Latest / Curiously Guided Podcast / Ep.106 | How AI Is Changing the Online Business Space & Why We’re Not Panicking with Christy Price, Squarespace Expert & Educator

Transcript

Ep.106 | How AI Is Changing the Online Business Space & Why We’re Not Panicking with Christy Price, Squarespace Expert & Educator · Curiously Guided Podcast

0:07
Mariah: Welcome to the Curiously Guided Podcast.
0:10
Mariah: We're your hosts, Mariah.
0:12
Shay: And hey guys, I'm Shay.
0:14
Shay: We're two online business consultants passionate about rewriting the rules to success within both life and business.
0:20
Shay: We believe that curiosity is our superpower.
0:24
Shay: And trusting the nudge is a muscle that's meant to be strengthened.
0:28
Mariah: Especially if we want to create a life that feels good from the inside out.
0:33
Shay: So if you're ready to open your mind and let curiosity guide the way, let's get into the episode.
0:40
Shay: Okay, you guys, when Mariah and I were reviewing the show notes for this episode, we were just sitting here like giggling and smiling at each other and talking about how excited we were to re-listen to it.
0:51
Shay: Um, you'll hear a bit more about like the origin of this conversation and why we decided to have it once we get into the episode.
0:56
Shay: But Christy is just a really interesting, cool human being.
1:01
Shay: Every time Ray and I mention her to each other, we're always just like beaming about her.
1:05
Shay: She's a joy.
1:07
Shay: This conversation, um it's really timely.
1:11
Shay: You know, I think we're all literally daily hearing about AI, hearing about how AI is changing everything.
1:17
Shay: Should we be worried?
1:18
Shay: Are we okay?
1:19
Shay: You know, are we at the forefront of it?
1:20
Shay: Are we gonna get phased out?
1:22
Shay: And this conversation was fun because Mariah, Christy, and I have been in the game for like longer than I want to do the math, like probably about a decade now.
1:31
Shay: And it's been cool to watch these phases and waves and remember that everything is cyclical and goes in cycles and there's gonna be seasons.
1:38
Shay: And really, it's your human that's gonna carry you through all of it and your curiosity and your ability to adapt.
1:44
Shay: This conversation is really cool.
1:47
Shay: It ends in a really cool place.
1:48
Shay: I'm excited to share it with you guys.
1:50
Mariah: You know what's funny is you were like, I don't want to do the math.
1:53
Mariah: And so I was like, I'll do the math.
1:54
Mariah: And so if you combine all of our years, we're over 40 years in the online business space, which is funny because like I'm still 25.
2:04
Mariah: LOL.
2:05
Mariah: So like the math doesn't math.
2:07
Mariah: Um, but it's like, uh, this conversation is so good.
2:11
Mariah: I was telling Shay and we're like ready to record the intro.
2:13
Mariah: I was like, it's just so easy to talk about Christy.
2:16
Mariah: Like the energy that she brings to conversations and how fun she is.
2:20
Mariah: I've hung out with her in person quite a few times, and I just I love her so much.
2:24
Mariah: I wish that we lived closer together so we could hang out all the time.
2:27
Mariah: But her perspective in the online space, it's so good, especially like if you get sucked into the threads or Twitter or like these social media rabbit holes where everybody is just like the world is ending, the online business space is done.
2:44
Mariah: You're gonna fucking love this conversation because like all of us think the opposite.
2:50
Mariah: We think that we're just getting started, and maybe it's we are just optimists about this, but like each of us sees the unlimited possibilities in the different corners of the website and how when the internet or when business or when marketing in general, when it zigs, you have to zag.
3:09
Mariah: And that's the whole thing, right?
3:12
Mariah: And that's that's why we created this podcast.
3:14
Mariah: It's about staying curiously guided.
3:16
Mariah: And I think all of us have been in the business space so long because we're curious, we're not stuck in our ways of this is the way that we have to do it.
3:24
Mariah: We're willing to adapt and to move and to learn and to explore, and like that's the magic of it all.
3:30
Mariah: So I'm excited to share Christy's story, her perspective, and all of the juicy tidbits that we get into in this episode.
3:38
Mariah: So a little bit about Christy.
3:40
Mariah: She's been working in web design for over 20 years and transitioned her business to focus solely on Squarespace in 2018.
3:47
Mariah: She builds websites, posts YouTube tutorials, and enjoys sharing what she's learning with new and aspiring designers.
3:55
Mariah: Christy lives in a house on a hill outside of Austin, Texas, with her husband and two Labrador retrievers, one naughty and one nice.
4:04
Mariah: And so, with that, let's kick it into the episode.
4:09
Shay: All right, welcome back, friends.
4:11
Shay: We have a really fun episode for you today.
4:14
Shay: Um, I've actually had this episode pinging around in my brain for about a year now.
4:19
Shay: Mariah and I went to the kit conference in Idaho last year, and we met up with our guest today, Christy, there.
4:26
Shay: And um I don't know if Mariah shared this with Christy.
4:29
Shay: So I've been in the web design space.
4:32
Shay: I got started my business around 2017, and I joined some like Facebook groups, and like Christy's name is one of the first people I I just remember seeing her name, and like I stalked her website, and I just thought she was like so cool and like such an expert in this space.
4:47
Shay: And so I have kind of been like fangirling over Christy for years, and then fast forward to I don't even know when that was.
4:54
Shay: Y'all went to, we were just joking about a conference that they went to together with Lashonda.
4:59
Shay: When was that?
5:00
Christy: Two and a half years ago, maybe.
5:02
Shay: So two and a half years ago, I see Mariah posting all these pictures with Christy Price.
5:07
Shay: And I was like, What?
5:09
Shay: You're hanging out with Christy Price?
5:11
Shay: Tell me everything about her.
5:13
Shay: So Mariah is like, LL, she's like, she's very cool.
5:18
Shay: Shea, stop putting her up on a pedestal now that you don't deserve to be.
5:21
Shay: But I just had you, Christy, in my head.
5:22
Shay: It's like, you're just someone that I think of as like you've been in this space for a while.
5:27
Shay: You've had a really consistent business um since 2018.
5:31
Shay: You've been focusing um solely on Squarespace web design.
5:35
Shay: I think I stumbled upon you even before that in 2017 when I was getting started.
5:39
Shay: So I just when we were talking and like getting to know you, I I was just like, I would love to talk with her with her about like what she's seen and kind of like what she predicts.
5:49
Shay: And then I know you have a daughter that's kind of like entering the workforce.
5:52
Shay: So I just think that your perspective on what where we've come from and where we're going is really interesting.
6:00
Shay: And so with that, thank you for coming on the podcast.
6:03
Christy: Thank you so much for having me.
6:05
Christy: I love your podcast.
6:06
Christy: It's just so conversational and fun.
6:08
Christy: And I feel like this is one of those times where we all just get to relax and chat.
6:13
Christy: And I hope people enjoy listening.
6:15
Shay: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
6:16
Shay: And with that, if you don't mind, I'd love if you could like get the listeners caught up on your origin story, if you will.
6:23
Shay: We mentioned, you know, you've been focusing on Squarespace web design.
6:27
Shay: Ryan and I both got in the game as web designers ourselves.
6:30
Shay: So we know that world.
6:31
Shay: And and I think you said like we've been around for two decades now, even with more general web design than that.
6:37
Shay: So tell us a bit about like how you got into it in the first place and how the initial process came to be.
6:42
Christy: Yeah, it's actually a funny story.
6:44
Christy: I was in graduate school working on my doctorate in cognitive psychology and was having these moments where I was like, I don't think I actually want to do this, but I don't know what else I could do.
7:01
Christy: And I was debating, I'd done everything for my PhD except for my dissertation.
7:06
Christy: And I was kind of had that rambling around in my head.
7:11
Christy: Randomly, I went on a road trip to Tellride, Colorado over the 4th of July weekend in oh goodness, the late 90s.
7:21
Christy: It's a long time ago.
7:22
Christy: I'm old.
7:22
Christy: Um, and I was on the ski lift in the summer.
7:27
Christy: I don't remember why, but I was randomly with this guy that I didn't know on the ski lift.
7:32
Christy: And you have quite a while to chat.
7:33
Christy: So we started chatting.
7:34
Christy: And I was asking him, you know, oh, are you here visiting?
7:37
Christy: And he's like, no, I live here.
7:39
Christy: I used to be an attorney and I hated it.
7:42
Christy: And I quit and I came here and now I'm a ski instructor and a hiking guide.
7:46
Christy: And I it's the best thing I ever could have done.
7:49
Christy: And I was like, oh my goodness.
7:51
Christy: Like he was just sent here on the ski lift to tell me to quit grad school.
