 Morning everybody What I am up to is I started a Sorry, I started a new personal like life-tracking site for myself So whenever I do someone like Twitter pocket Facebook all that it logs it in one place so I can remember how much I love the internet Do you guys love the internet? It's awesome. It's not all here But another reason why we're all here is because presumably we've taken time out of our week You know probably something came on Friday took off work, and then you're coming and spending your weekend instead of doing something like It's not an eye probably playing Pokemon right now or something. So I'm doing something like that. You're here to learn about WordPress. I Love it. It's what's kept me from having to get a real job for several years now And I want to talk about that process with the guys. So real quick. I've worked with other agencies You know as an employee. I've worked as a contractor for other agencies. I've done the like Elan's getting work online thing Self-employed for several years first at my own company where I called all the shots And now I am partners at a company called dinosaur iceberg in Orlando Doing all the things that were just described And so I've gone through the first run the gamut of the different ways to work on the internet I'm sure there's lots of other Creative methods out there, but the one I like best is the one I'm in right now, which is partnering I don't have to do everything myself. I have other people who can help me Get all the work done, but still have a lot of fun doing it And I also have a lot of fun putting slides together. So if you don't care about what I'm talking about at least you get to see some gifts but Hopefully, yes, I'm out of that So who here currently works for themselves? Okay, who here who doesn't work for themselves wants to work for themselves So pretty much the entire room was covered in that so you are in the right room good For those of you who don't already work for yourselves. Are you sure? Are you sure you want to? You have to wear every hat when you are starting your own company You have to wear you have to do everything You don't have time to do everything that you need to get done Oh, this thing these go this client and I also need to make sure that our new blog posts and more people combine us and I also need to make sure that I get these tax forms filled out and I also need to Make time to spend with the kids and make time to eat and work out So I don't you know die sitting in front of my computer If you are starting your own company, you don't have regular income generally You know, you have these feast and famine periods where you are getting 10 clients in this month because Whatever this is just the month that all the stars aligned and everyone decided that's when they want to give you a call And then in three months, no one calls you for a month or two. So there is the potential that you won't have regular income You need to be able to manage all of these costs yourself You're not going to be able to just expense something to your boss You're not going to be able to say well, you need this tool and here you pay for it or you're not going to be able to say You know you need to pay for better internet access at home because that's kind of one of the important things working on there You have internet access You also need to maintain your own work life balance. It means something different for everybody I know some people say that doesn't exist can't happen. Some people are very militant about I Clock out at this time and I'm done Or maybe you do something in between sometimes I just I mean I like being on the internet So sometimes in the evening when I'm done with dinner I just want to sit down and get to work on something or last night I was doing some client work after After off the party and everything You need to be able to manage all of those client relationships yourself One of the things that I like the best about being an employee at someone else's company is that I was handed a list of tasks I was able to complete those tasks check them off. My day was done Now I have to do all those things like following up with somebody and making sure that this invoice gets paid and giving this person a Call and oh this thing went over time or over budgets now We need to make that phone call that I don't really want to make or You know now we need to find some new people because we need to find some new clients So I need to manage all those relationships all those extra things that you're doing this because you really like building themes Let's say But that's not a business. That's one of the things that you're selling you have 90% of the rest of business that That you have to do to do that one thing that you like And finally you need to find some kind of market or niche We're gonna go over all these things a little bit more in-depth but what I mean there is you're going to have to You're going to have to choose that thing that you're gonna work on as opposed to doing everything I love doing everything. I can't make time to do it all and sometimes I oversell my cell phone Oh, yeah, we can get that done this week or oh, yeah I've never used this tool before but how hard can it be to learn and then How hard can this be? Let me let me just take some time and then that time turns into Weeks overdue or oh, we need to retool everything we do because I found this new tool It's there's too much to do So that's it. I love what I do, but it is I mean it's hard work right working for yourself There's a way more than you probably thought when you went into it's for me. I know So there are some steps that you're gonna take. I'm going to talk on all these things as a very Broad overview, but if you you know have like if you're here for some specific tools I'm going to list a couple of those as well, and then of course at the end if you have specific questions You need to have some sort of plan This is pretty much me whenever I Whenever I'm talking to clients, I'm like, okay, I have time to get this done And then I kind of I don't know where the time goes. I'm sitting about to do some work and crap This thing is due today, and I haven't even started You have some sort of plan before you get started so There's a again. I'm just gonna run through these real quick You need