Stuck in the corporate grind, dreaming of more freedom and fulfillment? This episode is your roadmap to breaking free! Shannon Mattern shares her powerful journey—from walking away from a high-paying job to building a thriving, heart-led web design business. ❤️
She reveals the biggest mistakes web designers make—like undercharging and overdelivering—and how shifting your mindset around pricing and value can transform your business. Plus, we dive into the game-changing shift from employee mentality to business owner, creating win-win-win success for you, your clients, and your community.
With humor, insights, and real-world strategies, this episode is packed with everything you need to build a profitable, sustainable, and fulfilling business. Don’t miss it! 🎧
Key Takeaways from this Episode
- Defining a heart-led business
- Transitioning from corporate to entrepreneurship
- The importance of charging what you’re worth
- Shifting from an employee to an entrepreneur mindset
- Strategies for web designers to thrive
About the Guest
Meet Shannon Mattern the host of the Profitable Web Designer Podcast and the founder of the Web Designer Academy. She empowers women web designers with the strategies and skills they need in marketing, sales, and client management to build profitable, sustainable, and fulfilling web design businesses.
Additional Resources
- Website: www. webdesigneracademy.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/profitablewebdesigner
- Podcast: Profitable Web Designer Podcast
- Free Web Designer Course: www.webdesigneracademy.com/free-course
Support for the Show:
Consider supporting our continued efforts to bring you great, free content each week. Click this link to become a monthly supporter and get a shout-out on the next episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1793649/supporters/new
Next Steps:
- Subscribe to The Heart-Led Business Show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
- Pass the Torch of Wisdom: Share this episode with someone who embraces holistic practices in their business journey. It’s a treasure trove of insights waiting to ignite their path!
- Join the Conversation: Connect with me on social media. Let’s exchange thoughts, inspiration, and heart-led wisdom.
Up Next…
- Explore the heart of entrepreneurship with a twist of legal savvy! Sahil Malhotra, Principal Attorney at Drishti Law, helps SMEs and startups protect their vision with smart intellectual property strategies.
- Sales Mastery Awaits: Boost your Health and Wellness sales with our complimentary training. Start selling with integrity today! → https://go.businessleadmaximizer.com/script-training
- Spread the Heart-Led Message: Loved the episode? Your review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify fuels our mission. 📑
- Need some recommendations on great tools to help with sales? Check out my preferred tools here: https://tomjackobs.com/resources
Explore the Dialogue’s Treasures: Unearth the insights within! Delve into the profound wisdom woven throughout our conversation.
Speaker: 0:01
Welcome to the Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let’s go. Let your heart guide your business journey.
Tom: 0:36
Well, hello again, happy hearts. Get ready for a web of wisdom with our wonderful wizard of the worldwide web. Hold on to your headsets because we’re dialing into the dynamic domain of the Duchess herself, Shannon Mattern. She’s the muse of marketing, the sage of sales, and the clairvoyant of client management. And on today’s Heart-Led Business show, we’re diving deep into her experience of running her own Heart-Led Business. So Shannon, welcome to the show.
Shannon Mattern: 1:04
Wow, thank you. I think that might be the best intro I have ever heard. That’s amazing. Thank you.
Tom: 1:10
Awesome. That’s my goal of the show is just to have great intros and then let the cards fall where they may.
Shannon Mattern: 1:19
Oh, you nailed it for sure.
Tom: 1:21
We set it up with a high bar and we’re just going to go higher.
Shannon Mattern: 1:24
Amazing.
Tom: 1:25
Well, Shannon, I’m so excited to have you on the show and you know, we’ve chatted before and I love your story. I love the work that you’re doing and I can’t wait to really dive into that. But first, the first question is always what’s your definition of a heart-led business?
Shannon Mattern: 1:40
I love this question. I was thinking about this before we started and I think really my definition is creating win win wins. You know, when we are able to run our business in such a way that we love what we do, we love how we’re doing it, we love the clients we’re working with, we’re like making the money that we need to make to have like the time, the resources, the capacity to serve them at a high-level and help them win and help them like create what they really want. And then, you know, together we can create more than what either of us could create on our own. I mean, that’s like, that’s the pinnacle, right? That’s what we, what I think is like the definition of a heart led business.
