If you’re a website designer or developer who’s invested in coaching and still feels stuck, this episode is for you.

I’ve been hearing from so many designers who say

“I tried coaching, I’m burned out, and my business still doesn’t feel sustainable.”

In this episode I’m breaking down the real reasons coaching often doesn’t work for website designers, and why mentoring can be a better fit when you need practical, industry specific support.

I talk about:

• the key difference between coaching and mentoring

• why “you already have the answers” can feel infuriating when you’re in client chaos

• how industry specific advice helps with things like tricky feedback, scope creep and boundaries

• what it looks like to be supported while you level up without burning out

I’ll also share how I work with designers and developers inside my Phoenix programme and through one to one mentoring, so you can decide what kind of support is right for you.

👉 Want mentoring that actually understands the realities of running a web design business?

Come and find out more at websitesmadesimple.co.uk or email me at [email protected]

Happy designing!

Skip to the good bits:

00:00 Coach vs. Mentor: Key Differences

06:04 "Mastering Best Practices Confidently"

08:50 Mentoring for Thriving Designers

10:40 "Connect for Design Insights"

Join my Phoenix Programme - https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/phoenix-programme

Mentioned in this episode:

Join my Sparks Group Mentoring Programme

Remember to sign up for our blogging masterclass!

Go to https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/masterclass

Blogging masterclass

A coach, a little bit like therapy, but not quite therapy. We

do our best work when we're out of our comfort zone. As a mentor,

I'm not going to waste your time suggesting that you

explore or scope out something that I know from personal experience

does not work.

At the moment, I'm speaking to a lot of website designers who

are saying to me, I've recently had coaching, or I've had coaching

in the last year. I know I needed to do something in my business and

the coaching didn't work. And I feel like I'm burnt out.

And I feel like I've kind of lost faith in

how to run my business in a model where I can scale it,

where I can take some more time out of it, and where I can actually

really enjoy it again. And I really

hear you. I really feel for you. And so, so

many people have been there. And I wanted to record this

podcast episode for you because I wanted to say, don't

give up. Please don't give up, because there is the

right solution for you out there. And I thought I would use this

episode to walk through a few of the

points in why this possibly hasn't worked for you

and how we can turn that around.

Hi, for anyone who doesn't know me, I am Holly Christie. I am the host

of this podcast, Websites Made simple, and I am a

website designer, a website designer's mentor, and

developers. I mentor you too, and I am here to help

you have the best career that you can

have doing what you love. So let's get

started.

So the one thing that has come up is that people

say about, you know, I went to work with a coach, and

I get it. There are coaches everywhere. I build so

many websites for coaches. I really do know,

like, how that message is being put to us, particularly freelancers,

all the time. You need coaching for this, you need coaching for that. And it's

really easy to fall down the spiral of someone's content and think, oh, yeah,

I really like them. I feel like I've got to know them. It's time to

go and work with them. And one of the things that I would

say people are probably in our industry making

the first mistake with is that they're working with a coach instead of a

mentor. And the difference between this is that

coaching is very much you have your own

answers and the coach is there to help you

unlock them. And in doing that, they can help you

overcome obstacles, they can help you do some brilliant

things and increase your confidence and find these answers. And it's

Fantastic. But when you're a website designer, the chances

are that what you need is mentoring. Where someone says,

I've been where you are, I know what the industry

is like, I know the problems that you're facing and whether that's growing

your business or whether that's with a really sticky layout that you just

can't quite get right, or everything that comes in between with

that. And that is what mentoring is. Coaching. They're not meant to give

advice. They are meant to just listen and ask

questions. And they sometimes will use work models and worksheets and stuff which

will help to kind of challenge you and stretch you and help you to really

explore those answers. But they can't give you advice.

If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you will

know that I give a lot of advice. And one of those

things is because I am a mentor, so I can and I've been you and

I've lived you. And I don't want you to have to do

that all by yourself and feel really at lost of it. Or I also

don't want you to have the hideous experiences that I had along the way that

kind of formulates that basis of this advice as

well.

What you won't know about me because it's from qualification

from even before my website designing days is that I trained in

counseling so skills as well. And so I also

know how to really listen and use those guided questions as well to

support you in being heard,

in finding those answers and having the confidence that it's not

just about saying this is what you need to do now go off and do

it. It's about really supporting you in the best way that that works

for you as well. I always say, like, no two websites.

If I went and built a website and you went and built a website and

we were using all the same materials, we would not build

the same website. And that's the case with mentoring

and coaching as well, is that you won't be getting the same advice. So when

you work with me, you'd be getting the advice that really works for

you and helps support you in getting to the next level.

