Restart S1 EP1: From Janitor to 7-Figure Web Design Coach w/ Josh Hall

Josh Hall | 00:00
I’m going to pitch to circle that their tagline should be the condom of communities. That is what I’m going to pitch.
Amr Selim | 00:06
But I was diagnosed with ADHD like a couple of years ago. And I didn’t know.
Josh Hall | 00:11
About it. You know, what’s interesting about that is when you, it’s a good lesson right off the gate.
Like, When you reach out to somebody to interview them, even if you have a show with modest numbers or it’s just something they can repurpose.
Amr Selim | 00:24
If your computer gets stuck or glitches and is getting you nowhere, wouldn’t you just hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete and restart it? Easier. Why is it then when our lives feel stuck or not going the way we want it to go, We don’t do the same. It’s not as easy. If we could just restart, Hi, I am Amir Saleem. Most people call me the Internet Guy. And it’s because they can’t pronounce my name. But I’m a professional restorter. I’ve gone from an amateur musician in Egypt to a tech consultant and an entrepreneur in Canada. Along the way, I’ve navigated four continents, six countries and seven different industries. I have lost count of how many times I’ve had to start again from zero. I wrote a book. I called it “Restart”. And this podcast is the living version of that journey. Every episode I’ll be bringing you the raw stories and strategies from people who have the guts to hit that reset button with their lives You will learn how to find your thread You know. Those portable skills like character and people-person grit that will always go with you wherever you go, when you network and your friends with it. Whether you’re 22 and terrified of your first steps into the business world, or 50 and wondering if it’s too late to switch lanes now, This show is for you. Now, let’s get moving. Hello everyone and welcome to the first episode of restart the podcast. This is the show about strategies and stories of self-reinvention. Our guest today is Mr. Josh Hall, who went from being a janitor and a cabinet maker to a CEO of a seven figure company. Josh is a prominent web design business coach, and he’s the founder of Web Designer Pro, the online community where web designers get the professional coaching they need, as well as the partnership opportunities for their businesses to thrive. Josh and I have been friends who complete each other since 2018. Today we’re looking past the labels to talk about the person. We want to explore the journey and the mindset that made Josh reinvent himself so many times to get to where he is today. And we’ll find out why character is extremely important in the age of AI and how being a people person is the saving grace that will come to the rescue every time.
So without further ado, let’s go meet Josh. The book is not about ADHD, but I… Kind of because I realized why I moved a lot, why I changed jobs, countries, industries. It’s funny, I’ve got two jobs. One I stayed seven and a half years. One I stayed eight years. But other than that, it’s kind of a year here, a year there. And the ADHD certainly explains it.
So it dawned on me that It’s not just me. So many people changed their life. It’s not just a pivot. It’s a complete reinvention. And I remember… Cabinetmaker is like, how would you go from a cabinetmaker to even graphics and then from graphics to web?
So these are things that I feel like I know some of, but we probably didn’t Yeah.
Josh Hall | 03:51
No, that sounds great, man. I love the premise of your book because it’s so interesting. It is. It’s right. It’s true. It’s like, it’s not, it’s much more than just a pivot.
I mean, you really, you do tend to restart. As I mean, I guess the through line is being an entrepreneur in a lot of cases, if you have your own business, if it’s in different industries.
Yeah. But so the through line is just being an entrepreneur. But you’re right. It is like you’re restarting and in many ways you have your background and your expertise and your skill sets. And but you do restart, as you mentioned, I mean, I. Cabinetmaker, drummer. Graphic designer. Or drummer. I forgot drummer. Web designer, business owner, course creator. And community builder now. Now I’m more of a community builder than anything.
So each one of those had some level of restart. So yeah, man. That’s all.
Yeah. So.
Amr Selim | 04:43
Like I kind of want to go through that. Part first and then you know once we get into the web design part of it I have some questions for you.
Josh Hall | 04:55
Deal. I’m in, man.
Amr Selim | 04:57
All right, let’s go. Let’s go.
Josh Hall | 05:00
Sounds good. Take it away.
Amr Selim | 05:02
Hello, everybody. Hello.
So Josh, it’s been some time since we met. It’s been like what three years we’ve been saying that offline.
Josh Hall | 05:11
Yeah, I mean, when we got initially connected, it was probably what, like… 2018, something like that.
Yeah. Yeah, because you were… Thank Was it the Divi group?
Amr Selim | 05:24
You for accepting that invitation out of the blue because I didn’t know you back then.
Josh Hall | 05:30
Was it Divi web designers group that we got connected in?
Amr Selim | 05:33
I think I found you on the Facebook group and then I emailed you to have you. To interview you, I didn’t have a podcast, so it wasn’t a podcast.
Sometimes when I get questions related to web design, And… I feel like many people would have the same question.
So why not record it and put it on YouTube, maybe people find it even 10 years later, who knows?
Josh Hall | 05:56
Yeah. And then I, you know, what’s interesting about that is when you, it’s a good lesson right off the gate.
Like. When you reach out to somebody to interview them, even if you have a show with modest numbers or it’s just something they can repurpose, I got to know you and then your skill set because I needed help with email and domains. And I found out that you are a very rare person who actually likes that stuff.
So I was like, please be my friend because I do not want to ever do that stuff again. So we hit it off from the get go.
And then here we are, you know, what, seven years later. So yeah, it’s great to reconnect, man.
Amr Selim | 06:30
Yeah, so lately I’ve been thinking a lot about like, you know, as you grow older, I’m going to be 55 this January. And it’s a good number, five and five, right?
So I’m going to be ten.
Josh Hall | 06:41
I like it.
Amr Selim | 06:43
And it makes you think about your journey. It’s not like that you want it to end, but it’s kind of like sometimes you feel, so what’s next? I’ve done this, I’ve done that.
And then like, okay, what else can I do? It’s kind of, you want to keep pre-inventing yourself and you don’t feel…
Like, it’s time to… Rest or retire yet? And my mind doesn’t rest.
Like my brain keeps on going in like 120 miles an hour. Sometimes I find it hard to sleep.
So I feel about I think about the reinventions and some of the stories that I heard in the past kind of strike me And I want to know more about it. And one of them was your story.
So I want to go back to I don’t know. You graduating high school? Is that… Is that when you got your first job?
Josh Hall | 07:35
I actually got my first job. So you’re in Canada.
So you probably know Tim Hortons pretty well. My first job was actually at Tim Hortons in the summer of my eighth grade year.
So I think I was 14. I don’t even know how the heck I got a job there. But I would just go in like, and my whole goal with working at Tim Hortons was like once a week on weekends, I just wanted to save enough money so I could buy stuff for my drum set. I wanted to buy cymbals and, you know, like I remember the first time I got like $135 check, I thought I was just rolling. And I went right to the percussion store in Columbus and got my, you know, my Z symbol, my Zildjian symbol. And I just loved it.
So yeah, I, yeah, started basically just to make money for my drums. And then, yeah, I got a job. Well at a tour bus customizing shop, which was local to me as well. It was actually so close that I could just walk there from my house, which is why I got that job.
Cause it was before I got a license. And then Before I started building cabinets there, I was actually just a janitor.
So I would go in after high school and just clean up the shop and you know, the bathrooms and sweep. And it was a nice little, you know, two hour job after high school. You were Yeah.
Amr Selim | 08:44
Like what? 15 at the time.
Josh Hall | 08:46
Yeah. And this.
Amr Selim | 08:49
I mean, when you say cabinet maker, it’s carpentry, right? Yeah.
So how did you learn? Like what? What put your interest in that?
Josh Hall | 08:56
It was completely on the job learning because I was cleaning up after these guys and then… So basically what that shop was. It was electrical. It was like electrician. It was fabrication. And it was all for tour buses and specialty vehicles.
So it was pretty cool. Like Metallica’s bus was in, Johnny Cash’s bus was in. We used to get yeah.
Amr Selim | 09:18
A lot. Of course, it was banned tour buses.
Yeah, a lot of the tourist buses. Not like the tour buses.
Josh Hall | 09:24
Well, those two, they were literally Yeah.
Amr Selim | 09:26
Related to music.
Josh Hall | 09:28
There were a lot of musicians that would come through, but then there were, yeah, there were like enterprise vehicles and fleets of, you know, sometimes it would be like government contracts. We’d build out stuff.
So we would do stuff for like NFL, like tailgating vehicles. We had a line of those.
So we did all sorts of stuff. So basically like I was, went from janitor to once I graduated high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. The band wasn’t able to be like full time.
So I was like, yeah, I’ll just keep on, you know, I’ll learn more here basically. And then I, and then fabrication, carpet work, and I didn’t really have an interest in electrical.
So I stuck with, yeah, like building cabinets and laminating and stuff like that.
Amr Selim | 10:10
Nice. I mean, it is hard building things. It’s like, I like DIYs, but in most cases, I got like one little thing here or there wrong that bugs the hell out of me. Then I don’t want to redo the whole work.
Josh Hall | 10:23
Yeah, and that was one where… It did help me because I’m not naturally a detail person. Oriented person. I struggle with that still today. My wife is the opposite. She is like extremely detailed, you know, like remembers every little last checklist, every little detail. I’m just not wired like that.
So that job, Help me. Become more detailed because like in a tour bus, if you are like one, a meter off on the cabinet. You have just screwed everything else up.
So, which I guess cabinetry in general is like that, but there was literally no wiggle room in a tour bus. Like in a house, you may have a leak. It probably pushed the cabin a little bit over and it’s not going to go across the wall. But in a bus, it’s like you’re packing everything in there.
So yeah. So in a way, like, it moves. Yep. It’s.
Amr Selim | 11:16
You don’t want it to open in the middle of like, it’s gotta be, It’s not just the measurements. It’s the hinges. It’s everything.
Josh Hall | 11:24
My manager one time was like, why the hell did I get into this industry? I should have just done this in houses that don’t move.
Yeah, Let’s see.
Amr Selim | 11:31
Exactly. It’s hard to do it on a moving thing.
So how long did you spend in there?
Josh Hall | 11:37
I was there for… I worked in that job between being the janitor and then being a cabinetmaker, I think for six years.
Yeah. Yeah. Five or six years.
So all through high school and then a few years after high school as my band, I was a drummer, And then got into a couple of bands and then got into a pretty serious band out of high school. We were weekend warriors and then started traveling a lot more.
