Aggressively Human: Online Business in the Age of AI, Algorithms & Automations How being human has built a web design business with Shannon Mattern
What if the answer to growing your business wasn’t building a funnel or crazy AI workflows, but being human, and building discernment and relationships?
In this episode, we talk with Shannon Mattern, founder of the Web Designer Academy, where she teaches web designers how to package, price, position, and sell their services. She came up through freelance web design herself—undercharging, over-delivering, treating clients like bosses—before closing that side of her business and pivoting to teach others what she had to learn the hard way.
We talk about what’s actually driving undercharging, how AI is a repositioning opportunity when seen strategically, and why the real value of a web designer has never really been the design itself.
* Why web designers undercharge—and why the root cause runs deeper than mindset or confidence
* The codependency cycle: from people-pleasing freelancer to the same patterns showing up in her own business
* Building a business through referrals and word of mouth instead of paid ads and growth hacks
* Why hiring people different from yourself actually improves the business (even when it's uncomfortable)
* Why competing on price is a trap, and what to position on instead
* Why AI tools like Wix and Squarespace aren’t the threat most designers think they are
* Repositioning from “I make websites” to “I’m a business strategist and growth partner”
* How AI is actually a reason to charge more—not less—if you reposition around strategy and business impact
The truth is, designers hear me when I say this or anybody doing anything where like [00:30:00] part of your business relies on a piece of software that your expertise is not knowing how to manipulate that piece of software to. build the thing. It's the fact that you can even translate what a client's needs are something that's going to them the outcomes and results that they want.” - Shannon Mattern
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