to have some sort of client relationship management tool You need to have a contract tool or something to your estrus and invoices project management tool time tracking Calendar all those many things that you need to make sure the business runs the asterisk at the end of everyone is because Choose the right tool for you. I'm going to give you some examples of tools to use But it doesn't matter which tools I use it matters Which tool you'll end up using so you might say Okay, I need something to track my time. There's Dozens hundreds of tools out there for that doesn't matter if you find the perfect tool if you're never going to use it We've tried a bunch of tools that people say are the best and just because for whatever reason it didn't fit me I didn't end up using it and that's worse than no tool at all this thing Oh, yeah, we have something for that. We just I don't I haven't logged into it in weeks take a look so So I'll mention the ones that I do use but I'll mention a couple of other common ones You should be doing some sort of time tracking We use toggle internally because it has a nice open API that I can put that data wherever I want and I could put it right into our Estimate or excuse me our invoicing system so I can just keep an eye on how much time we're spending on each project There's other tools out there. There's harvest if you use them for your invoicing already They already have their own time tracking. Why not stick with that? If you don't want to have to think about it at all rescue time is a really good one that It can just sit on the background of computer and log what you're doing for you Then you can tag things later if you want so you can say okay at these times. I was working on this project or whatever That's if you really don't want to have to think about it really hard Yeah, I was gonna keep some sort of detailed finances You don't do what I did for the first few years and just keep like a spreadsheet that had you know like okay These are the numbers and I don't know taxes something over here It was it was kind of it was kind of a nightmare, but I mean thankfully it all worked out But if you have a system in place It's a lot better than trying to wing it when it comes tax time And when it comes to getting people to pay you and tracking that they actually paid you for things We use a quick books There's another one I used to use called fresh books Harvest again if you use that already if you have you know all of these have a lot of intermingling features Time-tracking estimates invoicing the tools tools themselves don't matter. It's how you use them Need some way to manage your projects I'm not always the best at this I don't always take the time to log what I'm working on and I just go cool I did this thing and then now I have a partner that's you know that there's other way of employees and we have partner and They're like what did you do today and I have to go back and look you know I don't remember did you get this thing done for them? I think I did I don't know I didn't check it off. So so we got a little organized I got a little more organized working with others my personal favorite is Trello I even use that in my personal life just for like I'm gonna keep track of this, you know, whatever the trip I'm going on. I'm gonna put it into Trello. I do all of my to-dos on a daily basis from there We have base camp is another popular one I really enjoyed it they actually change their fee structure. So it's not super crazy expensive anymore So we may look into going back to that one and then two others that I tried and personally don't like but a lot of people Love them podium and sauna Again, I'm just gonna reiterate it doesn't matter what tool I use just it matters what tool you are going to use Choose one run with it. It's a lot better than spending weeks trying to find the perfect one as I've done You need to have some sort of process while you're working That is my process on certain days what I'm trying to figure out what's going on. What's wrong with something? But that does not actually fix anything it ends up making the problem worse So part of my process is as I mentioned we track everything in Trello So if anyone here is not familiar Trello, I'm gonna do a really quick. I can't like point at it Over on the side over on the right side There's a menu there that has the people who are involved in this project and then a stream of activity This is a project that we were almost done with but you notice that we have These lists those are the gray boxes at top for the for the setup the design development And then things will be completed Things that are in green those are checklists So we were able to actually like say we need to work on the home page And then I made a long list of all the things that need to be done on that page I could just go in and check them off when they were done. You can also assign these cards to people That's where you have our little user icons on them and you could assign dates to them as well So they can get notifications in whatever manner they choose of you know, this thing is due today at noon So we have that system in place that allows us to make sure that things are getting done And if something's left behind we can you know have a discussion via the card like Why is this thing not done on the home page because we're waiting on this picture from the client or whatever But it's a system that makes it a lot easier when you're working with other people But it works great when you're working the loan to to make sure that nothing gets left behind and make sure that everything's where it needs to be Another mention that little icon up top is that you can attach files directly to these so you can invite your clients Stawn to this and say you know we need that picture for the home page and I can just Drag it right onto the page Having this in place has saved a lot of headache of trying to figure out where I'm at What should I be doing right now that is? The biggest problem that I have is when I sit down in front of Peter going okay great I have a hundred things to do. What should I be doing right now? That's if somebody could make that decision for me I would probably pay you like a lot of money Just to just to be able to give you the exact answer and not have me have that fear