Tom: 2:32
Yeah, absolutely. And that is the last piece that you’re talking about. The win, win, win kind of reminds me of a quote that I’ve heard from, I believe it was Zig Ziglar, that the more you do for, I’m going to completely slaughter this quote, of course, but the more you can do for others, the more we’ll come back to you. Which I think is such a great way of approaching business. And it’s unfortunate that not a lot of businesses kind of approach it that way. But of course, here at The Heart-Led Business Show, we want to change that and highlight businesses that actually do make a difference in other people’s lives, as well as the owner’s life as well. So tell us a little bit about your business and what inspired you to start a heart led business.
Shannon Mattern: 3:14
Yeah, so my company is called the Web Designer Academy and we help women web designers package, price, sell profitable web design projects. We help them stop undercharging, stop over delivering and really create the business, like create a heart led business, basically. I don’t say it that way, but that’s really what we help them what we help them do. And my journey started over 10 years ago now, I was climbing the corporate ladder as we do. And, you know, as we’re taught to do in the U.S. as like, here’s what, here’s, here’s the blueprint for a successful, happy, no one ever says happy, but successful life, right? Is you follow this path and, you know, you climb the corporate ladder and you get the all the benefits and whatever. And I just found myself very, very unfulfilled. And I had a moment where I was like, this can’t be it. This can’t be what the rest of my life is going to look like. I’m, I was 35 years old at the time. I’m like, Really? Like, another 30 years of this and then I retire? Like, that’s just not, that’s not okay. And so for me, my journey started with, I need to fix this for me. And once I, unbrainwashed myself, I guess, through reading books, listening to podcasts, similar to this, just like showing myself that there is another way. And I started a business on the side of my day job and I built that up to the point where three years later, I was ready to like, leave my high paying, good benefit corporate job and take the leap into solopreneurship. I was just like, I have to tell as many other people as I possibly can about this life because it is so much more rich and rewarding and freeing and I could, I just have so much more impact doing this than I ever did. So that’s really what drove me. My business specifically was freelance web design. That’s what I started doing on the side. I started teaching web design to my target audience back then was Oh, if you’re building a business on the side because you want to quit your day job, I’ll show you how to build your website and I’ll show you how to like do all the technical things. And then I was also doing a freelance web design for clients as well. And then that kind of evolved into other web designers saying, how are you doing this? How are you getting clients? How did you, how are you able to quit your day job? And just kind of following the thread of, what I love to do and what I’m really good at and what’s really fun and what doesn’t feel like work was coaching other web designers to the things in their business and in their mindset and in the way they think about money and the value to really be able to create that win win win that I talked about earlier.
Tom: 6:16
Yeah. What a great story. And it really is basically the same story that I hear over and over, over again from guests on the show is I was in a job corporate or another job that didn’t give me joy. I had desires to do something else. I took the leap of faith and I did that something else. And now. I’m really happy. And so
Shannon Mattern: 6:42
Yeah.
Tom: 6:42
I love that. And I also hear from a lot of people that it’s scary making that transition from a high paying corporate job into the unknown or what oftentimes we think is the unknown. Tell me about that experience for you and how long it took you from side hustle to full time hustle.
Shannon Mattern: 7:02
Yeah, my experience was that I was very scared to make the move. And it was three years of me side hustling and it was started off doing freelance web design, so undercharging, over delivering, cannot figure out how to make enough money to replace my six figures that I’m making. Let me try to scale, let me try to, like, make money teaching many people how to do it so that I’m not doing it. That also, while it was fun and fulfilling, was not going to get me close to where I needed to go as fast as I, as I wanted it to. The amount of effort I needed to put in up front to grow it as big as I would have needed to, you know, replace my paycheck and business expenses and, and, and that was going to be a longer lead time than I was really interested in. So I really had to work on charging enough for my one on one services to, I’m like, oh, if I’m actually, like, charging, you know, 5,000 felt astronomical to me at the time for, like, a highly functional website.
Tom: 8:09
Right.
Shannon Mattern: 8:09
It’s so funny to think of that.
Tom: 8:11
It converts leads.
Shannon Mattern: 8:12
If I just even charged that I could make this happen faster, you know, whatever. So it was about, it was three years from inception to leaving my day job. And I actually gave a seven month notice to my boss. I had like been promoted up into an executive role at the time.
Tom: 8:32
Okay. That’s fair.
Shannon Mattern: 8:33
I was like, we were in a, like a budgeting meeting for the following fiscal year and all these projects were being planned that I was going to be spearheading, and I was like, well it’s now or never to tell them that I’m not going to be here to run these projects, so I kind of want to say something now. And so, I did and I finished out my seven months and I never thought for one second about taking it back and saying, no, I’m not going.
Tom: 9:02
Mm.
