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1) Melissa Mendez
You’re partner shouldn’t be living your dream.
Melissa explains that as a business woman, she put so much energy in to her business. At the time, she was frustrated that her partner wasn’t helping with her business. She called a friend who’s a psychologist frustrated and hurt that her partner didn’t want to help but the psychologist explained to Melissa that her partner has his own dreams and they may be different from Melissa’s.
Lesson: When you’re in a relationship, each individual has their own individual life, dreams and goals, even though you are in a partnership. Yes, sacrifices are made when you are entrepreneurial, and you may need your partner to support you, but don’t expect your partner to work for you.
2) Dexter Washington
Pick your boss.
Dexter explains that as a freelancer or agency owner, you need to choose which clients you want to work with. You can work with larger clients that will likely include longer projects or you can work with smaller clients that will likely include shorter projects. You can work with high end clients that drive mercedes or you can work with a regular clients that drive ford fiestas. You need to try and figure out who do you want to be telling you what. Decide who makes you happy. Try and work out who makes you smile when you’re on a call with them and what type of work gives you life rather than drains you.
3) Ethan Suero
When you say you want to go freelance, what does that mean?
Ethan explains goes in to the weeds of the different types of freelancing you can be in this episode: Work for own clients? Work for agencies but work from home as freelancer? Work as a freelancer on retainer for a small number of clients? Ethan explains working for agencies as a freelancer can sometimes suit people better than being a freelancer that works with their own clients - agencies know what they’re doing, they give you all the assets and you just get the work done which is the bit you enjoy anyway perhaps etc etc. You can freelance in various ways - don’t think you have to get your own clients the whole time!
4) Jenna Manthe
Share your work.
Jenna talks about whatever you create, share it wherever you want to share it consistently. If you’re not sharing your work, people aren’t going to know you exist when they search for you online or scroll through their feed. Share work at different stages of the process too - not just at the end when it’s finished and looks beautiful! Jenna also talks about how sharing your work sometimes doesn’t seem worth it but she promises that over time, amazing things will happen! Share your work consistently and see what happens!
5) Harry Roper
You are trying to sprint towards this finishing line up at the top but actually you realise you need to do a lot more at the ground level before you get there.
Harry explains that there is nothing more stressful than managing a team and trying to fulfill client work. Trying to grow fast means that things break without systems in place. Harry talks about the importance of taking your time if you are trying to build an agency. By freelancing first, knowing all the different stages of the process will mean that if you do eventually hire people, you will have clear documentation of your processes.
6) Emily Lonetto
The journey for someone in a community is now come in, feel welcome in room one, find room 2 and feel welcome in room 2 […] and this is a really healthy sign of a strong community.
Emily talks about how the Webflow community is thriving because the community is not only using the Webflow product, but it’s part of making the Webflow product better. There is a symbiotic relationship between the Webflow user’s feedback and the Webflow product constantly becoming better which is beautiful. She also speaks about how the Webflow community has many “rooms now,” with different communities for different Webflowers like Floxies, New2TheFlow and Flowparty!
7) Shais Ahmad
Do great work, the rest will fall in to place.
Shais talks a lot in this episode about how to get clients and growing in confidence but I think this very simple quote is possibly the most important takeaway. It’s not glamorous but it takes time to get to where you want to be - especially if it’s ambitious. Doing great work consistently will get you to where you want to go though!
8) Corey Moen
Founding your opinion based on something more than just your preference will go so far.
Corey talks about working with clients, you can’t just show them your work. Even though they are hiring you because you have more skillset in web design and development than they do, they will still have strong opinions which may mean revision after revision if you’re not careful. It’s essential to guide your client throughout the process with transparent communication but also show quantitative data whenever possible!
9) Felix Meens
What worked for me was just LinkedIn!
