How to Get Web Design Clients by Making Friends — Not Cold Pitching
She was working for Oprah. Then Madison Square Garden. On paper, Alex had the kind of career most people spend years building toward — live events, production, A-list energy. But behind the scenes? She was exhausted, working until 1:30 in the morning when concerts ran late, knowing in the back of her mind that none of it would be sustainable once she wanted to start a family.
Then COVID hit, Madison Square Garden went dark, and — as Alex puts it — it turned out shows can get cancelled after all.
What happened next is the part I love: Alex had been quietly taking coding and digital marketing classes on the side for years, building websites for friends and family just because she loved it. COVID became the nudge she'd been waiting for. She took Square Secrets™ and Square Secrets Business™, built her processes properly from the ground up, and launched a freelance web design business — while pregnant, without a paid portfolio to her name.
She's now fully booked out months in advance, working with women in health and wellness, occasionally taking on a client she just clicks with outside that niche, and structuring her days around her daughter's schedule and her own wellbeing. She made back her course investment within two months. She's now in six figures. And she's never once felt like she has to go back.
I sat down with Alex to talk through how she actually did it — from those first clients, to what she says in the pitch, to what made her stand out, to what running the business as a new mum really looks like. Watch below, or keep reading for the full story.
Prefer to watch? Catch the full conversation below, or keep reading.
From Oprah's team to Madison Square Garden — and then the pivot
Alex started her career in journalism before moving into live events production, which she loved far more than the newsroom. She worked on the Nate Berkus show — part of the Oprah family — and when that was cancelled, followed the executive producer to the Queen Latifah show. When that too felt uncertain, she made what seemed like an unshakeable call: Madison Square Garden. Concerts, Rangers games, Knicks games. Things that don't get cancelled.
Except, of course, they did.
"Thankfully," Alex says, "on the side for many years while I was at Madison Square Garden, I was taking coding classes and digital marketing classes because my family and friends always wanted websites." She loved being creative, but the creativity she was craving — graphics, branding, strategy — wasn't really what producing live events gave her. Building websites scratched that itch. It started as something she did because people around her needed it.
When her husband pointed out that working until 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning wasn't going to be compatible with the family they were planning, Alex made the leap. She went to her dad's house in Palm Beach during COVID, sat down with Square Secrets™ and Square Secrets Business™, and went through the entire thing focused and uninterrupted. "I remember where I was," she told me. "I didn't have a baby yet."
The courses were the catalyst. "It was truly the catalyst for me to be like — this is absolutely what I need to be doing. I have the entire toolkit now and I can make it my own."
How she got her first clients — and why she thinks about it like dating
This is the question I hear most from new designers, and it's also the one where Alex's answer is so specifically, genuinely hers that I want to make sure I do it justice. Because it isn't a strategy, exactly. It's more of a disposition.
"I think of being a web designer and finding clients similar to dating," she told me. "How many new people are you meeting a week?"
If you're working from home, not talking to anyone, trying to build this as a side hustle in isolation — you're not going to meet people who need websites. It's that simple. Alex's early clients came from exactly the opposite of that. She was getting a massage and the masseuse mentioned she needed a website. Alex mentioned what she did. That was a client.
The mechanism here isn't "networking." It's just being a social person who tells people what she does. And when people ask — which they always do — she doesn't just say "I build websites." She says she's a website designer, and her niche is working with women in health and wellness. That specificity triggers the referral chain immediately: "Oh, my friend, my this, my that."
She also proactively noticed businesses with websites that needed an upgrade and reached out. When I asked her what she actually says in that kind of outreach, she was clear: you don't walk straight in and pitch. You make friends first. You become a regular. You let them trust you before you ever mention their website.
"Hiring someone to build your website — they need to trust you," she said. "And if you start by just becoming friends, then they go, 'I trust this person, I like this person.' The way you hire a therapist, you hire anything — you want to like them."