Shannon Mattern: 9:02
And that just kind of gave me the I don’t know that like runway to really be like, okay, this is happening. I have my safety net for a while. This is happening. I’m super excited for it. And also I was like, I have some goals. I want to be able to like hit that number two or three times that replaces my day job income before I quit. fully cut the cord and go on my own. And what I, what I realized is like, I should always bet on me. Like, I am my
Tom: 9:30
Yes.
Shannon Mattern: 9:30
best bet. How much more can I create when I’m not dividing my time between giving them 40, 50 hours, 60 hours a week? could put back into my own thing for sure.
Tom: 9:46
So once you left and you had that 50 60 hours to put into you, what did the business do at that point? Curious.
Shannon Mattern: 9:55
I went into hustle fear overdrive mode. So, it maintained its revenue and I probably doubled my efforts And I can look back at the time and be like, oh, that’s what you were doing. I was so scared still. Because I hadn’t really realized that I would be okay no matter what. I’m like, oh, I went into I’m gonna learn every marketing sales strategy from everyone out there teaching. I’m gonna sign up for all the courses. I’m gonna do everything everybody says, times 10. I expected everything to work right away, you know, like that launch mentality, right? Like if I do this and I follow this process and I spend all this time in a vacuum by myself, building this thing. And then I launch it out into the world. It’s going to, you know, overnight it’s going to work. And so I did all of that. Thank goodness that the foundation I had laid that was not so hustly and overworky and stressful was like paying the bills while I was off doing who knows what, trying to create a security for myself. I already had it, but yeah, no. I kind of went off. the rails for about six months to a year in terms of my my hustle because I was terrified. And looking back, I’m like, I didn’t need to do any of that. Like all of the things that I had put in place were working. I was making the money I needed to make and I did end up burning myself out. And that’s when I had to take a look and be like, we have to fundamentally change our expectations of like what success means and also timelines for things to happen. Like I was expecting instant results from my efforts and not being patient and planting seeds and waiting for them to come to fruition. So
Tom: 11:51
Yeah.
Shannon Mattern: 11:51
It was interesting year that I’m like, oh, okay, so I went through that and now I know how to help other people when they’re in it or before they get into it, that it’s a risk of you know, you never know what that feels like when you leave your job until you do it.
Tom: 12:10
Yeah.
Shannon Mattern: 12:11
And you’re like, Okay, now I, I go into overwork when I’m scared, and that’s my, that’s my default, so, but
Tom: 12:17
Yeah. Yeah. I like that. What you said too.
Shannon Mattern: 12:19
had a lot of fun, you know, at the same,
Tom: 12:21
Yeah.
Shannon Mattern: 12:22
of fun. I enjoyed it, but yeah.
Tom: 12:24
I like what you said about setting expectations as well and realistic timelines. Cause I think a lot of people see Instagram and all the crap that’s out there in terms of, you know, burn the boats, you know, go all into your side hustle, just, you know, do it right now. And I think that’s terrible advice. Number one, I think it’s very irresponsible because it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. And nobody knows like what you did to build up to that point where you were in quote overnight success. And I think that’s, it’s important. And when you’re coaching other women, entrepreneurs, they’re web designers. Do they come to you before they quit their day job or like, where do they typically come into your world?
Shannon Mattern: 13:10
Both really, like some of them are side hustling. The majority of them have been doing, like running their web design business for like at least a year, and they come to us because they’re like doing what I was doing, like burning the candle at both ends and just trying to do everything and understanding that like, this is actually harder. I’m working harder than I did at my day job. And I have less freedom than I did at my day job and I’ve created turned, I’ve put my clients and I’ve kind of turned my clients into my bosses. Like I didn’t shed the employee mindset. So they leave their day job and then they recreate it. Times 10 with how they structure things and how they think of their clients. And that’s really when they come to us and also while they’re still working their day job to figure out like, cause they’re still doing that. And they’re like, how do I manage this when I have like a real boss? And it’s like, you have to fundamentally shift how you think about all of this.
Tom: 14:12
Yeah. And is that one of the first things that you work with people on is just mindset of a business owner?
Shannon Mattern: 14:18
I call it like a benevolent bait and switch, right? Because I’m like, I’m going to teach you all of the systems and processes for running your web design business, how to package, price, market, and sell that stuff, yeah, there’s a few strategies we teach that maybe are a little unconventional. But the biggest thing that needs to change is your belief about what you’re allowed to have, how you’re allowed to run your business, so it’s mindset all of the way. And that’s why I call it like a benevolent bait and switch, because I’m going to get you on like systems processes and what, and whatever, but in order for you to actually implement those, you have to notice how you’re thinking now and change it.