7:57
Christy: So I went back and I said to my advisor, I think I'd like to take a sabbatical for a semester and just, you know, take a semester off and figure out what I want to do.
8:08
Christy: And he was like, No, you if you if you leave, you can't come back.
8:12
Christy: He was a jerk.
8:13
Christy: And then I was like, okay, I quit.
8:16
Christy: And then he goes, Well, I hope you know everyone will always know you're a failure.
8:20
Christy: Oh, did you?
8:22
Christy: Yes.
8:22
Christy: And I'm like, Oh, I am making such the right decision right now.
8:26
Christy: And I'm like, I'm done.
8:27
Christy: I'm out.
8:28
Christy: I am not a failure because I don't have extra letters after my name.
8:31
Christy: So around that same time, I had a friend who was working in uh startups in Austin.
8:38
Christy: This is the dot com boom.
8:41
Christy: And she reached out, she's like, You're miserable.
8:44
Christy: Quit grad school, come to work at the startup.
8:47
Christy: They're looking for coders.
8:49
Christy: And I'm like, Oh, yeah, I can do that because as part of my um research, I was coding programs for uh to do reaction time work with the visual system.
9:00
Christy: So I was a coder.
9:01
Christy: I didn't even know it, but I was a coder because I was coding things and I was like, oh, I can do that.
9:06
Christy: And then she's like, Yeah, so they're gonna do uh website stuff.
9:09
Christy: And I was like, Oh, I've played with that.
9:10
Christy: That's fun.
9:11
Christy: This is like back in the day of Netscape Navigator, if you remember that.
9:14
Christy: So I was like, I can code that because HTML is easy.
9:18
Christy: And so I got the job and showed up at I Kid You Not Mall.com.
9:24
Christy: Their whole business scheme was basically an affiliate program based on different stores in a mall.
9:34
Christy: And it was just like the weirdest, weirdest business ever.
9:37
Christy: I I wish I could show you the logo.
9:42
Christy: Um, just yeah, it was hideous.
9:45
Christy: Uh so I show up there.
9:48
Christy: This is a disaster.
9:50
Christy: Like the whole company is a nightmare.
9:52
Christy: It is so much fun.
9:54
Christy: I have so much fun coding.
9:55
Christy: I start working with the designers, and I'm like, well, this is more fun than coding.
10:00
Christy: Teach me all the things you know.
10:03
Christy: And so they did.
10:04
Christy: And then as it turned out, I was in this beautifully um positioned spot where I could talk to the designers and the developers who couldn't really talk to each other.
10:14
Christy: So I got to play the bridge between those two worlds, and it was really, really fun.
10:18
Christy: And I just had a blast.
10:20
Christy: And working at a startup, you know, when you're younger, is a lot of fun.
10:24
Christy: And I learned a ton.
10:25
Christy: And that was great for years until the dot-com bubble burst and we all got laid off.
10:32
Christy: And at that point, I was like, oh no, nobody wants coders or designers anymore.
10:39
Christy: It turns out they did.
10:40
Christy: They just didn't have businesses that you could show up at work, you know, and work at.
10:45
Christy: So I worked in my pajamas as a freelancer for years.
10:49
Christy: Uh, had my daughter, kept working part-time.
10:52
Christy: And then in 2018, my daughter turned 16.
10:57
Christy: And I'm like, well, she doesn't really need me anymore.
10:59
Christy: I'm kind of bored.
11:01
Christy: Let's shake things up.
11:02
Christy: And that's when I went all in on Squarespace and started creating tons of content, um, really making that the driving force in my business and haven't looked back.
11:15
Mariah: How were you finding clients when you were a freelancer, like before Squarespace?
11:21
Christy: Yeah.
11:21
Christy: So it was basically all the folks that I'd worked with in those businesses, they all got laid off too.
11:26
Christy: And they were all starting their own businesses and they needed people to code or do design.
11:31
Christy: And so it was really seamless.
11:33
Christy: I mean, finding clients was not hard.
11:35
Christy: And then it was very much after that, it was local networking.
11:40
Christy: Um, you know, this was way before LinkedIn was anything anybody talked about, or social media even.
11:47
Christy: Um, and so it was a lot of just word of mouth.
11:52
Mariah: The good old days of marketing.
11:54
Shay: Yeah, yeah.
11:55
Shay: And then you said you kind of when you took the like pivot to Squarespace, you started, what was the strategy?
12:01
Shay: Making content, was it blog, or like tell me about like what that kind of how marketing shifted at that point?
12:07
Christy: Yeah.
12:07
Christy: So at that point, I'm like, well, I I had been working in WordPress.
12:11
Christy: So I went from like custom coding to WordPress and realized along the way, I hate WordPress.
12:18
Christy: My clients hate WordPress.
12:20
Christy: Why are we here?
12:21
Christy: There has to be something else.
12:22
Christy: So in 2016, 2017, I started building two websites and every web platform I could get my hands on just to figure out what I liked.
12:30
Christy: Because I'm like, if I'm gonna be doing this, I need to figure out something that I enjoy using.
12:34
Christy: And, you know, Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, strikingly like the ones you've never heard of.
12:41
Christy: I built in them all.
12:42
Christy: I still have a couple of Wix sites live today, which I think is hysterical from years ago.
12:47
Christy: Uh, and then Squarespace is what I landed on.
12:50
Christy: And I'm like, well, I don't really have, you know, kind of the connections for Squarespace.
12:56
Christy: I had connections in the WordPress world, but it was very isolated.
12:59
Christy: And it wasn't like, oh, you need a website.
13:01
Christy: It felt different at that time.
13:03
Christy: Today I feel like people are more platform agnostic, but at the time, nobody wanted to come with me to Squarespace.
13:09
Christy: So it felt like I was starting from scratch.
13:11
Christy: And I uh bluffed my way into a job at this company called 60, which was you could hire a Squarespace expert for an hour.
13:21
Christy: And I was just learning, like, I had just opened Squarespace like two months ago.
13:27
Christy: And I'm like, oh, I can figure it out, right?
13:29
Christy: And so I'm like, yeah, I've been a web designer forever.
13:32
Christy: Yeah, I know Squarespace.
13:33
Christy: And I got this job with 60.
13:34
Christy: And the beautiful thing about 60 is that they would have clients fill out very detailed briefs ahead of time.
13:42
Christy: So when someone booked a call with you, you knew exactly what their issue was, you know, a few days in advance.
13:48
Christy: And so what I would do is I would spend like two to three hours figuring out how to solve this problem.
13:54
Christy: So on the hour-long call with them, it would seem seamless.
13:58
Christy: And I would look like such an expert.
14:00
Christy: And so I did that.
14:02
Christy: And then I realized after a while that people had the same questions.
14:06
Christy: And boy, wouldn't it be great if there was a resource out there that I could just be like, here, I have created this for you.
14:16
Christy: And so that's when I started doing blog posts about, you know, just answering questions that I would get or things that I figured out as I was building websites.
14:25
Mariah: Christy, I now understand why we get along so well.
14:30
Mariah: Like our brains are so similar in terms of like how to figure it out and like Shays too, where it's just like we kind of just figured out the online space, figured out that like you can fucking make money online.
14:43
Mariah: Like when I I don't want to speak for Shay, but like when I started my business, I was like, fuck yeah, I can do a fucking WordPressite.
14:50
Mariah: I was like, I can I can whip this shit up.
14:52
Mariah: And I was taking like local clients, and then I had a mentor actually who like taught me everything that he knew about WordPress.
14:58
Mariah: And so, like having him to be able to ask questions too, but it was also the age of the internet, right?
15:04
Mariah: Like I had everything at my fingertips, and I was like, I can figure out anything.
15:07
Mariah: And then I actually remember that exact point when Squarespace started to get a little bit of like well known enough that people were like, What is this?
15:19
Mariah: No, we can't even.
15:20
Mariah: I remember there was huge pushback because people were like, no, that can't be a quote unquote custom site because it's all template.
15:27
Mariah: You don't get that back-end access to the HTML or the CSS or the server files that we were used to having from WordPress.
15:35
Mariah: So I remember I was making out with a guy, all right, and I wanted to date him.
15:40
Mariah: And so I was like, listen, your dad owns a farm.
15:44
Mariah: And so your farm needs a website.
15:46
Mariah: How about I just make the website for you?
15:49
Mariah: Basically, I knew that I would have to ask him a whole bunch of questions, like all the time and like follow up with him.
15:54
Mariah: And I was like, Yeah, my excuse, like fucking hang out with him.
15:57
Mariah: And I was like, we need to hang out and make out again in order for you to provide feedback on your dad's farm as well.
