S05 E04 - Screening Your Clients and Scaling Your Business with Jared Gold

Today's guest is Jared Gold. Jared is cofounder of Website By Tonight, the easiest, most affordable way to launch a simple and professional website.

Jared started off in web design by doing websites for local practitioners and friends. Over time, he realized he was getting a lot of referrals, and a lightbulb went off as he realized how he could scale his business.

Though he didn't necessarily think about niching down initially, his main client base was made up of small businesses and solo entrepreneurs, and the sites he worked on ranged from redesigns to greenfield projects.

In order to scale his business, Jared built processes to help him screen clients and make sure they're a good fit for him and his team. This takes a lot of time. But because his service is so high touch - letting the client be in on the entire design process - he found it a critical piece of ensuring that the clients he works with get what he's doing and aren't going to disrupt the process.

Jared has built a solid team to help deliver his unique website design service — one that lets the client help design via screen share.

[click_to_tweet tweet="When people are just starting out, they're excited at the prospect of winning business, but they don't realize at what cost. But if you're in this long enough, there are going to be some clients that still give you nightmares." quote="When people are just starting out, they're excited at the prospect of winning business, but they don't realize at what cost. But if you're in this long enough, there are going to be some clients that still give you nightmares." theme="style3"]

In this episode Jared talks about:

• How he screens clients to make sure they are a good fit for his business
• The challenges he faces working directly with clients and letting them in on the design process
• How Jared set up a good system for guiding clients to the finish line and how he hopes to improve on it

Main Takeaways

• People need to earn the right to work with you as a professional. If they are too demanding or too detailed oriented, it will be harder to deliver the product you promised them.
• Set client expectations and boundaries up front. People who work with you need to know what they will be getting and how much access to you they will get.
• Put a process in place to help move you projects along swiftly. There are a lot of tools out there that can help your business run smoothly.

Important Mentions in this Episode

Jared was gracious to extend to the audience of Live In The Feast, anyone who mentions they heard about this podcast $50 off any package. They can also get free access to my project brief, content doc, and online course (usually $99) by going here and entering their email.

• Website By Tonight
• Meal Tribes
• Squarespace