Case Study: Redesigning a Website to Reflect Your Business with Rebekah Jordan
In this episode of Process to Profitability, Samantha Mabe interviews Rebekah Jordan, an education consultant and owner of Crossbridge Education Consulting. Rebekah shares her experience working with Samantha to redesign her website, reflecting her unique personality and services. They discuss the importance of websites in business, Rebekah's role as an education consultant, and the challenges she faces in helping families find the right school placements for their children. Rebekah highlights the transformational impact of the website redesign and the value it brings to her business.
Timestamps:
[00:00:00] Introduction to the podcast and guest, Rebekah Jordan.
[00:02:31] Rebekah describes her role as a therapeutic educational consultant and her work with families in mental health crises.
[00:03:46] Rebekah shares her planned transition from schools to consulting and the timeline of starting her website.
[00:04:27] Rebekah explains the DIY approach she took to create her initial website using Squarespace.
[00:05:11] Rebekah discusses the shift in her business focus and the changing needs of families during the pandemic.
[00:06:49] Samantha inquires about Rebekah's decision to work with Lemon and the Sea in a VIP Day.
[00:08:14] Samantha asks Rebekah about her experience with the VIP Day process and the transformation of her brand and website.
[00:10:20] Samantha asks Rebekah if she had a favorite part of the process.
[00:11:18] Samantha explains her experience and expertise in distilling information and translating it into a design.
[00:13:13] Communication and trust are key in the creative process. Provide and receive feedback positively, focus on the positives, and prioritize nailing website copy.
[00:21:53] Accessibility and user-friendliness key in website design
Key Points:
Rebekah Jordan is an education consultant specializing in therapeutic placements for students facing mental health challenges.
Rebekah started her business in 2020 and initially created her website on her own.
The pandemic brought significant changes to the education landscape, altering Rebekah's focus from homeschool builds to therapeutic placements.
Referrals are the primary way families find Rebekah, emphasizing the importance of a strong website to make a positive impression.
Rebekah chose to work with Samantha based on her podcast, emails, and design aesthetic, establishing trust and compatibility.
The VIP Day process facilitated a quick and effective website redesign, providing a significant visual transformation.
Rebekah enjoyed the anticipation of receiving the mockup design and was thrilled with the outcome.
Samantha's skill in distilling clients' essence and turning it into a design was crucial in the successful website transformation.
Resources:
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: Thanks for tuning in to Process to Profitability. Today I'm talking with Rebekah Jordan, who is one of my VIP Day clients. She is an education consultant and reached out to me earlier this year to work on her website. She started her business in 2020, and as it evolved, she knew that she did not wanna have to do the redesign of her site. We worked together to create something that was a big transformation as far as the branding of the site, but it really reflects her and her business, and it makes it super easy for people to see if she is going to be a good fit for their personality and in the services that she's offering before they ever have to jump on a call.
[00:00:46] She's got a lot of great insights as far as websites in general and being a business owner in a space where people need you and what that looks like.
[00:00:59] She is the owner and director of Crossbridge Education Consulting and is a passionate problem solver. She served in the field of education for 25 years and eventually she helped close to a thousand students and families find creative solutions for their educational problems. Currently, she specializes in mental health and boarding school placements for your quirky off the beaten path, tween or teen. Her favorite students to work with are the ones with something fun in their profile, whether that's a healthy dose of anxiety, dyslexia, neurodivergence depression, or other mental health challenges.
[00:01:34] When she's not working with families, you can remind Rebekah on the road visiting schools and programs around the country or out on the trails, hiking with her wife, son, dog, and giant fluffy cat.
[00:01:44] Make sure you check her out on Instagram if you're interested in learning more about her business and the families that she helps, and check out the website and the before and after so that you can see the transformation that we brought and how we really put her personality into a design that is in no way a copy of anyone else in the space but speaks to her business and helps her to find more of the right clients when they need her.
Meet Rebekah and her business helping families find the right school placement for their students
[00:02:16] Samantha Mabe: Hi Rebekah. Thanks for coming on today.
[00:02:19] Rebekah Jordan: Hey, Samantha, I am super glad to be here, so thanks for having me.
[00:02:23] Samantha Mabe: Let's get started by having you tell everybody kind of what you do in your business and who you work with and how you help them.
