Stephen Palacino on building empathy-driven client relationships
In this episode of Looks Good From Here, we chat with web designer Stephen Palacino. What happens when you realize you have options? For Stephen Palacino of Page1 Branding, that moment came late one Friday night at an ad agency when he said out loud, "I don't want to be here." That decision led to branding his parents' goat milk soap company and eventually to 14 years of serving small businesses through Squarespace design. Continue reading below or watch the episode here.
From hospital marketing to handmade soap websites
Stephen's path to web design started at an advertising agency where he worked as a media buyer for 13 hospitals across five states. But late one Friday night, while doing budget planning, he had a realization that changed everything.
"I was working very late one night and I just said out loud, I don't want to be here," Stephen recalls. "And I just felt it in my spirit there was just this resounding, so why are you here? And I know that that's different for everybody. I was not married. I didn't have children at the time, but it was just this amazing aha moment of I have options."
His first client? His parents' goat farm. They were making handmade goat milk soap and selling it to friends and family, but it didn't have a name or branding. Stephen branded the company Red Clay Soap with the tagline "Get dirty, live clean," built their first website, and never looked back.
"The phone just kept ringing and I just kept saying yes," Stephen says. Though he's quick to add, "I said yes a lot more back then than I do now. The funnel of yeses has shrunk tremendously."
Why Squarespace became the platform of choice
After working with Wix, WordPress, Shopify, and developers through the years, Stephen settled on Squarespace about seven years ago. His reasoning came down to two key factors: control and client empowerment.
"For me, working with developers at that time, I didn't like not having answers," Stephen explains. "When I was having to rely on someone else for 80% of a project and then a client would ask me something simple, when is this or what is this or why is this, and then I had to go turn and talk to somebody else and then go back to them. When you're managing multiple projects, that can get really exhausting."
He discovered that Squarespace offered the perfect balance. "I always tell my clients, Squarespace to me is the number one platform for anyone to use after someone like me sets it up," he says. "Clients just wanted that autonomy."
The power of time blocking and transparent deadlines
Stephen is passionate about time blocking, a practice he adopted after studying successful designers like Sam Crawford, Ben Manley, and Kelsey from Week of the Website. But his approach goes beyond personal productivity—he shares his schedule openly with clients.
"What it does is it allows you to tell a client, I'm going to finish this now. It puts a timeline on the client's engagement so that they have to respond," Stephen explains. "If they're saying I need it by tomorrow, the project is going to be done tomorrow."
This isn't about secretly completing work faster than promised. Stephen is transparent about real timelines. "I was having difficulty managing false reality. Me telling the client four weeks and then doing it in four days meant I had to track two timelines," he says. "I need one reality."
His signature offering is what he calls "48"—a two-day website build process. "I start designing in my mind as soon as we started having this conversation," Stephen says. "After you've done it hundreds of times, it's no longer seen as a chore for me. It's really a creative process that is very engaging."
Getting clients from hesitant to delighted
One of Stephen's core principles is compressing the timeline between client hesitancy and delight. As he puts it, "I know if I finish a project quicker and the client is delighted, they will refer me faster. I'm trying to compress the timeline between them being hesitant and them being delighted."
This philosophy extends to how he presents work. Rather than sending designs via email and waiting days for feedback, Stephen prefers live presentations. "I want to see their face. I want to see their eyes. I want to hear if there's hesitancy and I want to ask them about that," he explains.
He's not afraid of difficult feedback moments. When a client doesn't like what he's presented, his response is direct: "I say, listen, I can design anything you want me to design. I need to understand what we're aiming for better. Can you walk me through again what you're looking for?"
One memorable project involved a therapist in Chicago who wanted a funky design. When Stephen's first attempt fell flat, she told him bluntly, "This is boring. It's not what I want. This is just not cool."
Stephen's response? "Give me three hours." He delivered a completely reimagined design that same day, and she loved it. "I still hate those calls," Stephen admits, "but I'm also forcing the paycheck and forcing the delight. Because I know I can deliver—it's just a matter of understanding what they want."