16:04
Mariah: Clearly.
16:05
Mariah: Clearly.
16:06
Mariah: And I was like, because I need to explore Squarespace.
16:08
Mariah: And so that's essentially what it was.
16:10
Mariah: And I fell in love with the simplicity of it.
16:13
Christy: It really was.
16:14
Christy: It was very simple at the time.
16:17
Christy: I it they've obviously added a lot since then.
16:20
Christy: But when I was looking at platforms, there were kind of two things I was looking for.
16:24
Christy: One was is this gonna work the way my brain works?
16:28
Christy: And so you and I, Mariah, were from this background where HTML was separate than CSS and Squarespace was built like that on the back end.
16:36
Christy: So you could lay CSS code on top of the design.
16:39
Christy: And there were other platforms that didn't let you do that.
16:42
Christy: Like Wix was kind of all muddied and integrated.
16:45
Christy: And so having that clear delineation, like from somebody who's coming from a coding background, I'm like, oh yeah, that's how it works.
16:52
Christy: That makes sense to me.
16:53
Christy: And then the second thing that I was looking for is what is something that I can hand off to a client and go, here's your website.
17:02
Christy: Peace be with you, my friend.
17:04
Christy: And that's not something you do with WordPress.
17:07
Christy: As you know, you have to offer maintenance plans.
17:09
Christy: You have to go in and update plugins, you have to do things for your client because they don't want to get in there.
17:14
Christy: Um, and Squarespace at the time was using an editor that was really pretty intuitive once you got over that initial learning curve, and people could edit the site themselves.
17:24
Christy: And it was real, real hard for them to turn it into a dumpster fire.
17:28
Christy: So you could have, yeah, it was a templated site to some degree.
17:32
Christy: You could add some custom code to make it look a little different, but it looked clean, it looked modern, and it wasn't a disaster, which, if you were using some of those competitors, you know, get somebody in with a rogue mouse click, and boy, things have gone south fast.
17:50
Shay: Yeah, or like one plug-in updates.
17:52
Shay: Um it's funny, we all have a similar origin story.
17:54
Shay: I was more in the design side of things.
17:56
Shay: And I started at my first job, I was hanging out with the designers.
17:59
Shay: And then I got my husband and I started doing the design, and all of our clients needed websites.
18:05
Shay: So I was probably about that time, Christina, you were making blogs, I was searching what's the difference between WordPress and Wix.
18:11
Shay: And in my mind, I was like, Squarespace, this is such a godsend.
18:16
Shay: Why isn't everybody using this?
18:17
Shay: Because of the peace to be with you, Ellen.
18:19
Shay: I was like, I do I do not want to be maintaining as little of that as possible.
18:24
Shay: And then I loved that I could do some custom, simple like CSS, because I wasn't a I learned code as I went, but it's funny, I was also on 60.
18:33
Shay: So to get my initial clients, I had a few like word of mouth, but then I was like, okay, I need to broaden and yeah.
18:40
Shay: I my heart started racing when you brought up 60 because I got thrown in the deep end with a view situation.
18:46
Shay: And I feel like that's just kind of how you have to get started.
18:49
Shay: Yeah.
18:50
Shay: One thing where I and I talk about like the beautiful part of the time we're living in right now is you can have what I call like a portfolio-based career.
18:58
Shay: So if you are like you, Christy or I, we went all the way through school and then like we're like, ah, the same for me.
19:04
Shay: Yeah.
19:05
Shay: You I just started building a new portfolio.
19:08
Shay: And so that's what we did with web design and branding.
19:10
Shay: And you can um put yourself out there.
19:13
Shay: Christy is a really cool example.
19:15
Shay: I found her through that content that she was making just answering questions on 60, right?
19:20
Shay: Like that is a very cool story.
19:23
Shay: And so I'm wondering for you the trajectory of your business.
19:26
Shay: I'm assuming that the blog posts work, that was back in the day.
19:30
Shay: We loved blogs, they were bringing people to us that was science.
19:34
Shay: But I don't think you're doing that marketing strategy today.
19:37
Shay: So tell me about like how things shifted with that over time.
19:49
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19:55
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21:00
Christy: Yeah, I mean, 2018 to like 2023 was the heyday of blogging.
21:07
Christy: And you you couldn't just blog.
21:10
Christy: So I would blog, but then I would, I called it stealth marketing.
21:14
Christy: I would go into like Facebook groups of people who had Squarespace questions and I would look at a quote, you know, look at the questions and then like, do I have a blog post that answers that?
21:24
Christy: Yes, great.
21:24
Christy: Let me get the link and put it in there.
21:25
Christy: It's like, oh, I cover that here.
21:27
Christy: Or if it was something I could write a blog post on in less than 30 minutes, boom, done.
21:33
Christy: Oh, I have a blog post on that here.
21:36
Christy: Uh, please don't look at the timestamp.
21:38
Christy: So, you know, it was just a way to start ranking an SEO.
21:43
Christy: And it absolutely paid off.
21:46
Christy: Like between then and like 2023, early 2024, um, that is like referrals and SEO.
21:54
Christy: That is how I got all my clients.
21:57
Christy: And it was, it was easy.
21:58
Christy: It was easy to write.
21:59
Christy: blog post, not have to worry about being everywhere all the time on social, doing videos, that sort of thing.
22:09
Christy: Um but then in 2024, things changed.
22:14
Christy: And it was, I think it was in 2023, I was part of Google Labs and this might have been early 2024.
22:24
Christy: I don't remember.
22:24
Christy: No, 2023.
22:25
Christy: Part of Google Labs.
22:27
Christy: And I saw that they were going to roll out these AI snippets that answered everybody's questions.
22:32
Christy: And I'm like, oh no.
22:34
Christy: Because nobody's going to scroll down and find my website and click on that.
22:39
Christy: They're just going to get their question answered.
22:41
Christy: And so I saw their writing on the wall in terms of visits to my website.
22:47
Christy: And Mariah and I actually I hired Mariah because I'm just like oh no this is terrible.
22:53
Christy: What am I going to do?
22:54
Christy: And Mariah's like, well, you know, it's a two-edged sword, right?
22:57
Christy: Because I'm paraphrasing this.
22:58
Christy: Let me know if I get it wrong, Mariah.
23:00
Christy: You're like, yeah, you won't have as much traffic, but look, you're showing up in some of these snippets and people are like, oh Christy Bryce, she must know what she's talking about.
23:08
Mariah: I remember you getting recommended in the snippet and then your website was also recommended right below.
23:13
Mariah: And then I don't know if you started your YouTube channel then.
23:17
Mariah: Yeah.
23:17
Mariah: But it's like, but then your YouTube videos once you started that were also getting recommended in like the video section.
23:23
Mariah: And then I remember looking at your data and some of your traffic was dipping and I was like do you care about the sports?
23:31
Mariah: And you were like, no, I fucking hate that.
23:35
Mariah: That doesn't even make sense for how like the platform works.
23:37
Mariah: No.
23:38
Mariah: Yeah.
23:38
Christy: Yeah.
23:39
Christy: And so to your point about the YouTube uh videos, I saw this writing on the wall and I'm like, oh no, I'm going to have to have another search engine.
23:50
Christy: And this is before I realized that AI was going to be its own like real search engine, right?
23:54
Christy: I mean this is new days for all of us.
23:57
Christy: And I'm like, okay, what search engines do I know besides Google?
24:00
Christy: I know YouTube and I know Pinterest.
24:03
Christy: And I'm like, I'm not doing Pinterest.
24:06
Christy: No.
24:07
Christy: No way.
24:08
Christy: And then I'm like, well, I guess I'm going to start my YouTube channel.
24:12
Christy: And I had tried in 2020, because we were all stuck at home and bored, I tried starting a YouTube channel and I made it like eight or nine weeks of a video every week.
24:24
Christy: And I was like, oh, this is terrible.
24:25
Christy: I hate this.
24:26
Christy: I hate recording.
24:27
Christy: I hate the editing.
24:29
Christy: I'm not going to pay somebody to edit.
24:30
Christy: I don't have money to do that.
24:32
Christy: I'm not, I'm just not going to do it.
24:34
Christy: And so I quit.
24:35
Christy: But then in 2024, I'm like, okay, February 2024, this is when I'm going to start.
24:40
Christy: I'm going to do a video every week.
24:42
Christy: Fortunately, the editing tools in that four-year gap had gotten much better.
24:47
Christy: My production quality is what I will lovingly call good enough.
24:52
Christy: Like nobody really cares.
24:53
Christy: Like I show up without makeup.
24:55
Christy: Sometimes my lighting is great.
24:57
Christy: Sometimes it's eh, I have a good mic.
