Double Your Squarespace Business: Doing the Work vs Moving the Work (Part 3)
This is Part 3 of a 3-part Double Your Squarespace Business series.
In Part 1, we looked at where you’re standing – getting closer to real demand and into better rooms.
In Part 2, we checked your headroom and capacity – is there actually space to grow where you are, and can your current setup hold 2x?
This piece is about the third layer:
The difference between doing the work and moving the work – and why that’s where leverage actually lives.
A quick story
I was talking to a developer who'd spent the last few years as "the person people call when their Squarespace site breaks."
Every month looked like:
full calendar
endless Slack pings and emails
a mess of small retainers and one-off fixes
Revenue-wise, he was hovering in the same 90–110k range.
He wasn't lazy. He wasn't underpriced. He just kept saying yes to the next thing in front of him.
When I asked what his most profitable work was, he didn't hesitate:
"Honestly? Migrating sites from WordPress. Those projects are bigger, cleaner, and the clients are way more serious."
We dug into it:
Those projects were 6–10k on average.
The clients cared about reliability and ease-of-use, not just "a nice site."
He kept getting asked the same questions and solving the same problems every time.
But if you looked at his marketing, none of that showed up.
His site said generic stuff like "Custom Squarespace design & development," with WordPress migrations buried in a bulleted list of services.
He was excellent at doing the work… but he'd never really moved that work into a better container.
Once we saw it, the question shifted from:
"How do I get more clients?"
to:
"How do I move this WordPress → Squarespace migration work so it does more of the heavy lifting for me?"
He went quiet for a second.
"But that feels like... limiting myself. What if people think I only do migrations? I lose all the other work."
"What do you have to lose? The exhausting work you just said you don't want?"
Another pause.
"Honestly? Most of it's exhausting. The migrations are the only projects where I'm not constantly chasing scope or explaining why something costs what it costs."
The resistance was identity.
He didn't want to be "just the migration guy." It felt narrow. Small.
But here's what shifted: he realized he wasn't shrinking his business. He was finally pointing it at the thing that already worked instead of scattering his energy.
He started small:
turned his messy internal checklist into a clear "Migration Roadmap" he could show prospects
packaged migrations into a defined offer with a starting price, timeline, and process
wrote one simple page on his site just for WordPress → Squarespace, with a couple of mini case studies
asked a few past migration clients for intros to friends who were "still stuck on WordPress"
Within a few months, nothing about his technical skills had changed.
But the same work was moving differently:
more of his pipeline was made up of well-scoped migrations
conversations started from "I want you to migrate us" instead of "I just need a few fixes"
each migration led to better long-term support work, instead of random tiny tickets
That's the shift this piece is about.
The first ability: doing the work
This is the part you already know.
Doing the work is:
designing the site
fixing the broken thing
hitting the deadline
keeping the client happy
It fills your calendar. It got you to six-figures. It’s why people refer you and say nice things about you.
If you’re booked and your clients like you, you’re probably an 8–10/10 here.
But “doing the work” mostly pays you once. You get the project, you deliver, you get paid, you move on.
If you want to double after you’ve hit a ceiling, you need another ability on top of that.
The second ability: moving the work
“Moving the work” is my shorthand for everything that happens after you’ve done a good job.
It’s things like:
turning one project into the way you do that kind of project from now on
turning that project into a clearer offer on your site
turning pieces of that project into a template, plugin, checklist, or system you can reuse
turning that project into a case study that attracts similar clients
putting that project in front of people who are already at your next level of budget and seriousness
Moving the work is how you turn:
one win → many wins
It’s how your past effort keeps working for you.
That’s leverage.
Why most designers never make this shift
The issue usually isn’t “I don’t know how to do good work.”
What happens is:
doing good work has been so rewarded – by clients, by referrals, by your own work ethic – that you’ve never had to think much about what happens after
you finish a project, move to the next one, repeat
the pattern keeps you afloat, so it feels risky to change it
That cycle works… until it doesn’t.
Until you’re a few years in at the same revenue, wondering why getting better at the work isn’t moving the needle.
The shift from doing to moving doesn’t require a 50-step system. It just needs intention.
It asks you to see every project as two opportunities:
Get paid for this project
Set yourself up to get paid again from what you learned, built, or proved
Most designers only see #1.
How this connects back to doubling
Parts 1 and 2 were about conditions:
You’re standing close enough to real demand.
There’s actual headroom in your lane.
You’ve built enough capacity that 2x wouldn’t shatter everything.
Part 3 is about behavior:
Every time you do good work, you ask:
“How can I also move this work?”
That’s how you get out of the pattern where every new dollar requires a brand new surge of effort.
Where to go from here
You don’t have to redesign your whole business this week.
If you read this series and something clicked, you're probably ready for the next Double Your Squarespace Business cohort.
DYSB is a 90-day program where we identify your highest-return work, package it into a repeatable offer, and build the systems so your past effort keeps paying you.
There's a new cohort starting soon.
If you want help doing this in your own business, put your name on the interest list below and I'll send details there first.
