Yo, what is up everybody? This is obviously a little bit different, isn’t it? I’m starting a brand new series.
It is kind of a behind-the-scenes series, maybe a casual series. I’m going to call it my AFK series or AFK style videos.
I don’t always like to be in front of the computer, in front of the big screens, in front of the big lights, at the desk, in the office.
I spend enough time there.
And so a lot of times there are videos I want to record and I don’t want to be there when I record them.
I want to be just living my life.
And this is an opportunity maybe for you guys to see a little bit more of a behind-the-scenes look.
It’s just a new style, maybe a more entertaining style of creating content.
And it helps me out because I get to be out and about when I’m creating my videos and I can be more casual.
And I can also, like, first of all, I mean, I get my best ideas when I’m out and about.
And so if I can just record them instead of writing them down and then trying to record them later at some point,
if I can just pop out the camera and record it, that’s better for all of us, right?
By the way, I’m sitting outside my favorite sushi spot right now, about to go get me an absolutely delectable Ichiban roll.
It’s going to be fantastic. I’m starving. It’s going to be fantastic.
But I’m going to record this video for you guys first.
And the topic for today is combating this lie that every business needs a website in 2025.
This is a lie.
By the way, if you buy, there’s three lies.
And if you buy into these lies, it is going to create tremendous negative outcomes for your business, for your agency, for your freelance business.
Lie number one is that every business needs a website.
Lie number two is that every business should be able, if we make it affordable enough, should be able to afford a website.
And we should do whatever we need to do to, like, we shouldn’t be saying no to these businesses.
We got to work with them.
We got to find ways to help them afford a website because it’s so important to their business.
And it’s so important to, like, the democratization of the web and getting everybody online and everybody having representation and all this other stuff that we throw in there.
All these feel-good ideas that we put out there to convince ourselves that, yeah, we should be doing this work for everybody that comes along.
And the third lie is that just because a business says they’re a business doesn’t mean they’re a real business.
So these are the three lies that we’re going to tackle.
There’s going to be some hard truths in here.
It’s very hard for me to say, truths, to say that word for whatever reason it is.
My mouth doesn’t work.
It doesn’t form those sounds the way that I would like them to.
Okay?
That’s neither here nor there.
We’re going to continue on as if nothing has happened so far.
All right.
Let’s get into it.
So the idea in 2005 that everybody needed a website, probably a good idea.
2012, probably a good idea.
I don’t know when exactly it shifted.
More recently, I would say.
But we just have to accept the fact that we live in an era where everybody has checked that box.
Everybody has a website now.
Every business has checked that box.
Okay?
To whatever degree.
And there are only 10 spots on the front page of Google still.
Right?
There’s 30, but like 20 of them are paid.
So, you know, there’s 10 spots on the front page of Google.
You used to be able to just check the box of having a website.
You could do a little bit of SEO work.
You could get yourself ranking.
You could drive traffic to the website.
You could make that website work for a business for very little money.
And that is just not the reality.
And that is just not the reality in today’s web.
So, in 2025, a business comes to you.
Here’s the common scenario.
A business comes to you.
And they start giving you the, yeah, all we need is a really basic website kind of thing.
Because they’re trying to keep the budget low.
This is a red flag for like, how do you know they want to keep the budget low?
They’re telling you they want a basic site.
They don’t need anything crazy.
Maybe five to seven pages.
This kind of talk, that is the red flag, right?
And so, they’re already trying to get you to come in with some low ball offer, right?
They’ve seen the Wix commercials that everybody can do it.
They bought into that lie.
They’re not looking to spend a lot of money.
And you’re going to throw out, so you’re on the other end of the spectrum.
Hopefully, you are setting project minimums.
And you are starting to realize, hey, I can’t be entertaining these $1,000 projects.
I can’t be entertaining these $2,500 projects.
What we need to do is we need to set a project minimum of like $5,000.
If they don’t have $5,000, we’re going to try not to work with them.
But when you first set those limits, you feel bad for people.
And you need the money.
You’re making all these excuses as to why you should actually accept this project for $3,500 or $2,500 or something like that, right?
And you fall into this trap of serving these low-end clients with low-end dollars.
And you’re in the rat race.
It’s the agency freelance rat race living project to project.
The money’s running out before the project is done.
It’s an absolute agency poverty kind of situation.
And you can’t find a way out of this because the way you see it, you need every dollar that is possible to come in.