24:59
Christy: And but I'm mostly sharing my screen and answering a question that they have or sharing a perspective that people want to think about.
25:07
Christy: So they don't really care what I look like or what my office is.
25:11
Christy: And once I kind of got past that, I'm like, yeah, I can do this every week.
25:16
Christy: And the first six months were real hard.
25:18
Christy: And then it became fun.
25:20
Christy: It became a game like can I get my channel monetized?
25:24
Christy: And how many subscribers can I get?
25:27
Christy: And which videos are doing better.
25:29
Christy: And I have completely fallen in love with creating YouTube videos.
25:34
Christy: And I feel like especially today in the age of AI, that's going to be one of the last things to go because people want to connect with other people.
25:44
Christy: And yeah, here I am no makeup, messy hair, my lighting's kind of wonky, but I'm a real human and so are you.
25:50
Christy: So maybe I can show you how to do this thing that I figured out.
25:57
Shay: I love that.
25:58
Shay: And I'm wondering like so what you mentioned monetizing.
26:02
Shay: When we start making content it kind of brings in a whole new element to business.
26:06
Shay: But I'm curious about for the web design business, has that led to the same results?
26:10
Shay: Like do you feel like you've gotten into the same spot you were with grooves where with um blogs where you were um getting clients referred to you like what has been the impact of YouTube on the business specifically?
26:20
Christy: Yeah.
26:21
Christy: I I think to answer that question, let me back up a little bit to around 2020, 2021 and talk about the client work that I was doing because from 2018, 2019, 2020, especially 2020, we all had so much client work.
26:37
Christy: Like that was the heyday for web designers, like more clients than we could shake a stick at.
26:43
Christy: And I got real tired of doing web design.
26:47
Christy: And I still love it.
26:49
Christy: But in 2021 I was like, I cannot sustain this.
26:52
Christy: I've got to figure out some other areas to make money.
26:56
Christy: Fortunately because of the blog, I'd been bringing in a good amount of affiliate income every month.
27:03
Christy: So that was supplementing the client work and I was like well if I just lean a little bit more into that and do some more content on my blog about products that I love that could help out, you know, the people reading, that would be great.
27:14
Christy: So I kind of ramped up my affiliate marketing game.
27:17
Christy: I started creating some digital products and selling those and it took the pressure off of having to feel like I was in client build mode all the time.
27:28
Christy: And so that was really nice.
27:31
Christy: And so when YouTube started, I started that I wasn't really I wasn't totally doing that to find clients, but it was more like getting people into those affiliate blog posts or the affiliate links if I'm talking about a product or buying one of my digital products.
27:49
Christy: So it was it was not just clients it was kind of threefold and it's been really nice because it's allowed me some extra space to free up from client work so I could create more resources.
28:03
Christy: So last year I was able to take off a couple months totally from client work and create a course called the Web Designers Playbook that teaches web designers how to run a custom website project from start to finish.
28:16
Christy: And that income then replaced the client, you know, the client income for another couple of months.
28:23
Christy: So last year was the first year that my client income was less than 50% of my overall revenue, which felt really fun.
28:31
Christy: And I, you know, I attribute that yeah some to the YouTube because it's bringing me a lot broader audience because I'm stepping out of just like my website or sorry my YouTube channel does say like Squarespace tutorials, but I step outside that and I'm becoming broader with that and more just general tech tools and problem solving for entrepreneurs.
28:56
Christy: So I feel like that's growing as well.
28:59
Christy: And it I feel like this is a shift like this is another shift point of my business.
29:05
Christy: You know, in in 2021 it was like let's see if we can reduce the client work.
29:10
Christy: This year it's like let's maybe continue doing that.
29:14
Christy: I do want to keep a hand in because I'm teaching it and things are changing so fast right now.
29:19
Christy: But let's reduce it a little more and give ourselves some space to explore things that are maybe outside just Squarespace.
29:27
Mariah: Did you think especially like 2019 2020ish, did you think that A, that this could be a possibility and B, was it like even on your radar?
29:38
Mariah: Like I'm just thinking of like that that shift in your mind of just like I'm a service provider.
29:44
Mariah: Like I create things for people.
29:46
Mariah: That's where a lot of people get started in the online space, right?
29:49
Mariah: Because it's kind of like sure I have a gift, I have a zone of genius, you don't have it, you need to hire somebody for it.
29:54
Mariah: You can hire me.
29:55
Mariah: And it's like that's the easiest way to start making money online.
29:58
Mariah: But then you usually get to a point I guess like what was that point where you were like wait I can make money from like affiliates like I can make money from like digital products because not everybody gets there.
30:09
Mariah: Right.
30:09
Mariah: Especially I realize that in my local networking I've realized that like a lot of people that are in that service provider mindset.
30:18
Mariah: I've even said like on local Buffalo New York threads there was a girl just like a couple weeks ago complaining about like how she can't take on more like she's never going to hit the six figure mark.
30:28
Mariah: Right.
30:29
Mariah: Because she doesn't have the bandwidth to take more clients.
30:32
Mariah: Yeah.
30:32
Mariah: She doesn't want to be an agency.
30:34
Mariah: So I'm pretty sure she went and like got a corporate job because she was just like I'm burnt out and I don't want to like add more things.
30:41
Mariah: And to me, maybe I've just been in the online space so long.
30:44
Mariah: I don't know the answer to my own question of like when that shifted but I'm curious if you do.
30:50
Christy: Yeah it was 2019.
30:51
Christy: So that was when I realized that I was kind of capping out those hours and it's like well you can raise your rates but you can't like raise them so significantly that it's going to be like oh I'm in the lap of luxury now just creating client websites.
31:08
Christy: So in 2019 I was part of a small group of entrepreneurs and it was like a little mini mind.
31:16
Christy: And everybody else in that group was pressuring me to start an agency.
31:21
Christy: They're like oh you need to scale you know you want to make more money you need to scale and I just had the ick that is not for me.
31:30
Christy: I enjoy the work that I do I do not enjoy managing people.
31:35
Christy: I knew that that was not the path for me.
31:38
Christy: And while it was very clear to these other people in the group I'm just like no like that is a hard no I will not even consider that.
31:47
Christy: And around that same timeframe two things happened.
31:52
Christy: One, I published a blog post about um member space because at the time there was no way to add a member area to Squarespace natively.
32:02
Christy: And I had a client who needed something like that.
32:04
Christy: I found memberspace and I'm like this is great.
32:06
Christy: I wrote a blog post about it and they had I still make money from that blog post today because they have ongoing payouts.
32:14
Christy: So I I mean every month I'm like oh memberspace I love you.
32:20
Christy: And so that was when I realized that affiliate income could really become something very like a decent percentage of my income.
32:31
Christy: And once you do the work it's just there running along like that truly is passive.
32:37
Christy: Like you're not supporting anything you're not answering questions about a product you're like, I don't know ask memberspace.
32:43
Christy: I don't know how to do that.
32:44
Christy: So that's when I realized affiliate income could be a part of this puzzle.
32:50
Christy: And I think it was that same year that Squarespace Circle reached out and said could we pay you to do a webinar on how to set up Squarespace campaigns.
33:03
Christy: And I was like Yeah.
33:06
Christy: And also I could record this slightly different and sell it myself.
33:13
Christy: And so I did and I was like this is great.
33:18
Christy: I love teaching I love you know showing people how to do things that maybe felt too hard but when you break it down and just show them step by step it's doable and I can make some money doing this.
33:32
Christy: And again that's not totally passive because you're supporting it and you know it needs updates from time to time.
33:37
Christy: I've since retired that one because it needed desperately needed updates and I'm like I'm done with campaigns.
33:44
Shay: But um but those were kind of the things that happened in 2019 that made me think I don't have to grow an agency to scale my revenue one thing I'm really struck by is the similarity between you and Mariah's business trajectory because she definitely had that same advice oh how to scale agency.
34:05
Shay: I was getting that too and and it's funny you guys I I didn't put this together until this moment but I left web design Mariah has left web design and one of my questions for you Christy was like how did you stay with web design for this long?
34:19
Shay: And I think you've answered it.
34:21
Shay: You've given you were honest with like because that was what was told to me too I booked my first few 10K sites and I was doing the math and I was like I can't I can't hold that load yeah it was telling me the only path forward was agency.
34:35
Shay: So I was like I'm getting out of here.
34:37
Shay: Yeah.
34:37
Shay: And Mariah kind of like really zoned in on like no this is what I do this piece of it and built her thing.
34:43
Shay: And so I think it's cool that you two were both able to be like no that's not right for me.
34:48
Shay: But what I do enjoy is teaching and how how could I bring that into this business model?
34:54
Shay: And so it's interesting.