that I'm doing the wrong thing right now I also I know that we've had people talk about all sorts of frameworks and themes out there. I personally use Genesis for a lot of things and This doesn't matter the code that's up there But what I'm displaying is a part of our functions file for our custom Genesis theme that we start every project with or most of our projects with The idea is that we have this really strong base that we've built up over time and every time we think oh There's a new way to do this slide out menu for mobile I'm going to put that into our base theme and then we just you know We version control we have it up on github so we can pull it down whenever you start a new project So if somebody comes to me and says I need this theme built when we pull that down We're halfway done with the project already and it gets over that blank page feeling that I get of Where do I start on this? I just set this up You know put some some of their content on the page and I'm already halfway done with the project I can get that feeling of accomplishment very early on that I can keep building momentum on If anyone here happens like sometimes You know I write I'm writing a blog post and I stare at that blank post page all day You know, I can't really put any starter Text in but I can put some starter code in that that removes that fear of staring at a blank page all day For those of you who already work for yourselves who works from like an office or a co-working space Yes, it's still pretty much everyone's working at home, right? Like yeah so I work both from home and from a co-working space and It's really hard to stay focused when you're working at home. I I Don't have anyone looking over my shoulder to make sure that I'm typing real words on the keyboard So I have to I have to make ways to stay focused and you know There's so many tips on oh make sure that you have a separate office and that your family knows that this is work time and not you know Family time whatever all those things most important for me is having a routine that I stick to So I you know get up every morning and I have a routine for when I get started with work And when I'm done with work for the day and other people are aware that that routine exists So they aren't gonna you know if they go oh, hey, I'm free today You want to go grab lunch and go to the mall or something something they'll you know take way too much time Well, I'm working right now as you know I have an easy out and not feel guilty saying no I don't want to spend time with you because I'm doing that thing that pays me to keep spending time with you You have to have some sort of motivation for this My motivation really is that freedom that liberty that comes from working for yourself that ability to say I'm gonna do What I want I'm going to choose the clients I want I'm going to decide when I feel like working Do I want to spend time after the party sitting at work, you know because that's what I feel like doing right now Then I get to do I want to Do I want to take a few hours off during the day to go do? Whatever thing it is. I can do that because no one's telling me like no you have to be here right now That's my motivation. You have some other motivation. I know some people have the motivation of More practical of the you know, I was laid off and I need to make some income There's the motivation of I'm making more money doing this than I am at this job there's the motivation of I Get to stay home with my family and have less stress. I hate driving I hate it driving to the office every day that like one that was an hour and a half out of my day Just gone every day, and I don't even know how many years it took off my life because I just get so Angry in the car. So that's one thing that I don't have to do that anymore I work out of co-working space, but it's it's just a couple miles from my house You know, it only takes only takes a few minutes to drive down there or I can take my bike down there We even have little Orlando if we have a train system now that goes right like a block away from my office So it's really nice. I can choose if I want to go into the office that day It's not as stressful as when I was forced to go in at exactly nine because if you're five minutes late or 20 minutes early. That's not when we start work Sorry, I work on the internet. You're the internet's awake 24-7 You have to set some sort of regular goals. I have goals set out both daily These are my tasks for the day weekly. These are the updates We send weekly updates to our clients so I at least know I need to have something done So I can tell these people at the end of the week what I've done this week And then we have a couple of long-term goals So we're interested in working on this project and we know we can't get started on it now But we are looking to do that within this year So I have some projects some personal projects that I'm saying I'm going to Make sure I devote some time this year to work on it's a bit longer term But I have something to look forward to It really helps keep you motivated when you have a plan Again, that's the hardest part of my day is that Is that sitting down and not knowing what I'm going to work on The way I got over that was the night before when I'm finishing up work for the day I look at my to-do list and I move over so I'm doing all in trello. I just drag over the cards to my Today list of the things that I know I'm going to do the next day And then I can go in in the morning and it's basically like having someone something they know Here's what you're doing today I still maintain a work environment. I do have a separate office in the house I don't like have a whole room. I spare bedrooms. So you don't need to you know, as long as you have a place that is set aside that Isn't the kitchen table while everyone's preparing a meal or isn't uh, isn't in the living room right next to the television Uh, I have a place that I can stay to remove some of that distraction and that if I need to I can shut the door But then I also differentiate between my on and off time You need to have that moment of I am done working for today It's really easy to answer emails at all times a day or take client calls or You know decide that you need to work on this because this thing is due this week And I need