 So, again, I'm Nathan. I'm from Birmingham, Alabama. I have been a freelance web developer since 1995. Yes, that is correct. 1995. Back when we used a tool called Hot Dog to code HTML. Anybody remember that? From Sausage Software. Yeah. And then we got really cool with Netscape Navigator 2.0 that had the visual editor built in. Oh boy, yeah. So it's been a while. I've been an I-Them's training instructor for several years now and I'm also a business coach for freelancers. I love working with freelancers helping them up their game in their web businesses. So I always try to talk like this with this slide. I'm not an expert. I'm a learner. There are things I'm still learning. There are processes I'm still improving. Anybody who positions themselves as an expert, I'm naturally skeptical of because we all have something to learn, right? So hopefully you can learn from some of the things that I've done wrong over the years and save yourself that heartache in those mistakes. So here's where we're headed today. We're talking about recurring income. We're going to see why recurring income is critical to a freelance business. And then we're going to go into a talk about how to create recurring income. And I'm going to give you some tools that I think are really helpful in thinking through your strategy of creating services for your clients. And last of all, just kind of a vision at the end of the difference that having good steady recurring income can make. So that's where we're headed. Hopefully we'll finish up, you know, with about 10, 5, 10 minutes left for some quick Q&A at the end. And we'll go from there. So why is recurring income critical to a freelance web business? So let's just ask how many of you guys are freelance web developers? That's you. You live in that world, you work with clients, you're trying to make ends meet. How many of you finances are not an issue at all? Yeah, so here's why recurring income is critical. How many of you feel like this when you're looking at your freelance finances? Maybe you're okay on this step, but the next step, well, we might go off the end, it might be it, the world's going to end, you know, this is very typical for freelancers to find themselves in a situation where, you know, the next step, boy, the next month, I'm great this month, but next month, or maybe two months from now, I don't know where the next job's coming from, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get the bills paid. It's this scenario why recurring income is absolutely critical in the life of a freelancer. And let's say you do awesome this year, and you knock it out, and you make six figures in your freelance business. Well, guess what happens on January 1 of next year? You start over again. That sucks, doesn't it? Okay, so recurring income helps to deliver you from this cycle of starting at zero again every January. So a long time ago, one of my mentors asked me this question, and he was sort of a serial entrepreneur, the computer guy, IT specialist, and he asked me, okay, Nathan, is $1 more valuable than another? What do you think? Any two volunteers? I'm gonna pick, I'm gonna go front row. Melanie, pick a dollar. Okay, you get a second dollar. Okay, now. Oh, two melodies. Okay, now these two ladies just got a dollar, right? Any difference in this money? Does it spend the same? Okay, now here's what they didn't know. The dollar that this Melanie selected also comes with next month, another dollar. And the next month, another dollar. And the next month, another dollar. She's putting away. This is this is the person understands the open source license, right? Share and share alike, right? Okay, so is there a difference in these dollars after all? Yeah, she's still not want to give back. She knows how this works. Is there a difference in these dollars? One dollar is followed by a series of other dollars. Now, what is instead of a dollar? That was $100 or $500. And it didn't just happen once, but it happened every month of the year. So all of a sudden, you didn't just make $500 that first month, you made $6,000 over the year. That's the value of recurring income. See, the more predictable a dollar is, the more valuable it becomes. That makes sense. $1 is not as valuable as another dollar. If $1 is more predictable than another dollar, that dollar has immensely more value. And here's the beauty of it all, when you're talking about freelance web development, we all live with this underlying current of stress over finances. It's just part of the game. Less risk means less stress. So when you build your business based on recurring revenue, and you start to see that recurring revenue build much less risk every month, much less stress, which is why I come to the point of this whole talk, which is recurring income is the foundation of a successful freelance web development business. You've got to have it. Otherwise, you're walking a tightrope. And every step might be your last. You've got to have that underlying safety net of recurring income. Does that make sense? Alright, let's look at two businesses. How many of you recognize those two logos? How many of you remember going to blockbuster video and renting the VCR tapes? And yeah, okay. So those of us geezers remember that sort of thing. Okay, so what's the difference in these two business models? blockbuster is based on repeat customers going to blockbuster have a great experience. Come back the next week, 