34:56
Shay: It sounds to me like sustainability for you has kind of looked like um giving yourself a bit of peace of mind with other revenue sources so you could kind of free up some time and explore things.
35:08
Christy: Absolutely and you know a few years ago we had just a lot of really terrible things happen in our family and I had to take off a few months from work and unexpectedly.
35:19
Christy: So I had to cancel client projects and what did I do?
35:23
Christy: I ran sales I like pointed people to posts about affiliate products and I made you know not a hundred percent of the income that I would have gotten from clients but like a good chunk of it.
35:36
Christy: And you realize that when you have these kind of different buckets that you can lean into for revenue you don't have to do the same thing all day every day.
35:47
Christy: You can choose like depending on what your life looks like at that moment, you can choose to lean into one a little more than the others.
35:53
Christy: And so I feel like you know if I had been doing just web design that year, my revenue would have really suffered.
36:03
Christy: And so you're building in kind of redundancies for for income and you know on a good year it can really outperform your wildest expectations.
36:15
Christy: And on a bad year you're still getting income for work that you're not actively one-on-one with someone doing, which is really nice.
36:26
Mariah: I feel like the cool part of your story is like kind of what we like to showcase on the podcast all the time.
36:33
Mariah: It's like you kind of just followed your curiosity and it was kind of just like following these breadcrumbs and like you had no fucking idea when you took that startup job back in whenever when that it was like it would end up with you being a YouTube content creator.
36:47
Christy: Yeah.
36:48
Christy: Yeah.
36:48
Christy: And I think you know one of the things that I think about a lot is we are our own boss.
36:55
Christy: And I feel like so many people in this space don't take advantage of that.
37:00
Christy: I'm a really good boss.
37:03
Christy: Like I'm like you know what you work two hours today.
37:06
Christy: It's a really nice day you're done go have fun.
37:09
Christy: Uh or you know Christy you know I know you were gonna do this product and you started working on it but you're just not feeling it.
37:17
Christy: You just you can let that go.
37:18
Christy: You don't have to do that.
37:20
Christy: And so I feel like being a good boss to yourself, we are in this really interesting world where we get to dictate what we do, how we do it, and we do not have to follow someone else's formula for it.
37:37
Christy: We can forge our own path and do things the way we want to do.
37:41
Christy: And so a couple of years ago I started thinking about like what what are my tenants and my business?
37:47
Christy: Like what should I really be looking at everything through the lens of and I came up with well fun and money is it fun awesome if I'm enjoying this and it maybe it doesn't make any money but I think it's fun, I'm going to do that because I need joy, right?
38:05
Christy: I need some fun.
38:06
Christy: Does it make money?
38:08
Christy: Yeah that's probably something I should consider doing for my business but is it fun and does it make money together that is like the thing that I'm going to spend most of my time doing because if it's revenue you know if revenue heavy and I enjoy doing it, that's what I'm going to do.
38:26
Christy: It doesn't matter what it is, just that it's you know it's fun and I make some money.
38:30
Shay: And remembering that we get to make the rules I think like I am just remembering that this year.
38:36
Shay: Yeah I was like and I love this idea what kind of boss are you being to yourself because the whole reason I got into this was oh if it's a nice day I do not want to be locked in this cubicle.
38:45
Shay: Yeah.
38:45
Shay: So like why am I sitting here in my office?
38:47
Christy: I've been kind of telling my husband hey let's take advantage of Wednesday mornings we could go to the museum and not have crowds like really those little things that I used to dream of when I was kind of like locked in the cubicle because it's easy to just forget that and then just yeah no it is so easy to forget that and just think like oh I have a job I should be at my desk 40 hours a week that's what people do have jobs.
39:11
Shay: But we don't have to or like raised yeah it is hard to get out of that um well I the reason I wanted to have this conversation with you two is I think we're all you know you brought up AI Christy and that was kind of what sparked this idea I think I am certainly seeing a ton of people in my circle losing their jobs being afraid of losing their jobs being forced into career changes and us three every time I talk with you guys I'm like and I'm making money like this and I'm making money like that and I'm making money like that.
39:43
Shay: And so I'm finding myself talking to friends and they're like oh the online ship has sailed or like you two I'm sure you hear AI is going to ruin SEO AI is going to ruin web design taking our jobs.
39:56
Shay: Yeah I'm curious from your Boldemill's perspective if you were giving advice to someone who is just getting into the online space or maybe if you were to redo it again today what would you guys be focusing on you want me to answer this one first?
40:13
Mariah: Everybody's looking at me okay um I it's I don't have like I don't come into this non-biased do you know what I mean?
40:25
Mariah: I think if I had to start over again I would do SEO which it's crazy because five years ago me I was like I went through this like spiritual awakening right and I'm just like I have a soul and my soul is so deep and what do you mean I do SEO that isn't deep enough like what do you mean?
40:43
Mariah: And then I had the shift where I go what a gift that I get to help business owners that are good hearted people show up as the perfect solution to the problem when other good hearted people are looking for them and I get to help these small business owners get found by their people I get to teach them a marketing skill so that an agency doesn't gut them for $3,000 a month what a fucking gift.
41:12
Mariah: And it's funny because like when AI first came out two years ago three years ago whatever even my husband was like Mariah girl you better strike while the iron's hot because AI is coming for your job girl you think you're gonna be able to do this shit forever.
41:26
Mariah: And I was like in my head, you know I'm stubborn.
41:30
Mariah: He will tell you that I am stubborn.
41:32
Mariah: I will dig my heels into the ground just for the simple point of like you don't know me.
41:37
Mariah: You don't know what I feel and you don't know what I think and you don't know my industry.
41:41
Mariah: And so me and him bicker about it like jokingly and lovingly and he was he was just trying to bring this awareness because he knows that I can get caught in in rabbit holes and I go listen I hear you I see you and I'm I have my finger on the pulse here I'm pretty intuitive and I can see where things are like I can read the writing on the wall.
42:01
Mariah: And I was like I don't think that SU was going to shift like that.
42:05
Mariah: And so people kept telling me SU was shifting it's shifting it's shifting it's dying it's dying it's dying AI's taking over everything I'm busier than ever.
42:13
Mariah: I've never been this busy I'm telling people don't call me till September like I'm fucking busy bro and here's the thing my version of busy is not their version of busy my version of busy is I would like to enjoy my summer.
42:27
Mariah: I don't want to have back-to-back client projects like I'm booked until September time wise because I don't want client projects and I'm I'm glad that you brought up like the decisions and stuff like that because we have such a wide range of decision freedom that we forget about.
42:45
Mariah: And I feel like if I had to go back and tell myself that that could shift a lot of things really quickly for me because I was always concerned about what other people thought.
42:57
Mariah: And I think if this AI shift would have happened five years ago, it would have gutted me.
43:02
Mariah: But now I'm like no I've been in this I see where it's going I see the gaps that are happening and people keep coming to me with different questions but they're still the same I'm still saying the same things but like with a different mask on.
43:17
Mariah: Like I just have to use slightly different words now but like all of it is so connected that I don't see it crumbling to the ground and I'm actually seeing people revolting against AI and I'm seeing all of like the holes that AI creates and the trouble that people are getting into I have somebody in my membership that was like yeah I was asking ChatGBT like what I should do to get my website found ChatGPT said paste words on your site and then make them the same color as the background so people can't black hat SEO use old school like keyword stuffing and I was like do not do that.
43:55
Mariah: If you did that go and delete that right now delete that immediately and I was like but he I think that experts are needed now more than ever.
44:02
Mariah: And YouTube is that platform where it's it's really fucking hard to create AI video content that connects with humans.
44:09
Mariah: And so we're all getting burnt out on seeing the same old AI marketing bullshit email, especially when you were talking business to business.
44:17
Mariah: When you're B2C and you're business to consumer, my mom could read a post by AI and she's like, oh my God, did you hear?
44:23
Mariah: And I was like, girl, that's fake news.
44:25
Mariah: Like, what?
44:26
Mariah: When you're talking to business owners, we see it because we use it too.
44:30
Mariah: And so that's a convoluted way.
44:33
Shay: Well, I'm so Mariah, you're starting with zero subscribers.
44:35
Shay: Nobody knows about Mariah magazine.
44:38
Shay: Where do you go to YouTube to start educating, or where do you go today if you were starting from scratch and wanted to get some clients?
44:46
Mariah: I want to say YouTube, but if I am who I am and I didn't have the confidence on YouTube that I have, I would start with blog posts to get in the habit of creating educational content to find my process, to find my flow.
45:02
Mariah: And then I would turn those blog posts into YouTube videos.
45:05
Mariah: But yes, I would still do YouTube.
