How Scale with Templates Helped Liz Build A More Sustainable Business
A conversation with past students crafted by copywriter Nailah King of The Content Witches.
Welcome to Student Stories
Explore the journeys of past students and discover how Scale with Templates has helped web designers build their own successful Squarespace template shop. Learn about the challenges they faced, their triumphs, and their exciting plans for the future. These stories will take you behind the scenes of what it's like to be part of Scale with Templates and give valuable insights to anyone forging a new path on their design journey.
“This has, hands down, been the best course I’ve ever done. I love that Kate’s teaching me something about how to build my business in a very practical way. I couldn’t wait to finish it, and I’ve often found myself referencing it many months later.”
Meet Liz
Liz Ellery is a Squarespace designer, photographer, and educator. In 2021, 3 years after starting her business, while she loved her work with custom design, Liz was looking for a way to supplement her income and build more financial stability into her business.
Beginnings
Before starting her design career, Liz was in a related but different industry: fashion design. After studying fashion design, she would go on to stay in this
career for ten years. But this path started to feel unfulfilling and ultimately misaligned with where she wanted her journey to continue.
The next chapter of Liz's design journey emerged from a pretty surprising place: a deeply disappointing Google search for a business coach. After seeing what was available, Liz knew she could do better and give women a better web design experience that helped them make a genuine connection with their audience.
Getting started with templates
In 2018, with her businesses starting to grow and evolve, Liz built offerings for one-on-one client work that she really enjoys.
But as is the case for many entrepreneurs earlier in their entrepreneurial journey, her business needed to be more consistent as some months were more profitable than others. Liz knew she needed to add an income stream to help reduce these feast and famine periods while still providing gorgeous designs for her clients.
Squarespace Templates would become the thing that would help Liz bridge that gap not only to boost her income month over month but also help her diversify her offers to support potential clients who love her style and ethos and want access to high-quality designs for their website but not with a custom design price tag.
“I saw the templates not as this savior of my business, but I thought if I could sell two or three a month, that would be such a nice supplement income alongside what I’m doing.”
And Liz isn't the only one; according to a Squarespace Template Industry Report by SQSP Themes, many of her fellow template designers use templates to supplement their income.
She could bring the design and brand elements to the table, but what about the practical ones?
This is when Liz knew she needed help with building and delivering the templates.
Finding the right teacher
When Liz was ready to invest in a course about building a template, she'd followed Kate for years and loved her no-nonsense, straightforward approach.
“I wanted to buy a course because I just wanted somebody that I trusted that, I knew would take me step by step through everything and also guide me on different ways that I could do it.”
With Kate's extensive knowledge of Squarespace and running a successful template shop, Liz was confident Kate would be the right person to learn from. Kate's approach is different from your typical one-size-fits-all approach. Liz really appreciated how open she was to considering how things would work or didn't work with your business:
“And it wasn’t just the one way that she liked to do it, you know, I think Kate’s very fair when she’s doing things. She will give you lots of different opinions on why something is good. It might be good for you, and this might be good for you for this reason.”
Building a more sustainable business
For Liz, Scale with Templates gave her practical knowledge that she could continue to apply long after completing the course.
Actively marketing templates can be one of the biggest challenges for designers. By being part of Scale with Templates, she has an efficient sales system for her templates and an emerging affiliate program that will not only help her continue to amplify her marketing and reach new audiences but also allow her to put her killer networking skills to good use.
Building a template library also made it possible for Liz to continue to work with templates and start building an incredible done-with-you offering that uses her templates as a base but gets you up and running with Liz's help.
Two years on, Liz still regularly revisits the course if she needs support and resources, as the videos are bite-sized so that she can take action quickly.
As for the future, Liz feels like she's on the precipice of even more exciting things, including a future template restyle option for her clients, so we suspect there will be even more amazing things to come for her.
Thank you, Liz, for sharing your story! We can't wait to see what's next for you.
Ready to build your own successful Squarespace template shop?
