2025: Year in Review

Written By Vanessa Many

Wow, 2025 was quite a year.

It’s amazing to look back and reflect on all that’s happened (and that’s not even getting into the national and global news)!

I started off 2025 by getting very, very serious about web design, in a very, very unserious way: I went to Mexico.

I needed some extensive, dedicated time to just sit and build my website, and finish the web design course I had started in the late fall of 2024.

Luckily, I have a friend who owns a house on the beach outside of Rocky Point, Mexico, and I was able to pack up the car, and my dog, and head south of the border.

It was such an amazing time.

I’d wake up before the sunrise and watch the sky change from dark blue to light blue to every shade of pink, crimson and gold, as waves rippled and reflected light. Pelicans coasted along the ocean breeze. Whales came up for air in the distant waters.

I made coffee, walked my dog, then got to work.

Building a business is never an easy feat. You have to reflect on every single detail of how you will operate, what you will be offering and (especially important for web designers), make it all look absolutely gorgeous.

I spent nine days repeating the process over and over again: pouring over Paige Brunton’s web design course (Square Secrets), drinking coffee, going on long walks on the beach with my dog, staring at the ocean, and diligently building my website.

By the time I got back home to Flagstaff, I was feeling pretty darned accomplished, but had a lot left to do, mainly writing blogs and working on my marketing structure.

On February 25, 2025 (yes, I’m a numbers nerd), I officially launched Blue Skies Web Designs!

It was sort of a funny feeling— I’d worked so hard for this and poured my heart & soul into it— and then it was like, ok… now what?!

My partner was so proud of me and knew just what to do; I came home from dance class to a bottle of champagne, balloons, flowers and a card. What a sweetie.

After that, I focused on letting everyone in existence know that I had a launched and was looking for new clients. Even though I’d been building websites for colleagues, friends and acquaintances for a few years at this point, this definitely felt like a huge step.

From a Facebook post I’d made about my launch, an old friend from Denmark reached out asking if I could do a website audit of her biomedical company. They already worked with a web designer, but wanted some insights on how to make the site more warm and approachable versus being so science- and data-focused.

I absolutely loved this project and loved re-connecting with an old friend from my world travels in the 90’s.

Still, I couldn’t wait to start a full design project! But, when?!?

And more importantly: how would I find the time to do it all?!

Making the leap into launching a new career also meant spreading myself pretty thin: I already owned and operated a full-time massage practice and needed to figure out how to run two businesses at the same time.

News flash: it ain’t easy.

On days I really wanted to brush up on a skill, take an online course, or work on one corner of my website, I had to instead focus on what was actually bringing in money: my massage business.

How to balance one’s passion, which at this point, brought in zero dollars, with one’s well-established main income stream?

This conundrum was one of the primary themes throughout the entirety of 2025. 

In March, I met with a business mentor from the Small Business Development Center to help me make sure I was on track with all the administrative tasks that come with opening a small business. Things like opening a business checking account, registering the business with the city, forming an LLC, submitting articles of incorporation, and all that other fun stuff. 

Then, in mid-March, it happened: after an initial consultation call with a massage colleague, I snagged my very first paying web design client!!

It was a perfect fit: she was a Licensed Massage Therapist wanting to launch her own massage business for the first time, and so excited to have someone who deeply understood the industry, her vision and the type of clients she wanted to work with. She wanted to pay in full for the project (not how I typically run my payment system) and we set a date to work on her design. 

I was elated! I felt like, “wow, I am actually doing this thing.” 

I was also utterly terrified. Would I get it right? Would my content planners and questionnaires feel supportive enough to get the information I needed to build the best website I could?

And most of all: would my client absolutely LOVE her website? 

Well, as luck would have it, I had to wait a while to get those questions answered, at least from this particular client. She had a series of unfortunate events occur all in the span of just a couple weeks, causing her to need to pause the project for an indefinite period of time. 

Whomp-whomp. 

In April, I mostly kept focused on three things: continuing massage work, writing blogs and doing “behind the scenes work” for my web design business and going to African dance classes & workshops (one of the biggest hobbies in my life).

Three big things happened in May. I had my first (real first) web design client, an acquaintance who had already had a website but needed an overhaul.

She’d built the site herself years prior but recognized that it was, as she said, “cringe.” 

In technical terms, this meant the layout was clunky, the imaging was off, and it was pretty hard to understand what exactly she was offering, even though she was a skilled and knowledgeable professional in her field (Psychotherapy and Somatic Experiencing, to be exact).

The other fantastic thing that happened in May 2025 was that I built a website for the Flagstaff African Dance community, of which I’ve been involved since the early 2000’s. As our community has grown over the years, we wanted to do more to highlight our workshops, classes and new online registration forms.

What better way to do all that than with a website?! I volunteered to jump in and build them a fun and informative website, since I just so happened to have the time on my hands and was eager to put my web design skills to the test!

And when it rains it pours; a dear friend and fellow massage therapist reached out to me at the end of May, saying she was having trouble with her old website and I could help her fix it up?

Why yes, of course! 