[00:02:31] Rebekah Jordan: Sure. So I am a therapeutic educational consultant, which most people kind of don't know what that is typically.
[00:02:40] My background's been in education. I've been working in schools and with families for about 25 years, and now the work I do is with families whose kids are in a mental health crisis.
[00:02:50] Typically, I do some traditional boarding school placements, but most of my work is with families where either education has caused a glitch in their kids' mental health or their kids' mental health has caused a glitch in their education, and so we're trying to work out. Do they have the right services? How do we make sure they get the right services? If that's not at home, where is it? So that we're making really thoughtful and mindful choices about how to support these kids and these families.
[00:03:17] Samantha Mabe: You do a lot of traveling for your job, a lot of research, a lot of continuing education, I'm sure. So you have lots of expertise in that area.
[00:03:25] Rebekah Jordan: Yeah, I spend about 20% of my time on the road visiting schools and programs. There's a long chunks of time where you will not find me at my desk, but working from, from some various hotel room or, um, you know, carport or wherever I might find myself.
How Rebekah DIYed her website when she started her business
[00:03:41] Samantha Mabe: When did you start your business on your own and how did you start your website at the time?
[00:03:46] Rebekah Jordan: So I made a planned move out of schools back into consulting. I'd been an an elementary school principal and knew I wanted to come back into this work of working one-on-one with families.
[00:03:58] And so I made a planned move back into consulting in June of 2020, not having any idea what the world was gonna look like or feel like in June of 2020. But I started doing the legwork for that in January of 2020. I am neuro divergent myself, I have ADHD I get really hyper-focused and excited about projects and so I created my website in one day because that's how you roll. Did all the research, picked Squarespace, ran with it, built something.
[00:04:27] I loved it at the time. It was clean, it looked good, but it really was pretty vague in general because I didn't yet know exactly what the need was gonna be. I didn't yet know exactly who my audience was, who was I speaking to, who was gonna need my services.
[00:04:45] You mentioned before, I have this long history in education, right? So there's a lot of different things that I can do and I left it pretty open-ended to see what people really needed me to do. Um, so it was, it was a great holding spot for me at the time.
[00:05:02] Samantha Mabe: And you started, I mean, you jumped into your business in a pandemic. So education looked very different and the solutions people needed was very different then.
[00:05:11] Rebekah Jordan: They really, really were. That first year, part of what I had done previously when I was doing consulting, um, Was doing a lot of homeschool builds for people, which was a great skillset to have in the summer of 2020 and fall of 2020 because that's what people needed and wanted.
[00:05:27] And so that first year, I'd say about 70% of my business was homeschool builds. And the other 30% of my business was doing therapeutic placements in some boarding schools. And that has completely flipped now. I have colleagues who do phenomenal work in the homeschool space and so that's not something I do much of unless it's just a filler for a family.
[00:05:48] And now I do primarily therapeutic work and, and the rest is boarding school placements. And all of my kids have something quirky and fun in their profile, but I didn't know that in June of 2020, and I certainly didn't know that in January of 2020 when we had no idea what we were gonna be looking at.
The importance of having a website when your business runs on referrals
[00:06:05] Samantha Mabe: So how do most of these families find you?
[00:06:09] Rebekah Jordan: Most of 'em find me through word of mouth. And so that was one of the reasons why doing a website redesign was really important because friends and colleagues and programs and schools would say, Hey, you should call Rebekah. They'd send them my website link and that would be the first thing that they would see or look at, and it didn't really say a whole lot.
[00:06:32] That was one of the biggest reasons was that referrals are my primary source. And how do you find out about someone who's been referred to you? You go, you can check them out behind the scenes, right? You look at their website. Um, there's, there's not much else out there to speak about us other than our digital presence.
Why Rebekah decided to work with Lemon and the Sea in a VIP Day
[00:06:49] Samantha Mabe: When you wanted to redesign your website, why did you decide to work with me and do the VIP Day process?
[00:06:55] Rebekah Jordan: Um, the short answer is that I've been stalking you. I have no idea at this point how I originally came across you. It's like so long gone in my memory, but for probably, a year, year and a half -you would actually know your timeframes on the podcast and, and your own communications better than I do- but I'd been listening to your podcast. I'm an avid learner and so I loved that you presented topics in this really clear, easy to understand way.
