No Curriculum or Judgment: Inside My Web Design Community
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I've been running my community since 2023!
I'm in there answering questions and checking in all the time, but I still meet designers who had no idea it exists. So today I'm taking you behind the curtain, top to bottom, so you can actually see what’s in there for yourself!
Before I get into the tour—who am I to be running a design community? 🤭 (no judgement for your question; I get it!)
I'm a graphic designer turned web designer, and I've been running my own business since 2015; as a side-hustle for the first 5 years, then full time ever since!
I don’t know everything, but I do know a lot of things because I've tried, and failed or succeeded at a lot of things in those years, which is exactly why I created a space where you don't have to go through that alone.
I have a knack for explaining things well, and with an unusual amount of detail, so I decided to create a community where I could be on standby for your questions as you build and grow your businesses. Questions about your tech stack, whether you should try or skip switching to X new software, how to make sense of your new lead inquiry’s comments, and even provide website audits if requested.
Basically, I wanted to create a judgement-free, inclusive community that I never had when I was trying to figure out everything myself too—plus, I just like solving problems. Ya ready to bring me yours? 😂 😁 J/K! Let’s peek inside first!
Why I Built a Support Community for Designers With No Curriculum & a Free tier
It can be hard to explain the purpose of this community, but to be frank—there's no one-size-fits-all goal for every member. It's not a course. There's no curriculum, no lessons, no weekly assignments, no quizzes, and nothing to fall behind on. If you show up after not posting for months, that’s fine because there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s how you want to engage there.
What it is meant to be is a calm and judgement-free space to ask questions while you build & grow your business.
When I was starting my freelance gig as a side hustle, my biggest problem wasn't information because I could find that on Google.
My problem was that I had a hundred questions about how that information applied to me and my situation, but I had nobody to ask where I'd reliably get a helpful answer. I didn’t want a generic "it depends” or a short summary of what I should do, that conveniently left out all the important details about HOW to implement their suggestion. 🫠
I didn't have that, and I couldn’t really find that ‘out there’ either. Not for the Squarespace or web design community, and not in a way that allowed us to be ourselves, even if we cursed like a sailor or wanted to share a helpful affiliate link for something we loved & knew would help other people in the same group.
So I built it myself, because it needed to exist and I also figured if I knew what you were struggling with, I could actually help more people, more effectively!
It's also just good to have “community” so you don’t feel so isolated working for yourself at home with no one to talk to about what you’re working on. I also built this group to be the antidote to that!
Free vs. Paid: which plan is the right fit?
There are two ways to join the community, and I built it this way on purpose so you can join the fun based on what you actually want from me or the group.
The free tier is lovingly called Freeloaders. 🤭 If you want a community of other designers to hang out with and ask each other questions, that's what this tier is for, and there's zero shame in staying here forever if that's what you need.
The paid tier is appropriately called Insiders, and it's for members who want more hands-on help and reliably quick answers from me. Fair warning though: being “succinct” isn't really my style—I'm long-winded, if you haven't noticed. But if you want direct support from me with your specific situations & questions, rather than a place to just ‘ask the group’ and vibe with other designers, this is where you want to be. Insiders get access to the Freeloaders’ spaces too!
Member pricing for Insiders is set up so it's actually affordable to join for a year, or even just one month at a time, if that's what you need. In other free or very cheap memberships, the size of the community means that your posts often get lost & go unanswered, and in the smaller ones, typically the cost is well over $100/mo.
I put my community somewhere in the middle! That’s why there are two separate areas; this way Insiders can stay small & intimate, while Freeloaders can grow as large as the community wants it to be.
So if you're setting up your new client portal system and you don't know who to ask when something confuses you, you probably don't need my help forever; you only need it for the however long you're building out the thing and getting used to it. You can just join for that stretch, get unstuck, and leave whenever. No judgement!
Free members get occasional free events. Paid members also get monthly time with me to ask questions. Otherwise, it's just different levels of access to a calm and judgement-free space with other like-minded designers like yourself.
What This Community Is (and isn't)
I want to be REALLY CLEAR here because "community" gets thrown around a lot and means fifty different things depending on who's running it.
