Meet Our Elevators – Monique Dubbelman

A Brief Background for Monique Dubbelman

Monique Dubbelman has played a role in design for a few decades now. Back in the late ‘80s, she trained to be a graphical engineer. That role eventually led to management positions in the print industry, which eventually gave way to the digital world we all know and work in now.

After print died down, Monique made a decision to move away, both literally and figuratively, from her work. She moved to the countryside in the Netherlands about 15 years ago and built her own webshop for organic gardening. And this was just the start.

Life Before the Blueprint

Monique officially began building websites with BOE!media in 2011. While she was happy working as a designer and a builder, she found that her business model was not scalable. She was working on demand and compromising on price for the small business clients she worked for.

So, she began looking for the next phase of her career.

It was at that time when Beaver Builder pointed her in the direction of WP Elevation and the Blueprint program. She was sceptical at first though, saying:

“You get lots of opportunities and big promises [from programs like these], so I was a bit sceptical in the beginning.”

Sceptical of the Blueprint

It’s not uncommon that we encounter people who are sceptical of the Blueprint.

For WordPress professionals and consultants that are in a tough spot – feeling burned out, overloaded, and bleeding money – the investment in WP Elevation might seem like an unwise choice. However, once they start looking at what they get in return, it’s when that scepticism will begin to fade away.

That’s exactly what happened for Monique. After examining the Blueprint further, she asked herself, “Will this help me get the right mindset and actually do the work?”

The answer was, “Yes”.

Making Positive Changes with the Blueprint

As Monique so deftly pointed out, the Blueprint program works because it motivates Elevators to actually use the tools and strategies provided to them. Although Monique only began the Blueprint about six months ago, she’s already been able to make positive changes to her business.

Here are some ways in which the Blueprint has helped her:

• She did away with clients that didn’t fit well with the new way of working.
• Other clients who didn’t understand the value of her services left on their own accord, leaving her free to connect with better clients.
• The free giveaway guide inspired her to bring some of her ebooks out of retirement and put them back into circulation.
• She has used a number of tools and materials provided by the Blueprint, translated them for her audience, and really made them work for her specific business.

While she has gone through the Blueprint and made big strides with what she’s done so far, she continues to return to it to find new ways to improve her workflow and make it work for her clients.

Her Take on the Community

The WP Elevation community has proven to be a welcoming environment for Monique to trust in as she hones her business model.

As she explained in the podcast, everyone in the community is open and stands on equal footing, no matter how long they’ve been at this. And because it’s okay to be vulnerable and talk about the bad as much as the good, it has encouraged her to do more with the Blueprint.

Monique’s accountability partner has also been helpful in motivating her to work through it. Hers happens to live near her in the Netherlands and they meet (by video chat now) every two to three weeks. They talk about what they’ve been doing as well as plans for the future, supporting each other along the way.

Favourite Tools

There are two tools Monique gives a special shout-out to.

The first is ManageWP. As she explained, she’s now hired someone to handle the maintenance side of her business. However, she still really enjoys how easy ManageWP has made it to care for multiple client websites at once.

She also is a big fan of Beaver Builder, the company that referred her to WP Elevation in the first place. While she’s spent a lot of time exploring page builders, in general, she appreciates Beaver Builder’s continued embrace of web developers as users. As other builders move further away from web development in the hopes of making more universally user-friendly tools (ahem… Gutenberg), Beaver Builder is one that continues to support the way she prefers to work.

A Personal Approach to the Blueprint

That’s one of the key things Monique has gotten from the Blueprint: the fact that you don’t have to grow your business in the same direction as everyone else. You can use it to improve your workflow, but do it in a way that makes sense for the way that you want to work.

Although she was tempted to get carried away with the Blueprint at first, she quickly realised that she needed to consider what was the most important to her. Then, she could take those elements from the Blueprint and put them to work.

As such, she still works on her own and doesn’t have any major plans for expansion. While she outsources maintenance to someone else (because it’s something she dislikes), she’s reluctant to hand over the design piece as it’s something she’s always had a passion for.

Wrap-Up

In the near future, Monique plans to do more strategic one-on-one work, which means that she may have to outsource that piece eventually.

For now, she’s designing her business the way she wants to with the Blueprint. We hope other Elevators are encouraged by this who may feel intimidated by others whose aspirations appear larger or more impressive in scope than their own. The future looks different for everyone and you can shape it however you see fit with the Blueprint.

P.S. We’ve created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.