250, you get another movie, right? That does go back the way it's 250. I was doing a talk for a group of kids a couple years ago. And I quoted the lyrics to I can't get no satisfaction. I asked him who sang it. In unison, they said Britney Spears. I kid you not. It was that day I realized I was old. So yeah, blockbuster is based on repeat customers Netflix, based on recurring revenue. Where are these two companies today? Dead and growing. Right? Now, how does that apply to your freelance business? Are you simply basing your doesn't show up. Are you simply basing your business on repeat customers? Or are you basing your business on a recurring revenue model? Because sooner or later, if you're only focused on repeat customers, and we all by the way, repeat customers are great. And that's a great place to start. But you've got to have recurring revenue if you're going to survive, especially as an independent freelancer. With recurring income, you get a more consistent revenue stream. You have a more predictable workload. And as a result of that, you can spend more time working and not selling who enjoys selling. Anybody? There are a few superheroes among us that enjoy these things. Talk to them, you know, rub some of their sweat off, maybe it'll make you a better seller. You know, like they did the gladiators, you know, anyway. The rest of us mere mortals struggle with selling. Right? Recurring income lets you spend more time focusing on what you enjoy. Plus it lets you maintain additional maintain relationships for additional work and referrals. How many of you have realized in your businesses that it's a lot easier to sell an existing customer on a new product than just to find a brand new customer. So recurring revenue keeps you in the conversation with that customer. Okay, so let's talk about how to create recurring income. And I want to give you a couple of tools in a minute. But here's the idea you need to create a suite of ongoing services to bundle with your core product. What's your core product? Website, right? WordPress, we love WordPress. WordPress is actually you're the product, right? You're selling yourself and your expertise, but you're building a website. That's the core. So bundling with that a suite of supplementary services that are ongoing in nature. It starts off like this. I'm going to give you guys all these slides at the end. So if you're frantically scribbling, just hang tight. Three questions. What is it that my customers really need? What services can I create to meet those needs? And then what resources do I need to perform those services? If you can answer those three questions well, you can create all kinds of valuable, useful services for your clients. What do they need? What can I do to meet the need? What do I need to do to get things together to meet that need? Okay. Now I work with a group called iThemes, we met backup buddy and some other products. Backup buddy is one of the sponsors of the WordCamp today. Sponsors are awesome, by the way. Make sure you thank those folks that are hanging out down there at the tables. iThemes is built to empower freelancers like ourselves to do what we do. They have a whole suite of software to do those things. iThemes sync that helps you manage lots of websites. There's backup buddy to do backups and migration. There's iThemes stash, which is cloud storage. There's iThemes security to keep things safe. iThemes is built to empower freelancers. I am a contractor with iThemes. I'm not a full-time employee. I'm a freelancer that started using them as a customer. And I built my business around these software packages. Now, if you are interested in those things, there's a coupon code WCATL35% off anything iThemes sells. I'll put that up again at the end. Even if you don't do iThemes, there's tons of stuff out there that will empower us as WordPress freelancers to do these sorts of packages. So whether you maybe use Managed WP, you bring in Securea as your security partner. There's all kinds of services out there that are built for us as freelancers to package together and help our clients succeed. And the question is, how do I do that? How do I put together good packages that meet my client needs? And the first thing I tell people, especially in a coaching situation where people are trying to figure out, you know, how do I take my business to the next level? How do I start to build recurring revenue? I always tell them this, I say start by thinking telescopically. I think the bread and butter of every freelance web developers recurring income needs to be a website hosting and maintenance package. Now we got a guy here from Liquid Web. Liquid Web is my web hosting partner. Love those guys. They got a table downstairs. Make sure you go say hi to AJ. Liquid Web is fantastic. Best web host I've used since 1995. No kidding. The support is that great. Hosting and maintenance has got to be the bread and butter. And so I say think telescopically. Start out with hosting as a first tier. Add a second tier that includes backups and updates that also includes web hosting. See they build on top of each other. And then add a package that includes security. So you have a good, better best package hosting on a great host. We're going to add on top of that a second level that does backups and updates for WordPress. Then we add a third level of security where we're going to bring in security firewall, maybe I think security, whatever