If you’re new here, you might not know that I started my entrepreneurship journey as a web designer. Then, around 2016, I moved to the infopreneur space, and I’ve been there ever since. People ask me a LOT about how I went from web designer to infopreneur and why, so I wanted to talk about it with you today!
How I Went from Web Designer to Infopreneur
Want to listen to the podcast version of this post? I've got you covered!
As service providers, it’s easy to get burned out and think about how great it would be to have a non-service-based business. But you have to really dive in and ask yourself if that’s what you want – because I’ve seen people make that transition and wish they didn’t a hundred times. If you’re struggling to make that choice, I want to help!
Let’s dive into what my business looked like when I was a web designer versus what it looks like now as an infopreneur. And how I actually executed the move as someone who needed to maintain my income.
If you’re a service provider looking to make this transition, I get you.
It can be SO, SO easy to become burned out when you’re doing a service constantly. You’re tired of offering that thing, or you’re tired of working with clients. The natural step is looking to someone who teaches courses and think, “that’s what I want to do!”
But how do you know if that’s really the right step for you? And if you decide that it is, what steps do you need to take to actually get from service provider to course creator, digital product creator, etc.?
Why did I want to change from a web designer to infopreneur?
I was a web designer from 2010-2015, exclusively (although I owned like 7 different companies and was a personal trainer in that time period). But the majority of my income came from being a web designer.
Even though I was a web designer, I wasn’t really in the online space. I would find clients from random Facebook groups and people I knew.
In 2015, I started getting exposed to the world of online content creators. I started my first podcast that year and my YouTube channel the next.
I was a burned out web designer since I started that company. Web design wasn't my dream in life and I knew it. Sure, I was decent at it and it made me money. But that didn’t mean I wanted to do it forever. The catch was that I also didn’t KNOW what I wanted to do forever.
I started testing the waters as a course creator
When I got into the online space, I saw other people teaching courses and hosting memberships. I realized that was super appealing to me, and so I tested the waters to see if that would work for me. And I loved it.
But at that point, I was testing it for free. My money was coming in through web design, and I couldn’t just decide to leave web design behind totally. Still, I was feeling burned out with web design.
Because I needed the money, I also didn’t turn away many clients – even when I knew we wouldn’t work well together. Then I was irritated with people and hated what I did. Rinse and repeat.
I had ALWAYS wanted to be in the marketing space and I have a degree in advertising. So I started exploring the idea of other options.
If you want to be a course creator or sell on a one-to-many scale, then you NEED an audience. But there’s this harmful mindset that you should ONLY dedicate time to being a course creator without an audience – which will NEVER work.
Sometimes, you HAVE to do the things you don’t want to do to afford you the path to do the things you WANT to do. Web design was that avenue for me.
You MAY have to do things you don’t want to do to be able to do the things you DO want to do.
I was building a massive course, but I needed to offer a one-on-one service that I didn’t love to give myself the financial support I needed. So, I offered one-on-one consulting for a while. I LOVED my clients, but my preferred teaching method is on a one-to-many basis.
I did that, even though it wasn’t my preference, because it afforded me the time to build that course and provide money for me that I could spend on ads to grow my audience. SO, it helped me work toward my goal.
Don’t neglect that there are lots of steps between offering a one-on-one service and becoming an infopreneur. You can use that thing you don’t love to fund the thing that you do!
You also want to make sure that teaching and course creation is the thing for you.
I spent months trying out teaching and course creation for free on Facebook groups to learn that I DID love it. And I got feedback from the people who I was teaching telling me that I was good at it!
There are some people who are naturally good at teaching, and others who need to cultivate that skill. Try it out for a few months and see where you are on that spectrum. You might even discover that you’re good at teaching but you don’t love creating the content and doing the things.
I have a lot of business friends who are great teachers, but we have very different business models because they MUCH prefer working one-on-one with people.
Being a course creator and teaching on a mass scale is not for everybody.
There are a lot of people who enjoy being behind the scenes, or working on-one-one with others. There are a lot of people who prefer to do services, or don’t like doing the work that it takes to be a course creator or an infopreneur.