[00:07:25] They were always things that were interesting to me. Sometimes they were things that I hadn't thought of. There are episodes I've gone back to and listened to again because I was like, wait, she did that great episode on gifting. I wanna go back and, and listen.
[00:07:37] And I would consistently read your emails because that was, that was how I was teaching myself how to improve my own website along the way.
[00:07:48] So when I hit the point of being like, okay, I am a busy enough that it is ridiculous for me to try to give myself a master's degree in web design. That's not my skillset. Um, as much fun as I might have doing it, I knew that you were the person I wanted to work with because I, you didn't know me, but I already knew the approach you took. I already knew what you like. I, I knew I liked your aesthetic. All of those things were really important to me.
The VIP Day process and transformation of Rebekah's brand and website
[00:08:14] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. So what did you like about the VIP Day process? And I know we made a big change in like the design aesthetic of your website, so that was a big change in people can see a before and after, but like we made a big shift in that one day.
[00:08:30] Rebekah Jordan: It was it a huge shift and frankly, if you had told me that we would have been able to make like that level of a shift, I'm not sure I would've believed you before starting. And I think part of that comes to how well you have the process designed, right?
[00:08:47] So VIP Day is a little bit of a misnomer because it isn't just one day. But you structured the time leading up to that day so effectively that I was able to do my work. I think the process worked beautifully for someone like me who needs pressure and a deadline to get something done, and I'm gonna sit down and get it done in one big chunk, which might have left you feeling a little bit nervous because I just don't think I had anything to you before, like five minutes before my deadline. But we got it to you because I needed that pressure.
[00:09:20] If we had done a design process that wasn't a VIP Day, we would've been bouncing back for months. I could have had so much analysis paralysis, I could have been like, well, do I, do I like this shade of orange? Or should it maybe be this shade of orange?
[00:09:37] And the time crunch really made it so that I had to be trusting my gut more. How do I feel about this? How do I like this? I had enough time and enough time to plan to send a couple things to a couple people I trusted to get some feedback on it in the process, but not so much and so many that I was agonizing over, like whether this line should extend an extra quarter inch or not.
[00:10:00] And I really was put in the position saying, you know what? This is my designer. I've hired her. I'm gonna trust her instead of doing a long, drawn out, back and forth process.
[00:10:08] So for me, I loved that I had. We were gonna do it and we were gonna get it done. And there was no like, oh, right. I owe you that thing. It just, it just happened. It was like magic.
The anticipation and excitement of receiving the mockup design
[00:10:20] Samantha Mabe: Did you have a favorite part of the process?
[00:10:22] Rebekah Jordan: I think the anticipation of waiting for that first draft to drop and, and then opening it. I videoed myself opening the first draft that you sent me. I was blown away because, yeah, we'd done mood boards back and forth and we talked a little bit about like colors.
[00:10:42] But I opened it and I was like, oh my God, you get me in a way that I, I could not have articulated to you who we were and how I wanted to visually represent that in any sort of way that would've produced what you managed to produce for us, which is like the embodiment of who we are.
[00:11:03] It really was like magic.
[00:11:05] I don't know how you did that, but the questions you asked leading up to it. And I'm curious like, how did you figure out that process to be able to like distill from people that essence that just is them?
[00:11:18] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I feel like some of it is, I've just been doing this for a long time and so I kind of know which questions I need to ask and what I need.
[00:11:26] Generally, like the inspiration question is really important and some people don't like to answer that one cause they don't know what to send me, but that's the best way I know kind of what you like and what you don't like and the overall look and feel. And then I have come to realize, it's just like my superpower is just taking all that information and turning it into a design.
[00:11:48] And I think because it gets delivered as like this is the entire page with your copy and your images, it's really easy to see how it's going to look and so you're not nitpicking all the little details cuz you're getting the big picture.
[00:12:03] Rebekah Jordan: Yep. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It is your superpower. It's truly magic.
[00:12:07] And I agree on that mood board. That was like that inspiration board was, I think the only part where I got at all frustrated because my brain couldn't wrap around what you needed from me, right? And I think you sent back like some feedback and then got there and it was great.
Advice for working with a websdite designer
[00:12:24] Samantha Mabe: Do you have any advice for somebody who might work with, for a website in general and then specifically with me through this process?