packages you want to add on to that. Good, better, best. Now in the marketing, in a marketing strategy, which one are they going to tend to pick? One in the middle, right? They tend to always follow put one in the middle. That's where you bundle your core. And you kind of break it out one a little less one a little more still all have value. Thinking telescopically. Does that make sense? Start with one bill on some more add another move to another kind of package. Maybe you're looking at a social media service. Start out with some social media training either one time or ongoing, just to empower people to do it theirself who want to do it themselves. Maybe add on top of that. Well, I don't want to do it myself. So you can build my Facebook page and make it look great. And do all the things that need to be done to make it work. And maybe a third level on top of that a premium level where you're actually helping them provide content for their social media properties. Good, better, best, telescopically. Does that make sense? Here's another idea. SEO. Start out with some basic basic SEO training. Add on to that website optimization. Add on top of that ongoing content creation. Good, better, best. Now you may look at these things and say, I don't know how to do that. Okay, I can use Facebook, but I don't know how to do. You know, maybe I'm not going to be great at doing training. Maybe I'm not going to do great at ongoing content. Maybe I don't know SEO. But you know people who know SEO, right? So that's the resources. Who can I gather around me to do the things I don't do, but I can still sell to make a profit? Gather those resources together. That's why these word camps are so great. I hope you guys have taken time to interact with people and mingle and have lunch with people, ask questions over the time of this word camp. Because, you know, the world is big enough for all of us to have a good business. And when we work together, we go farther, right? You want to go fast, go alone, the old African proverb says, if you want to go long or go far, you go together. So you bring around yourself people who have compatible skill sets to offer these services to your customers. Now here's where we're going to get interesting. Two tools. So you can go now to brilliantly.net slash worksheets. That's just a forward out to a Dropbox link that will give you a PDF. So if you've got your computer open, you want to do that, go ahead. I'm going to have them up here on the screen. These worksheets will help you think through the process of what services to offer your recurring income clients brilliantly.net slash worksheets. The six page PDF. So let me show you what it looks like. Alright, here's the first which I've called the advanced services generator, which I can't find on the, there it is. Okay, so advanced services generator, there's really nothing to this advanced, by the way, it's the name of the coaching service I offer to freelance web developers. It's free tool for you guys. It's basically a brainstorming canvas. So it's just a grid, but it asks some very important questions. Here's what I encourage you to do. Print this thing off. Turn off your computer. After it prints out. Go to a coffee shop, your bat deck, some place where you can completely unplug and just think. Alright, whatever environment stimulates you get out in front of the screen, go there and just think about the answers to these questions. Okay, here's where it starts out. All right, identify a customer segment. What work do they do? What gains do they have? What pains and solutions? The second page gives you some instructions. All right, so who is the customer? Can you guys see that? No, I need to make it bigger. Okay, who is the customer? What kind of customer are we working with? What kind of work is this customer trying to accomplish? What would the customer gain if this work was done effectively? What pains does the customer have while trying to accomplish this work? And then how can you address the customer's pains so the gains are realized? All right, so there's the instructions, that's page two. Page three gives you an example. All right, so let's identify a customer segment. Small business, all right. What does our small, what does a small business client need to do? Well, we need to keep WordPress and plugins up to date. So we're starting now to talk about what I say is the bread and butter of every freelance web developers recurring income, hosting and maintenance, hosting and maintenance. Small businesses need to keep WordPress and the associated plugins up to date, right? What happens if they don't? They get hacked, right? They come in and they got pharmaceutical ads all over their side on Monday morning. It's a bad day for everybody. Okay, so that's what they need to do. All right, what happens if that work is accomplished? Well, the site stays secured, right? And it's going to perform better. But what are the pains involved in this? How many of you guys have ever had one your clients say, I was afraid to push the update button? I didn't know what was going to happen. I thought it was going to break. And, you know, sometimes it does, by the way. So they have a fear of making updates to WordPress. That's the first pain. The second one is forgetting. Fear and forgetting are the two main reasons people don't update their website in my experience. So forgetting to check if updates are needed. Oh, we