And then she added something I think is one of the most underappreciated truths about this job: "We're therapists. Like, I am a life coach. First. Because when I meet someone, I ask them what their goals are. What do you want to do in one year? In five years? In ten? And then — let me help you build a website to get there."
Most clients, she says, are thinking about right now. Alex is already thinking about where they want to be. That reframe — from "let me build you a website" to "let me help you build toward your future" — is what makes the conversation different. And it's what makes people want to hire her.
Why she chose a niche — and why she doesn't let it box her in
Alex niched into female-owned businesses in the health and wellness space, and it wasn't a random strategic decision. It came from her own life. At 29, her OB had suggested she consider freezing her eggs, and she went deep — really deep — into researching women's health, nutrition, hormones, all of it. "I really went into this journey of health and wellness," she told me. "I know the material. I know who the target audience is. I can really help them the most."
The practical benefit of that niche compounded quickly. The more acupuncturist websites you do, the more psychologist websites you do, the more dermatologist websites you do — the easier it gets. You already know what the psychologist needs on their website. You're not starting from zero every single time. Alex put it exactly right: it's just more efficient.
But — and this matters — the niche is a starting point, not a gate. When an interior designer came to her having seen one of her websites and said "I know you mostly work with women in health and wellness, but would you help me?" — she said absolutely, because she loved his personality and clicked with him. You niche because it makes your business easier to run and easier to market. You stay flexible because you're the boss.
She mentioned that a client once saw a design she'd done for an interior designer and reached out specifically because of it — demonstrating the ripple effect of doing good work outside the niche. The work speaks. The referrals follow.
What makes her stand out — the full suite, not just the website
This was the part of our conversation that I hadn't heard quite this way before, and I think it's the thing that most explains why Alex is booked out months in advance. It's not just that she builds beautiful websites. It's what she offers around the website that makes clients choose her over everyone else.
She starts with branding. Before a single page is designed, she and the client go through an in-depth questionnaire — goals, one-year plan, five-year plan, target audience, who they actually want walking through their door. She sets up a Pinterest board for style direction, discusses fonts, logos, colour palettes, websites that inspire them (even from completely different industries). She gets very, very clear.
Then she builds the website. And then — and this is what sets her apart — she does social strategy.
"What do you enjoy doing?" she asks clients. If they don't like Instagram, she doesn't push Instagram. Instead, she looks at where they are being underutilised. Google Business, she says, is one of the most consistently neglected tools she sees — she has an email template she sends to clients to help them collect Google reviews, and it costs them nothing. Not a dime.
For clients who do want social, she builds Canva templates tailored to their brand so they can actually show up consistently without starting from scratch every week. She teaches them how to use Squarespace themselves so they're never dependent on her for small updates. She teaches them Instagram if they need it. She teaches them Canva. She helps them understand their Google business profile.
"Clients like to go to me because they don't want to spend money on a branding person, and they don't want to spend money on a social person," she explained. "They want someone to teach them how — if they don't know anything about Instagram, I teach them. If they don't know Canva, I teach them. And then they are fully in their element to grow their business."
The result is that when someone is comparing designers, Alex wins — because she's offering a full suite of support, not just a finished website delivered and goodbye.
She also mentioned wanting to continue upskilling, particularly around code. She's a fan of Will Myers' Code Curious membership, Chrissy Price's work, and Becca Harpin's new ChatGPT-powered tool for generating custom code — all people worth looking up if you want to keep building your technical toolkit. Her point, though, was that not knowing how to code should never be the thing holding you back from getting started. "If that's what's holding you back from being a web designer — that's crazy," she said. "There's so much on the internet now."
The 24-hour website — and being a dream maker for clients
Alex shared a couple of client stories that I think show exactly what she means when she talks about doing more than building websites.
The first: she saw that a CNN anchor was about to launch a book — and had no website. She messaged him directly. He said yes. Within 12 hours she had a physical copy of the book in her hands, photographed it beautifully on her rooftop in New York City, and launched a complete website within 24 hours. "When he went literally the next day to the book launch on TV, he had a website to show."