So I was able to be somewhat flexible with that job. They would give me like Fridays off often.
So yeah. So then I got more into the band stuff and really started taking that seriously.
And then with the cabinet making job, I got laid off as did half of the company in 2009. So to?
Amr Selim | 12:20
What happened? Did they not get as many orders as they used.
Josh Hall | 12:23
The recession that hit in 2008, which was completely unknown to me. I just didn’t follow.
You know, I just was not an adult. I wasn’t, I had no idea what was going on with real estate markets and everything.
So state, I don’t know what it was like in Canada at that time, but State side, we had a big recession and that trickled down to real estate and then to more automotive stuff. So it got really bad in 2009.
And then people, yeah, you know, like large tour bus gas was really expensive then too. I remember that. Gas was like crazy expensive in those years.
So it all trickled down to that industry being hit. And then that just triggered me getting laid off along with half of the company almost in 2009.
Amr Selim | 13:09
So what happened? Like you found yourself like all of a sudden out of the job. What did you think about like? Here’s what I want to do next. How does the idea come?
Josh Hall | 13:21
Well. One of the biggest helpers on that was I had just purchased an SUV. I just purchased a Ford Explorer. And so I had like a decent car payment for the first time. And I got laid off like two months after I got that. And at the time I was living with my parents and stuff.
So it was, you know, I was young. I think it was 22 at that point, 23, but, I did.
So I realized like I got to make money and I was doing odd jobs and working for friends and stuff. But because I was in a band, we were doing the weekend where thing we weren’t making much money from that personally, but. I’d always had an interest in graphic design and, I had played around with Photoshop before. And so I remember vividly, I think it was like the day after I got laid off. I was like, I’m going to experiment with graphic design.
Amr Selim | 14:11
That was.
Josh Hall | 14:11
2009. 2009.
Yeah. So I dove into Photoshop and started just DIY learning Photoshop and that was one.
Amr Selim | 14:19
Of the hardest softwares to learn back then. I mean, it is still hard today, but like it’s a little easier. But I remember not just that. The license was…
Like what was it? $300? I can’t remember. It used to be really.
Josh Hall | 14:32
Expensive. So I got, I had at that time just started doing like night classes at the community college here in Columbus, Ohio.
So I was able to get the student discount on it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, I just learned Photoshop.
And then… The main reason I learned Photoshop was because I wanted to start doing art for the band.
So I was starting to do our t-shirt artwork and then print stuff. And I ended up creating our third album cover with Photoshop.
So it was beneficial in that, like it helped the band, And I just enjoyed designing. And then my light bulb moment came when we were playing a festival and somebody asked who designed our merch in our artwork. And I said, I did. And they asked how much would you charge to do ours? And it was like, ding, I could make money doing this.
Amr Selim | 15:24
How much do I charge? How much do I.
Josh Hall | 15:26
Charge? Of course.
Yeah, I had no business mind whatsoever. But that was the kickstart of my trajectory into graphic design and eventually web design.
And then funny enough… Right when I started doing freelance graphic design and making money, My old manager called me. From the shop, from the cabinet shop and said, Hey, we’re ready to have you come back. And that hammer was Yeah.
Amr Selim | 15:52
Getting orders.
Josh Hall | 15:54
That was a really important thing. Point because I wasn’t making much in freelance, but I just felt like if I go back to this cabinet job. I feel like I’m just going to get sucked back into making $11 an hour. And I just don’t know if I’m going to break free from, I wasn’t married. I didn’t have a relationship. I was living with my dad. I didn’t have that many bills.
So it was like, I kind of felt like if I’m going to, go for it with like trying to, you know, doing some night classes and learning design and getting into graphic design now was the time. So I just stuck with it. And I mean, as I look back, I’m kind of surprised I had the balls to do that, honestly, because I really, even my mom said, I remember her saying like, I’m so worried about you financially and stuff. And I’m like, I get it. But I just, something inside me was like, I just don’t want to go back to that, you know?
Amr Selim | 16:45
You laid it out nicely now because you said I wasn’t spending that much. I was still living with my dad.
So you don’t have the high expenses, you probably just had The car, paying for the car.
Josh Hall | 16:57
Car insurance. Yeah. It was like, you know, depending on pricing, even modestly as a design, like a freelancer, I could make… A few business cards and a brochure and a couple of designs a month and then, you know, have my bills covered.
So it was very, it was a big decision, but it was not a risky decision because I feel I could always go get that cabinet making job back.
Amr Selim | 17:19
Yeah.
Josh Hall | 17:21
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a lot different than, you know, now I’m coaching people who have families and are thinking about going full time. And that’s a whole different set of risks and things to be prepared for rather than somebody who has little bills and has, yeah.
Amr Selim | 17:34
That’s why it has to be a calculated risk. It’s not like, you know, I get a crazy idea. I’m going to dump everything and just focus on it. And it might, I mean, for some, it might work, but it’s kind of like, do I walk a step back or do I walk a step forward? And which one is more beneficial? It’s kind of a, Cause benefit ratio sort of thing.
Josh Hall | 17:58
Totally. Calculated risk. I like that term. That’s, that really is what it is. And that’s a lot easier when you’re younger and you don’t have as many bills, expenses and responsibilities. That’s.
Amr Selim | 18:09
What my son is saying right now. He’s 22 and he just started his business in March. And he only had about a year left to graduate business school. But he’s still graduating, but he’s doing it a little bit slower to focus more on the business.
And then. He keeps on like we keep having the conversation.
So what’s up? What’s the plan, whatever. And he says, Look, for as long as I’m living with you guys, I’m okay.
Like, I’m not So I can take that risk. Like it’s a calculated risk, which is a good thing to do.
Josh Hall | 18:43
Yeah. Yeah.
Sounds like, I mean, sounds like an awesome kid. That sounds like what I would do. Heck yeah.
Amr Selim | 18:49
Yeah. And so… From graphics to web, I mean, this is… The most obvious bridge ever.
Like I’m probably the only one who didn’t do that. I switched from IT to web. Right. Not from design to web design. I switched from servers and like, you know, administration, like kind of IT administration and setting up At the time, they were not called data centers, but whatever resembles the data centers these days, And just moving to web, because I realized that The IT is…
Like it’s got so many people. Like there was about 40,000 people who could do the job I’m doing at the time I was doing it. And I wanted to do something unique. And… When I became like a user of the internet, It was just, Something unique. And I wanted to know how it worked.
Like, how does this thing work? It’s a network. It’s still a network. But like, how does it work?
You know, how can I send an email at the other side of the world and it arrives in minutes? What makes it work and what makes it not work? And that’s why I still like doing the email stuff today. Because I was intrigued by it, like, I don’t know, 20 years ago. And I continued.
Josh Hall | 20:14
But that’s what made us great referral. That’s what made us great partners, by the way, is because the background differences between like you going IT to web, me going design to web.
And then I don’t give a crap how email works. I just want it to work.
So if I like you have that like intrinsic, like, let me figure this out, which made us perfect because that just drained me. I was like, I really have to work to figure out how this works. You love it. Let’s partner up.
Yeah. I.
Amr Selim | 20:39
Love anything back and the stuff that people don’t see. The stuff that makes the world work but it doesn’t look pretty and People most of the time tend to ignore it or wait till this is the thing as well. This is the funny part. Most web designers, they wait till the problem happens. Then they scramble trying to find somebody like me to solve it for them. But why don’t you include this as a service In every new design you’re doing, just make sure that the emails are going out properly. Everything is set up properly. It will save you headache and it will save you face. When the client calls and says, my emails are not going out, as if you did a mistake. And sometimes… There’s no mistake. Things change.
Like when Google and Yahoo and other, you know, email providers changed I think it was what a year or a couple of years ago, and they said, we’re going to strict and like kind of the rules. And if you don’t have the proper DMARC and DKIM records and SPF records, nothing is going to be delivered.
So yeah, so anyway, let’s just go back, so from… The bridge from. Web design, sorry, from graphic design to web design. I remember you said You were volunteering at a church? Is that how it started?
Yeah.
Josh Hall | 21:58
I was actually, I was like volunteering for a church and I was doing, I was drumming for like the praise band in the middle of our like metal drumming days too, occasionally. And then they got wind. Of me doing design and it was a small church. They didn’t have anyone doing the web. It was like assistant pastor who was trying to build a website. And he was like, do you want to take the website on? And I was like, sure, I’ll give it a go. And they offered to pay me a little and they sent me to another like night school class to learn back then was Dreamweaver back in 2010.
Amr Selim | 22:31
Yeah, I loved it at the time.
Josh Hall | 22:33
Yeah, it was pretty quick. It was a pretty quick transition from Photoshop, a little bit of Illustrator and then right into Dreamweaver and basic web. I did a lot more like print design and graphic design for the first couple of years and like slowly learned web. But those two like I’ve said many times, all roads lead to the website.
Amr Selim | 22:54
What’s that? Was that 2010 or 2011?
Josh Hall | 22:57
Yeah. That would have been like, yeah, 2010 is when I started doing Dreamweaver.
And then by the end of 2010, I had built up enough freelance clients between print design, graphic design, and very basic websites that I was like, all right, I think I can make an official business out of this. So I did. And my whole goal at that point was to still get a job as a designer. I had no… Interest at that point in like running my own business and being a true entrepreneur. But I had made enough to be like, okay, I think I could like do freelance and not have to do, you know, shitty business. Crap jobs on the side just to make enough rent or make enough for my bills.
And then A couple years of doing that, I built up a pretty good network as a freelancer. And then one of the years, I think it was 2012, I had made almost 30 grand in on the side.
And then, I was like in a place. Yeah. I was in a place to where like, I could have got a job. As a junior developer or designer, And I had a good friend of mine who was actually on the podcast recently, Chris Webb, who was a corporate web designer. I was really close with him through those years and was kind of wanting to be the next him. And he actually took me into some of his offices and showed me like the agency world. And I was like, it’d be so cool to be a designer and as an agency. But then when I, you know, made that amount, I was like, man, I did that on the side. What have I like? Went for this. I’m like, I could probably do like six figures in the next couple of years.
So that’s what I did. That’s, that gave me enough foundation and confidence to say like, I’m like going to make this a real business.
And then I called it in transit studios. Was there.