hadn't logged into the WordPress site in six months and there's 58 plugging up. Probably not. But maybe, you know, that many plugging updates and wow, what are we going to do? And they've completely forgotten. These are the same people who when, you know, Java wants to update on their computer, they hit ignore, right? And they just forget about it or Windows wants to make an update. So look what we've got. We've got small businesses who have this need to keep WordPress and the associated plugins up to date. And there's an important gain in it. If they do this work, the site's going to stay secure and perform optimally. But they're afraid they forget to do it. So here's an opportunity for us to provide a service. Does that make sense? So we're going to offer managed WordPress update services for client websites. And through whatever tool you use, whether it be iThemesync or Infinite WP or one of the others, that offer, you know, a way where you can update multiple websites at once, you create that package to fulfill that need. Does that make sense? Let's look at another one. So let's say we want to target non-profit organizations. Who here works with nonprofits? A lot of the work of nonprofits, probably 30 percent of my business is nonprofit by choice. And I enjoy working with nonprofits. So what are, what's the work that a nonprofit needs to do? Well, to get donations and to raise their volunteer base, a nonprofit has to be great at communicating, right? They need to let people know about the work they're doing, what the needs are. So they can connect with the people who have those same, you know, that they're basically trying to identify with people who have the same concerns as they do. And they're providing an avenue for the average person to more effectively do the work that everybody wants to do, right? So they need to regularly communicate with their current and potential donors and potential volunteers about their work. Now, what would that do? If a nonprofit is successfully communicating with their donor base or with their volunteers, what's going to happen? Excitement about the work of the nonprofit, right? People get excited when they hear success stories about this, you know, this lady that was in this bad situation. Our nonprofit took her and helped her get reestablished and you know, what took her back through, you know, she's now in college and the world is looking great again, okay? Excitement, increase the donation levels of existing donors, activate new donors because those sort of messages get shared out on social media and people are excited about it. So the whole message grows as a result of this. Now, for those of you who work with nonprofits, why doesn't this happen as effectively as it should? No staff, no money, what else? One other big thing. Listen, all great ideas die in committee. In time, right? That kind of goes with staff, but we got, when I meet with nonprofits, they always say, look, we've got these great ideas, we just don't have the time to pull it off. There's not enough staff to do it. There's not enough money to make it happen. So lack of staff without, without skill or training, how about anybody work with the nonprofit with the well-meaning office person who posts to social media? Well-meaning, good-hearted person who can't spell three words correctly. Oh goodness, or they have the worst picture in the world that they put on social media, you know? It's anyway. Lack of staff with adequate skill or training, lack of time or keeping the message in brand consistent. What I see a lot of times in nonprofits is there's eight people trying to communicate into a channel and everybody's saying something different so the message gets mixed, right? Anyway, all that to say, there's our problem. So what do we do? We're going to offer an email marketing service to plan a message calendar and create emails coordinated with website content so that it works in a, in a circular fashion email to social to web and it all works together, right? So this is what you sit down at a coffee shop on your back deck, wherever and you start to think about some market segments. What are their gains? What are their pains? What solutions can you provide? Now you can do this, right? You know who you're working with, you know what your customers need. So it's a simple grid. There's nothing magic about this. It just takes some time to focus on. Now how many of you actually actively plan time to work on your business like this instead of just in your business? You understand the distinction between those two things? Most of us are so busy working that we never get time to work on the system that is our business. We're working in our business instead of on our business. So I challenged people in our webinar on this last week to take an hour. Look, just knock off an hour early on Friday afternoon. We're starting hour early the next morning. Whatever it takes, just take an hour and get two or three of these lines filled out and then go on the second worksheet. The second worksheet is the services planner. Now this is based on a really great tool called the business model generator. It's a free, it's a creative commons license thing, which I've tweaked just a little bit. Here's how it looks, you can print that out, use as much as you want. Here's the instructions. So we're going to take one of those lines in the brainstorming tool and we're going to say, all right, what