So you’re going to take the next one at $2,500 and the next one at $3,500 and maybe even the next one at $1,500.
You’re doing whatever you can do to get by.
And the only way, the only way to escape this rat race is to accept that the three lies that we just covered, and we’re going to cover them in more detail, are in fact lies.
And if you continue to believe them and you continue to buy into them, you are essentially committing yourself to this agency poverty for the rest of time until you run out of steam and run out of energy and you just have to shut everything down.
You’re never going to get to where you want to go.
So let’s accept the fact that now in 2025, not everybody needs a website.
And here’s why.
You need money to own a website, not just to get the website online, but to own a website and make it do something for your business.
And if a business comes to you and you throw out the number of $5,000, let’s just, we’re going to use that as our benchmark.
Let’s say your project minimum $5,000.
And you tell the client, hey, our minimum is $5,000.
Are you cool with that?
Is that what you expected?
And they start objecting to it.
This right away highlights two different fundamental truths.
One, if a business objects to a $5,000 price point for what is really supposed to be their central marketing and sales hub on the internet, right?
Something that is going to, should, should be producing a tremendous ROI for their business.
They are objecting to a $5,000 price tag for that.
You are very likely not dealing with a real business.
And this is that lie that, oh, well, they said they’re a business.
They must be a business.
If they don’t have $5,000, they’re not a business.
They are a hobby or they are a hopeful business or they are a maybe business.
They’re not a business at the current time.
A business at the current time has $5,000 to invest in something as important as a working, functional, ROI-based website.
Okay?
Now, there could be a reason they don’t want to spend $5,000 is they don’t know what the potential of a website is.
Like a real website.
Okay?
And they don’t know.
They’re still in brochure website land.
And you’ve got to get them out of brochure website land.
And if they are a serious business and they have serious money and they’re just not educated,
you will be able to educate them and you will be able to get them.
Here’s the key.
You will be able to get them to spend $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000 or $25,000.
Okay?
So that is a possible scenario.
But if they truly, fundamentally don’t have or aren’t willing to spend $5,000 on something so important,
they are not, my friend, a real business.
And you should not be entertaining them as if they are a real business.
Just let them go.
It’s not a good fit.
Go find yourself a real business to work with.
Okay?
I’m telling you right now.
Okay?
I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire life.
If a business is a real business, they have $5,000.
Okay?
So one of two things is happening.
Either A, they’re not a real business.
Or two, you’re not doing your job communicating what the actual value of a website is.
The solution to those two challenges is not to reduce the price.
Absolutely not.
Will we be reducing the price?
That is not the solution to either of those two problems.
Okay?
Either you’re going to go find somebody else who’s a real business,
or you’re going to get this person on the same page with you
as to why they should be spending more than $5,000 for this website.
Okay?
All right.
So we got that out of the way.
Because remember, here’s the other truth that we have to get into.
Not every business can afford a website.
Because the $5,000 that they are going to spend for you to design and build this website
and get it published and get it online and check the box of,
okay, we have a website or we have a new website.
That is the beginning of the money that has to go into that website.
Because this is not a scenario where, well, we built it so they will come.
And you know that as well as I know it.
You are supposedly an expert in this industry.
You are supposedly a consultant.
Aren’t you supposed to be informing your client of that?
This is not a if we build it, they will come scenario.
We can’t just do a few SEO tricks.
You’re an electrician.
You’re a plumber.
You’re a restaurant.
You’re a whatever.
There’s 5,000 of you in every city.
And every single one of those businesses has a website,
whether it’s Wix or Squarespace or WordPress or agency-driven.
And I guarantee all of the ones taking up the top 10 spots are agency-driven.
They have mad dollars behind them pumping money into SEO, pumping money into PPC,
pumping money into billboards and offline marketing and everything else that they’re doing.
Why?
Because those are real businesses.
And that’s what real businesses do.
They don’t balk at spending $5,000.
This is just proof positive of the other lie that I was talking about.
So you have to inform people.
Like if somebody’s objecting to the first $5,000,
this is a scenario where most of these businesses,
if they were going to run PPC, for example,
are going to be spending a minimum of $2,500 a month.
That’s the bare minimum.
They don’t have $5,000,
but somehow they’re going to have the $2,500 a month that they need to pump into this website
to actually drive traffic and get an ROI from it.
What about Facebook ads?