Amr Selim | 24:41
A scary part back then? Cause I mean, it’s a little bit similar to When the cabinet making shop called you back and you thought about it, no, I want to move forward and see where it leads me. But this time it’s a bigger step because you’re going to go completely solo.
Josh Hall | 24:58
Yeah. That and And I had just in 2012, I had met my now wife.
Amr Selim | 24:59
The company business. Yeah.
Josh Hall | 25:05
So we had just started dating. So there were a lot more implications at that point, but, I think what was different is that I didn’t have like a job I passed up on or quit from. It was just like, I can try to go as far as I can with freelance. And my mindset then too is like, If you can build up Your own freelance business. You are very valuable people. In the agency world, because you show that you can communicate, And you can manage projects and you can design and you can stick to deadlines and you can work with people and you can handle a lot of different things in a freelance role that makes you much more valuable as My thought was like in an agency type of settings. Do you think…
Amr Selim | 25:55
Playing music in a band gives you a lot of people.
Josh Hall | 25:58
Skills. Huge. I’m so glad you mentioned that because I kick myself talking about this journey and not. Thanking the band experience because it’s, Yeah.
So much of being in a band…
Amr Selim | 26:16
You know, really out there. But the band… You’re on the road, you’re out all time, you go to different states and different cities and…
Josh Hall | 26:24
Well, in a band… And it’s funny because being in the web design world, I thought I was such a unicorn. I thought I had such a unique story, but I’m just like, Most web designers out there, like a surprisingly large amount of web designers were in a band and then they got into either video or photography or design and then you end up.
Amr Selim | 26:41
Yeah.
Josh Hall | 26:43
And the thing that translates between music and freelance business, creative business is when you’re in a band. You are, you create a brand like you and the people you’re in a band with, you guys create some sort of marketable product. Whether you don’t want to use those terms in a band because it’s like, that’s lame. But you are like, you have like a customer base. You have an ideal customer avatar. You are a, you know, a brand and yeah, the level of like marketing skills and communication skills are almost immeasurable because what you don’t realize when you’re young in a band is you’re learning how to communicate with people. You’re learning how to compromise, how to stand your ground, showing up on time. There’s often deadlines. If you’re a serious band, it’s like, all right, we got to get this album done. It needs to go to the printer.
So you’re dealing with real deadlines and then you’re dealing with marketing pushes. You’re dealing with an album launch. You’re dealing with travel and logistics and people skills and planning and emails and calls. You’re dealing with all these things that are actually what we do in business, just in a different creative outlet.
Amr Selim | 27:55
Yeah, the product is different, but the process is exactly the same.
Josh Hall | 27:59
Yeah, and then you get to the thing where it’s like… The product itself is going to change over time.
And then it’s like, I don’t feel like doing this. Like, I’m sick of these songs. I don’t want to do this anymore. But sometimes in business, it’s the boring, monotonous stuff that is actually, you know, going to help you stay foundational and solid through different pivots and different times.
So there’s so much that translates to the world of creative business for sure.
Amr Selim | 28:26
And When did you think that WordPress because I did design with Dreamweaver, and it was my go to thing. Until…
Someone asked me, If I tried… Accountant management system. And there was something called. Yumla.
Josh Hall | 28:43
Yeah. I had a terrible Joomla experience early on.
Yeah. As did most people who use Joomla, yeah.
Amr Selim | 28:52
And then, but like with Dreamweaver, there was a, We used to lock some areas of the page so the client cannot mess up the design so that they can only you know, change some text here and images there, but they cannot change, for example, the menus or the footer or whatever. But it wasn’t easy.
Like even though it was a great, you know, tool and process. But then I found, I personally found WordPress in 2010. And I started playing around with it.
So when did you learn that there’s something called WordPress?
Josh Hall | 29:29
I heard about it in 2010, like right when I got started in Dreamweaver, actually. It was just some guy at a party. We were playing beer pong and he was like, I just found out he was in web design and he had mentioned WordPress.
And then I just, it sounded, I thought I had heard of it as like a blog style site. So I didn’t think too much of it. And honestly, like I didn’t think Yeah.
Amr Selim | 29:50
Too much of it. I didn’t know what a blog was.
Josh Hall | 29:53
And that was, I mean, that was so early even in the blogging days, but I even with him, I was, I just didn’t think it, I didn’t take it seriously until 2011 and 12 when it came up more. And then I, Like, WordPress themes started coming out, which This was before page builders like Divi, Elementor, et cetera.
So, Back then… Trying to think of the… Actually, I think it was a friend of mine who was in a band and they hired a web designer who did a WordPress site for them and he showed it to me and I was like, wow. And I was like, you can log in and change this and you could pick your theme. And I was like, this is so much easier than dream waiver. Dream waiver was cool because you could write HTML. And somewhat visually put stuff in there and then see it in CSS and see it. And I think it was really good from like a basic sense of even today, how basic like websites function and work with proper HTML and markup. But yeah. WordPress came along.
And then once theme forest and sites where you could basically go and purchase a design and put it in with WordPress, that was the game changer. So most everybody, I feel like even that I knew in web design went that route, unless you were like hard coding sites and going extremely custom, but most freelancers and small businesses at that point went to WordPress.
So it was a pretty, like, it was a no brainer for me to take WordPress more seriously through 2011 and 12.
Amr Selim | 31:22
Yeah, so when you were starting your company, your web design company in Transit Studios, Were you… When you started Were you a WordPress exclusive or you still did some… Dreamweaver and HTML stuff.
Josh Hall | 31:35
I did some HTML and Dreamweaver. So I technically started it in the fall of 2010. And I called it in transit studios because our third album was called in transit and it just, it was at the same time.
So I was like, that’s a cool name. It’s not registered. I like it. We’ll go with that.
So I did start with dream Weaver. And then I want to say it was 2011 ish, like late 2011 when I was like, okay, I think I can, like do a WordPress website. I definitely should have taken an official course. To guide me through that because I made my life way more painful than it needed to be learning WordPress. I just was like fumbling through tutorials and Did not do it in an efficient way.
And then I was trying to like, yeah, Right.
Amr Selim | 32:20
YouTube wasn’t as big as it is right now. Yeah.
Josh Hall | 32:23
It was different than I was stuck in the, like you design up a layout in Photoshop, you slice it up, you bring it in a dream Weaver and then you use CSS. And I was trying to do that with WordPress, but I didn’t understand how WordPress works.
So it was a really messy transition that I wish I would have just taken a WordPress course. I’m sure there were some back then on Linda or Udemy or, I should probably give myself some leeway because back then the learning space was very different too.
Like, I don’t know how much was online in the learning end of things back then.
Amr Selim | 33:01
Not much. Not much. I used to buy lots of books.
So I bought all the Linda So here’s the thing, because I wasn’t I didn’t have a web design business back then.
Josh Hall | 33:05
Books. Did you get WordPress for dummies? Everyone had that, right? No.
Amr Selim | 33:15
It was… I was teaching web design in an institute between… 2002 And maybe 2000 and… Or ish.
And then I went and I joined another business as an IT manager. But I would teach in the evening. I would teach web design again in the evening. It was like a dual role. But then somewhere around like, okay, in 2007, I was working for the government.
So I wasn’t designing websites. I would sit with the guy in charge of that government department’s website. To see how he’s doing stuff. And, you know, put my nose in his business but he was a lovely guy he didn’t mind it and he was a PHP developer he was a developer he wasn’t like he was He could build an application on his own, completely on his own in PHP at the time. And the website was not WordPress. And I was trying to convince him to separate the two.
So I have the app somewhere and have the other services and the government services and the interface for the system that we were using. Somewhere and then have the site as WordPress so that he can give it to the PR department and they can manage it. And it’s less headache for him. But until I left the government department 2013, I don’t think the website was in WordPress yet. I don’t know what it is right now. Gotcha.
So I wasn’t really designing as per se. I started to look at I would do things for friends, family, acquaintances on the side. But I didn’t have a business. I just worked for the government. From 2006 to 2013. And after this, I worked for a software company.
So yeah, we did some interfaces, but it was hard-coded HTML and CSS as well. But I switched it. Their website was a new one. And I switched it to WordPress.
So that was an accomplishment.
Josh Hall | 35:12
That was pretty common too, because there was in those years, fellow web designers who were around back didn’t probably remember that. There was a bit of a, I don’t know if there was like an official race, but you were kind of, Your tool stack back then was WordPress, Joomla or Drupal? Unless you want the hard code website. Whereas now it’s like, I do feel for folks getting started now because it’s like, I don’t want WordPress. Do I go to Squarespace? Do I do ShowIt? Do I do Webflow? Or and not do this?
Amr Selim | 35:41
Elementor. Do I use AI or not use AI? Do I do this.
Josh Hall | 35:45
Back then it was pretty, like, it was pretty, you know, you’re either going to hand code it Dreamweaver or there was a couple other similar Dreamweaver ones, or you’re going to do a CMS, a content management system, which was going to be Joomla, WordPress or Drupal. And very quickly WordPress started I mean, 2011, 12 and 13, I’d love to see the growth trajectory of WordPress because I think it probably skyrocketed.
Amr Selim | 36:12
Yes, it went from probably… A couple of million to like maybe 15 or 20 and then 30.
Josh Hall | 36:19
30% of the internet I think is probably about where WordPress was by 2013. So Yeah.
Amr Selim | 36:27
I remember when I was in the software business in Probably 2015, the established web designers who used to do hard-coded websites and were very proud about it would tell you that if you do a website in WordPress, you’re not a real designer. Like it used to be like, kind of used to be called out on it. He’s lazy. He’s using WordPress. And it’s like, dude, it’s not about being lazy. It’s about when the project is done, like, okay, you can design the best thing in the world. You could be the most skilled person in the world in an industry. But you got to think about the client.
Yeah. When they get their stuff, They need to be able to do things in it.
Like this is the main thing. This is the main reason WordPress and the likes of WordPress exist today.
Josh Hall | 37:17
I mean, what’s interesting about that time period in web design is I understand and it’s kind of funny now because I feel like WordPress developers and designers now feel that way too, like new web designers. Getting on, you know, using a hosting builder or yeah, just like an AI builder where it’s like real web designers, you use WordPress.
So it’s like, it’s just, you know, it’s kind of like the progression is just kind of. You know, it’s like every five years, it just goes back to that. What that was.