Be clear on what you like and don't like to get the best results from your designer
[00:12:33] Rebekah Jordan: I'm gonna go backwards. Um, working with you in this process, I think not being worried about being really, really clear with you about what are the things I like, what are the things I dislike or what are the things they like? What are the things they dislike? What are the, what are the things that make them tick? That, that more information is probably better.
Be willing to release control and trust the process
[00:12:59] Rebekah Jordan: And also too then on the flip side, be willing to release a little bit of control and trust because sometimes we don't see ourselves as well as other people can see us.
[00:13:10] I think an example for us is like if you had just sent me that color, I think it's called Cinnamon, that's now in my color palette. And I might've even said this to you at the time of like, I'm not sure about the orange. Um, and I leaned into it and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna just, I'm gonna step back.
[00:13:31] I'm gonna trust. And to be able to do that and then see the final product and, and let it be okay that you have to wait for that.
Be kind when giving feedback
[00:13:39] Rebekah Jordan: And then being, being kind and feedback, right? It's so easy to go right to the things that we see that are wrong, but to remember that like, one, you're a human being. Two, this is your passion and therefore it is personal and you put a lot of time and energy and work into creating this thing. And so instead of diving right to like, that one hump is like ivory instead of white instead of ivory. Share back with you all of the phenomenal things that come out of it, and then, and then fine tune the details because of course there's details that are gonna be tuned.
Give yourself enough time to write your copy and do customer research
[00:14:18] Rebekah Jordan: With website in general, I think really nailing your copy and, and giving yourself enough time to do the copy and do it well. And if you need to hire a copywriter to do that, hire a copywriter to do that. But that is the one piece that I think I wish I had done farther in advance than I did, um, just because it also would've informed the process in a different way had I really spent that deep time to do that articulation and do some more like voice of the consumer work ahead of time.
[00:15:01] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. And copy and design goes so hand in hand that they can be really impactful, and it's so helpful for me to have the copy ahead of time so that I can design. If I know like, okay, you've got these three short paragraphs, I can design for that versus I don't know what you're gonna put here, so I'm just gonna make something up and you're gonna have to write the copy to match the design. It's so much better to work the other way.
Don't underestimate the importance of tone and personality in your copy and design
[00:15:27] Rebekah Jordan: Yeah, and I don't think you can underestimate tone of voice in the process. I would imagine for you, it's really similar to the process I work through when I'm helping families find the right fit school or program. There's so many nuances that go into who a family is, who a child is, what they need, what's gonna be the right fit in all those ways beyond like, do they have space for a seventh grade lacrosse player, or can they work with someone who's on the autism spectrum?
[00:15:54] There's lots of schools and programs that can do that. There's lots of designs you could pop on an accounting firm and be like, this says money and accounting. But there's such a difference between, even between me and other ED consultants in the way we work, in who we are, and how we talk with our clients, right?
[00:16:13] So I'm warm, approachable, and like super professional, but land more on the side of being someone you wanna sit down and have a cup of coffee with and that you, you trust with this very important part of your life because you can tell I care. And then there's other ED consultants who are like, they're sharks and that is a good thing for them and for their clients, but their website's gonna look really, really different.
[00:16:37] You put a lot of curves into my design. For someone else that might have been straight lines, and that alone would've shifted the entire vibe of website.
Find a way to express your unique point of view
[00:16:45] Samantha Mabe: And I, I know one of the concerns that you had sending me some of the other ed consultant websites is like, I don't want to copy them. I'm just showing you like what other people are doing.
[00:16:55] And so we had to make sure, yes, we can use it as inspiration, but we're not trying to make you look like anybody else because when people interact with you, you want that to be a reflection of your personality and the way you run your business and the other people who work with you.
[00:17:10] Rebekah Jordan: Yeah. And it's hard because there's, there's not a lot of us, and I can aesthetically love the design of someone else's and be like, oh, you got there first.
[00:17:18] It's very realistic that clients would be opening one of my colleagues' websites who lives in California and mine in the same search. We have to, you know, just being respectful and mindful to really develop our own identities. You were really good about kind of helping me understand your process there, which was important. I needed that.