My community doesn't include specific skills training. You don't have to specialize in the same website platform as me to join. Yes, I specialize in Squarespace, and plenty of members do too, but that's not what the space is for. People come in asking about Dubsado, Kitchen, Breely, Kit, Flodesk, client situations that have nothing to do with a website builder, pricing questions, and even "how do I say no to this client" questions. It's a business support space first, not a platform-specific one (but I am pretty handy with my tech stacks and happy to help Insiders troubleshoot).
It's also not full of distracting noise. There aren't constant notifications you can't escape (because you control how many you get, from your profile), and there's no pressure to behave a certain way or do certain things. You can get clarity, accountability, direction, systems help, and troubleshooting help, in whatever combination you actually need, whenever you need it.
Let's Talk Numbers: 3 Years & 400+ Members
I have to update these manually here, so they're not real-time-accurate, but as of recording there are more than 400 people in the community overall, with about 20 to 30 people usually active in the paid tier at any given time. That means the Insiders tier is a MUCH smaller room, which matters if you're the type of person who wants to ask something a little sensitive or vulnerable and not have hundreds of strangers see it.
Roughly 40% of the whole group is actively posting, commenting, asking questions, or showing up to calls & events. Again, paid members get monthly calls, and I'll get into that more in a minute, because it's a little unhinged & definitely NOT the normal way calls are handled. 😂
The public-facing parts of the community are actually visible from outside (logged out), which surprises people. If you need privacy, that's what Insiders is for. But the only space that's truly free-access is the Freeloader Fan Club page, plus a space called Just for Fun, which is exactly what it sounds like: pictures of my dog or cat, other people's pets, funny AI images, quotes, fun drinks, (almost) whatever ya want to share.
I also post a "mini blog post" every single Monday in the free space, which I've done every week for three years straight. If you're wondering my actual priorities live, ...it's apparently not my blog these days. It's in the Club. LOL
House Rules: Spam, Foul Language, ... & Affiliate Links!
Every community has rules, and mine are a little different from most.
First-time posts and comments from new members are moderated, mostly to help catch spammers, which has picked up as the size of the community has grown. If you show up and your first post is "hi I'm a full stack developer looking for a partner," that's a no. This space is for real designers, running their own businesses, asking real questions about real situations, NOT lead generation. You're welcome to work with anyone in the community, but it's not your personal job board & nothing else. We're here primarily to build relationships with each other, support each other, and learn from each other.
No bullying, —obviously.
Foul language doesn't bother me even a little, because I curse plenty myself. Just avoid slurs, and stay away from using derogatory words when referring to other humans.
Community over competition is a legit rule here. We're not fighting over each other to steal clients or work from other people. I've found the Squarespace community as a whole is exceptionally graceful in this area, so it's never been a problem to date. I'd love for it to stay that way!
Software support: If your question is about something unresolved with a specific piece of software, that's not on me to help you fix. I'm not employed by Squarespace, Dubsado, Breely, ClickUp, Notion, or Kitchen. I'll help where I can if you're on the Insider plan, where we can troubleshoot more effectively, but software bugs require sending a support ticket to that software.
Affiliate links & self-promotion are fine (the rule that surprises people most), as long as you tell people which links are affiliate links & you were prompted by someone else or you got my permission first. This has been a pet peeve of mine in other communities, where someone gives a genuinely helpful answer that happens to include their affiliate link, and the whole thing gets removed for being "promotional." If the answer is real and helpful, I don't care if there's an affiliate link in it (as long as you are clear that it's an affiliate link, per the US FTC guidelines). Three years in, and it's never been abused! It has stayed natural, not salesy or pushy, and I intend to keep it that way as long as it remains helpful for the group overall.
What You Get as an Insider
The Insider-only spaces (rooms) are where things become a bit more juicy & fun!
There's a discussion feed that's only visible to paying members, with topics you can filter by, a free website audit you can request if you want a fresh perspective on your website, and a running list of questions submitted for office hours calls.
There's also a resource library divided into a feed, a CSS code library, and a general resource list. If the code in the library wasn't written by me, I link out to whoever's tutorial it came from, so you can get the code & the tutorial from them. If it is mine or more generic information, the full code lives right there.