to do it all right now. I do have that time of You know when my significant other is home We are both done working for the day and I can go great now. I can do whatever I want this evening without feeling guilty Finally you need to have perspective. This is probably the most important perspective in my life Nothing cannot be improved with pizza I I live by that motto But more important I also live by the motto that this stuff isn't important So this is important to us. This is important to our clients But this isn't the end of the world if You know if I deliver something a day late or this isn't the end of the world If man, I thought I was going to get these five things done today And I only got these two things and I got sidetracked by Whatever It's really easy to let all of those problems get to you. I've Always struggled with having um feeling I'll say feeling inadequate feeling inferior and that I didn't get as much done or oh man It's really easy to get on like twitter and facebook and see what everyone else is doing Everyone is perfect on the internet, right? Like no one ever unless it's someone that you're laughing at like oh this person had a meltdown Everybody is like wow this person's killing it. They are perfect. Everything is amazing It's really easy to compare yourself to that and feel like you're not doing enough I mean there's there's different I I don't think I can tell all of you how to solve that problem You know because I can't just say turn it off or ignore it or whatever But uh find find those wins for yourself find the things that sure this person is doing x But that's not really what I want anyway. So why am I jealous of them? I like Again for me I like the fact that I make enough money to live comfortably at home And be able to do what I want with my day and be able to choose the projects that I like and be able to say You don't have a budget, but I really like your I really like your company I want to work with you or you do have a good budget, but I really don't like your company So I'm not in it just for the money, you know forget it like they're You know everyone's all you'll find that client you it feels really great To be able to say no to people um A piece of a piece of personal financial advice that I got a few years ago before I went so Solo uh freelancer I made sure that I had you know a fair amount of money saved up in the bank so that if I turns out I sucked at it I could go back, you know survive for a few months But but a good piece of advice somebody gave me was um having an fu fund set up And that is um the the idea of that is that someone says, you know I want you to do this and you can go to them and say no you I don't want to Obviously, I don't say that to people all the time. I'm not saying. Oh, just go out and fall over now but uh, but when you when you want to it's It's really empowering like that is probably the That is one of the best feelings in the world being able to say no. I am in control of my life I am in control of this. Uh, that's the most important thing that I get out of coming to work camps That's the most important thing that word presses didn't make that control that empowerment that uh, I don't have to worry about somebody else, you know Taking away the thing that I work on because it's free. It's here for us to do whatever we want with it And we all choose to come again spend our weekends You know sitting here as opposed to doing whatever else because you have a community of people around you who Are totally into the same stuff. You are Jeff Or as much as they're just coming Yeah, so um, so I do discuss uh the word of mouth on my next slide But um, the question the question is um, if I set aside specific time for marketing during the week The answer is yes and no So yes, we do have a regular email that goes out and uh, generally since it goes out on friday I'm usually working on it on thursday because I put that off until thursday Um, but uh, I don't say okay monday morning from this to this. That's when i'm working on this because The the work I do is a bit. I would love to be a bit more structured in work, but it's It's really fluid, you know when when you come and go well, I thought this was going to take five hours But end up taking 10 hours. So now all these other things are pushed down the chain We we do do some marketing now, um, mainly just like But I don't do any paid marketing. Uh, we we do solely like social media marketing We put things on our blog. We um attend events like this, which are amazing for marketing But no not any one specific time Not not any one specific blocked off time for it um Honestly, I kind of like I don't almost say I judge but when I see something and I'm like, oh, you know Um, so and so shared this funny article and then I look and it's like a buffer link You know, it almost feels cheap in the bit that I'm like, oh, okay They weren't really thinking about this right now when I am they were just thought about this like a week ago and Just sent some computer said, you know tweet this out right now Um, I much I much like I much rather like that feeling that I'm experiencing something at the same time Someone else's so if I'm like, oh look this cool thing I found online That's because I just read it and so you're going to go read it and then you tweet at me and it's fresh in my mind And you know, we can have a conversation about it So when it comes to finding customers, uh, I'm not humongous fan of the idea that the customer is always right Um at the same time, I think the customer Can be right so The problem that I have with yeah, that is that is absolutely That is absolutely something we run into on a daily basis so So it's funny. It's it's like it's it's a joke, but at the same time, I just have to be good at my job to explain to them That uh, that this is what you want But this is why we can't get there right now And there's so many ways you could do that we break things up into phases So we can keep clients coming back and we can say listen We can do this for you right now and then let's see how it picks up your business And then we can do this other cool awesome thing that you want to do Normally break it up by things that are less mission critical. You know, I don't want to say you need All this you need this cool interaction on your