Education sets the expectation
A phrase Stephen uses with clients is "education sets the expectation." He's found that most clients come in with expectations rooted in negative past experiences—high costs, long timelines, or projects that went wrong.
"I think to your point, clients come in with their expectations. Often times those expectations are rooted in negative experiences," Stephen observes. "It's very rare that clients will come with ‘I just had a great web designer’."
His approach is to listen deeply to where clients are in their business journey. "I always start by saying how is business going? Where are you at in your business?" he explains. "Whatever website you want to build, we're going to build you a website and it's going to be great. But to get there, let's just talk about the business."
This conversation-first approach is something Stephen learned from Promise at Go Live, who told him years ago, "Your conversation is your currency."
"When I have a client phone call that goes for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour, I want to hear where they're at. I want to know their story," Stephen says.
The caution about agency growth
Having watched agencies open and close over his 14 years in business, Stephen approaches the topic of scaling with caution. He's talked with agency owners who said growing their team took three years to get back to the profitability they had as a solo operation.
"I have heard that and I'm always careful to say it doesn't mean you haven't made millions. It doesn't mean you haven't learned. It doesn't mean you weren't able to go on that ski trip," Stephen explains. "But on the other side of that, what you're saying is I closed because I was stressed. It wasn't what I wanted. It created tension in my family."
His advice to other designers? "Make sure the reasons you're doing it are because you want to run an agency. Not because you think that's the way to more money or more freedom."
For Stephen, staying solo has been intentional. "At least in this season, I still love doing it. I still for now actually love designing," he says. "If you charge enough and you worked this week, you can take a Friday off because I've charged enough on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday."
Websites as tools, not trophies
Stephen sees a shift happening in how businesses view websites. "I think right now they're still thought of almost like trophies for businesses. Here's our website," he observes. "I want them to be beautiful, but they're really a tool."
He recently built a website for an influencer with one and a half million followers that looked completely different from his typical portfolio pieces. "They were like, we need people to go to our homepage. It's not about our aesthetic. It's about getting the conversion," Stephen explains.
This functional approach extends to practical problems like working with clients who don't have professional photography. His solution for a fence installation company? "Let's call them customer photos so that people are primed to know that these are actually customer photos," he says. "Let's use stock photos where we can from your manufacturers, but then let's have this customer photo section."
Conversation as the foundation
Throughout the conversation, one theme emerges consistently: the value of genuine human connection. Whether it's listening to clients explain their business challenges, presenting work live to see immediate reactions, or creating spaces for designers to learn from each other, Stephen believes in the power of conversation.
"I think the beauty of conversation is that when you have genuine conversations, you naturally have aha moments," he says. "When two people bring their best or bring their good to a conversation, it's just this reciprocal thing that happens very quickly."
Finding balance through boundaries
When he's not delivering websites in record time, Stephen takes intentional breaks. He closes his business for three weeks during the holidays and doesn't respond to anything. "I take three weeks off. I'm just gone," he says.
His philosophy on work-life balance comes from advice he heard years ago: "If you work with your mind then you should take a break with your hands or if you work with your hands you should take a break with your mind." For Stephen, that means building garden boxes, constructing a pergola, or spending time outdoors with his family.
The future is bright
Looking ahead, Stephen is optimistic about the tools available to designers. "Designing in 2010 was hard. Designing in 2015 was hard. It is easier now to be a web designer and to do it well. The tools are better and I'm excited for the future." Whatever animation, hover effect, or transition they're imagining can now be done —they just need to share their vision.
For designers looking to build sustainable practices, Stephen's journey offers a roadmap: focus on genuine client relationships, be transparent about timelines, deliver quality quickly, and don't scale just because you think you should. Most importantly, remember that at the end of the day, you're helping business owners move forward—and that's what matters most.
Connect with Stephen Palacino
Website: page1branding.com
Instagram: @page1branding
Listen to the full episode. This conversation is from the Looks Good From Here podcast, where we dive past the shiny Instagram version of the internet to have real conversations with designers building real businesses.