45:06
Shay: Cool.
45:07
Mariah: Yeah.
45:08
Shay: What about you, Christy?
45:09
Shay: Like if you were, what are your thoughts?
45:11
Christy: And like if you were scratched I want to go back to something Mariah said before I answer that, because you're talking about, yeah, I'm booked because I want to do other stuff.
45:22
Christy: And I have this phrase in my mind.
45:24
Christy: I can't remember where I heard it, but instead of saying my plate is full, I think my plate is full as as full as I like.
45:32
Christy: And so I love that.
45:35
Christy: I I I just like I always visualize that.
45:38
Christy: I'm just like, no, uh, my client plate is as full as I like.
45:41
Christy: I'm done.
45:43
Christy: Um I loved your answer to the question because I agree.
45:47
Christy: Like I feel like there is this reaction against AI.
45:51
Christy: We're gonna see more of that, see more people valuing experts instead of a robot to guide them.
45:59
Christy: We'll get back to that.
46:01
Christy: And I'm not worried for web designers at all because I'm thinking back to those days at the startup when we were coding by hand and Dreamweaver rolled out.
46:11
Christy: It's like, oh, it's gonna change everything.
46:13
Christy: You're gonna lose your jobs.
46:16
Christy: No, it's fine.
46:18
Christy: And then I'm also reminded of a conversation that I had with Kelsey a week of the website.
46:24
Christy: And she's like, Squarespace designers, we've built entire careers off the back of a DIY platform.
46:32
Christy: Like, come for us, AI.
46:34
Christy: Like, there's we're already, like, we're already making whatever we want out of this.
46:40
Christy: We will continue to do so.
46:41
Christy: So I'm not worried.
46:44
Christy: Um, but if I did have to start over again today, I think I would do exactly what Mariah said with creating content.
46:52
Christy: So I would go back to the blog posts, but instead of going into Facebook groups and share them, I'd be on Reddit answering questions.
47:00
Christy: Like today, I find myself instead of Googling things, I go to Reddit because that's where the people are.
47:05
Christy: That's where the humans are that know the answers is not giving me some AI thing.
47:09
Christy: It's like the only thing I trust on the internet anymore.
47:12
Shay: Yeah.
47:12
Shay: Where the real you can get a real opinion.
47:14
Mariah: Yeah, exactly.
47:14
Mariah: That's where I question everybody's suggestions because everybody contradicts themselves or like somebody else.
47:22
Mariah: I was I'm literally just on a Reddit thread this morning because we need a fucking bed frame for a king bed.
47:28
Mariah: And I was in this Reddit thread, and then somebody was like, Yeah, but don't get the king one because if you want the adjustable, the motor, it's not that like good to be able to lift up like a whole king mattress.
47:38
Mariah: So you should get the double splits twins if you want the adjustable, and then somebody else was like, No, that was stupid, and then you have to sit.
47:44
Mariah: And I was like, I gotta get off a Reddit, dude.
47:46
Mariah: Also, you should get the split mattress because it's a marriage saver.
47:50
Mariah: It's you can I already bought it.
47:53
Mariah: We're already we're already connected.
47:55
Mariah: I could cut it.
47:56
Mariah: You think I could cut it and sew it myself?
47:58
Mariah: I'm a DIY girl, I have a sewing machine.
48:02
Christy: I don't know, but I will say having this uh the ability to adjust your side the way you want it is pretty spectacular.
48:08
Christy: Okay.
48:09
Christy: Compared with a sleep number bed, like I can crank my side up to 90.
48:14
Christy: Dave can do whatever he wants over there.
48:17
Christy: I don't care.
48:18
Christy: I'm in zero G with a 90% full mattress.
48:22
Christy: I'm thrilled.
48:26
Mariah: Yeah, I think okay.
48:29
Mariah: You know what's funny is that I was also thinking, like, you brought up Dreamweaver, and then in my head I go WordPress too.
48:36
Mariah: Yeah.
48:37
Mariah: When WordPress came out, everybody was like, oh my god, you're not gonna need HTML job, you're not gonna need to learn JavaScript, your HTML, your table layouts are trash.
48:46
Mariah: And so I think once you've just been in the space long enough, yeah, everything's gonna be fine.
48:53
Mariah: Things as long as you're curious, the people that are getting really fucked over are the people that aren't curious or they're not expanding their not, they're not willing to follow breadcrumbs, they're not willing to expand a little bit.
49:10
Mariah: Like if I was only doing client work, like you were saying, it's like, well, what if something happens?
49:17
Mariah: Like I had a health emergency in December and it's like I would have been fucked.
49:21
Mariah: But like I had money coming in from YouTube ads, I had money coming in from sponsorship videos that I created prior to that, affiliate income, like digital product stuff.
49:30
Mariah: Like when you're a business owner and you own your own business, those different streams of income are your lifelines.
49:37
Christy: Yep.
49:38
Mariah: Do certain things.
49:38
Mariah: And so it doesn't just help you when a personal thing happens, it helps you when an industry thing happens, when a new 2020 happens and people aren't spending any money on service providers or experts because they're nervous about what's going to happen.
49:51
Mariah: Where are they spending money?
49:53
Mariah: I saw that they were spending more money on DIY things and products to help them get their business online.
49:59
Mariah: They were spending more money on templates, they were spending more money on things to be able to take things into their own hands.
50:05
Mariah: And so if you can have your pulse, like a pulse on your audience on the industry, and you're willing to be creative and curious, you're gonna be fine.
50:16
Christy: Yeah.
50:16
Christy: Like, don't panic.
50:18
Christy: It's all gonna be fine.
50:19
Christy: This industry has seen sea changes every few years, and that's never gonna change.
50:26
Christy: And I feel like AI, I don't know what it is about AI that makes it so different and that we're talking about it all the time with everything, but it's just another change that we're gonna see.
50:40
Christy: People are still gonna need websites, even if it is, even if we do get to the point where AI can create websites.
50:47
Christy: And I played around with Claw Design last week.
50:50
Christy: I'm not worried.
50:51
Christy: Um, but even when we do get to that point, you're gonna need somebody who can prompt it correctly.
50:58
Christy: You're not gonna be able to do that if you're Joe Schmoe, who's never prompted an AI for a website before.
51:05
Christy: So you're still gonna need experts.
51:07
Christy: Like your role may look a little different, but you're still gonna need to be an expert in your field.
51:13
Christy: And I don't think that's gonna change for web designers.
51:17
Christy: I think there's still gonna be space for us.
51:19
Mariah: Girl, I saw a thread on threads where somebody was like, if you've created a website with Claude Design or Claude Code or whatever the fuck it is, pop your URL in.
51:30
Mariah: They all look the same.
51:31
Mariah: It was the same website, they all look the same with slightly different colors.
51:38
Mariah: And I was like, listen, listen, y'all, that'll work in B2C.
51:43
Mariah: I'll say it all day.
51:44
Mariah: That shit'll work in B2C.
51:45
Mariah: My mom won't know the difference.
51:46
Mariah: Andrew won't know the difference.
51:48
Mariah: He was just on some some gut fixing website that was very clearly created by A, who's like, I'm gonna take this quiz, takes a quiz, gets prompted, this whatever.
51:56
Mariah: And then he's so frustrated because the user experience was trying.
51:59
Mariah: She goes, I just want to join the membership.
52:01
Mariah: Why can't I join?
52:02
Mariah: None of the buttons were working, yada yada.
52:04
Mariah: And I look at it, I go, babe, that shit was cre.
52:09
Mariah: That was two prompts of code, is what created that.
52:12
Mariah: And like you just gave it your email and like gotten, let's not even talk about the security features of it.
52:17
Mariah: But it's just like, you still need to know user experience, you still need to know your audience, you still need to know what makes a good site.
52:25
Mariah: Like, I consult people on SEO, and I can't tell you how many times I have to be like, we need to create a service page on your website for cold audiences.
52:35
Mariah: Yeah.
52:35
Mariah: Yeah.
52:35
Mariah: We can't have this cute paragraph and a picture of your dog.
52:40
Mariah: We need you to describe what you do, how you do it, like that type of thing.
52:46
Mariah: So it's like, it's just, it's really interesting to see the blind spots that are so glaringly obvious once you actually start noticing what AI is creating.
52:58
Christy: Yeah, just like you.
52:59
Christy: I was playing around with Cloud Design.
53:01
Christy: And then people were sending people send me things, and they're like, I made a website on Claude Design.
53:06
Christy: And I'm like, it looks like the last three emails I got from totally different people.
53:09
Christy: They look exactly the same.
53:11
Christy: And so I when I was playing with it, I was giving it inspiration sites.