page and all these cool little features that are going to take Way longer and a way more budget to do when really you want to find out is anyone going to actually click to buy my product You know, and then maybe they don't and you've wasted a whole bunch of money that you didn't need to So I don't think that clients are ever wrong so much as Either not educated or misinformed And in that in that case, I need to do my best efforts to explain to them. Here's why this is what you want And uh, this is what you can get That one Another I I need to know when I draw the line with clients one of the important ones for me is working hours I tell them I have, you know, monday to friday nine to five There are way too many clients that feel like they can call at nine p.m. On sunday I don't understand what it is about nine on sunday But that's the time that everyone decides that they want to call and those good of voicemail And then on monday morning, I respond to them I might have my phone in front of me But that doesn't matter that I don't want to, you know, show an availability that I don't want to have Same for responding to emails or same for I have clients who will try to dictate the time that I work like oh, no Well, you can work on this tomorrow and get it to me tomorrow afternoon And you know, I just have to go or I can work on all of my other clients that I already have And put this in the schedule that you know, I'm telling you upfront again. It's an education thing I tell people upfront. This is one we can start working on your project We do have a do you want to start working on this quicker? It's going to cost more money, but You know giving people that upfront notice of this is one we can start working It helps manage their expectations So I can let them know that yes, you are valued But no, you are not valued any higher than all the other people who already have come to us I still do things to keep my clients happy I know a lot of things I've said have been kind of negative, but I don't I'm not a negative person I will do more than more than my fair share of extra work for my clients And when it doesn't come to that, it's also me Doing a weekly Q&A session for our meet-up group for doing a few hours of a help desk We do those at the Orlando meet-up about once a month We do two lecture meet-ups a month and then we have ward camp. I travel to other ward camps I do plenty of extra work for people for free That that doesn't make me feel guilty when it comes time for the paying clients But when it comes to those clients if they say well, I really want to do this thing And we haven't been able to work it out, but then I don't know maybe they say oh, I want to do this tool and we say well We can't really do this thing because you know, it'll take way more time But then I find a way to do it easier later I have no problem jumping in and just doing that for them It gives them it gives them that extra value that makes them want to keep coming back Keep referring new clients to us. I mean everyone always says Under promise over the liver and that definitely works out here I tell people listen, this is going to take us about two weeks If I think it's something that's going to take me a week to do that way if something does come up and it takes me But seven days instead of the 10 days. It still looks like I did it three days early It's not it's not lying to the client. It's saying I'm building in some gap time So that you are going to be more appreciative when you get something Um, I do keep uh, we we do do regular Follow-ups with our clients every week so we let them know here's what we are working on Here's what we have a problem if we have any Here's something cool that we did for you or if it is something that's a bigger issue I won't just wait until the end of the week to send that email. I'll say, you know, listen We're doing this and it looks like it's going to take longer than we originally thought I make sure that I keep people up to date on where we are because I've had so many people come to me and say Well, I paid somebody to build a site for me and then they disappeared for a month And then they came back with something that wasn't what I wanted at all And uh, have anyone have you any of you guys gotten those clients before? Like it's those are the best people to please just because you go. Oh, that's not me I can you know as long as you've come and work with them on the process We do like a waterfall process um from that trial and card for we we do things in the uh, You know research wire framing design development launching all those different phases So we make sure that they are signing off on each one of those phases before we move to the next There's no point that someone's like, well, that's not what I wanted at all If they ever say that I go, well, you know just a few days ago you signed off on the wireframes and You know, why'd you sign off on those if that's not what you wanted? Uh, but more important I'm not going away for a month and coming back to them with something that they aren't happy with If they aren't happy with it. It's not because of a month of Miss communication. It's because Of maybe a week at most and then I only have a week's worth of work to revamp it some way That's the best way I found to get repeat business Keeping your clients happy Clients I've had clients that I even thought hated us who send us repeat business and another friend They're like, oh, no, it's just you know, maybe they were having an off day when they sent whatever email or we had that phone chat But we got the work done. We kept it under budget We kept it within the time frame and that's all they really care about. Do you need someone who's reliable? I know I know this guy. That's the best way that we found to get work Um to answer your question. It is mainly word of mouth Uh, finally, um, sorry. I want to do one last hand-raising thing for those of you who do work for yourself. How many of you Literally are working for yourself. You are the sole person in your company Most yeah most everyone who is already working for themselves Um, you've probably figured out by now. You can't do everything. You need a team Even if your team sometimes is a little bit clumsy But you can't do everything you need your team of vendors around you to handle