5 Mistakes I Made Early in My Web Design Studio (And What They Taught Me)
Reflections on pricing, hiring, systems, and finding clarity in the chaos of creative entrepreneurship.
Hey Designers,
I’ve been reflecting on some of my early mistakes and that’s inspired this post —let’s get straight to it.
1. Not Showing the Work
Here’s one that’s still a work in progress: I’ve never been great at sharing what we do.
I didn’t have a system for posting mockups and case studies; client work was always the priority. Honestly, I didn’t see the value in it. Most of the attention came from other designers anyway—not potential clients. Not a bad thing, but also not my priority.
The truth is, people can’t hire you if they don’t see your work—and in today’s world, visibility is half the battle. As much as you may be getting work through referrals, sharing is still valuable.
Over the past year, I now have a simple system to share more of our work as it happens—raw, real, and useful. No fake laptop mockups, just screens of actual work.
2. Not Focused on Our Core Service Enough
For the longest time, we were focused on doing everything having to do with design and development: custom web apps, websites, branding, product design, migrations, etc., while doing these things on multiple platforms. Slimming this down to a few platforms you trust and a couple (or one) services would take the confusion out of pricing.
No one was coming to us for application design and development as much as we were trying to push that. Although we did some work, it made narrowing down our core services more complicated—when the majority of our leads came to us for Webflow websites. It's really that simple, and it should have stayed that way.
3. Undercharging for Projects
I’ve charged anywhere from $1,500 to $40,000 for web projects—and I’ve undercharged more than I’d like to admit. It wasn't until I ran into a profit calculator and educated myself on maximizing for profits. You have to charge more when you think about it right, so in order to create high-quality projects, you need to hire the best or become the best. In order to get there, it takes lots of vetting, explorations, research, experience, etc. All of that work is absolutely worth you being able to charge more.
To be honest, I think that's over-justifying it. You can charge more regardless. Pick a price, be confident, be ambitious, and let the market tell you otherwise.
4. Hiring Too Fast (And Too Junior)
In the past, I often worked with junior designers or developers—usually just giving people a shot if I vibed with their work. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. But I’ve learned the hard way that it’s not about skill level alone—it’s about experience across the board.
The real issue wasn’t skill. It was experience.
Things like:
Knowing how to talk to clients
Navigating creative blocks
Troubleshooting without handholding
Managing timelines under pressure
When people lacked those soft skills, projects got messy, clients got frustrated, and I ended up having to jump in to clean things up.
Lesson: Hire people who already have the experience—or be fully ready to train them. Anything in between will cost you.
5. Avoiding Systems and Ops Early On & Not Using AI as a Tool.
I'll be honest—I listened to others early on and just did this straight from the beginning. I used Scribe and Loom to document everything I was doing, from onboarding new clients to intaking new leads and even sales calls. I didn't know or care what I was going to delegate—all I knew is that I had to do this.
You don't want to get to a place where you're managing multiple projects, and tracking them is messy and handoffs are manual.
Creating a great client experience shouldn't be based on memory. That's too much to process mentally, and you're eventually going to forget something the client asked about at the worst time.
Implement tools like ClickUp or any other client management system. Set up SOPs, and build a custom dashboard for clients. Im leveraging AI to help me with kickstarting ideas and client communication workflows. Using it as a tool can save you lots of hours of manual inputs.
Final Thought
Every one of these mistakes came from a real place—trying to grow, trying to deliver, trying to do right by the people I worked with. And while they cost me time, money, and peace at different points, they also gave me the clarity I needed to build something more sustainable.
Running a studio isn’t about doing everything perfectly—it’s about being honest enough to course-correct when something’s not working.
So if you’re in that phase where things feel messy or uncertain, know this:
You’re not failing. You’re just refining.
Keep building. Keep learning. And don’t be afraid to rebuild better.
Peace,
–Dexter