I mean, think.
Amr Selim | 37:48
Of it like, If you’re going to put a hole in the wall and you could do a manual drill and keep going. Yeah.
And then the electric drills comes up and then people say, people use the electric drill are just lazy.
Josh Hall | 38:01
Yeah. It’s a tool. Yes, it is a tool. It’s all a tool. Whether you hand code the tool or you use a tool that’s already got stuff in there. Exactly. The thing is though, it is the client side and I don’t know. What the small business world was like in those years as much.
I mean, I just started doing So was that like the main web builder?
Amr Selim | 38:22
Freelance. On page, Microsoft’s drum page. It wasn’t the main thing, but it was a way for the medium-sized companies would give the web design job. To the office manager or one of the secretaries if it’s like a little bit bigger of a company.
And then… Once they do the first iteration that doesn’t look as good, then they send them to take a course like in somewhere in one of the institutes, which these used to be the people I used to teach when I was teaching. And you would teach them front page, Dreamweaver, HTML and CSS? Yes. And I don’t know where I came from. There were not as many web design companies and agencies like in the Middle East. In each country, you had maybe two or three big ones, very reputable. But it was really hard to find freelancers or there was no Upwork or Fiverr, or maybe they were not, famous at the time? Sure.
Josh Hall | 39:24
Well, even back in like really anywhere in between 2000 and nine in 2012 or 13, a small, like a small business to get a website up until really WordPress was a big deal. Like you were just, a small business was not going to pay 1500 bucks and get a hand-coded website. And it was so Yeah.
Amr Selim | 39:46
Complicated to manage.
Josh Hall | 39:48
Yeah. Managing was a problem. And I remember when I did one of those night classes for the Dreamweaver course, actually, the professor showed us one of his sites and I think he said it was like a 20 or $30,000 bill. This was, you know, back in 2010.
Yeah. And nowadays that would be like a $900 website kind of thing.
I mean, it was really. Yeah. It was so different on the small business side of things. And funnily enough, I think one little fun piece about musicians getting into web design is MySpace. Because MySpace back in those days allowed the average person, if you were interested at all, to play around with the HTML and you could build a header and you could customize.
I mean, I remember… Doing like very basic MySpace designs.
And then, yeah, you could slice it up. And it was basically like a little mini website on your MySpace account.
So that was kind of a factor too, to where… I think people are getting into web design unintentionally through MySpace.
I mean, so many web designers around my age in the 30s or early 40s. Yeah, we’re in a band, customize our MySpace pages. And the next thing you know, we’re building websites for people.
Amr Selim | 41:00
There was something similar called GeoCities as well. Similar to MySpace. What made you like, how did you find Elegant Themes? What made you look into.
Josh Hall | 41:14
It? What’s funny is… I was very against Divi and page builders initially. Very against it. Me too.
Yeah, there you go. I mean, especially from coming from your world, I can imagine that would have been a much harder sell, but. What happened is back in those days, This would have been 1314. Is you would go to a site like ThemeForest, buy a dentist theme, and then build that on a WordPress site for your dentist.
And then you get an auto mechanic, you’d search auto mechanic themes, you’d say, which one do you like? They like that one, you’d build that on WordPress. Divvy? Was revolutionary. Back in 2014, Because there was a couple other page builders, but they just sucked. It was a clunky, terrible experience. Divi wasn’t the first one that was smooth, right? And was pretty dang easy to figure out. And you could use WordPress, but it was visual. It was like, you could build the blocks of the page. And nowadays it’s like, well, duh, that sounds like what you would want to do anyway. But back then, I mean.
Taking to it. The way I got into it was one of my clients was a CPA and they, their marketing guy worked for like a bigger agency in town. And this marketing guy was like, Hey, I really like your stuff. My agency is actually looking to like just hire out occasional web design help. It’s not a full-time role, but it’s just, you know, you can work from home, take on projects as you see fit. We use this page builder called Divi. And that’s how I got, that’s how I found out about it. I was yeah, I had to use it if I wanted to take on jobs from this company.
Amr Selim | 42:58
Like.
Josh Hall | 43:04
And it was just a subcontractor role and I got to make extra money. I didn’t have to sell. I didn’t have to talk to the client. They just gave me designs and I would build them in Divi.
So that’s how I got started with it. And then, I remember working on like a ThemeForest WordPress website. And I could not get the theme to do what I wanted to do.
And then it dawned on me. I’m like, I could do this in Divi.
And then. Divi just became the one I used for every site.
And then I really learned how to customize it and save sections and make it my own. And then that’s what started my foray into Divi.
Amr Selim | 43:39
Why did you decide you wanted to write about this experience? Because you were Like, I don’t know, one of the famous bloggers for Divi?
Josh Hall | 43:47
Yeah. So Elegant Themes, which is the company that owns, well, runs, what is Divi? Divi is their signature product. What’s funny is Elegant Themes used to do just a bunch of themes for WordPress. Divi just happened to be the one that was page builder friendly.
And then it just took off. Back in those days, Facebook groups were even bigger than they are now. Especially in web design. And I was in a Divi group and The content manager for the elegant themes blog, which was huge at the time. Lived in Columbus. And this was back in the day when in Facebook, unless you change your privacy settings, it would say where you posted from. And I was like my gosh. He’s that’s crazy.
So I just message him on Facebook and it was like, hey man. I’m a divvy designer at this point. At this point, I was just knocking on the door of six figures with my business. This would have been circa 16 by now.
So a couple years of using Divi and building my freelance business and really, you know, getting to a six figure level. And then I just asked him if he wanted to go out for coffee. I had no intention to. I had no hidden agenda. I just wanted to meet him. And I am a community builder at heart. I do. I’m a network builder at heart.
So I met him and then told him about my business. And then he was like, I, it was funny because I was just, I did not value my journey at that point and what I had built because I always felt like I should have been in a big agency downtown. And I was like, I’m just the solopreneur.
Amr Selim | 45:19
We all do this to ourselves. Right. We all like it’s, I don’t know if it’s the imposter syndrome or is it something else, but like, you will be doing something that is very valuable, but you think normal, everybody else is doing something valuable.
Yeah. And then you don’t talk about.
Josh Hall | 45:34
It. And you don’t talk about it. And with him, I think because I’ve always been open with numbers and business stuff, I just told him like, yeah, we’re actually, we should be hitting six figures this year. And he was like, wow. He’s like, would you like to write for the elegant things blog and just share your experience on pricing and onboarding and offers and, Part of me was like, yeah, like who’s going to want to learn from me?
Like there’s agencies doing, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars. And he’s like, yeah, but you know, he, If I remember right, I think he said a lot of people would like to do what you do. Which is make a hundred thousand dollars work for yourself. Work from home, have 2030 clients, And I was like. I guess you’re right. I think a lot of people, I would like that five years, you know, five years ago, I would have loved to have learned from me.
So. That’s how I became a blog author for elegant themes.
Yeah.
Amr Selim | 46:24
This is interesting for me because there is no money angle here. You did it because you wanted to do it.
Like it’s not, you’re not doing it to market your services. You’re not doing it to make money. And this is for me, that’s a lesson because it’s how I’m wired.
Sometimes I do stuff. I don’t know why I’m doing it. I just want to do it. I just like doing it. I don’t even think about why I’m doing it.
Like, you know, If it helps somebody, great. If it doesn’t, then I would have wasted some of my hours. But it doesn’t matter. I like doing it.
Josh Hall | 46:55
And I guess a through line through my journey that I should probably say now is I love teaching. And I love sharing what I’m doing. I am a big fan of the like see, do teach model, which is, and even with drums, I was giving drum lessons when I was at the height of drumming for the band, I was giving drum lessons to kids locally. And I love doing that at this point to working with elegant themes. I was involved in a mentor program for my local high school for kids who wanted to learn design and 3d and game design and web design. And I really enjoy a couple of the students who went through that and were fired up about it. I love teaching them. If they were fired up to learn web design and wanted to do what I did, I love teaching them.
So there was an element of that, of like, it’s kind of a fun passion project. I get to blog on a site that gets like hundreds of thousands of readers every week. It was pretty cool. And I just kind of figured, again, it was one of those things where it was like. Nothing to lose in the sense of I was getting paid per article. I wasn’t writing for free. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was cool. It was a little bit of extra money and I enjoyed writing for them. And I figured, There’s no downside to writing for elegant themes.
Like, no matter where I go in my journey, it’s going to be cool to be like, I wrote for Elegant Themes.
Amr Selim | 48:14
I wrote for Elegant Themes.
Josh Hall | 48:15
Yeah. Yeah. Because I went for a while. My first foray into YouTube and building what is my brand now was Josh’s They called me the Yoda of Divvy and I was a blog author for Elegant Themes. That was in my tagline for years. And it all started.
Amr Selim | 48:34
There. So when I moved out of the Middle East and migrated to Canada in 2015, well, 2015, I still had my job in Dubai.
So… I came and I left my family here and I went back to Dubai for another Nine months, and then I came back and settled completely. In Canada as a permanent resident in 2016. And so I registered my company in 2015 so that when I come to Canada, I’m an entrepreneur and my company was supposed to be doing something completely different. It was supposed to be selling software. That’s right.
Yeah. Yeah. And it was supposed to be HR software.
That’s why it’s called human talents. It morphed into like this is the third iteration of my company right now. But anyway, so I wanted to build the first website For my new business. But I didn’t have the time. Because I had to deal with settling in Canada as a newcomer.
You know, everything else. And I hadn’t seen my family for nine months and the kids were going to school and, you know, I didn’t have the time to build it myself.
So I hired somebody and they built it in Divi and when I got it, managing it was a nightmare. So I started watching at that time, like 2016, YouTube was strong enough. You could find stuff there and the Facebook groups.
So I started to read some of your blogs? And I saw a couple of tutorials, some of your tutorials, some somebody else’s tutorials and started to learn Divi bit by bit and just to be able to manage my own website. And once I knew what I was doing, I realized how much power is in that. And I yeah, I mean, I did buy the Divi lifetime license somewhere in 2000, maybe 14 or 13. I can’t remember.
Josh Hall | 50:32
Wow. So you were early on.
Amr Selim | 50:34
And I never used I bought it because it was like lifetime.
Josh Hall | 50:35
It. Gotcha.
