We recently connected with Justin Mabee and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Justin, thanks for joining us today. Let’s talk about innovation. What’s the most innovative thing you’ve done in your career?
I think something I’ve done that is innovative in my career is actually spend quality time on every single project I work on. While many other designers in the web design field are content with just building the same style websites over and over again with no imagination, I take a different path. My goal with every single website I work on is to be as creative as possible, and mull over the deep design details to create something that is truly unique in the Squarespace design world. All of my websites tend to be much more creative and unique, and it brings me more clients.
Justin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Justin Mabee is a top-rated, professional Squarespace web designer and expert with 12 years of experience and 500+ projects completed. Justin creates sophisticated custom Squarespace website designers for every industry.
I got my start designing websites back in college where I built basic websites for bands and musicians I went to school with. In 2012 when I graduated, I started doing websites part-time for small businesses in Memphis, and then Nashville. For nearly 5 years I built websites on the side until 2017 when I decided to leave the startup world and go freelance full time.
It was a difficult transition even though I was making good money, and I’ll never regret when I did it. I taught myself everything I know with website design in Squarespace, taught myself basic HTML and CSS, and just kept pushing myself to learn new skills.
I provide value to my clients by providing them with websites that convert, that help them raise their revenue, and give them a beautiful presence on the web. I’m proud of so much of my portfolio, from tech startups to memberships and courses, from small businesses to large enterprises, I’ve built well over 500 websites and excel at what I do.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Back in 2021, I lost one of the biggest sources of my leads due to some mistakes I made in my business. While I lost 50% of my leads overnight, I consistently kept making the same amount of money year over year, if not more. The resiliency took a while for me to realize and make happen, and it was a really worrisome time where I didn’t know what was going to happen next. But after a year of bringing in projects on my own and continuing to build my business on my own, I realized I didn’t need that source anymore, and my business was even better for it.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
I think there are business-minded people, who are good at sales and marketing and growing a business, while there are other people who are much more artistic and creative. I think the business-minded people can easily implement new systems, revenue streams, and sales funnels, while creatives tend to have a hard time working on these administrative parts of their business. While there are certainly people who can do both and do them well, I as a creative struggle with the administrative part of my business and always prefer to have a professional do those things for me.
I recently spoke with an entrepreneur who really pushes sales and lead funnels, and was trying to convince me that I needed to work on my offering and improve my sales tactics. But this is the type of person who applies the same rules over and over to every part of the business, and assumes that a creative can do the same thing as easily and 10x their revenue. But it’s not that easy for us creative types.
Contact Info:
- Website: justinmabee.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jmabeebiz/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmabee
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jmabeebiz
- Other: Threads: http://threads.net/@jmabeebiz Cosmos: https://www.cosmos.so/mabee Read.cv: https://posts.cv/mabee Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@jmabeebiz Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/jmabeebiz Behance: https://behance.net/justinmabee Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/jmdsqsp