By June, I was feeling slightly more confident, ever-refining my systems, and thoroughly loving every minute (except for the fact that there were never enough hours in a week to do web design work, take care of myself and my relationships, run a massage business, perform in a band, attend dance classes and do enough massages to feel financially comfortable). 

In June, I also had my first discovery call with a “real” web design client, as in, someone I didn’t know and was looking for an entire custom website build.

It felt like a dream come true.

She was exactly my niche: a massage therapist of 20 years, well-admired in her community, and a hardworking, dedicated practitioner.

After our call, when she said she couldn’t wait to work with me, I felt like a bonafide web designer.

Her project was going to be my biggest yet– pulling her logo, branding and elements from her old Wordpress site and building out a new 5-page site in Squarespace. 

Over a two-week period in the hottest part of July, I built a beautiful, powerful site that my client was absolutely delighted with.

I’m not gonna lie. It was a LOT of work. I knew I needed more support to figure out how to do things more efficiently as a little baby web designer still riding around with training wheels on.

That’s why in August, I signed up for Launch the Damn Thing’s community membership, where I receive extensive mentorship and support.

Inside “The Club,” as it’s called, I have found a group of seasoned and new web designers who are so helpful, so caring, so hilarious, and so dedicated to their craft that I feel like I’ve got a whole team behind me. 

Seriously, if you’re in the web design world, you NEED to be in “The Club.” 

But I digress.

Back to August. A fellow Flagstaff massage therapist, after looking around on the internet at local massage sites, had found my massage business. She said she’d really liked the look and feel of my website, and then found out I’m also a web designer (yep, I have a button on my massage site that links folks to my web design site). 

She said she knew right away she wanted to work with me.

Since we both live in the same town and she’s a busy mom of two, instead of a discovery call we met in person at her home studio.

All she really needed was a simple one-page site plus an online scheduling page, so that’s just what we built.

Her project went smoothly over a three-day period in mid-August.

This meant I’d now officially completed all of my offerings since launching: a website refresh, a full custom build, a one-page site and a site audit.

After six months, I was feeling more confident but also still working myself to the bone: when I wasn’t building websites, I was doing massage, and that meant some stretches where I worked 12-15 days in a row.

In September, I worked on a really fun and slightly different project: building a full custom site for an astrologer!

She was just starting to launch her business, so she found all of the content planners and questionnaires I provide my clients to be incredibly useful as she thought through the behind-the-scenes and operational aspects of her business. 

Up to this point, my projects had all been for people directly working in the massage industry, so it was really fun to branch out and learn a lot about another industry altogether! 

Also in September, I worked on a very small project, something I wasn’t sure I could do well, but it turned out to be really fun and a huge success.

The husband of a former design client reached out to ask if I could just make some “quick edits” to his Christmas lighting website, as he’d tried to do it on his own and was feeling a bit lost.

Since I don’t offer hourly work, but wanted to help him out as the husband of a former client, I offered to do a live call with him, where he’d watch on a Google Meet call as I worked (furiously) for one hour.

His site went from black & white, with an almost-illegible font and a very jumbled design, to a sleek, festive, and welcoming one-page site. In just one hour.

How much fun is that?! 

In October, things slowed down a bit as it was my birthday and I went on a big backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon. We did the Hermit Trail to Boucher Trail, which has been deemed the most treacherous and technical trail on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and boy, was it ever.

Luckily, I had done the trail once before, so knew what to expect and felt physically and emotionally prepared, having trained for it as best as I could throughout the month of September.

But when I came back from that trip, it was time to jump back in.

Remember that first client who’d paid up front back in February?

Well, she was finally ready to get started on her design project, so with sore legs and a happy heart, that’s just what we did in late October. 

We officially launched her five-page custom site on Halloween.

By November, I was beat. Looking back on my calendar now, I see just how full it was: massage clients and band practice and workouts and dance class and dog care and doctor’s appointments and all the other things that make up life.

You know around the holiday season, how people’s brains just shut down? There’s too many holiday parties to attend, gifts to buy and things to do. That was me.

On top of that, one of my best friends made her annual visit to the states from Australia in December, so I flew out to the east coast to visit her there, then we re-united again in Tucson (where we both met back in 1999) for a week of tacos and margaritas and hikes in the sunshine.

The only thing I managed to accomplish from a professional standpoint in December (other than doing a whole bunch of massage), was interviewing and onboarding a massage therapist to join my massage practice.

The intention is that this will allow me to focus a bit more on my design work, while maintaining my massage practice.

Needless to say, I didn’t get much done in the design world in December, and I was totally at peace with that. I think it’s okay to just accept low productivity in lieu of holding on for the (sleigh) ride. 

So, that’s that, 2025 all wrapped up. 

In brief:

Takehome pay:

  • $4,408

Main lessons:

  • Take a leap of faith to do something you truly love

  • Find a community of supportive, helpful people to guide and mentor you

  • Trust the process

  • Find a work/life balance and take more dedicated days off

Vanessa Many https://www.blueskieswebdesigns.com
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