Amr Selim | 50:38
It’s a deal, right?
Josh Hall | 50:40
Yeah, it was probably like a hundred bucks back then.
Amr Selim | 50:42
I would play with this later. Like, yeah. And, I started to realize that the guys in Elegant Themes They’re not stagnant. Because here’s the thing, in my opinion, the biggest differentiator between them and any other tool that you use for web design is that they’re always doing something new. They’re always making things better. And even though at the time, I think maybe 2017, everyone was mad at Divi because it was slower in loading.
Well, They were saying it’s slower. It wasn’t for real. But in general, like in most cases, it was their hosting that was the problem. But anyway, there was this kind of reputation that Divi is heavier than then other page builders and some people were telling others to avoid it. And it was when I got too passionate To try and prove it.
So I would… I would put similar website in the same hosting one is using Divi similar looking one is using Divi and one is using Elementor and then I would test and then I would see If Divi for real, I like doing these hands-on projects. But at the same time, I could see Every maybe five or six months, BVE launches… New features that nobody else has. And you’re thinking like Okay, so if people are buying stuff from ThemeForest, yeah, you’ll get some updates. You’ll get a patch here and there. You’ll get security updates. Maybe you get some CSS stuff. Maybe you get some update that makes it load a little bit faster, but that’s about it. But if you’re using Divi, you get a completely different way of getting something done.
Like it’s amazing. It’s kind of amazing how they did now. They did DV5. And they’re not charging separately for it. If you had Divi, You get DV5 with it.
Like now, it’s like, It’s a completely different software. And they’re not.
So I love the ecosystem and I love how they run their business. And I think you echoed this. In your training, which is A good segue now. You’re an in-transit studio. You’re a successful business owner. You have this web design agency. Why did you create courses?
I mean, you already had blogs, you had tutorials on YouTube, you had your Facebook group. There was so much going on.
So what made you think, Let me do my own course.
Josh Hall | 53:13
So… In… When I started blogging for Elegant Themes, my profile in that world went up skyrocketing. It was big time.
So then I started my Facebook group, which is called Divi Web Designers. It’s the second largest Facebook group for Divi still today. Tim Streifler with Divi Life owns it now. I sold it to him back in 2010. Too, but I built that. I built, Hey Tim, I built that group, which is kind of funny because like what I learned in building that group, I was, you know, technically a community builder back then. And now it’s mainly what I do now.
So it’s like, you know, I started building that. And the main reason I did that is because I thought. I would become a like child theme creator and build Divi layouts and plugins and themes and stuff like that. I had no interest or desire to do courses at all. But people kept on asking me how to do certain stuff and asking for courses.
So, I think back then it probably would have been I want to say like, maybe it would have behooved me to have like a Divi course as the first one I did.
Amr Selim | 54:21
This restart in your life came because people demanded it?
Josh Hall | 54:25
Yes. Well, so cool.
Yeah. Yeah. People demanded it.
And then you would think I would have just done a Divi course. I started my YouTube channel. I was doing different tutorials, but yeah, At that time, my first daughter was born and I’ve told the story many times that we spent two months in the NICU, the newborn intensive care unit. And that was a very trying experience. What got us through that and what allowed me to barely work through those couple months was our maintenance plan. And I had built up enough recurring revenue and our maintenance plan to help carry us through that. And. When I told that story and I just, you know, it was such a, top of mind, like personal thing for me, I was like, you know, I was like, I don’t. Feel like I’m ready to, you know, do courses and teach people business. But I’m like, I can absolutely share how I do my maintenance plan. And you build recurring revenue.
So that was my first course. I just went for it and opened it. And I polled the group and I was like, who would be interested in learning how I run my maintenance plan? And I was like, I’m thinking about doing a course on it.
So there was such interest in that and building recurring revenue. This was 2018 at this point. And so I launched that first course. And yeah, it had like 80 some students come through. And I think I want to say I made like over 10 K. And that Really got me excited because I was like, $10,000 off of one launch and there’s nothing for me to fulfill. I don’t have to like, you know, Yeah.
Amr Selim | 55:55
Do client work.
Josh Hall | 55:57
Yeah. So that’s what started the foray.
And then I just, you know, in typical restart fashion, I was like, all right, I’m a course grader. And then I had an idea to do like a suite of courses and just went all out over the next couple of years, building courses. And those are still the core of my, all of my curriculums today.
So…
Amr Selim | 56:16
I wouldn’t have built mine until you pushed me to do it.
Josh Hall | 56:19
Yeah. You have your email. Yep. I.
Amr Selim | 56:21
Taught. I mean, I taught for years and years. I was a trainer. I was teaching technology, different parts, not necessarily web design. I taught networking. I taught fixing computers, building computers, everything, kind of everything related to the old technology back then that was there. And I did it officially as an instructor in an institute and I did it like in the software company because we have something called customer success, which is… From the company’s perspective, you want to make sure that the customer will renew the license.
So you got to make sure that they’re using the software in their day-to-day work to so that you’re an integral part of how they do their work. This way, they will always renew the license. It’s recurring revenue, right?
So you got to be teaching your customers all the time. And that’s something that I keep doing and I kept doing for years and I do today. But I never… I don’t know. I guess I was procrastinating because I don’t like editing videos.
I mean, I like editing videos, but they take so much of my time. So I enjoy it to the point that if I keep doing it, I could probably spend the whole day just doing one video and that’s not… A good use of the.
Josh Hall | 57:36
Time. Yeah, that is.
I mean, for anyone interested in doing a course of any sort, like, Editing is a killer. It’s… It was interesting is like my first couple of courses were just screen share tutorials.
So I wasn’t even face to camera. Maybe a couple lessons if I had like business stuff, but it was mostly like, you know, like literally just sharing my screen on stuff, which really helped because it meant that I didn’t have a bunch of like, editing unless I was or doing long pauses or something.
So I did… Unintentionally make it easy to do my courses just because I did not overproduce my videos. And to this day, it’s what I struggle with because I look at YouTube videos today and they’re so polished and There’s so many cuts and visuals.
Amr Selim | 58:25
Don’t go down that rabbit hole.
Josh Hall | 58:26
Exactly. I’m like, you know what? And I think people appreciate just a good old slide deck or just a simple, like I try to cut my videos down. And a screen share is great. And a screen share. You’re right?
Amr Selim | 58:38
Showing people how you would do it, Yes. So they can learn it the first way, how you could do it yourself. Then once they’re, they can switch it up a bit and do it their own way. But the first time You just follow the steps. You follow what you see on the screen. And I feel… To this day, I feel that, to me at least as a learner, that’s the easiest way to learn.
Like somebody’s showing you exactly how they do it. And you just go and replicate that yourself.
Yeah. It’s like, I’m, well, I’m old, so…
So in university, the way I would… Study for the exam was to read the book and summarize it myself.
So pen and paper and you’re writing whatever you’re reading and that’s the way it gets in there. And it’s the same way now using technology, you watch the video, but you have to.
So, I mean, I feel it’s better when you have two monitors and then one you’re running the course and then you pose it. And then on the other one, you already have your Divi or your website open. And you just do exactly what you saw right now. Because if you leave it for a couple of weeks, A, you could forget. B, you could lose interest. And C, you probably will not finish the course unless you start actually implementing.
Josh Hall | 59:58
And it is tricky with courses, depending on the content you’re teaching on. Like if it’s a website tutorial style course, if it’s like a build along with me, that’s the way to go. Doesn’t need editing. Doesn’t need anything fancy. Here’s my screen. Here’s what I’m doing. You do it. Pause. You do it. If it’s like I’m teaching how to get web design clients.
Amr Selim | 01:00:18
Yeah. You know.
Josh Hall | 01:00:19
That’s where it’s tricky with like literal post-production on courses. Cause it’s like, do I just have a slide and just list out what I recommend or do I have visuals? Do I it?
Amr Selim | 01:00:30
Put myself in.
Josh Hall | 01:00:32
That’s where it’s tricky. I’m in this right now. Because this will be coming out on my podcast at least, we’re going to repurpose this. This will come out in January 26. I’m in the middle of revamping my SEO course. And some of that is visual to where like I could just show screen share, like Google something, here’s what it looks like. But if it’s like mapping out the different types of SEO and AI SEO and something like that, the question is, do I do talking head or Do I do slides? Do I do animations? And I have to tell myself this.
So for anyone who’s in this is true for anyone doing like a workshop or a training. The distinction I would make is it educational or is it entertainment? And if you’re on social media and you got to get people interested in you, it’s probably got to lean a little more towards entertainment. I like Edutainment.
Amr Selim | 01:01:25
Edutainment.
Josh Hall | 01:01:27
Yes. Edutainment. Perfect.
So, You may want to teach something. If it’s short form, it’s gotta be entertainment because I can’t just do a horizontal screen share for an hour and post it on Facebook. No one’s going to watch that, but on YouTube is different, but. Regardless, I think with content now that’s educational or entertainment or in the middle, which is edutainment. You do need to like, You just got to be self-aware and honest about, okay, if I’m doing a course that’s like screen share, I can, I don’t need to worry about editing, you know, drastically, no quick cuts, no fancy stuff. Just, Teach. If it is social media content to get people interested in you and build your following, you’re probably going to need the best time in post-production and keeping it quick and cuts and something engaging.
And then in the middle, maybe that’s more of like, a 30 minute masterclass or a webinar or something that maybe starts off a little more flashy, but then gets into the non-edited kind of stuff. So that’s the challenge, especially nowadays, as far as balancing education, entertainment online in both courses and social media.
Amr Selim | 01:02:34
And I feel like you did something that I was talking about earlier. Long time ago already, and you were the first person who did it. When was the time when you went using Circle? Around which year?
Josh Hall | 01:02:48
2020. 2020 is, yeah, so.
Amr Selim | 01:02:53
Prior to that, every single course that I’ve seen online or that I’ve taken myself, People would create a Facebook group and I hated it because what happens, it starts all nice and beautiful. Then people start fighting for I don’t know why, but they start having differences of opinions about stupid stuff.
Right? And then you see like the attention is no longer on the material that we’re learning, but it’s rather, it could be political. It could be, you know, it’s a year of elections or whatever it is, but the course.
And then, of course, Facebook itself, if you’re going… With the intention to go to the Facebook group, which is part of the course, there is no way you’re going to isolate yourself from your actual Facebook account where you have your friends and family.
