinctions. And so I just say web designer just because you know like most people would go okay yeah designing thing for the web that probably means a little bit of this or that and then we get into like okay this is really what a web designer is but
00:28:00
Speaker
There's a new phrase that's come out maybe within the last five years called full stack designer. So you've got your full stack developer who can do both front end and back end development. And then a full stack designer would be someone who is comfortable in the design world, but comfortable in the developed world. And so that's what I've always loved doing. And so hoping to find other people out there like me, even though I know it's rare.
00:28:22
Speaker
No, and I think that's super helpful. Also because some of the distinctions too, even on the web designer side, when you get into UX and this and that, I think there are unhelpful distinctions because as a web designer, you really need to have some sort of understanding of all of those things in order to be.
00:28:37
Speaker
an effective web designer, because it's not just and you know this, so preaching to the choir here, but it's not just how something looks, right? You know, but it's, you know, design is about how something works just as much as it is how something looks. So, you know, I would say that it's just probably the way that you go about talking about it is way more helpful than if, you know, people went to your website and then all of a sudden saw 10 different subsets of website design. And then that's just a whole new place to get stuck.
00:29:04
Speaker
you know, and be like, Okay, well, what do I want to do? Where do I want to start? So I agree. I think that's probably much more helpful. As far as getting started and finding work, one thing that you had mentioned that I think is super valuable that some people just don't do in part probably because you know, kind of as you mentioned, they just feel like they have no place to do it, you know, or no
Networking and Career Confidence for New Designers
00:29:24
Speaker
right to do it. They haven't learned enough to do it. But that is just to tell your entire network what you're doing. Like, hey,
00:29:30
Speaker
I'm a website designer now, you know, and putting it out there. And I think, again, you know, it has to do with people just kind of being scared about maybe what other people will think or feeling like, well, am I really a website designer because I only know XYZ or I've only been doing this for a couple of months and I haven't really built a website for somebody else. So what are some things that you would say to encourage somebody who just needs to take that step of putting it out there to their network, what they're doing, you know, maybe to get their first couple of projects?
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah, this is great. And a friend and I had this discussion about when do you become a plumber? Is it when you get a truck and fill it with plumbing tools?
00:30:09
Speaker
or put it for a sale sign. No, you become a plumber when you go to somebody's house and you plumb stuff. The same is true for web design. You're a web designer when you design things for the web. It doesn't matter what income you're making. It doesn't matter if you're making anything. If you have put something on a web browser, you are a web designer.
00:30:32
Speaker
I think there's this misunderstanding when it comes to what it means to be professional, you know, because if I'm honest, like most of the time I'm just googling stuff and trying to figure it out. It's not like I'm sitting in front of a computer and just coding my heart out for hours upon hours upon hours. No, I'm coding for 30 minutes. I hit an error that I've never seen before. And then for two hours, I'm googling trying to figure out how to get past this. And so I think,
00:30:59
Speaker
Don't let the idea of how professional you have to be before you consider yourself worthy of being paid or worthy of finding work hold you back from just going for it. There's a phrase that says like throw your heart over the wall and your body will follow after. I encourage people to do that because the other option is to like slowly try to climb up this wall that's actually a pretty big learning curve.
00:31:24
Speaker
If you've not put something in that's going to hold your feet to the fire, it's going to be pretty difficult to sustain that and to keep going. My encouragement is just go for it. Call yourself a web designer even though you've never done it before or you're just wanting to try and reach out to people that you know. There's a guy named Donald Miller that runs Storybrand. I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with, but he said something that impacted me when I first got started.