The second: a friend who had been thinking about launching a women's events community for three years — hemming and hawing, not quite starting. Alex sat her down and said: "I'm making you a website this weekend. Next week you're going to launch it and start getting sign-ups." Super Bowl weekend, Alex barely looked up. The following week, 30 people signed up. The week after, 50. She's now up to 70 members.
"We are dream makers for people," Alex said. "People have these dreams and we bring them to life. There are business coaches out there who tell you what you need to do. But we are business coaches, business strategists — and we execute for people."
She got a call from a psychologist client who'd just bought her dream house. "Because of you," the client said. "You helped me make a website. You helped me with my marketing. I have so many clients. I was able to buy my dream house this week."
That, Alex says, is what this job actually is.
Making back the course investment — in two months
I always ask this question of past students because I think it genuinely helps people who are sitting on the fence. Alex's answer was clear: within two months of finishing the courses, she had three clients and had made back her entire investment. From there, she didn't blink. She's now six figures in and describes the cost of the courses as something she got back "in spades."
She also made a point I think is worth highlighting, because it's about something people often underestimate when they're deciding whether to invest: it's not just the course content. It's the community. The Facebook group. The monthly calls. The fact that Squarespace updates constantly — and the courses are kept up to date to match. "A lot of people do not do what Paige does," she said. "Links break. Squarespace updates. You need to invest with a person who has your back."
She also made one observation that I found unexpectedly generous: "Even if you're not considering being a web designer," she said, "there is so much value to taking these courses just in life. The Canva hacks, the business strategy — even if I'd never become a designer, I would have used what I learned in my husband's business." The skills transfer.
Running the business as a new mum
Alex planned for motherhood with the same intentionality she brought to building the business. When she found out she was pregnant, she started gradually scaling back — from four or five clients a month down to two, then one, then nothing in the final weeks. By months eight and nine, she'd closed the books entirely until her daughter was around five or six months old.
"I had the luxury, thank God, of giving myself this runway and this financial freedom to take a real pause."
She mentors young women who are thinking about careers in law or medicine, and she's honest with them: those jobs will give you two months of maternity leave, maybe three. If you're lucky and work somewhere like Google, perhaps six. But for most people, that's not the reality. If you build a business like this early, you give yourself the pause on your own terms.
Now that her daughter is older and the schedule is more predictable — naps between 1 and 2pm, bedtime by a certain hour — Alex structures her week around it. She clusters client meetings on Mondays and Tuesdays. She does evening calls after her daughter goes to sleep. She found childcare that aligned with her values, including someone who would cook healthy food for her daughter rather than relying on pouches.
She's in all the mum's groups now. She takes her daughter to classes. And while the other mums say "I have to go back to work," Alex says something different: "I get to go back to work." She's making the money she wants to be making. She's setting her own hours. She's helping people. And it feels like a life she chose, not a life she got handed.
Her advice if you're on the fence
"Don't think twice."
That was her opening. If you are genuinely considering becoming a web designer, it's an absolute no-brainer — and even if you're not sure yet, the business knowledge, the strategy, the practical skills in Canva and Squarespace and digital marketing are genuinely useful in any direction your life goes.
She sat at her dad's house in Palm Beach, went through everything focused and all at once, and came out the other side knowing what she was doing. No imposter syndrome. Proper onboarding, legal docs, invoicing — all of it in place before her first paid client. "I didn't have any imposter syndrome once I started," she told me. "Because taking the course really set me up for success in that way."
Three clients. Two months. Investment back. Six figures. Fully booked. Baby. Dream house for her client. Life on her own schedule.
That's Alex's story.
If Alex's path resonates with you, the next move is figuring out what your version of it looks like — your niche, your people, your approach to finding clients. That looks different for everyone, and it starts with knowing what actually suits you.
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