those tasks that you can't do so Few ways that you can do that build maintain relationships with other people Word camps are a great place to do that. I developed. I don't design. Oh great. I designed but I don't develop Perfect. We can work together. You may not have to actually hire anyone like hire someone as an employee or have someone hire You as an employee, but you keep trading work back and forth It's also an extra great way to garner business because there's that designer that you work with who does all your design work And he has access to a whole different network of people or um, there's the uh, you know Marketer that she has a whole stable of clients that oh well, they wanted someone to work on their site But they didn't know anyone reliable now they do now they can send them to you Um, you might establish your own fees to work with people So there's designer that I work with that we both charge each other half of what we charge our clients. Um, Just because we keep sharing business back and forth. And so it's still profitable for both of us You can choose to do that or not do it. You can do, you know, commissions if you bring me a client I'll you know, give me 10 percent or whatever. Um, those are all personal decisions to make If you have something that you're not good at just be aware of it And use other people to fill in those gaps. I'm not a designer. I am not a marketer I have other people who can do those things for me. They can do it a lot better than I can in a lot less time That's worth paying money for I am not going to try to go out and learn something that is not in my wheelhouse at all Just to save a few dollars now That's it's not going to give me good client I also try to delegate as much work as I can So I know those things that I'm good at and I know those things that I enjoy doing But then I also know if if this project requires let's say a lot of data entry I need to put a lot of posts that they have from the old site that isn't in wordpress So maybe I can't migrate or whatever something something that is like time intensive but not necessarily Very mentally intensive. I try to offload those as much as I can You know, I have people who are no wordpress really well Even if they aren't developers, but I can just say here go put all this stuff in make it look nice Clean it up make sure you know, whatever everything's in there Um, and that's again a lot cheaper to pay someone then take all of my own time to do it That I could be that I could use that time to charge a client As I mentioned before under promise over deliver do not tell someone you can do something if you aren't 90 sure that you can do it I do make promises that I am not a hundred percent sure I can keep sometimes But I never make one that I think I can't keep it's more like I don't know. I know that I do a lot of WooCommerce sites And I've never used these digital downloads, but I'm betting I can do it So I go yes, we can do this for you Or you know some other fill in the appropriate tool at the very least I know that I have other people to lean on to help if I have those problems, but I am not saying Oh, well, you know, we're really great in wordpress. We've never looked at Drupal before but yeah, I'll do your Drupal project for you And then, you know, it turns out that I have to learn a whole new system I'm definitely not going to be able to keep that promise But what I do like to do is learn on the job and that's whatever you're doing You can learn something you're going to learn something new with every project Or at least I hope you are I one of the things I strive to do is learn something new with every project that we're doing Put another tool in our tool belt Keep myself mentally stimulated. So I'm not just, you know, doing the same thing over and over again You can do that on your own time and you should But you can also again doing that 90 percent promise there You can take that extra 10 percent and learn while someone's paying you to do it You know, it's I already know I'm going to be able to keep that promise but bonus I'm getting paid to learn how to use this tool Finally, uh, I'm going to start with the I'm going to finish with the easiest task because you guys are already doing this Stay connected. Uh, one of the best ways that I get business is from referrals It's from word of mouth is from people that I chat with at these events By the way, I'm going to be in the happiness bar most of the afternoon if you guys have any questions attend events, uh, I Do that all the time. I love going to conferences. I love meeting new people I love chatting about whatever problems people are having and you know, maybe ways that we can solve them Maybe I can't maybe I just want to chat about Cats I I'm a dog person. Sorry. I just turned off half the room here Pokemon if anyone's pokemon, we will totally do a pokemon battle later But but the the point is there are a lot of people including people in this room That I know simply by going to these events and I've learned about them and I've learned about their businesses And I've learned that okay This isn't something that I can do but I can pass this on to this person One of the biggest places that I get referrals is from other agencies These people are not your competitors in the room or at least not straightforward your competitors These are potential allies So I don't have enough time to take on this project or this project has too small of a budget for me Or this project has too large of a budget for me or you know, whatever fill in the blank or Oh, this person needs a A buddy press site and I don't do buddy. We do buddy press fun and say I don't know. I'm seeing an example I'll say buddy press and I don't do that But I know this person if they're really awesome at it That person would have never gotten that lead because they weren't here at this event But they had somebody who was there to do it for them That's one of my goals is to have you guys basically sell for me go I know this person who you know didn't make a total fool of himself on stage. I hope Let me send him over to you I do follow what other people are up to so I get to see where the new trends are So that when someone, you know, when a potential client talks about Whatever new tool I'm not completely into art going on. I've