Like, you know what?
An opening budget for a real business running Facebook ads or TikTok ads or Instagram ads
or whatever is SEO,
they’re going to be on a retainer for legitimate SEO.
That’s thousands of dollars per month.
The idea that they’re going to scrape whatever money you ask for together,
and then you’re going to build something without any insight as to
how are you going to fund the thing going forward.
That’s crazy talk.
That’s crazy work.
If that’s what you’re doing for clients,
you’re doing crazy work.
Businesses that would have to scrape together the money to have you build a $5,000 website,
or if they have to scrape that $5,000 together,
they cannot afford to have a website in the modern era.
Even if they do that,
even if they scrape it together,
even if you do your job,
that website is just going to sit there.
That is a glorified brochure website.
Until many more marketing dollars are pumped into that website,
it ain’t going to do a damn thing.
And you should tell them that up front.
If you have that conversation,
man, to be honest with you,
if you’re struggling to come up with $5,000 for a real website,
I don’t think your business can afford a website at the current time.
Because the truth is,
this is the consultancy you have to do.
The truth is,
that website is going to do nothing for your business
unless you have many more dollars to put in after that
to drive significant traffic,
to drive significant ROI.
Just being honest with you,
being upfront with you.
And this is something they need to hear.
You know why?
Because they could take whatever $5,000,
they could scrap together,
scrape together,
and they could go put that into a more scrappy,
more immediate ROI marketing initiative.
And that’s what you should advise them to do.
Anybody who comes to you who claims to be a business,
and clearly they aren’t one
because they don’t have the money that a real business has,
should be consulted
to take whatever money they can scrape together,
whatever time and effort they can scrape together,
and go put that into an immediate ROI-driven marketing initiative
that is not named a website.
Because a website in 2025
is a next-step marketing initiative.
It is not a first-step marketing initiative.
It was a first-step marketing initiative in 2005, perhaps.
It was a first-step marketing initiative in 2015, perhaps.
In 2025,
doing the first step of putting a website online
that doesn’t do anything for you.
You ain’t gonna show up, Jack, okay?
You gotta have many, many, many more dollars
to put in after that first iteration goes live
or nothing is gonna happen.
Which means,
if all you can afford is that first step,
you’re just lighting that money on fire,
at least for the time being.
It would be much better for that person,
that company, that whatever,
that hobby,
really, that’s what we should call them.
They’re a hobby right now, okay?
They’re an aspiring business,
but they aren’t a real business.
It would be better for them to take that money,
go do something scrappy with it,
go do something that has an immediate ROI.
You have to know this.
They have to be told this.
You, if you wanna get out of the rat race,
if you wanna stop being a broke agency,
living project to project,
you have to accept that these three lies
are, in fact, lies.
Not every business needs a website.
Not every business can afford a website.
And not every business is actually a business.
And just because they say they’re a business
don’t mean they’re a business, okay?
Real businesses have money.
Real businesses are willing to invest real money.
Real businesses are willing to put good money
after good money after good money.
As long as you know what you’re doing,
as long as you’re doing your job,
they will continue investing and investing
and scaling that investment
and getting a real ROI out of their website.
This is what needs to happen in 2025,
in the modern era.
This is what you need to be communicating to your clients.
These are the standards that you need to be setting
for yourself and your business.
If you want to start doing $10,000 projects,
$20,000 projects,
if you want your money to stop running out
before the project is completed,
these are the standards you need to set.
This is going to get you to the next level.
This is going to get you to where you feel like,
wow, I’m actually being paid
what I deserve to be paid now.
And wow, I’m actually able to pay my bills.
And wow, I’m not desperate for the next project.
And I can actually pick and choose my clients.
And I can actually get rid of all the red flag people.
And I can actually enjoy what I do
instead of being broke and burned out.
These are the truths.
These are the lies.
We have to live in reality.
We have to accept reality for what it is.
And if you start doing this consistently
and you can be disciplined to reality,
you will have much better outcomes.
If you like this video,
drop comments below,
hit like,
make sure you’re subscribed.
There’s a lot more where this is coming from.
If you have questions about this video,
drop them below.
If you have objections to this video,
drop them below.
I love it all.
I love it all.
Okay.
And I’ll be back very soon.
I’m going to go get my Ichiban roll.
I’m starving.
I’m going to go get my sushi.
Okay.
I’ll be back very soon.