Doing it, I would say within your comfort zone. But we do our best

work when we're out of our comfort zone. What I will say is that I

can absolutely support you every step of the way with that as

well. So a coach also doesn't

have an industry specific experience, so they're

not able to really take some of the issues that we face

within the industry and really advise you on how to deal with that

as well. And that's quite a big one because when you get a client, come

back and say, I don't like the draft of this website,

sorry, or, you know, I don't want to stick to your terms of service,

or I date this, that or the other. What you need is on the ground

help then and there. You don't need someone saying, well,

what do you feel your answer should be for that? Or how did that make

you feel? You need someone who can say, right, okay, what would you like the

outcome of this to be? And for us to be able to go through and

work on that outcome and get that outcome, achieve it together. As

a mentor, I will support you to working to best

practices all of the time. I am absolutely known

for not cutting corners. And that doesn't mean that we do

everything longhand all of the way. There are lots of tips

and tricks that I can teach you and, you know, whether that's

kind of cloning pages and saving containers and sending stuff up

to the cloud and drawing it back down from the cloud and really kind of

honing those practices. But it means that when you are

working to best practices all of the time, you know that

you can be confident in, in not only what you are delivering to your

clients, but to the skills that you're learning and you're

embedding as well. You know, once you start doing something really well one way, you

will continue to do that really well all the way

through. So I will support you in doing that as well.

And going back to that point where I said about we all do things differently,

we all run our businesses slightly differently as well. And as a mentor, I'm

not here to say to you, you've got to do this like the way I

do it, or you've got to use the tools I use, or you've got to

do this, that, and the other, I can, of course, make recommendations as

to what tools I use. I think there's a podcast episode back in

the backlogs which talk to you about what tools I use, what the essential

ones I feel are. But what I'm looking to do when I'm working

with you is, is look at building on the stuff

that's really worked for you. So you might think, right, I've got this

set up nailed. This is what I want to work in. And then we're going

to go and develop that and say, okay, that's brilliant. You know, how can

we then bring that to the market in a way that's going to get you

more business, that's going to keep your clients happy, that's going to feel very productive

for you. And we all, especially because we work in

such a creative industry, we have so many ideas and that

can be for running our businesses as well as projects

and things like that. And I'm going to

encourage you to scope out those ideas as well. I work

with coaches. I had a coach a few years ago when I really wanted

to level up. She was absolutely amazing. Every time I came up with an

idea, she would say, go and scope it out. And I would go and scope

it out and I would know which ones were worth pursuing because

I would action them, I would take action on them. So we

will look at doing that as well and some of them will naturally

fall by the wayside. So when you've had coaching in the

past and you've said, I feel like I've been burned, I feel like it hasn't

worked, all that sort of stuff, you're not going to get that when

you're working with me because we're not going to get to a point where you

feel like none of this is working and it is just hopeless.

I'm going to really support you with some really industry specific stuff that's

going to get you to the next level and it works. Not only have I

done this for myself, but I mentor handfuls of

website designers and developers every year and they've all

gone on to grow their business, they've gone on to niche, they've gone on to

get specific skill sets and they are all thriving. And you

can thrive too.

Finally with coaching, and you've probably had this, and it's just following

on from the last point is that coaches can sometimes gloss over when there's been

something that's not worked well because they don't know how to fix it.

And again, with mentoring, we can fix it. Because we're

not going to gloss over if something hasn't worked. We'll look at why it hasn't

worked. If we're scoping something else and I'm telling you that's

not going to work, I will also tell you why it's not going to work.

And then of course, if you want to then push forward and say, no, I

really want to try and develop this, then we will look at the most viable

and practical way of developing it together. So if you feel

that you would like to give it another go, you would like to get back

in the saddle and really develop your website design

business, but you'd like to do it with some industry specific support.

You could look at my Phoenix program. That is a nine month program

for websites, developers and designers. It is there to

support them in leveling up, growing their business, making a name for themselves

and loving what they do. It's also designed to help you to

be able to step away from your business a little bit so that you can

make more money but also have some more free time. If you're a

little bit nervous of going into a nine month program right

now, I hear you. I totally understand why that would be the case

and you can book one to one mentoring with me through my websites as well.

And you just go to websitesmadesimple.co.uk you'll find

everything you need there and I would love to hear from you. If

you've liked what you've heard today and you would like to explore this more,

come to the website or get in touch. You can find me at

helloebsitesmadesimple.co.uk. i would

love to hear from you. Until then, happy

designing.