Felix explains he was spending so much time trying to be seen everywhere as a freelancer trying to get clients that he wasn’t being seen anywhere. If you try and spread yourself too thin marketing yourself, you might find yourself burnt out and without clients. Felix advises focussing on a particular platform in depth to get client work and he has found success on LinkedIn but others might find more success on other platforms that they focus on.
10) Ziga Fafjar
It should be a goal to have at least a certain amount of money on a subscription basis.
Ziga explains that it’s important to have some sort of subscription based clients (retainers) in order to keep your freelancing or agency running afloat. He doesn’t mean all the income but advises between 20-30% of income from retainer income - enough to pay rent for example for a freelancer. As much as retainers may not be as exciting as fresh client projects, they are very useful on quiet months.
11) Kaela Williams
When you see someone doing better than you, my first reaction is to congratulate them or support them on their journey.
Kaela has this beautiful outlook when it comes to competition in the Webflow space. Whenever she sees someone post their beautiful work or talk about their client wins, she doesn’t have feelings of jealousy. She doesn’t have feelings of inadequacy even though that person may have stunned her by the quality of work that she can’t yet do. She doesn’t let that other person’s success affect her self-worth even though she may not be having the same success when seeing their social media posts. Instead, she realises that rising tides lift all the boats (in the words of Mason Poe) and that everyone is winning together in the Webflow space the more great work and happy clients there are out there.
12) Julian Kreth
The first time we hired someone, we hired a visual designer. What we didn’t know that a visual designer is someone that designs windows in shops!
Julian talks about his lessons from hiring for his agency. There are a lot of great lessons about hiring in this episode but recognising that you can’t just hire your friends, how important a clear hiring process is and not rushing the process.
13) Asmah Mansur-Williams & Nkenna Amadi
Relationships that we build upon leads to more trust and more referrals from our clients.
One of Asmah and Nkenna’s lessons from running The Black Pepper Studio are that going above and beyond for your clients leads to your next clients. They don’t have a cold email strategy or anything other lead generation techniques than forming relationships with clients by doing exceptional work and posting about that work online. This leads to more referrals from like minded clients with similar energy and the flywheel continues!
14) Ben Celinski
It is important to not rush through the beginning phase. The beginning phase is when you set the expectations. If you do it wrong, you will have hurt egos and no clear expectations.
Ben talks about how setting expectations with the client includes being realistic with time to achieve results ie. If you want a 20 page website in a week, it’s not going to be much help to you necessarily because there may be rushed design thinking going in to it. Similarly, if a client wants a website that wants crazy 3D animations, the website performance will be affected so talking through this type of potential realities will be important to align upon before beginning the project.
15) Matt Evans
I just dm people and say do you fancy having a chat and it’s changed my perspective on everything.
Matt has started talking to more people in the community and it has completely changed his life - by talking to people, he has made friends, got freelance work, had inspiring conversations, realised how he can build things that would help the community and more. There are communities out there for everyone so if you haven’t yet jumped in to whatever community you want to be part of, check out this article here!
16) Marcelo Russo
Success for me is when employees transcend my company to go and do even bigger and greater things and that they don’t look back and feel like we did them wrong in any way.
Marcelo is quite different from most bosses - rather than running his agency solely thinking about numbers, he puts people first. It sounds cheesy to use that phrase, and I think this “people first,” line seems to be whipped out at loads of companies whether they actually live by that phrase or not, but Marcelo explains that the employees are his most important asset at the agency and if they need time off, they get time off. If they want to leave and pursue whatever they want, Marcelo applauds that and wants to help them on their journey.
17) Jamie Windell
At the end of the year, when it comes to paying the government your taxes, if you haven’t set aside that money, you are trying to find that money.
Jamie’s expertise is running accounts for his agency. He gives powerful advice about running your creative business and particularly thinking about financials. He recommends having a separate business account that deals with all business costs, taking off 20% from every project payment straight away for taxes (or whatever amount needed) and also charging enough to cover not only your time but business expenses. Powerful episode.