Tom: 14:57
Yeah. And would you say that most of the clients that you work with are heart led entrepreneurs and that’s why they, they come to you. Yeah, cool. And so what’s the biggest issue that you’re finding with your clientele that are trading the side hustle for full time hustle, getting rid of the day job and, and all that.
Shannon Mattern: 15:17
They don’t think they can charge quote unquote that much.
Tom: 15:21
Okay.
Shannon Mattern: 15:22
Whatever that number is. Because they have been conditioned that someone else deems what their salary, what they’re worth when they set a salary and pay them at their corporate job. Like the market says that this is what you’re worth based on how employers hire and decide to pay and so they take that someone else gets to decide what i’m worth mentality into their business and so all their think they’re I call it like employee mindset and expense mindset, right? It’s like they really they see like
Tom: 16:04
someone
Shannon Mattern: 16:04
else gets to determine all of this for me and also like this my clients they think that their clients don’t have the resources and that like, oh, if I charge money for this, I’m taking something from them. They have less, I have more, it doesn’t make them feel good. And so they’re trying to figure out what like feels like, what feels right without ripping people off and taking advantage of them and being greedy and all this stuff and I’m like, I have to help you just play on a completely different playing field. That’s just that’s like a one way of thinking it’s not the way the world works.
Tom: 16:44
That’s interesting too. And I have to admit, I probably had that mindset as well in terms of the market says, this is what you should charge for your services. Like when I had my fitness business, this is what personal trainers charge. So you need to charge the same thing. And until I got the coaching and shifted the mindset into, yeah, that’s might be what everybody else is charging, but why does it have to be what I charge and and is that the best for the client as well? And the way I was charging was 10 sessions at a time and you get the 11th for free. And which is ridiculous because you can’t make any change in only 10 sessions. And I’m sure it’s the same in many other different businesses that you’re not doing the biz, you’re not doing the client a favor if you’re undercharging either.
Shannon Mattern: 17:33
Yeah, and we talked about this when you were on my podcast it’s like, if you’re trying to sell a website, and you’re trying to sell, I’m gonna build you a website with five pages and this automation and this thing, then so is everybody else, and now you’re competing on price. And the lowest price wins, usually. But if I’m selling, if I’m learning, what do you, what are your goals? What do you really want? What can you create as a result of me building you, what you need to create the outcomes that you really ultimately want? And if that’s what I’m selling, and that’s how I’m interacting with you during the sales process and ultimately I’m like, here’s what’s possible for you, here’s what I’m going to create in order for you to get there, and here’s how it all is going to work, and here’s what that looks like to work together. That’s a whole different conversation than here’s a five page website logo branding and an email integration.
Tom: 18:35
And then you could do yourself on the wrist or whatever, you know,
Shannon Mattern: 18:39
Yeah, exactly. And you don’t know what you don’t know, and I do as the designer. I know all the comments, I know all the mistakes you’re gonna make, and all the things that you’re not gonna think about when you go to build it yourself. And I’m gonna ask you really important questions that help you, actually, use this tool that I’m going to build for you. And so when I think about selling that and I’m selling it at a price that’s sustainable for me to offer, meaning I don’t have to overwork, I don’t have to work with 10 other clients at the same time, I can give you more attention. I can invest in better tools and education and things to level up my knowledge because I’m charging appropriately. I’m able to like deliver you a super high level service and you are making a decision through how you decide to spend your money about what you’re committed to and what you really want for yourself and how much you value yourself. And so that’s kind of where it’s like, it is for us to undercharge, does our clients a disservice, because we’re basically saying to them like, I don’t think you’re capable of making this important to you. I don’t think you’re capable of like, the resources and the commitment to the table for you to go get what you want. I need to save you and treat you like you’re helpless and lower my price to help you because you’re not powerful enough to make this happen on your own. And like, that’s, that’s not a win win win. That’s like, oh, I need money. I’m going to lower my price down so that I can make sure I get enough money for you to cover my needs. And I don’t think that’s not win win win.
Tom: 20:22
Yeah, well it’s not sustainable. And the other thing too is if you’re not, this is worth repeating what you said, you know, when you charge appropriately, you’re able to up level yourself and serve your clients better through the education and learning that you do. To better at your craft. And I don’t, and I don’t think I’ve heard anybody say that quite, quite that way before, and it’s totally makes sense because the better you are one, the quicker you’ll be at it, the better results the client’s going to get. And you’re going to have better freedom and it’s just better all around. And we were talking last week on your show too, about, you know, the time element and that a lot of the folks that you work with and the lot of folks that I work with as well, don’t charge enough per hour because it’s so easy for them to do what they do in that hour time. So, how do you address that with your clients and get them to change that mindset as well?