Insiders also get free perks! The perks include access to a few things I've built specifically because I know they're useful:
a free (detailed) pricing calculator template so you can actually play with your numbers and figure out your rates,
a free copy of the Client Whisperer, which works in ChatGPT or Claude (instructions are included for both)
an exclusive discount for my Ultimate Client Portal System course, and
a member resources page with email templates and bonus videos I've collected
and more added as the community grows and I get a better feel for what people need help with at any given time
a live chat space where you can see who's online when you are,
a co-working calendar members can set up themselves for accountability sessions on Zoom or Google Meet or wherever,
and the usual profile features that all members (free & paid) have access to:
bookmarking posts,
light or dark mode,
notification settings,
and a community switcher if you're active in other Circle-based groups too
Monthly Office Hours (with time for EVERY question)
When the group first opened, I used to do these weekly. That lasted about as long as you'd expect (actually, only about 4-5 months), because they were routinely 3 to 4 hours long, and blocking that off every single week was difficult to block into my calendar. So I moved them to monthly.
Because I moved these calls to monthly, I stopped putting a time limit on them at all. 🫣 The longest one I've ever run was somewhere around 5 or 6 hours, sometimes with intermissions to refill our tea/coffee, let our dog out, or use the bathroom ourselves, etc. 😂
They're NOT formal and I'm not there to entertain, or 'teach' unless requested by someone who asked a specific 'how' question. 😃
There's a form to pre-submit questions, we work through those first, and then I just take whatever questions come up live in the call.
You can attend with your camera on or off, mic on or off, leave whenever you want, or arrive late & stay as long as you need, —it doesn't matter to me. They are held on Google Meet, because I hate Zoom, and we just hang out until people are done talking.
This is, honestly, my favorite part of every single month. Bring your coffee, matcha or chai, your mimosa, your cozy blanket, your furbaby, whatever. We just hang out and work through real problems together for a few hours, and we NEVER know where that conversation will lead us which is what makes it fun & interesting!
The Searchable Replay Library
There's also a full library of past call replays, organized by date or type.
There are office hours replays going back to 2024, meaning there's about three full years of recorded calls in there!
There are also occasional workshops I'll lead, guest workshops where I've brought in outside experts, and a set of real client calls, recorded with my clients' permission, so you can see what a real client meeting actually sounds & works like. Those client calls include a kickoff & launch call for a custom project, and an overview call sent to a VIP Day client, so you can see an example of both types of meetings.
No, you don't need to watch all of them, or any of them. In fact, I'd think you're a little nuts if you try to watch that many hours of content, but they're searchable with AI-generated timestamped chapters and resource lists for most of them, added specifically so you can search for a phrase and pull up the exact five minutes where the replay talked about the thing you're stuck on. I built it that way on purpose, because a library nobody can search through is just a pile of videos nobody watches. 🫠 #letsbereal
Celebrating Wins (small and big!)
There's also a dedicated space for celebrating our accomplishments each week, because not everyone is comfortable randomly posting that they did something they're proud of. I get it. I am that person too, usually. So I facilitate it myself, posting every Friday about what I worked on that week, and it's not a highlight reel of huge accomplishments.
Sometimes it's just that I made a meal with several days of leftovers so I don't have to cook every night (always a 'huge' win to me). 👏🏻 Sometimes it's that I hit 12,000 steps. Sometimes it's that I took the afternoon off and didn't let myself feel guilty about it. So I try to share a couple business wins & personal wins each week to get the conversation started, but members can post theirs whenever they want!
How to Join the Club, literally 😂
If you've heard me mention "the Club" before and never really understood what it actually was, that's on me for not showing you sooner! Now you've seen behind the curtain: the free tier, the paid tier, the rules, the replay library, and the monthly office hours calls that run waaay longer than they ought to (& why I don't care).
I'm in this community literally all the time. It practically stays open in my browser 24/7. It's also on my phone and sometimes I'm replying to people from the passenger seat of our car or while I'm standing in line at the grocery store, because I genuinely love the people in there and I love hanging out with them! 🤭😃
If that sounds like what you've been missing, join the Freeloaders or Insiders anytime!