53:15
Christy: I'm just like, make it look like this.
53:17
Christy: And choosing things that, for example, did not have a thin serif header with italics.
53:23
Christy: Um, and it wasn't able to do it.
53:25
Christy: It still gave me the thing that it thought I needed, which was that same site we're seeing over and over again.
53:32
Christy: So yeah, I'm not worried.
53:34
Christy: Not yet.
53:36
Shay: Um, I was hoping this conversation would have this kind of conclusion of hey, this happens every couple of years.
53:44
Shay: Yeah.
53:44
Shay: You know, like there's gonna be shifts, and that's the fun and also kind of maybe uncertain part about working online as opposed to like a more traditional job.
53:55
Shay: But just like all of us have noticed, I shared this with Mariah the other week, and it's really, I know everyone has tumbled feelings about Tony Robbins, but when I was joining the workforce, I heard him say, like, it's your responsibility to stay valuable in the economy.
54:09
Shay: You need to pay attention to how things are changing, and then how can you be a value in whatever is going on right now?
54:15
Shay: And so one thing I love about all of our stories is it's almost like some dog millionaire, right?
54:20
Shay: We're like using all our experiences to kind of like morph and change into the news situation.
54:26
Shay: But I just feel really resilient and strong at this point.
54:30
Shay: Like I feel like, okay, we've seen shifts.
54:32
Shay: And I even like you guys stayed kind of in the web design world.
54:36
Shay: I pivoted off.
54:37
Shay: I heard about, oh, there's this thing going on with high-ticket sales.
54:40
Shay: How could I get into that?
54:41
Shay: There's always going to be something going on like that.
54:43
Shay: The internet is always changing.
54:45
Shay: There's gonna be little pockets you can get into.
54:47
Shay: And it really comes back to build a portfolio, get some experience, start networking, go to these conferences, go to communities.
54:55
Shay: If there is a group training program, which I have a mixed feelings on, it might be helpful for your network.
55:00
Shay: But just it's not like how it was.
55:03
Shay: You do not need to go back to school and get a degree.
55:05
Shay: And I would even say, like, I don't know, I just am feeling less and less confident that these jobs that people are thinking are so secure in the in the box world are so secure.
55:14
Shay: I think the economy is changing.
55:16
Shay: And honestly, I think us out here in this digital online space are like really setting ourselves up well for the future.
55:24
Shay: When I think about the wealthiest people I know right now, it's content creators.
55:28
Shay: Like I really believe deeply this is the future.
55:32
Shay: So if you're a person that's kind of like you're in this job and you're like feeling like, oh, I want to do something online, but that ship has sailed, I would probably say like it hasn't even left the harbor yet.
55:42
Shay: Like I just feel like we don't even know where this is going, but like this is the future.
55:46
Shay: And I think people get scared.
55:49
Shay: Oh, if I do this, I'm gonna like get myself out of the corporate world, I'll never be able to get back in.
55:53
Shay: But I just hope that our stories are kind of examples of like, there's a million ways to slice and dice this baby, and it gets to be fun.
56:02
Shay: That's the other cool part about Chrissy's message message is like she told us that her zonem genius was knowing how to take time off.
56:08
Shay: That has been it for me always.
56:10
Shay: Like, I'm not, I've always said I'm not trying to buy an island.
56:13
Shay: I really just want to earn enough money to give myself a good quality of life and then enjoy that quality of life.
56:19
Shay: So I I think this is so cool, Chrissy.
56:23
Shay: I think that your story is encouraging.
56:26
Shay: I up until this point have really avoided making content, and I am just seeing like over and over again how fundamental that is to like building a sustainable online business model.
56:37
Shay: I love adding revenue streams.
56:39
Shay: I'm all about that.
56:39
Shay: And like I am just feeling really excited after talking to you two about I don't know, I feel like everyone wants to tell you if you work for yourself, it's not sustainable.
56:47
Shay: But you guys have just shared such lovely examples of shit happens, and I built this awesome sustainable system for myself that supported me.
56:54
Shay: So if you're listening to this and you're curious about online space or earning money online, um, it and you're hearing about AI and blah, blah, blah.
57:03
Shay: It's it is what you make of it.
57:06
Shay: Like, where are you curious?
57:07
Shay: Where do you like what do you like?
57:09
Shay: Do you like managing people?
57:11
Shay: Do you like educating people?
57:12
Shay: You know, there's like so many different things.
57:13
Shay: Do you like baking sourdough bread?
57:15
Shay: Like, whatever you like to do, you can be making content about that.
57:19
Shay: And you could be getting affiliate links, or you could be building courses, or you could just be doing infinite number of things, which I think for our brains is like the fun and exciting part.
57:29
Shay: So, Christy, I just think I've always been like your fangirl, but like I just think you're cool and I love the idea of like I found you on Facebook comments.
57:37
Shay: I know that's where I first started seeing your name.
57:39
Shay: But this weird thing happened where I was like, oh, that Christy, like she is just the expert in this space.
57:46
Shay: So I think there is absolutely something now we're over on Reddit, but just whenever you know, start sharing it.
57:52
Shay: Start showing up.
57:53
Shay: Where are your people?
57:54
Shay: Be on Reddit.
57:54
Shay: Be, I there's still great things going on on Facebook, to be honest.
57:58
Shay: So, like, I don't know.
57:59
Shay: I don't think any of it's dead.
58:00
Shay: I think you just kind of got to figure out how it works for you.
58:05
Mariah: Okay.
58:06
Mariah: I've been sitting here the entire time that Shay was talking and I was like, I don't want to end this.
58:10
Mariah: We have one more question.
58:12
Mariah: I have one more question before we get to our final question.
58:14
Mariah: And Christy, I know that you have somewhere to go, but I still have a couple minutes with you.
58:17
Mariah: So to piggyback off of what Shay said in terms of like you prioritize and like what you said, you prioritize the fun, you prioritize the money.
58:27
Mariah: One of the things that I noticed when we first started emailing, A, this isn't a question, this is just something that I love.
58:33
Mariah: You have your unplugged days in your email signature.
58:37
Mariah: So like when you email Christy, she responds back.
58:40
Mariah: She has upcoming unplugged days where like she's not gonna be available.
58:44
Mariah: I was, I don't want to say I was offended the first time that I saw that, but I was like, You can do that, you can just like say, like, she wasn't like, I'm going on vacation, I'm getting surgery.
58:59
Mariah: She literally was like, I'm not fucking answering you between like these two days, and she didn't explain why she didn't have whatever.
59:05
Mariah: Like, that is such an easy way for us to just take some fucking time off.
59:14
Mariah: I had to share that example because, like, what's what's the logistics behind it?
59:18
Mariah: It's literally looking at your schedule and being like, huh, I'm not gonna work these days.
59:22
Mariah: Yep.
59:23
Mariah: I'm gonna take off, and then you put it in your footer, and then you don't have to make a big hubaloo about it.
59:27
Mariah: And you can literally just like decide and then let people notice that like that's when your unplugged days are.
59:34
Mariah: So I had to bring that on as an example of something that like I really, really love about what you do.
59:40
Mariah: And then I wanted to tie that in to we kind of mentioned you have a daughter that's about to like start entering the workforce and that type of thing.
59:47
Mariah: So combining all of this together, can we ask what your motherly advice is for her in the age of AI, based on everything that you know about the online space?
1:00:03
Mariah: Like, are you telling her, like, nope, you should be, and I don't know her skills or like, you know, what her zone of genius is, but are you telling her, like, nope, you should start maybe being a bookkeeper for somebody else, gain some knowledge, and then like, do you become a bookkeeper on your own?
1:00:16
Mariah: Or are you like, nope, it should start a YouTube channel, you should do a podcast?
1:00:20
Mariah: Like, where is your advice with like the career field, how you see things are moving and what you've learned along the way?
1:00:30
Mariah: Yeah.
1:00:31
Christy: So I just want to give a shout out to copywriter Jack Fish, who I totally stole the upcoming Unplugged days from.
1:00:39
Christy: But I when I saw that, I'm like, yes, we should normalize this.
1:00:43
Christy: We do not have to work every day.
1:00:46
Christy: We are humans and we get vacations and we get time off.
1:00:49
Christy: And also, I'm the boss.
1:00:51
Christy: I can choose not to work these days, and that's just how it is, because I'm the boss and I said so.
1:00:56
Christy: So I I love that you um that you found that interesting.
1:01:00
Christy: And I I hope more people do it because I think we need to normalize that.
1:01:03
Christy: Because just because we're on creative entrepreneurs does not mean we're available 24-7.
1:01:08
Christy: Um, as far as advice goes, so my daughter, her son of genius is writing.