So to me, that was like, You know, it’s kind of like, you know, when we say about SEO, you don’t want to send people outside the website. So you don’t want to have too many links.
I mean, sometimes you do have links to other websites that are useful. Or you have partnership with somebody, which is okay. But in general, you’re trying to keep the visitor hooked on your website so that they can buy or whatever it is that you want them to do, whatever action So it’s the same thing. Why would I create a course And then send my learners to Facebook where they get lost in Facebook.
Yeah. Like it made no sense whatsoever to me. And. For me coming from…
Software industry where we had learning management systems, We built the social part inside the learning management system. So that people can do these interactions I mean, I don’t know if I can say this on air. If you find it not… Good, just cut it off. But my manager in the software company, when we started to do… Build the social part as part of the learning management system. And we go out to explain it to I wouldn’t say clients, but people when you really well, they’re in our inner circle. He used to tell them, this is like social media, but with a condom on top of was like, Paul, don’t say that.
Josh Hall | 01:05:03
It. That’s good. I actually never, I’ve heard that. That’s funny. It.
Amr Selim | 01:05:12
People will get scared or maybe get the wrong idea. But what he meant was you’re going to shield them from every distraction.-
So that whatever they’re discussing, yes, there’s a social aspect. They can share a joke. They can maybe put a video of themselves. They can…
You know, share like a, Some even learning content that’s not from your course. It’s not feasible.
Josh Hall | 01:05:36
I’m going to pitch to circle that their tagline should be the condom of communities. That is what I’m going to pitch to circle.
Right after this.
Amr Selim | 01:05:45
Put a condom on your learning experience.
Josh Hall | 01:05:47
Right? Yeah. No, it really is a good, truthfully is a good analogy because I had that same problem because I did have Facebook groups. Man. When I started doing my courses, people were asking about support.
So I was like, I have an idea. I’ll create a separate Facebook group for each course.
And then when you join the business course, you have the business Facebook group. And then I had like five Facebook groups to manage and it was managing them as a nightmare.
So yeah, when I, in 2020, when I had the idea of creating like a, essentially a community, a premium community for students of mine is how the idea started. I was looking, I was like, I don’t want to do a, I thought about doing a Facebook group and I’m like, I’ve already got Divi web designers. I’ve got five different course groups. I’m like, I really would like to control the experience more and put a condom on it. And it was a Paul. Thanks, Paul. And, At that time, I was following Pat Flynn a lot in those years.
Still am. Great guy. And he and his community, or he had a similar course model. They talked about this platform called Circle. Because I looked at MemberPress and a bunch of other WordPress options, but then it was like, And I got a piece together, all these different plugins. That’s one thing to do with courses, but it’s a whole nother thing to do with a membership. That’s going to be as active as I, and I wanted to do calls. I wanted to have different payment tiers eventually.
So circle came out and I just fell in love with the user experience of it. I tried a couple other ones and then I was like yeah, I’m all in. I’m all in on circle. And I started what is now web designer pro, which is my main business. It was originally called the web design club. And it was just for my course students.
Yeah. It was basically just to say like, if you want to go further and you want more support and you want coaching with me, join my coaching community. It’s called the web design club. It’s in circle. The courses are not there yet because they didn’t have course functionality yet, but. You could have access to my courses and have the community. And yeah, I don’t run it now. It’s basically just fizzled out, but I had a student center that I took all my Facebook groups and consolidated them into a separate circle account. There were pros and cons to that. Because it was like free support here or join my web design club, premium community.
So I was managing both of those for a while. And I’ve since then condensed everything into Web Designer Pro. Which is what I rebranded it to back in 2023.
So that was kind of my progression into getting into Circle and then moving from like one-off courses to the membership model.
Amr Selim | 01:08:24
You call it progression, but it’s like a revolution, to be honest. It’s not… Because you kind of, you even took your courses from the learning management system on the website and they’re now on Circle. Isn’t that the case.
Josh Hall | 01:08:38
Now? Yeah.
Yeah. So technically my OG courses are still live on joshhall.co, which is my website. I don’t sell them. I haven’t sold them there since 2023. Basically up until this point, everyone who had purchased a lifetime access course there can still access it. But You really wouldn’t know about it unless you were a student back in those days.
So probably this year in 2026, I’ll be completely dropping that system and then giving anyone who has not joined pro some sort of offer to like go into the courses there for a limited time. And then, you know, you can stick with us or you can just download the course that you had purchased.
So. But yeah, it was the big restart for me. Which… Was a big pivot. Was going from one-off course sales to the membership model. Because in 2023, I decided, I’m going all in on Web Designer Pro. Courses, community, coaching, all together. And it was working so well for my top performing students that I was like, this is what I want to do. It’s what’s getting results. It went from like selling nine different courses randomly to just selling Web Designer Pro. You get all my courses in Web Designer Pro.
Yeah. So I love.
Amr Selim | 01:10:00
The fact. Because it’s, I used to say even to clients and past clients, and I would keep saying this to even future clients that a website, this is my words, right? I say a website is a living organism.
Like there’s no website. That you build it and forget it. It’s kind of, You got to keep doing stuff. You got to keep updating the content. You got to keep thinking. You don’t have to update.
Like if you don’t want to spend money on refreshing it every three, four years, that’s fine. If you want to pay your web designer one time and the website still looks fresh and good and whatever, that’s okay. Right. Although, I mean, I would advise everyone to refresh every now and then because technology changes. We get like different things, new things, and you want to incorporate these on your website. That will make it better, faster, more secure. But anyway. You have to maintain like a certain schedule, even if it’s once a week. To post stuff, to change your content.
So because this is a living organism, Learning it Learning this web design and the managing of websites and whatever is a living organism. You can have a course. That was made, I don’t know, four years ago, it’s still okay, still good, the information, most of the information would still be current, but it wouldn’t have the new stuff that’s happening right now. Right.
So when you do it as a community, Even if you don’t update the course content, you will update your coaching. You will update your message. You will update the discussion. It’s like…
You know, you always get the latest.
Josh Hall | 01:11:37
Yeah, that’s certainly what I found with pro. I mean, This is the trickiest part of where I am today is I have courses that are, some of them technically five or six years old now. Which a lot of those I’m getting ready to revamp my Divi course. I was waiting until five was further along to make a five version.
So that’ll be Q one 26, my SEO course. What’s interesting about that is like my SEO course, even though I made that in 2020, I, It all still holds up today. There are some differences with the way SERPs look search engine result pages, but, and obviously AI is a big component now, which is what I’m going to be updating that for. But I was able to let that go pretty long. Most of my courses are good for three to four years as are most, unless it’s off of a tool, because if you do a course on a tool and they change the UI, it’s like, you got it. That’s rough.
So.
Amr Selim | 01:12:29
I got to update some of my videos now because of my email deliverability, not just in the course, but even my videos on YouTube. I used a tool called SendGrid and they stopped giving free accounts.
Josh Hall | 01:12:43
Yes. So I note, for anyone doing courses or training video for clients or workshops or any resources that you house videos, this is another reason for courses to do low edit videos because my big goal is over the next few years is to be able to go in and change a lesson.
Amr Selim | 01:12:44
Got to re-record the video and use a different tool. Side.
Josh Hall | 01:13:03
Without needing to be on camera. I’m actually like- I’m intentionally going to make my courses.
Amr Selim | 01:13:07
Just change one part. Yes. One video.
Josh Hall | 01:13:12
Okay, cat’s out of the bag. Here’s my big- Here’s my strategy moving forward from 2026 on. My courses are going to be stupidly simple. Very more concise, very little face to camera because if I ever changed my office or if I ever tried to grow a beard one day, like I don’t want it to feel like, this is old.
Like, you know, Yeah.
Amr Selim | 01:13:33
Like one part will look different.
Josh Hall | 01:13:36
So I’m actually, my, What I’m going to mostly do moving forward is I’ll be face to camera in the intro and that’s probably about it. Like everything else No, truthfully, I think there’s a value to have like you in the corner, but, Personally, I think we’re past…
Amr Selim | 01:13:46
Is going to be screened. And then the screen share is just the screen share.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s.
Josh Hall | 01:13:59
Fine too. I think we’re past the days where like, you need to see the person’s head moving while talking in the corner. I think now me personally, like just give me a screen share.
Like I don’t need to see you talking little head. I don’t need to see a little hammer head in the corner now. I just, somewhere.
Amr Selim | 01:14:15
Yeah. Maybe have a photo in a circle at the bottom.
Josh Hall | 01:14:19
Absolutely. Absolutely. But that’s the biggie is especially with a suite of courses, I want to be able to go in if I need to change. One SEO course lesson. I don’t want to have to redo the whole freaking course. I just want to go in and change that lesson.
So that’s my personal big challenge. Anyone, again, even if you’re not a course creator, if you have resources for clients or if you have training that you teach your clients, how to use.
Amr Selim | 01:14:46
You want to make I’m going to look up or out for my own interest right now.
Josh Hall | 01:14:48
It easy to update. That’s going to be my new course. Easy to update.
Amr Selim | 01:14:58
Are you going to update your course about making courses because i wouldn’t have made my course until you gave me your course i mean we said the word course too many times yeah is until you push me to create it and then give me the course that helped me create mine so here i wouldn’t have created mine i.
Josh Hall | 01:15:09
But what’s so interesting about this.
Know here’s what’s tricky about that man it that course totally flopped with sales because You and a handful of others were interested in doing courses, but most of my audience are not. Most of my audience are web designers.
Yeah, teach.
Amr Selim | 01:15:33
They want to design. They don’t want to teach. Not everyone wants to.
Josh Hall | 01:15:36
Yeah, so I have a lot of interest. So it’s retiring.
Well, so it’s not even available for purchase now. It’s not even in pro. It’s literally just… It’s backlogged in my old website, so…
Amr Selim | 01:15:48
But… I’ve got to go download it from your website.
Yeah, think I do.
Josh Hall | 01:15:51
Yeah, you still have admin access, I think. I ages.
Amr Selim | 01:15:56
I haven’t been there for.
Josh Hall | 01:16:02
I have a lot of interest in doing a course on courses, a course on community, a course on podcasting, a course on YouTube. I just… I would have to make it. And those in particular.
