First, our monthly office hours for paid members is coming up! Join us on Tuesday, April 15 to ask me anything about value-based design & getting an impact with your work. These vary in attendance from 1 to 10 people, and they’re always helpful for you and for me. Signup link after the jump!
We are never not reworking the stupid website. The world changes; you change; you adapt. Since we’re usually busy serving our clients – and since we’ve been fully sold out since 2022 – I don’t know if we make changes often enough, but we eventually get around to it. Last week we got around to it. We got rid of some things, reworded some other things, and scrubbed a position that was no longer working for us.
The goal is correct plumage. You are signaling to a person in a way that solves their urgent, expensive problem. You do so in a way that reads the room & meets the moment. When it works well, you find kindred spirits. When it works poorly, you try to do everything for everyone, and you bungle your positioning.
In doing all of this, we avoid what we once called deck chair moves, where you rearrange things in order to feel a smug sense of satisfaction as the ship goes down. Oh, sure, change the fonts or colors or logo. Rebrand! Launch a thing that is the same as the old thing, just with different words! All deck chair moves. There is absolutely no substitute for coming correct to those in power, delivering value, and not wasting their time.
We tend to rework the stupid website with these things in mind:
- It is better to remove things than to add them. Remove words, paragraphs, sentences, and offerings. Cut back to as few things that you can practically sell as possible. Refuse unnecessary adornment.
- Reword to solve urgent, expensive problems. People hire you for this, no matter what tools you may use. Those problems must be geared towards a specific business with a specific problem that is costing money and happening now.
- Promote what’s left. I do a hilariously bad job with this, because of the aforementioned constant sold-out thing. Did you know that people love our self-paced workshop? It’s true.
In last week’s scrub, no offerings have been deleted, just hidden. Getting someone in the door & talking is most of the problem, because attention is finite and nobody knows who to trust. If someone then presents an issue for which one of our hidden offerings may be useful, now we have the opportunity to present it to them.
If you run your own value-based design business, it may be worth conducting a similar audit of what you offer. What urgent, expensive problems are you solving, and whom are you solving them for? Is that group open & receptive to your work? In what specific ways are you talking to them?
The rest of this post is available to members. Upgrade now to get:
- Every lesson on how to level up your career with value-based design
- Full access to our 10+ year archive
- Monthly office hours with an engaged community
- Early, discounted access to all new releases