Conversations with Jack Murphy

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jack Murphy.

Hi Jack, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
After graduating from high school, I took some time off to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Having lost my dad a few years earlier, I didn’t have a fully formed plan and needed time to reflect.

I did some traveling and returned to LA, but I still didn’t have a clear direction. I dabbled in hair care, woodworking, sales, and a few other odd jobs until 2013, when a friend reached out and invited me to work with them. They owned a web development company that helped small businesses maintain their online presence while ensuring their information remained their own, rather than being controlled by big corporations.

I loved the idea of helping the “little guy” and thought it would be a fun way to be creative. However, I had zero experience with coding! My friend assured me that I’d be a valuable asset to the team and the role wouldn’t involve coding, but would focus on client management instead.

Trusting their confidence, I joined the team. A few years in, I realized they were absolutely right—I didn’t need to know coding to thrive in the role. I also discovered how much fun I was having! Working with hundreds of clients and learning about their unique needs was fascinating, but collaborating with them to create solutions and bring their ideas to life was truly incredible.

Listening to my clients’ challenges naturally led to opportunities for improvement. Before I knew it, the issues were resolved, and clients would return—not with problems, but with creative ideas. I absolutely LOVED that! While I don’t enjoy fixing things that are broken, I’ve learned that the website industry is constantly evolving, and there’s no way to guarantee, “this will always work.” Just like a car needs regular maintenance or a phone regularly receives updates from the provider, so too should a website!

My role is to help clients find the best way forward, guide the team(s) in the right direction, implement changes, and refocus on increasing conversions. Being creative and looking toward the future—that’s where the fun is!

I’ve now been with my team for over 12 years, and they’ve become my family. We’ve grown in so many ways over the years, and I love them all.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Looking back now, it feels like a well-paved path to where I am today, but there were definitely rough patches along the way that I had to overcome.

The biggest challenge was losing my dad just as I was starting high school. This had a profound impact on me and shaped many of the decisions I would make in the ensuing years.

In 2013, still uncertain about my future, a friend took me under their wing at their web development company, Web Studios West—and I’ve been here ever since.

When I first entered the web world with no prior experience, my biggest challenge was overcoming my own uncertainties and lack of knowledge. To address this, I took several courses focused on communication and project management. These gave me a solid foundation to build on and apply directly to smaller client tasks.

After working on one-off tasks for a few years, I realized that one thing could easily complicate the job: a lack of information.

For example, when a client reaches out saying, “My website is broken,” it’s a big deal—but without more details, it’s difficult to address the issue. What exactly is broken? Does the website fail to load? Is there an error when adding a product to the cart? Or is it something else entirely?

In some cases, the client might not even know the answers to these questions because they trust my team to maintain their website. In these situations, taking the time to genuinely care about the client’s concerns, investigate the issue, and guide them toward a solution is in everyone’s best interest.

Once I understood that the solution lies within the data provided, I have always been able to find solutions for my clients in one way or another.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’ve been working in the website space since 2013 with Web Studios West. Over the years, I’ve moved through “the ranks,” starting as a “runner” handling mail, administrative tasks, and small client projects. From there, I progressed to managing full website rebuilds and eventually creating websites from the ground up.

Today, I serve as the Client Services Representative, and my goal is to help small business owners take ownership of their content and grow their online presence without requiring excessive effort or capital. I’m responsible for developing strategies to help both new and existing clients expand their web presence and drive more sales to their websites.

My main objective is to make my clients’ lives easier by helping them increase profits and grow their businesses. In return, I hope to build long-term relationships where they continue to bring me business. It’s very rewarding to see people thriving and enjoying life as a result of our teamwork.

As I guide my clients through important decisions, many of them have become more than just clients—they’ve become part of the “family” I work for. When I started, I never imagined this would be the case, nor did I expect to have so many friends who now keep me on speed dial for personal reasons, not just for their web needs!

My team specializes in e-commerce solutions, primarily building sites using Magento and WordPress. While we also support Shopify builds, we’ve found that small businesses are often taken advantage of when their sites aren’t self-hosted. That’s why our primary objective is to create websites that help businesses grow while ensuring the client retains full ownership of their content—not the platform.

Every client we work with has a unique setup for their business, and we take the time to understand their vision, brand, and goals. During a build, we focus on creating a site that not only works for their business but also serves as an online extension of their in-store branding. Our care doesn’t end when the site is launched because we’re in the business of building relationships.

Launching a site is like having a child—exciting but maybe a little overwhelming. Once it’s live, that’s when the real fun begins! We support our clients post-launch, helping them get comfortable with their new “lifestyle,” offering pointers, and ensuring they feel confident handling things themselves. And when they’re ready for the next adventure, we’re here to help.

My clients know me as the “solutions guy.” When they don’t know where to start with a website idea or issue, they come to me. I’ll investigate, figure out a solution for what they are encountering, get my team to take care of it, or, if it’s outside our area and needs another team to be involved, I’ll provide the client with clear steps to get it resolved by the other team and continue to help them along the way.

I’ve experienced the frustration of calling a company for support, only to be told, “This isn’t our problem, it’s XYZ’s,” and then being sent on a wild goose chase. That’s something I pride myself on never doing to my clients. Even if I can’t directly fix an issue, I take the time to explain why the site functions the way it does and offer actionable next steps. This not only helps the client move forward but also shows them that I’m listening and that I care.

At the end of the day, it all comes back to the goal of making things easier so we can all succeed together. We have a policy within our group that we always deliver what we promise and that really shines through in our service model.

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
When life has given me every reason not to enjoy something, finding something I can appreciate about that thing instead of getting mired down in the negative will make finding a solution much more possible.

Pricing:

• $215 per hour for Support
• We are extremely competitive for new and site rebuilds.
• We pride ourselves in helping small to medium-sized businesses succeed in sales and exposure.
• We offer support for clients who already have a website, but don’t have the expertise to maintain the site or have a bad situation with a current developer they are trying to resolve.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://webstudioswest.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/webstudioswest
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/webstudioswest
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/web-studios-west-burbank

Image Credits
FishyFoto – Photos
Dave Tourje – Artwork