Like are really hard to keep up to date. Like podcasting stuff changes, YouTube stuff. There’s no way I can maintain a YouTube course. And it was, unless it was like something I can dedicate to revamping all the time.
So in the case of a course on courses, As much interest as I have in that, I would need to make it very evergreen to where like it doesn’t need to be updated in like five years. So that’s the only.
Amr Selim | 01:16:39
Challenge. Like the part that was, like The most helpful part to me was setting things up and planning for it.
Like I’d already recorded some videos. I know how to edit videos. The technical part of it was okay for me because I already started. Okay. But the part that I was lacking was the planning part was the you know, the framework itself and how to put things in a certain order, like the business side of it.
Josh Hall | 01:17:10
Okay. So like marketing it.
Amr Selim | 01:17:12
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think I did a great job, but anyway, I’m the worst person ever to talk about themselves. Like face to face. If you get me talking, I will not shut up. Is the ADHD part of me? But in general, I don’t market myself well sometimes even or at all, like, you know, I don’t know, even 100% of my business is referrals, which tells me I should be out there more. I don’t want to call myself lazy, but like, How many coaching calls did you see me on? On web designer pro.
Josh Hall | 01:17:49
Right. Yeah. More active in the forum, especially early on.
Cause you’re still in there. I still tag you. I still see you popping in once.
So I love seeing you pop in, but yeah, it’s, you know, I mean, but it’s You could, it depends on your goals. You know, like you could have, all the work in the world with DNS and email help if you wanted to, but it just kind of depends on, you know, yeah. How much time do you want to devote in pro?
I mean, I.
Amr Selim | 01:18:16
I like teaching, so I’m thinking… It’s always at the back of my head to create a course actually for business people, for business owners, because I see there’s so many business owners there hell bent on building their own website. I don’t know why they want to do it. I don’t know. If they have a simplified idea that tells them that they’ll do it in 10 or 15 hours because they’ll take at least 50, if not 100.
So what I want to do is to create a course for them to make it build their website the correct way and avoid the pitfalls and the mistakes and make it build that website, make them build that website on a weekend. So kind of like 10 hours, 15 hours max. Right. And it’s a, I kind of made some videos that are like, you know, how to choose your domain name correctly. These are like free videos. They’re like… I did a mini series of my podcast and I called it Web Tips for Entrepreneurs. And I think I did five videos.
So it’s all the way from registering your domain to choosing Divi as your preferred, to forcing you to choose Divi as your preferred theme and website builder. But it’s because there’s so much stuff on Divi already. But I’m thinking to kind of formulate this into a step-by-step course. Just for business people. Right. But I don’t know even if this will have a market.
Josh Hall | 01:19:42
Well… The market is the DIY crowd. And that’s what’s really interesting in web design now is these platforms are I’ve seen. Have shifted away from the DIY crowd.
So… And I’m talking like Wix, like Divi used to be the DIY builder. Now, if you were to give a regular business owner control of Divi now, Good luck. Good luck with them.
And then DV5 comes along and they’re like, whoa, what’s this five? And then they’re calling you and you’re like, whoa, I’m not your website builder.
Amr Selim | 01:20:17
I still create tutorials for my clients because like they wouldn’t be able to even just find out what, you know, what they want to do with their website. I mean, in the.
Josh Hall | 01:20:27
Divi. I think. I think the DIY crowd is… Is going is already there and is going to continue to move towards AI builders and GoDaddy and host basically hosting builders. Divvy. Has like with Divi five, that is not a DIY tool at all.
Amr Selim | 01:20:49
All. Yeah, no, that’s that it.
Josh Hall | 01:20:52
I mean, even Elementor is starting to move away from like the small business owner. Just figure it out yourself.
Like every WordPress builder, Etch is a big one right now that’s catching fire. And with the guy in charge of that, Kevin Geary, he is like full blown developer that is not for novices. That’s like you’re a professional web designer. This is the tool you use. This is really common with a lot of page builders that I’m seeing. They’re moving away from DIY or so. The cool thing about that is there’s a lot more room for professional web designers.
So despite everyone’s worry about AI taking over, AI may take over. Some of the DIY crowd, but. I foresee mark my words on this. I think there’s going to be so much opportunity for web pros, web designer pros. There really is because.
Yeah. What small business clients don’t realize is I just want to build my site. I just want to put something up. There are so many aspects to that they have no idea.
Like domain, like email, like speed, like optimization, like SEO, like copy messaging. And despite prompts being a decent starting point, there’s so much more to that. And the fact is you can take a template that is designed in a nice way. And within three minutes, a client can butcher the hell out of that thing without even realizing what they’ve done.
So yes, an AI builder may be a starting point and a client will ruin it. So quickly because they are not a web designer, nor should they be.
So… No.
So here’s DIYers. Freaking run your own business. Let web designers build your stuff. Yes. AI can be a tool. In a part of the tool stack. But I think that the pendulum is going to shift. I think web designers are going to be extremely valued over the next five to 10 years in particular. Exactly.
Amr Selim | 01:22:51
Because here’s the thing as well. Like if you… Let’s just go back to the basic example that I gave earlier about drilling. Right.
So we… Let’s say you want to put your TV bracket on the wall, right?
So you as a DIYer, the homeowner yourself, You have so many options where you can drill the holes and, you know. I’m sweating Exactly.
Josh Hall | 01:23:14
Just thinking about this because that’s not something that is in my wheelhouse.
Amr Selim | 01:23:20
And then he, Don’t tell me that if you did this for the first time, every didn’t put holes in the wrong places and then ended up covering it with something. Because, or luckily covering it with the TV itself. You have like a couple of holes behind that nobody sees. When we.
Josh Hall | 01:23:36
Sold our house before we moved into our new house, the poor owner who removes those curtains is going to see a lot of, it’s going to look like I ran a machine gun through there because it’s a…
Amr Selim | 01:23:46
So why would you want to do this with your website? Yeah.
Like, literally, it’s the same thing. So it’s like you can do it yourself and get it wrong until you learn. And if you’re learning to become a web designer yourself, fine, by all means, go do it. But if you’re, I don’t know, a coach or a CPA or a lawyer or whatever, your time is more valuable than this.
Seriously, even with AI, you’re going to spend at least… Okay, with AI, maybe you spend 30, 40 hours. Without AI, maybe you spend… Sixty to a hundred. But if you’re hell-bent on doing it for some reason that I don’t know, Learn from a designer.
So the best way to build a website is to hire a designer, a web designer. The next best way is to learn from one. And that’s why I feel like this is my motivation to do the.
Josh Hall | 01:24:36
Course. What’s funny is like… I see so many designers worried and mostly it’s people outside of the industry or adjacent who are saying like all web designer jobs are going away. All does no, there’s gonna be no graphic designers, no coders, no developers. I saw a very similar thing happen. Probably circa 2016. Which is when Wix in particular came out With their website builder that was extremely DIY friendly for back then. And I had a client, well, he was a lead. He was somebody who was actually about to sign off on like a $2,000 custom website that I was going to build for him.
And then, Just like the next week, he was like, Hey Josh, I just want to let you know that I actually went in and just built it myself. And Wix. And he’s like, I’m sorry. I know we were going to work with you. And he was a personal acquaintance.
So like we knew each other and he had a business. And I actually met with him and he showed it to me and it looked pretty good. It actually looked like, well, I was like, well, yeah, like that’s not too shabby. Now, he told me, he was like, are you worried about this, taking, you know, web designer jobs? Because I can, you know, go build my own website. Here’s the thing, though. He had a background in graphic design. It was very tech savvy. Okay. He is a minority of a business owner. Most people do not have, or from your background, Amr. Maybe they know the tech stuff, but they can’t design for shit. And, That is a problem and vice versa. If you’re a really great designer and you come from print and logo, but you don’t know anything about domains and email and deliverability and optimization and DNS. If only somebody had a simple DNS course for people to go through. Just go into Web Designer Pro. That’s a problem. If somebody?
Amr Selim | 01:26:29
Only. Do you know have used AI.
Josh Hall | 01:26:31
I.
Amr Selim | 01:26:34
I like playing around with stuff, so I use different, even not just the AI that comes with Divi now. And I did get the subscription because it helps me a lot. And sometimes it gets things wrong.
Sometimes it gets things completely wrong. It’s got no resemblance to what I’m trying to do whatsoever. And sometimes…
Like you ask it for, I don’t know, give me a three column section that has this and that. And you feel like my God, I wouldn’t have gotten this idea on my own. But it’s like, it’s a hit and miss sort of thing. And it’s the same thing with AI. I spent… One night, and I don’t know why I spent the whole night doing it. I saw a template. That was using Elementor that had an effect up there in the hero section that I really liked. And I wanted to replicate this on Divi.
Cause I don’t like using Elementor much. It like, it gives me a headache.
Josh Hall | 01:27:28
That’s it. That’s both sides of the table. People who love Elementor hate Divi. People who like Divi generally don’t like Elementor.
Yeah.
Amr Selim | 01:27:35
And then I try to use AI to give me some CSS code and some JavaScript code so that I can manipulate the item that I was trying to do. And… After like maybe six and a half hours, I gave up. And I got an idea in my head to do it without AI And my idea worked.
So I got it done with Divi on my own without AI. But everything I tried with AI, and then when I get the error, I would give it back to AI and ask it to correct it, and it will give me new code, and I’ll put the new code.
Still doesn’t work. But having said that, icons I like it when he now generates the icons. I don’t have to go outside, look for icons anymore.
So small bits and pieces. Backgrounds sometimes, if you want to have a background of a city or a background of a mountain, a beach, you know, something without people in it, AI will do a wonderful job.
So yes, it will save some time, but it will not In my opinion, at least it will not replace the designer at all. And it will not have a clue about the back end.
So you still need the back end. You still need the email to be delivered. You still need the page to load within…
You know, three to five seconds max. Or one to five seconds max. You still need these things and AI is not going to do it for you. You still need to choose a good hosting and a good domain name, not a domain name that’s a sentence that Even you yourself will make a mistake when you type it.
Like things like that. This has nothing to do with AI.
Josh Hall | 01:29:11
Yeah, I’m really not terribly worried about it. I mean, I don’t want to diminish AI. It’s going to be incredible eventually. But again… Again, it’s a tool. It is a tool. There are just better tool. I don’t think most of the world understands how complex web design is and how many different aspects are, if it is going to be something that’s sustainable. And maintainable, trainable.
