Learn how Kate went from burnt out to sold-out with Squarespace templates.

Check out her course Scale with Templates.

Omari:

Welcome back to the unofficial Squarespace entrepreneur podcast. My name is Omari Harben. I'm your host, founder of S Q S P themes.com. And today we're going to be talking about one of my favorite topics, which is making and selling Squarespace templates.  today's guest is Kate Scott. Who's recently launched a course called scale with templates and, , it's all about everything you need to know in order to make that transition from selling your services to clients, to turn in your skills into an asset and selling it as a product. So without any further ado, I'm going to allow, , Kate to introduce herself and give us a little background into how she got here.

Kate:

Yeah, so I started,  in 2018 I started a marketing business and that was sort of my first,  formal business structure. I'd been a blogger for many years before that. And so I started this marketing business and my very first client asked me to build her a website. And I had just built my website on Squarespace mostly because I have shiny object syndrome and I wanted to try something other than WordPress and I fell in love with it. And so I built her website and in the process of doing that, I realized that marketing in general, wasn't really what I was passionate about. I was passionate about web design and website strategy and all of that. So I ended up,  closing up shop very quickly. After that I took a few months off to,  kind of educate myself more about Squarespace, learn more of the coding behind Squarespace. I took on Meg summer fields,  course to kind of Polish my skills. And then I relaunched in 2019 as a Squarespace designer. And it's, it's all been uphill from there.

Omari:

Wow, awesome. So that's interesting. I feel like I've taken the opposite path of being a marketer, trying my hand at design and development just to get by and then just reverting back to my market and, you know, savvy is my go-to.  so what were you doing before that, just out of curiosity before you started your own agency

Kate:

Or blogging? Yeah, I was a book blogger for a number of years and that became quite popular. And so,  I just sort of figured that after a certain amount of time, I needed to transition into something that was a little bit more lucrative because it's very hard to make a living, , in that particular space.

Omari:

Okay. So I can see how the skills come together,  because you are quite a writer or blogger as well.  so all right, so you're, you're now decided, okay, I'm going to design, I like this.  how do you go and get your first clients? Like, what's that like for you?

Kate:

So actually my first client was a referral from the manager of my local business bank.  that's, that's actually how I got started. In fact, my first two clients were referrals from him.  and from there, you know, I really started early on because of my experience with blogging. I started early working on my SEO, constantly blogging, constantly putting content out there and very quickly that started to be the primary way of getting clients. And it built up slowly. I mean, it doesn't happen overnight, but that's how most people found me. And I had a few contacts from my blogging days as well. So

Omari:

Yeah, there's definitely compounding effect too, to blog in an SEO,  starts off slow, but when it picks up it's up. Yeah. So I was reading your, your sales page for scale with templates. And you mentioned,  kind of that transition point of, you know, if I want to, if I want to grow my business beyond my own time, energy, labor effort, you know, I have to do something else. What, what was the catalyst there? What made you say, okay, this is an opportunity for me to grow and, and kind of expand my horizons.

Kate:

Yeah. Well, I have a chronic illness and I was burned. I was really burned out and it doesn't, it didn't take very much to get me to that point because I also find client work stressful. Anyway, I think that having deadlines, if you're a person that doesn't really like deadlines,  if you're a person that doesn't really like hopping on sales calls all the time, it's very, very stressful. And so not compounded with my illness,  made me realize that I need to completely restructure my business here. I need to have an out so that when I have a bad month, I can still be earning an income without killing myself in the process. Right.

Omari:

Wow. Okay.  that makes a lot of sense. , and was it, was there a reason why you went with, , templates as opposed to like, you know, starting off with a course,  you know, what was like your decision making process between, all right, should I start with templates or like, what am I going to make to kind of fill this potential income gap?

Kate:

Yeah, well, you know, when I choked Meg summer fields course, way back when I started my business, I had built this website for a fake client and I realized that that would make the perfect prototype for a template. And so I thought I've already done half the work. I should just keep going with that.  and I felt like, you know, starting with a product would be easier than starting with a course because you really have to build up, I think your reputation within a community in order to successfully sell a course. And I was still fairly new in business. I'd only been in business for about eight, eight or nine months when I released my, and when I started building my first template. And so I just thought, you know, it's going to be easier to start with a digital product, so I'll just, you know, go there and see what happens next. Yeah. Yeah.

Omari:

 cool.  so now that you are, you know, you've got, you got templates oversell,  I'm an affiliate of your templates.  what's, what's kind of like, you know, you've got this, , scale with templates what's next on the horizon. Like, how do you see your business from here?

Kate:

That's a great question because I've been asking myself that,  recently, cause there's so many different directions that I want to go, and I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling pulled by all of the different things that you're passionate about. So, you know, I may, I have an idea for another course that I may,  work on this fall.  may release some 7.1 templates.  I may explore a new platform. I just don't know yet which direction I'm going to end up going in. But right now I'm in the, , sitting down and trying to find clarity stage. Now that I've completed this, this part of my business. Yeah.

Omari:

I know that feeling.  I think one of the best parts is you can actually start to like, you know, plan longer term in terms of like the kinds of things that you want to take on without the immediate,  you know, how am I going to take care of next month kind of stresses. So huge benefit there.  let's see. Is there anything else that, that, you know, for listeners who are curious about your course and,  might be on the fence? , they might be saying, well, I don't know if this is going to be worth it for me. I want to do this, but I'm not sure. Like, what would you say, what's your take on that?

Kate:

You know, one of the things that I really learned in the process of building up my template shop is that I think a lot of people think that selling templates is just building a template, figuring out how to deliver it and then releasing it into the world. But there is so much involved in the customer service part of things from the tutorials that you provide with your template to make sure that people can actually customize it to, you know, your post-purchase email sequence was just something that most people don't really think a lot about,  to the kind of customer service you provide, the parameters that you set around. That there's a lot that's involved in that. And we spend a lot of time in the course focusing on that, because I think that if you want to get great testimonials, if you want to have a lot of referrals, you have to really get that customer service piece in place and have it be really strong.

Omari:

Yeah, that's a great selling point. And I could definitely attest to that.  I was sharing with a friend today who was asking me, you know, he was saying, Hey, what does it take to,  you know, he was asking me if he could hire a designer to create the templates and so on. And I said, yeah, that, you know, the upfront, there's some upfront cost and time and whatever, but well, you have to be aware of is that on the backend, , support is the biggest thing.  and so knowing how to go into that upfront with those parameters, like you mentioned, right? So you don't get overburdened,  knowing that backend flow of like, okay, someone has purchased the plugin, they might need a little bit of extra help, or they might need to know that there's, they're not kind of like going to be stranded if something goes wrong.

Kate:

There's so many of those considerations that like, even now with, , Squarespace themes, I'm still processing instill kind of like developing that structure because it's not something that I was aware of going into it, going into it. It's just like, I want to sell something and then you start selling something. And as the more stuff you sell, the more the support goes up. And it's like, all right. My real, my real business is a support business. And,  you know, that's actually where I, , I gain all of the market and insights from. Cause I feel like once you, once you have a product that sells and people are buying it, then the communication that you have with your existing customers that sets the tone for who's going to come next, that gives you insights for what they liked, what they didn't like, what you can make better.  so I feel like, yeah, that, that, , support mindset is really key to success out here.  well Kate, thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing with us. If you haven't already checked it out, Kate scott.co, right.  , that's the website and you can find the course on there. I'll obviously share a link to it and,  yeah. Thanks again, Kate. Thank you. [inaudible].