18) Yaya Lorenz
Who’s game are you playing?
Yaya candidly explains that inspecting your own success metrics is one of the most important things you can do to judge what path you want to take in life. When he set up his agency at the time, Yaya thought it was what he needed to do but on reflection, he believes that he hadn’t thought carefully enough as to whether it was right for him. Important to ask yourself whether you are doing things because of other’s expectations or because of your own wants, needs and desires.
19) Maggy Monceux
There are so many agencies that are starting to realise that it would be good to have a go-to webflow dev.
Maggy explains that as a freelancer, you don’t need to just get your own clients. You can freelance for agencies and potentially be a permalancer ie. on a retainer for them or work consistently on projects. It’s important to realise that there are hybrid versions of working as an employee and working as a freelancer and Maggy has learnt to become invaluable to different agencies. As a result, she lives comfortably while choosing when to work and focussing on just doing the building of websites which she prefers over trying to acquire clients herself.
20) Hamish Duncan
If you’re trying to develop a portfolio, go back to what really makes you tick and what sets you alight. Take that to your process to drive your creativity.
Hamish speaks about the power of tapping in to your own creative style and voice by recognising what maes you you. What interests you have and expressing them through your portfolio. If you squash your interests in an effort to look like everyone else or to be on brand, you risk losing the essence of who you are and why you do creative work. It’s important to not overlook that.
21) Emily Giordano
It might be interesting to do cloneables in different niches, and if you start enjoying making cloneables in a certain type of niche, you might want to explore that
Emily talked about how to choose a niche with web design. People constantly talk about finding a niche but Emily advocates trying out different web design styles and working on different industry projects before settling on a niche. A high reward, low risk way of doing that if you are just starting out is to create cloneables in different niches by finding terrible websites that exist, re-designing them and rebuilding them. You can go even further by approaching whoever owns the company and asking for what their pain points are and how you can make your cloneable even more effective!
22) Mason Poe
A rising tide lifts all the boats
Mason has a strong community philosophy when it comes to the Webflow eco-system. He is all for helping others grow because the more we help each other in the Webflow space grow, the more that clients are aware that Webflow exists, the more collaboration happens, the more people feel willing to share and grow together rather than isolated pockets of knowledge. He explains that webflow is a kind of watering hole where UI and UX and stortelling come together to bring life to a beautiful new product and the metaphor can be extended to include Webflow community members being an eclectic mix of people coming together with Webflow as a product too!
23) Penny Olorenshaw
You start to question whether there is something wrong with you, rather than there is something that just works differently in your brain
Penny speaks about working as a freelancer with ADHD, she finds that she has a lot of imposter syndrome since her brain doesn’t work like brains without ADHD and she begins to question herself. While ADHD can be frustrating for Penny, she also recognises how she can work relentlessly with focus over time while others struggle to focus on a task that needs to get done for as long as Penny so her advice is to focus on the positives of whoever you are and however your brain works rather than the negatives!
24) Ailín Tobin
Value your client relationships
Ailín’s episode covers a lot of ground about pricing. While Ailín charges more than enough to cover his bills and support a young family, he is against value based pricing on jobs (if interested about this, read this article here. Instead, Ailín prices projects with a longer term goal in mind of thinking about the value of the relationship. Every client that’s happy with you is likely to bring you more work so rather than trying value based pricing, Ailín
25) Breeona Nechole
We’re all gaining stuff from each other - we can all learn
Bree talks about the importance of finding mentors in her development as a Webflower. Instead of looking for mentors actively, she found her mentors by taking part in different communities, asking questions and generally showing up for others when they ask questions and need help. Mentors appear if you actively take part in community events like finsweet lives, Flowparty meetups and more. Rather than saying "will you be my mentor??" to strangers on the internet, she found connections with people and then kept seeing them before becoming friends and then haivng an informal mentor to ask questions and troubleshoot. Bree explains that you everyone can offer
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