Shannon Mattern: 21:23
Oh, yeah, like untying time for money is a huge thing that we do and the a couple parts to it one It’s like it’s so easy for you because of all the time you’ve put into making it easy So don’t discount that you’ve put a lot of time energy and effort into making it easy. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s not massively valuable, you know, to your client. So I’m just thinking about a scenario like if I’m about to do a sales promotion and my website is not working and it takes you 10 minutes to go in there and figure it out because you know exactly where to look and how to diagnose that and how to fix it and we’re like, back up and running. That’s so valuable to me as a business owner to have you in my back pocket and pay you to, well, to know my stuff inside and out enough that you can just come in and, and fix those things for me, you know? And so it’s like the value of what you do, stop thinking about, you know, How your employer set it up for you or how we were taught like, oh, guess what? This is what I what I am going to pay you by the hour, it’s about what your clients are able to create as a result of working with you as a result of like committing to their business at at the level that they need to to like make their business run easier. So I always think it’s, think about the long term value in the results for your clients, not about, oh this took me five minutes. Well it took you like five years to learn how to get it to take five minutes.
Tom: 23:04
Yeah, yeah, exactly. There’s a, the old story, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but you know, there’s a ship, you know, is at dock and the engine isn’t working and you know, big shifts at dock, they don’t move, they’re getting charged thousand, tens of thousands of dollars an hour just to lay there at dock. And so they called the maintenance guy up. Guy comes up, looks at the engine, takes his hammer out, taps on one piece, and then the engine works. Sends a bill to the captain, it’s 25,000. Kevin’s like 25,000. All you did was just tap your hammer. So yeah, but it took me 10 years to find out where to tap that hammer.
Shannon Mattern: 23:44
Yeah.
Tom: 23:44
And I think that mimics exactly like everything that we were just talking about and it’s the same in your business. Same in my business. It’s all that time and effort that you learn your craft that has so much value. And if you’re not charging appropriately for it, then you’re doing everybody disservice.
Shannon Mattern: 24:04
Yeah, and like on the flip side you think about like, Oh, like the client just, like how, like the opportunity cost of not working with that person, right? The person who can fast track things for you, who can save you hours of time. Like, think about what you can do with all of the time that you get back, when you have some time. experts in your back pocket and when you’re working with people who can see things that you can’t see, like, you don’t know what you don’t know, so you don’t even know what to look for. Like, how would you even know that the hammer’s the right tool and that you have to bang it somewhere? Like, sometimes you just don’t know that and so, you know, from the client’s perspective, being open to, like, I’m hiring people not to just do what I know I need, know I need them to do. Be open to like, there might be so many things that I don’t know that like, working with the right person could fast track me.
Tom: 25:02
Yeah. Yeah. That’s such a great lesson. And I see that over and over again in business as well as when you hire the right people, whether it’s a contractor or an employee and they just do the right stuff and they just make everything easier and they bring their own knowledge and effort into the equation. It just makes everything so much better. And I think that’s, that’s definitely leading from the heart. So that’s, that’s amazing. So Shannon, how can people learn more about what you do and the academy that you host?
Shannon Mattern: 25:33
Yeah, you can just go to webdesigneracademy.com everything that we do is over there. If you click on the podcast link, you’ll find our Profitable Web Designer podcast, which you were a guest on and we had a really great conversation about sales. So that’s the best place to connect with me and find all the other ways to connect with me.
Tom: 25:54
Okay, awesome. Well, we’ll put that into the show notes so that it makes it very easy for people to find as well. And Shannon, this was just a great conversation. You’re just so easy to talk to. And I enjoyed being on your show and I’m glad that you were on our show as well. And so thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your knowledge with everybody here.
Shannon Mattern: 26:14
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Tom: 26:16
Absolutely. And to our show listeners and watching those watching today on, on YouTube, we really do appreciate it. So make sure you’re checking out everything that Shannon’s doing. We’re going to put a. Again, all those links down in the show notes. And also if you could do me a very solid favor and do what other smart and considerate listeners are doing, and that is give us a rating and a review so that we get the message out that you can have a heart led business and make a profit. So until next time, lead with your heart.
Speaker 2: 26:47
You’ve been listening to the Heart Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.