00:31:50
Speaker
the first bouquet that you build, you pull from the flowers closest to you. And so you're building this portfolio that is proof of concept to people that don't know you and have no reason to trust you. And getting a gig or getting a project from a client is all about
00:32:08
Speaker
them making a decision on whether they can trust you. And so if you have nothing to show that you're trustworthy, it's going to be difficult to actually get them to take the leap. And so you find someone who trusts you for different reasons other than your portfolio from your testimonies. You know, you find someone who trusts you because they know you as a trustworthy person or they've been through things in life with you or they've seen you from afar because they're
00:32:32
Speaker
connected to you relationally. And so then you take that portfolio that you've built from people that trust you for different reasons and you show other people, hey, I'm trustworthy because look at these things that I've done or look at this feedback that I've gotten. And all the testimonies I had from the very beginning were all from people who were close friends, you know, but nobody knows that. You don't have to be like, oh, well, this is my mom, you know, like, so.
00:32:57
Speaker
that's probably not a good source. No, just put their testimonies up to show that you have something to say for what you are saying you can actually do. Yeah, absolutely. And two things you said that I really like. One, the Donald Miller quote, you build your first bouquet from flowers closest to you. And then two, throwing your heart over the wall and your body will fall after. I think both of those are just encouraging. And I think people who
00:33:19
Speaker
wait until they feel like, Oh, I'm an expert now really just end up never getting started. You know, everybody who I talked to, especially in the photography world and people that listen to this podcast might recognize like Caitlin James or Jasmine star. I hear that when they look back at their first images, they sort of cringe a little bit.
00:33:35
Speaker
But they still were shooting those images for someone, right? They still got started. And I think that's not a bad thing. Like, I want to look back at my work 10 years ago and be like, that's not my best work because in the past 10 years, I've improved a lot, you know? So, yeah, I mean, just such valuable advice just to get started and to tell your network. And as I said on this podcast before, especially in starting till which is my latest business. Yeah.
00:33:58
Speaker
a lot of our first clients just came from us sending emails and saying, Hey, listen, we're doing this now. And if you know of anybody that needs help with this, or if you need help with this, let us know we'd be happy to chat. I love that. Yeah. And from that came our first couple clients, and that has turned into a lot more clients.
00:34:14
Speaker
I think that's great advice in getting started. So I think that this conversation is only the beginning though. There's probably a lot in between there that people are curious about.
Connecting with Chris for Resources and Advice
00:34:24
Speaker
So if people wanted to connect with you, learn a little bit more about how they can become a self-made web designer, where should they go? Yeah, my website is the perfect place to do that. Selfmadewebdesigner.com, there's a place to sign up even if you want to do a phone call.
00:34:24
Speaker
So
00:34:39
Speaker
you know, sign up. I've got a link just to set up a chat, which I'm happy to do. And it's been funny because I've talked to people on the phone and after the conversation that was done, they were like, Oh man, I thought you were going to try to sell me on something. You know, I actually have nothing to sell. So that's just actually like helping people. And there's a starter kit course. If you're just getting started, that kind of takes you through the process that I took.
00:35:04
Speaker
in a more detailed fashion. It's 100% for free. You can connect with me there or I'm on Instagram at Christmas trick. So yeah, happy to happy to connect however is best. Yeah, I mean, that's incredible. And what a great resource if you're listening now and you want to get started in website design, this is 100% free. There's no pitch. There's no offer at the end of the call. So you got to take them up on that. And you're also starting a podcast. Do you have any details as far as like when that's going to be released?
00:35:30
Speaker
So I'm hoping to launch March 3rd and graciously you've committed to being on one of the first few episodes. So thank you a ton for that. Yeah, I can't wait. So, uh, it'll, it'll be by the same name, self-made web designer. And I'm hoping to talk to people about what you mentioned the more non-traditional route into the web design and tech worlds and have already had.
00:35:52
Speaker
interviewed quite a few people actually who have been heroes of mine that I've learned a ton from. And I'm happy to, to get their names out there so other people can learn from them. So super excited about that. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, you can find all the details about that in the show notes. And as soon as Chris's podcast launches, I will include a link to that as well. But again, that's self made web designer.com. Thank you, Chris for joining us on the podcast. We'll definitely have to have you back to continue this discussion. Thank you so much for having me, Dave. He really, really enjoyed it.
00:36:25
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.