I mean, so many aspects to it. And again, Where AI is going to cause a big dent is the like super simple DIY sites. That’s already like, yes. And it, Case in point, my neighbor… Is it just got a position on our HOA and they need a, Basic website with just like some downloadable PDFs. He asked me like, what would the best option be? And I was like, God, please don’t ask me to build that website. That is not something I want to do because I’m going to say no, be nice as possible. But I didn’t want to like, You know, it’s not a referable project. I don’t want to send that into my members of pro and be like, Hey, you know, you don’t want to work with this HOA.
So what I advise you what I advise you do is go to go daddy.
Amr Selim | 01:30:15
Want something very simple and probably cheap. So, you know.
Josh Hall | 01:30:21
Purchase the domain, They have their AI assistant. Iroh.
Yeah. Iroh. Yep. That’s probably fine. I’ll have to check in with him to see how it went. I don’t know how it went, but in that situation, that’s totally fine. Now, if he was a serious business and there were SEO implications and conversion implications and. It’s a big part of his digital presence and he’s doing marketing. And where is the marketing going? It’s going to the website to convert. That’s a whole nother ball game. I would not have advised they do that.
So. I think that’s where AI is now is it’s basically.
Amr Selim | 01:30:55
Like, there’s another thing with you mentioned your, speed making or you have a new version coming out of your SEO course. And this is the funny thing because every single SEO course or agency or service out there in the past They used to tell people to focus on I’m sorry, I have to say this, but on stupid stuff like H1 and H2 and it’s like, dude… Who cares? Do you think the Google bot cares? How many H1s and H2s you have on your page. If your content is relevant, it will be ranked. Full stop.
Yeah, right. It might help you a little bit to get a 10% if you’re you know, having something bold and whatever. But when AI is now running the search world, these things don’t matter at all. AI doesn’t give like, you know, a rodent’s backside. What’s the structure of your page? It’s just looking at your content, full stop.
Josh Hall | 01:31:55
Even if you have the worst looking website, might push back on that a bit just because yes, these LLMs are taking answer based queries and that’s what they’re looking for.
Amr Selim | 01:31:59
I.
Josh Hall | 01:32:10
But yeah, They’re pulling from trusted sources and to be a trusted source. There does have to be, you know, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to be like, okay. HTML markup.
Yeah.
Amr Selim | 01:32:26
It has to be readable. Yeah. If you.
Josh Hall | 01:32:28
Had like 18 H ones, it’s probably going to be like, you know, it would be good to have those in H ones, H twos and H threes. But yeah, you know, as long as it is a well-known article that is truly getting eyes like human eyes on it will likely be sourced. But.
Amr Selim | 01:32:44
I say if it’s drinkable by a human. And relevant to your industry, and relevant to you as a person and what makes you unique in your industry. It will get picked up anyway, regardless of I mean, I’m not trying to discourage people from structuring their page.
I mean, it’s good for the human eye, of course, to structure the page too. Yeah. But The part that bugs me You know, like how when you finish designing any website and the client Takes it.
And then In a matter of a couple of months, they send you an email to create an account for the SEO person that they’re using. And the first thing that the SEO person is telling them to do are things that have Absolutely. No relevance… To, you know, the real SEO.
Like kind of, yeah, they, okay, I don’t want to say no relevance, but 10, 15%. Yes.
Josh Hall | 01:33:39
That’s fair. There’s basically like… There’s micro. Consequences and macro consequences in that like yeah couple h1s on a page not ideal would be good to have the perfect seo markup on that but it will still rank it doesn’t like google is not going to say like if there’s two h1s absolutely not displaying it but page and go but with ai you’re My big…
Amr Selim | 01:34:01
Yeah they don’t have an h2 here i’m gonna leave this.
Josh Hall | 01:34:10
Central point to my new SEO course is going to be like, The old SEO. Tips and ways are absolutely still relevant.
Still content is still king. The basic HTML structure, all that stuff is still the foundation. The difference right now is that we are moving more and more into a quick answer based. Exactly.
So AI SEO is basically just answer SEO. Which means you can still take what you already have and maybe Q and a yeah.
Yeah. What was formerly snippets. That would get featured are now getting featured in AI overviews and Claude and perplexity and chat GPT.
So.
Amr Selim | 01:34:50
Yeah, I’m talking about business owners, not web designers, right? And business owners… When you’re paying someone for SEO services, You want to make sure they’re actually doing the right thing. You want to make sure they’re looking after the… That’s my opinion. And I could be wrong or maybe half wrong, but… In my opinion, if you’re going to pay somebody to do your SEO… You want to make sure they’re making your content king. You want to make sure they’re making your content more relevant, more refined. They’re not spending the hours that you’re paying for in doing H1 and H2 and making the picture smaller, bigger, whatever. That like… The search engine doesn’t care about this. As long as it can read the page and index its content and know you know, what this webpage is talking about. You were right. Regardless.
Josh Hall | 01:35:44
And it’s. Tricky. I feel for SEO is in some way because the metrics of measuring it is a lot tougher now because yeah. They’re getting… Pulled up in AI tools, but that’s a lot harder to measure because it’s not like a pay-per-click type of campaign where it’s like, all right, we made these changes. We got 200 more clicks.
Amr Selim | 01:36:07
Yeah. How many clicks we.
Josh Hall | 01:36:09
Got? I got to wrap up here in a couple of minutes, Samer. Sure. But just to, Final point on the AI real quick is like, You have to be more human than ever. In an AI world. And the challenge for small business clients is like, doing interviews, doing YouTube, doing different types of content, posting on social media, getting featured in prominent outlets, getting featured on blogs and backlinks. That’s all SEO. And that’s all AI SEO because when somebody’s searching for something, it’s looking for credibility, it’s looking for answers, it’s looking for who getting into local SEO too with like what you can do now with Google business profiles and map pack listings and, That’s different than my SEO, which is more keyword based and like long tail keywords and authority boosting.
Amr Selim | 01:36:46
To choose. Who are you and what you do.
And then we’re.
Josh Hall | 01:37:02
So just jump into my new SEO course when it’s ready here to go and early Q1. It’s just, it’s going to save you some time if you’re in web design. It’s just…
Amr Selim | 01:37:10
Let me know when you launch it. I’ll take a look as well.
I mean, I’m not… In… In the back of my head as well, there’s a gentleman on your community, Sam Star, is it Star SVO.
Josh Hall | 01:37:21
Sam? Yeah. And he is the king of local Sarston.
Amr Selim | 01:37:26
He’s an SEO guy and I would love to interview him because one of the main reasons why I don’t do SEO in general, like I don’t provide SEO services is that A, I feel that people have been focused on the wrong stuff, on the wrong things, rather than making their content king. B, that domain has loads and loads of spammers, like I get at least 10 emails a week of people offering me SEO services. Yep. And see Which is… My biggest detractor is like, how do I measure the before and after? Right.
Like unless the client stays with me for six to eight months, Have you? I cannot show. What they paid for. Have you No, I’ll shoot him a message.
Josh Hall | 01:38:09
Not connected with Sam yet? I’ll email intro you guys because I don’t know if it’s too late, but he’s doing an SEO summit. In February?
Amr Selim | 01:38:23
Okay.
Josh Hall | 01:38:25
Yeah. Let me get, I’ll get you guys connected because he needs your services with DNS and email and everything you’re doing.
So it is interesting because yeah, Sam has really taken the reins on just the one end of SEO, which is local SEO. Yes.
Amr Selim | 01:38:40
Cause he’s very passionate. I can tell he’s very passionate about it. And I haven’t seen somebody like kind of pushing so hard for this. And this is the area that I wasn’t interested in because I didn’t know you know, basically how to measure it and how to differentiate yourself from the spam.
Josh Hall | 01:39:00
Yeah. Easier to do probably. I think measuring is easier to do with local SEO than it is with, we’ll just call it like global SEO because you’re dealing with search, right.
You know, search terms and keyword phrases that are picked. Yeah.
I mean.
Amr Selim | 01:39:15
I know that you can look at the ranking itself, improve, but the issue is that most of the people who pay for SEO service are expecting to quick results and in my opinion you need to give it at least four months that’s the minimum.
Josh Hall | 01:39:29
Yeah. Yeah. I usually say like 90 days. I feel like you probably, you should be able to get some sort of movement within 90 days. But yeah, that’s probably real results.
I mean, technically real results, depending, it may take six months or longer, but. Then it gets into like, well, If you know, if you’re doing a thousand dollars a month for SEO services and one of your clients pays you three grand, then in three months, you just paid that off.
And then it’s all, you’re going to continue to compound to get more value from there. So.
Amr Selim | 01:40:00
Very quick one before we go. Quick fire. I’ll say a statement and you tell me You agree, disagree, or change my statement. AI is not going to replace web designers. Agree. AI is gonna make web designers much better.
Josh Hall | 01:40:16
I can’t answer a quick one just because it may make them more efficient. Yes. Okay. Could be no maybe.
Amr Selim | 01:40:24
Better at doing their job. I mean, yeah. More efficient.
Josh Hall | 01:40:27
Yeah. Yeah.
Cause you could focus on what you want to. Cause if you rely on AI to do everything and you don’t understand the basics of web design, then no, it would actually make you a worse web designer.
Amr Selim | 01:40:37
AI is something that I want to learn.
Josh Hall | 01:40:40
Regrudgingly, yes. No, out of the gate, no, but I know I need to stay up with it. You can’t.
Amr Selim | 01:40:46
Just say AI as in AI. It has to be the specific thing that you want. There’s so many of them now. Alright, AI is not gonna make it more fun like we make it more fun, so… Thank you very much, Josh. I’m really glad we connected. And I think we probably split this into two. I don’t know.
Some people like the long format. Let’s see I appreciate you, man.
Josh Hall | 01:41:07
What we do with it. I’m just going to post the whole thing because we covered a wide range and it was awesome.
So yeah, great to catch up, Amr. Thank you, man. Thank you for all the years of literally saving the hair I have left was thanks to you and those early email and DNS.
Amr Selim | 01:41:23
I can lose mine so that you can keep yours.
Josh Hall | 01:41:26
That’s all I can ask. Appreciate it.