no idea what you're talking about At the same time I can offer new solutions to people like well, you know This new tool just came out that can do this for you I just did a Shopify build a few weeks ago and Shopify added this new WordPress integration this week One I would have loved to have it back then but if anybody asked me now I go. Oh, yeah, we can do that Um As I mentioned before make time to learn keep keep learning new things There is there are people here who know way way more about WordPress development than I do They are the best people because they love showing other people the cool things that they just learned how to do and Keep making time to keep learning that if you just try to keep doing the same thing you're doing now You know for the next year. You're already going to be outclassed by other people around you Uh at the same time make time for yourself do things outside of the industry find other things that you're interested in I you know, I'm joking about it, but I do go to like gaming tournaments. I do go to nerdy events. I do go to uh I got a client from going to b-sides I don't really know much about web security, but I wanted to learn more about it I went on my own time and uh got a new client out of it bonus. I wasn't even expecting that So, you know, do remember that there's more of a world outside of here than the Marketing world or the development world or the wordpress world. There are other groups of people out there to talk to You can find me on twitter. Uh, that's our company. That's my weekly newsletter of weird web stuff And those are these slides Any questions? Oh, yes Yes clients could be done. Uh, could be oh, excuse me Clients can uh do commenting on trello and they can also move assets onto trello and download them One of the nice things about trello is that you can Make boards locked down to whatever level you want So you could say they can lock or they can You can lock cards so a client can't move a card from one list to another But you can say they can still drag assets onto the card Um, I have not so I'm not I'm not from here. Fellini's I will have to get the if it's nearby. We're leave we're going back to Orlando tonight, but if it's nearby, I'll stop there for dinner Yeah So right now my partners, um, I've worked with contractors in the past at my previous company and This is my fourth word camp atlanta and every year before this I was coming in as david from orange blossom media But that was basically me with contractors Now I have dinosaur iceberg, which is me and four partners or no, excuse me four partners total And then we contract out a few things that we don't do. Um, a couple of them are here today I'm actually giving a talk in another room right now, so Can't see each other's talks, uh, but we try to complement each other's skills So I enjoy the development, but as I mentioned, I'm not really a marketer I am not a um, I'm not the greatest at client management Like I don't always remember to get those emails out in time So I have other people in the company who those are the things that they are good at I've identified that weakness and Offloaded it where appropriate We do that based on ownership. We do a pretty simple split. We're all even even partners even ownership Um, and then the income is we do a draw on our account. Um, so we We we take an equal salary each month Um, I'm sure that I mean It doesn't concern me quite so much to think that oh this month I did more than this person or this person did more than me because then that's that's me saying to my partners Like I don't value you as much or Um, you know, I don't think that you did as much work or I think I did more work than you and it's really it's different work You know, maybe this week the thing I did was more mission critical because this client had a fire And I was the one that put it out. Maybe next week that won't be me Yes, sir. How many you should try to bill? I probably bill for A third of the time that I actually work Maybe half if I'm being generous maybe half but not no I work many more hours than I actually bill clients Which is why I have rates set up with that in mind That uh that those those non billable hours doesn't mean that I'm not doing something important It might just mean that you know, it's important for me to make sure that this Email goes out and this invoice gets created or whatever task, but that's not something I can You know make you pay me to do Both uh, so we start by billing by project generally Um, the reason being is that we can kind of get an estimate on how many hours it's going to be But no projects or projects are the same. So I'm not going to be able to make a great estimate upfront But if I come to you and say this is our hourly rate That doesn't mean anything to you as a client. You really want to know. Okay. How many hours is it going to take? so I can charge $10 an hour and take a hundred hours to do something or I can charge $100 an hour and take 10 hours to do it because I'm You know better than that person to charge 10 Um, are they getting the same value probably not but they're paying the same price Um, but so we start by project and then hourly comes in when Additional tasks are added to the scope or if they later come back and say You know great. We just want to do this one extra feature now something like that Website maintenance and things like that. Do you build that? Is that like currently a Lovely fee or do you put that also into your project price? So we have a um, we actually have a separate service setup. It's called site healthy So you can find on site healthy.com if you want to look at it It looks pretty similar to wp site care maintain wp curve There's a lot of them out there that do that that's their whole sole project they do is maintenance but the way that we work it in is um Our clients get a few months of that for free when they're done Like we build that in that they get a few months of that So hopefully they want to keep using it later. That is one that they pay either monthly or annually for Covering, you know hosting backup security ongoing maintenance things like that based on whatever their specific tasks require But they would keep paying after After the main project is done, but we set it up as a separate Set up as a whole separate system in the