You do NOT have to turn into an infopreneur if it doesn’t fit you and your wants.
What does my day-to-day look like as an infopreneur compared to a web designer?
As a web designer, marketing myself wasn’t a constant thing. I would focus on marketing myself for a bit until I hit my client goal, but while I had those clients I didn’t have to worry about the marketing aspect.
I focused more on the day-to-day work as soon as I got those clients. Building mock-ups, communicating with clients, and things like that.
As an infopreneur, literally ALL I do is create content and marketing myself. I film videos, record podcast episodes, plan and record content for launches, build webinars, things like that.
The day-to-day operations look very different. You require a very different audience than you do when you’re a web designer. If you need to make $10,000 per month as a web designer, you could get 2 clients and be set. As an infopreneur, if you want to make $10,000 per month on a $100 offer, then you’re going to need to sell 100 of those offers. And that would mean you need to consistently grow your audience monthly.
As an infopreneur, you HAVE to be a content creator in some form. If you aren’t, then your audience won’t grow at the rate you need it to grow to hit those numbers. You don’t have to do as much audience-building as a service provider.
How did I actually ditch web design and actually start teaching full-time?
We needed the money I was making as a web designer. Up until 2015, I was making between $500-$800 per month because I wasn’t charging enough for my services. AND I wasn’t taking my own business seriously.
In 2015, I took the time to re-evaluate my packages and pricing. In 2016, I was making $3,000-$5,000 per month. We had built our life around that income.
I had to continue making that money – I didn’t have months to spend trying to build up my course creator business without income. If you DO have the financial ability to do that, then do it! But if you don’t, don’t be discouraged.
I spent my free time (and many late nights) building courses. And they flopped for awhile – but then, they finally sold!
My goal was to make the same amount per month selling courses as I was making with web design. I continued to take on web design clients as I got closer to that goal because it felt like scary to drop them.
Up to this point, I was taking on two web design clients per month. Once I saw that I could launch or re-launch a course and make $3,000-$7,000 per month, then I was only taking on one client per month.
I was waffling between calling myself a web designer and an infopreneur.
I kept going back and forth between the two, because I was doing both things. And then I went to a conference that made me realize I was playing TOO SMALL.
I could TOTALLY do the infopreneur, course path. And if I wasn’t taking on web design clients, then I could have more time to do that.
At this point, my family was used to the income from one web design client and whatever courses I was launching, because I had been doing that for six months. Dropping my web design clients altogether felt scary, BUT I had proven to myself that I could sell what I needed to sell to maintain that income. All I needed to do now was believe in myself and double my efforts.
Then, I took a leap of faith and shut the doors on my web design business. It was SCARY AS HECK. But it was worth it.
I did NOT shut the door to one-on-one services at first
Because I didn’t! But I was able to re-imagine what one-on-one services looked like for me. One-on-one work allowed me to have steady income when I was deciding what my business would look like.
Because of my time as a web designer, I positioned myself as the tech and systems expert for entrepreneurs. That was a very natural transition for my audience. And there are a lot of people in this entrepreneurship space that struggle with the tech side of business.
I was hired by other entrepreneurs to manage the tech side of their business. Sort of like a techy VA, but I called myself a Systems Strategist.
As I transitioned out of web design, I took on a contractor job as a Systems Strategist with an entrepreneur while I continued to work on my courses. That combination was a MUCH more natural fit.
When I was doing web design and course creation, I was marketing myself twice in two very different ways. But as a contractor for systems and a person creating courses about systems and tech, the marketing was one and the same.
If you want to become an infopreneur, you may have to do two things at once.
If you want to create courses about Instagram, you may have to take on one-on-one clients to teach them Instagram while you build a course about Instagram. And that’s okay.
But you need to PLAN it. Giving yourself deadlines will help light a fire under you. Map out what the process looks like and do the work to get yourself there.
That's the ENTIRE story of how I went from web designer to infopreneur, and looking back, I wouldn't do it any other way.
If you're trying to make a similar switch, remember that transitions are just that! It may get messy somewhere in the middle. And that's okay.