The results Rebekah has seen since launching her new website design
[00:17:36] Samantha Mabe: What results have you seen since we launched the website?
[00:17:40] Rebekah Jordan: Um, that's a great question. I am super busy and have a packed schedule, which is awesome.
Easy referrals and consultations because the vetting is done by the website
[00:17:46] Rebekah Jordan: I think I shared this with you even earlier in this recording, but I know that the process of finding an ED consultant for most people who are in the place that my clients are in, which is often a point of crisis, is that somebody sends them two or three names, or a friend gives them a referral, and before they even reach out to me, they've gone to the website and made a decision about whether or not my vibe fits them.
[00:18:10] And so what I'm getting now is people who I know already have a sense of who I am, who I work with, and they've read the website and been like, that's my kid. Okay. I like her tone, she's approachable, or whatever the case might be. So they've already decided that they feel comfortable with my vibe before they reach out. So we don't have to do any of that filtering or vetting.
[00:18:37] I'm finding that I'm getting fewer calls from people where I'm like, I don't do what you're looking for. Or recognizing like, oh, we're not gonna, this is not gonna be the right fit on my end where I'm having to turn people away. Um, so that's, that I think is really important. That's huge.
[00:18:55] It's incredibly time saving for me. But it also, saves my clients time and, and generally my clients are not people who have a lot of time to spare. So if I'm not the right choice, I want them to know that on the front end and not spend the time booking a call, talking with me just to find out that we're not the right emotional vibe. I think that's been profoundly helpful.
Find a designer who empowers you to edit your own website
[00:19:20] Rebekah Jordan: Also, I just, I haven't really gone into the website. I used to be in my website every, like couple of days, changing something, fixing something, updating something. I haven't had to think about it. It's in great shape. I know it's in great shape. I know it says what I want it to say. I know it looks great and so sometimes I open it just because I wanna see it and I wanna look at it.
[00:19:46] I think that's a really important thing for people to know if they're thinking about working with you or in looking for a website is find somebody you can work with who is going to set you up to be independent, moving forward. Who will still be available.
[00:20:01] Like I know if I really got stuck and I was like, I've watched all the tutorials, I've done all the things, I know that like I could pick up the phone and call you. But you set us up with tutorials and resources and loom videos, and I know that what I need is there for me as a resource if I need it.
[00:20:20] And so I would recommend that anybody looking for a web designer really make an effort to find somebody who's not saying like, oh, you don't have to know how to do that. I'll take care of it, you don't have to know how to do that. I'll take care of that. Because it really, it locks you in to needing to rely on that person. And what if they're not available? What if they don't have time? You wanna be able to have the resources as a small, busy entrepreneur or a bigger busy entrepreneur to be able to have you and your team make the changes. So looking for somebody who's gonna set you up to have your information, have your data, and be able to manage it yourself, I think it's huge.
[00:20:57] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, that's always been a huge part of my business. I've never wanted people to feel like. And I honestly at the time didn't know web designers did that, where it was like, you have to come back to me for everything. Cause I was just like, that doesn't make any sense to me. Like it's their website. If they wanna go make changes, they should be able to do that.
[00:21:13] Rebekah Jordan: And I love that you say like you design Squarespace, that's what you do, right? I think that's huge because the tools are so accessible now that like, gone are the days of like, well you have to come to me cuz I can code and if you can't code, you can't.
[00:21:27] Don't make a website that's so complicated that it needs deep layers of code upon code, upon code, upon code. Not if you're a small, busy entrepreneur. Life's too short.
[00:21:38] My advice is to make sure that as people are vetting and look at the designs people do, right? Are they clean? Are they user-friendly? Are they accessible? Um, that's really important.
Connect with Rebekah and Team Crossbridge
[00:21:51] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. Well, if people want to learn more about what you do and see all your travels, where is the best place for them to connect with you?
[00:21:58] Rebekah Jordan: They can find me on my website, which is www.teamtmcrossbridge.com and that's probably the best place to find me. And from there you can find our Instagram, which is, I believe Crossbridge Bridge ed. We are on Instagram. Um, that is the best place to follow along with our travels, but if you sign up for our newsletter, you'll, you'll get a little link that shows you how to find us on Instagram, or you can link straight through our website.
[00:22:25] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. And I will link to that in the show notes too, so people can check it out.