event that and I've had people do this. That's all they want They already have a site that they like Yes, sir So I'll try to say this in a non controversial way I do only work with people who I know in person who I've already met Generally people who live in orlando our entire team We're all orlando based and it's not because like I need to see you come into the office every day or whatever It's still everyone works remote But it's much It's much more that I've met so and so and I know that they're really great at doing buddy press integrations And so I want to hire the person to do this project that is really good at buddy press Because you know this project requires that as opposed to I'm going to look to get someone who can do this Really cheaply The only downside then is that the people who are good are usually also really busy as well But I don't I don't choose to not you I don't choose to not go overseas For that it's more just the relationships that I built up the promise of continue to work So if I'm hiring somebody Overseas say three lands or something which I've done before and mixed results, you know, it's not all bad. It's not all good But if I'm hiring that person that's a one-off thing, you know, maybe I'll keep hiring them later But it's a one-way mode of communication. But if I choose to I don't know pass the project on to brad back there because he doesn't look like he's paying attention If I choose to uh, send him something maybe he'll do the same to me In the future, you know, and then then I've made that money back Um, any other questions I said brad no Yes, sir I do discounts when I choose to do them and I make sure the client knows that they are getting a discount Um I try to be a bit hard line on on our costs and everything and on on what we do because I'm not I get there's a bit of negotiation that goes into it But at the same time when I'm making a scope for somebody I say this is how long it's going to take This is how much it's going to cost Like that's that's it. That's our We're a bit busy right now. Um, if you choose to come back Uh, if you if you can work out the budget later choose to come back Or if you would be okay with uh, some other systems say that we Work on it in spare time over the next few months as opposed to working on it solely this month Um Or if there's some other value for that I've done a lot of again, I've probably done more free work than I've done Pay to work. It's not that I don't like doing free to work free work. It's that I get to choose those times. I do it. I did a You know, I've done sites for some nonprofits in the area or for friends or Actually friends are the worst though because then they just expect it for free But but I make that decision generally when it comes to making a scope making contracts. They're not really negotiable Um, it's it's it's more just I don't have to put as much effort or thought into it I don't want to do an email or call chain back and forth to somebody, you know haggling on price I would much rather just say this what's gonna cost No, okay That's why we also have people who do client relationships so that now they can keep following up those people whereas before I probably wouldn't Yeah Um, normally so there's a few ways I could do that one way you could just be describing to them All the many things and then halfway through a description of here's you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah They just are like, okay. Cool. You know sounds good Um, or I can just you know remind them that just as you have other clients I do as well I mean most people most people are really understanding like if I don't I don't go into these things with it with an adversarial approach I try to go in with a professional approach of you know, this is You came to us for a reason. Somebody told you that somebody told you that we were good or you've worked with us before or Whatever in some way you found us. I didn't pay for any marketing. So I know it's not that you saw my billboard or my facebook ad or something So just Trust that you are going to get what people have promised you Yes Generally to We can work that out more we've actually had clients request more and we've changed the budget accordingly Past to I've done something wrong by you having Problems still like I've completely misunderstood your project if if it goes past that But at the same time we had a client last year who paid us A fair amount extra to to have that up to three and then they only ever actually used it on one page But I think it was more just you know, maybe they had it it was a corporate concern or they just wanted the The security and the comfort in knowing that it was there So that was actually a bonus for us, but I don't really upsell that to people But there is a limit on how much back and forth I will do you know to appoint it can get excessive Any other questions you guys are in like the sneaky short lunch line? Oh Yes I'm sorry Oh some examples of contract tools We do them internally if we actually built a cool little tool, but that doesn't really help you So two tools that I do like Our tool is based off of sprout invoices. That is a wordpress plugin that starts free and has add-ons for it. It is a It's it's basically makes an invoice an estimate system on your website Uh, I've used proposify in the past Proposify.biz It is a tool that makes like pretty looking. It's um PowerPoint system for proposals basically like it templates them out for you when you put your content in Your contract shouldn't have to change too much. I paid a lawyer to make to make our first contract Uh, you know didn't cost too much money But we get to keep reusing that same contract while still having a bit more security than Or a bit more comfort than uh, than the one that I might have written myself Which I did start from when I wrote myself and then she looked at it and she changed so many things But those are those are two good ones sprout invoices you can find at Sproutapps.co. I believe you can find on the wordpress repo as well um and proposify Anymore before we go After lunch, I'm going to be in the happiness bar all day if you want to talk about theme or plugin development That's what I do. Um, I already probably saw about 10 people yesterday. So please come find me there later. Thanks