1:01:17
Christy: So her degree is in English with a minor in creative writing.
1:01:22
Christy: And she came out of college expecting to get a junior copywriter position, which has been one of the fallouts from AI.
1:01:33
Christy: Almost every company has cut all of those positions, and now the senior copywriters are just generating a whole lot of content using AI.
1:01:42
Christy: And it was really heartbreaking for her because that's what she loves to do.
1:01:47
Christy: And it's impossible to find a job doing that and getting training.
1:01:51
Christy: So she really wanted, you know, a job where she would show up and learn the ropes.
1:01:55
Christy: And what I think is interesting is in probably 10 years, nobody's gonna know how to teach other people how to do this.
1:02:01
Christy: So I think we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
1:02:04
Christy: But my advice to her and everyone else is find something that you like doing or that makes money.
1:02:15
Christy: Fun and money, right?
1:02:16
Christy: It comes back to fun and money.
1:02:18
Christy: So right now she is a VA for me and some other Squarespace designers because that brings in the money.
1:02:24
Christy: And she is also working on a novel because that is fun.
1:02:29
Christy: So yeah, as far as it goes, like Shay was saying, be scrappy, be willing to like pivot when you need to, show up, and everything's gonna be fine.
1:02:41
Christy: Everything will be fine.
1:02:43
Christy: Don't panic.
1:02:44
Mariah: I love that you're like that she's a VA.
1:02:48
Mariah: Me and Shay talk about this all the time, though.
1:02:50
Mariah: Like, it's such a good intro space, like to get into the online space via virtual assistant, even if it's creating an upwork profile, even if it's reaching out to somebody you know and be like, hey, do you need help answering emails or something?
1:03:04
Mariah: Like, that's just how you're going to get your feet wet in the space.
1:03:08
Mariah: I feel like most people come in either as a VA or as a website designer.
1:03:12
Mariah: Yeah.
1:03:12
Mariah: And it's like, and those two buckets or arenas kind of touch so many different skills that it's like then you allow yourself to be scrappy and to learn like what your zone of genius is.
1:03:23
Mariah: Yes.
1:03:23
Mariah: And kind of like all of our stories, we had no idea where we were gonna end up.
1:03:28
Mariah: But what we did is we just took the leap.
1:03:31
Mariah: So it's like your daughter has no idea where this novel is gonna go, where this VA work is gonna go.
1:03:36
Mariah: But maybe she finds that like she actually really enjoys editing your YouTube videos and like being fun with that.
1:03:42
Mariah: Okay, cool.
1:03:43
Mariah: What I didn't know that I liked being a video producer.
1:03:46
Mariah: Are there video producing?
1:03:47
Mariah: Can I create a portfolio for video producing?
1:03:50
Mariah: It's like, and she never would have realized that if she ended up being a junior copywriter for a magazine that maybe would have laid her off in six months.
1:03:58
Mariah: Yeah.
1:03:59
Christy: I feel like today it's so easy to just try things out.
1:04:05
Christy: So 25 years ago, when you took a job, you had to stay for a year no matter what, like, or it would just look really bad.
1:04:12
Christy: And even if you left in a year, people were just like, tisk, disc, you didn't stay with the company, you have no loyalty.
1:04:18
Christy: And today that is out the window.
1:04:20
Christy: That is totally out the window.
1:04:22
Christy: You can job hop, you can figure things out, and nobody's gonna look sideways at you.
1:04:27
Christy: I think that that is one of the beauties of the job market today.
1:04:32
Christy: I mean, there's just a lot of really awful things going on in it.
1:04:35
Christy: But one of the one of the upsides is that you're not expected to just stick it out somewhere terrible.
1:04:40
Christy: You can leave, do something else, or figure out on your own what to do that, what you like to do and make that your job.
1:04:47
Christy: I mean, that's what we all did.
1:04:48
Christy: We're like, that sounds fun.
1:04:50
Christy: Maybe I'll just do that myself.
1:04:52
Christy: And at this point, I can never go back to a corporate job.
1:04:56
Christy: I am highly unemployable.
1:04:58
Christy: I have opinions, I like my schedule.
1:05:01
Christy: Uh, I don't like being told what to do.
1:05:03
Christy: Uh, I could, I could never go back to a quote, real job.
1:05:08
Mariah: Yeah.
1:05:09
Mariah: Yeah.
1:05:09
Mariah: The online space is cool.
1:05:11
Mariah: And honestly, it brought all three of us together.
1:05:13
Mariah: What a gift.
1:05:14
Mariah: What a gift.
1:05:15
Mariah: What a gift.
1:05:16
Mariah: All right, Christy.
1:05:17
Mariah: Thank you so much for your time.
1:05:18
Mariah: We do have, okay, I promise is the last question.
1:05:21
Mariah: So we have one question that we ask every human on the podcast.
1:05:24
Mariah: What has been sparking your curiosity lately?
1:05:29
Christy: Yeah.
1:05:29
Christy: So that is a great question.
1:05:31
Christy: I think for me, what has been sparking my curiosity is not work-related at all.
1:05:37
Christy: Um, I'm currently fostering a third dog.
1:05:41
Christy: So we have two dogs and we are fostering a third dog.
1:05:44
Christy: And I've really been curious about dog training because each of my dogs has a very different personality.
1:05:54
Christy: And I feel like in dog training, it's kind of just like all, you know, this is how you teach a dog to sit.
1:06:00
Christy: This is how you, but it's not.
1:06:01
Christy: They're so different.
1:06:02
Christy: And so I've been kind of going down the rabbit hole of training dogs and working with their personalities and working with what fuels them and engages them.
1:06:11
Christy: And so that's been really fun.
1:06:14
Mariah: Can I be your test mentee?
1:06:16
Mariah: Because Frederico, my puppy Frederick, I've nicknamed him Fredrico.
1:06:21
Mariah: I love it.
1:06:22
Mariah: Um, doesn't want to walk around the block.
1:06:24
Mariah: I was like, listen, my dude, I got you for numerous reasons.
1:06:26
Mariah: And one of them is to get my computer ass outside.
1:06:30
Mariah: And by outside, I would like to take a walk.
1:06:32
Mariah: And he literally is just like, I'm not really interested in this.
1:06:36
Mariah: So we've signed up for puppy classes, but then he gets so overstimulated by all of he just wants to smell all of their buttholes.
1:06:42
Mariah: And to be honest, like, I get it, like on one end, because like that's super interesting.
1:06:47
Mariah: He's only really home with me and my husband.
1:06:49
Mariah: So it's like you have all of these scents all around.
1:06:51
Mariah: I get it.
1:06:52
Mariah: But like in this puppy class, it's a class, dude.
1:06:54
Mariah: Like, we are in school.
1:06:55
Mariah: You need to sit and go to your station.
1:06:58
Mariah: And he like is so overstimulated.
1:07:01
Mariah: So we're gonna have to talk about this after.
1:07:04
Mariah: Yes.
1:07:04
Mariah: I am also very interested in the idea of this because they are all so different.
1:07:09
Mariah: And he was a foster, and me and Andrew were talking.
1:07:12
Mariah: We literally were just like, fosters are angels.
1:07:16
Mariah: You guys are fucking angels.
1:07:18
Mariah: You're not even planning on keeping this dog long term, and you still use your free time to love this puppy, hold this puppy, walk this puppy, train this puppy.
1:07:28
Mariah: What a gift.
1:07:29
Mariah: So, on behalf of the entire world, I would like you to, I would like to say thank you so much for your foster service.
1:07:36
Mariah: And before we let you go, you need to tell the listeners where they can find and connect with you.
1:07:42
Mariah: Yeah, ChristyPrice.com or Christy Price on YouTube.
1:07:46
Mariah: Well, she makes it very easy for me, y'all.
1:07:49
Mariah: And if you're a website designer, you definitely need to check out her communities.
1:07:53
Mariah: Christy has an incredible YouTube, like a really fun YouTube membership.
1:07:57
Mariah: If you want some accountability for creating YouTube videos, I was a guest expert in there.
1:08:03
Mariah: The community is incredible.
1:08:04
Mariah: She's also has communities and products and different options for website designers.
1:08:09
Mariah: So we're gonna put some extra links to stuff in the show notes below.
1:08:13
Mariah: But I think we're ready to close this episode down.
1:08:16
Mariah: So thank you, Christy, for coming on, for sharing your knowledge, for giggling with us.
1:08:20
Mariah: You're the best.
1:08:21
Mariah: And so remember, friends, that you have the power to create whatever the fuck you want.
1:08:27
Mariah: Follow the nudge, ask questions, and let curiosity guide the way.
1:08:31
Mariah: We'll see you in the next episode.