are we going to call this new service and who is the target for the service? So in this example in a minute we're going to use this example of the email marketing for nonprofits. All right, a description of the service, what, you know, one line, one sentence description, including what the service includes to which customer segment is it targeted. You're going to drop right down in here in the middle column, the value propositions. What value does this service bring to the customer segment? Why would customers select our service over competitors? Which of the customer's needs will this help to meet? So you're basically just taking the things you brainstormed in the previous worksheet, what are their pains and what can you do, you're bringing that all together into a value. What value does it bring to the customer segment, why would they choose us, which of the customer's needs is going to address. Now once you have this filled up and you felt through your value proposition, you come over here to key activities. So what activities do I need to do to pull these things off? Well it's going to do all these great things but what do I need to do to pull that off and I'm going to list those things down. What tasks do I need to perform to fulfill that? All right, down below. What resources do I need to assemble in order to fulfill these value propositions? I got to find that CEO person, I got to find somebody to help me do email, I got to find, you know, these are all the things we need. What roles do I need to perform? What contractors do I need to hire? What tools do I need to develop? What third-party services are needed? So you put all those things down and then zip over to this last column. What's going to cost me to do this? Don't forget to include your own time there. Last of all, how am I going to price this service for the customer? Okay, so you've made a progression. You've gone from a list of all these customer segments and their problems down to your defining and filling out this form. Let's do an example of this email marketing. Here's how one's fleshed out. And this is in the download so you can see this later. But we're going to call the name of this service donor reach, this email marketing service for nonprofits. And we're going to target small to medium nonprofits. Large nonprofits usually have a division that does this already. But the small and medium ones, and sometimes it's the medium-sized nonprofits that struggle the most, because they got a lot more going on than the small ones and they usually outgrown their infrastructure. Medium nonprofits are a great target for this. So we're going to create an email marketing service for nonprofit organizations that helps them maintain compelling communication with their donor base. Make sense? Let's jump down to value propositions. So nonprofits or understaff rarely have the manpower expertise to maintain consistent strategic communications. We said that was true. A value proposition is that, hey, I'm local. They can meet with me face-to-face and we're going to talk through the message if they want to say. We're going to create and execute a planned message calendar. That's huge for an organization. We're going to create professional copy designed to engage potential donors. We're going to have, we're going to coordinate website content that's shareable to social media to supplement the email and provide additional calls to action and then we're going to do regular reporting. Now when you've done this, guess what you've just done in this column? Who has trouble selling? What have you done right here? It's your pitch. Now are you trying to sell the customer something they don't need? No, you're coming in with a great solution to their problem, right? So for those of us mere mortals who struggle with selling, this is a great tool to help you already package. I mean this is practically writing the email already that you're going to send out to your nonprofits to pitch the service. Okay, so there's a middle column. What am I going to have to have in the key activities? Well, we got to have a planned strategy meeting with me and a copywriter to assemble the message calendar. We got to create the email copy. We got to create a supplementary web content and we got to have a tracking report. That's what I've got to do to pull the service off, right? Underneath. What resources do I need? Well, I've got to have an email marketing platform. Maybe MailChimp, maybe Constant Contact, who knows? I've got to have an account manager. Probably that's going to be me right now. I need a copywriter because I'm not going to have time to write all that stuff. I've got to have a website manager. Again, probably going to be me right now. I've got to have an analytics and reporting platform. Okay, so we're starting to pull things together. This becomes a to-do list, a checklist for the things you need to do to make this service work. Alright, moving over here. What's going to cost me? Some sort of email platform? Probably going to get the client to sign up for their own account and let the client bear that load. It's going to make pricing easier when the client starts outgrowing the different tiers of different mailing services. So we're going to say maybe we'll push them toward Constant Contact because they have non-profit pricing. That's pretty good pricing for non-profits. We're going to need a copywriter. Okay, I've got somebody that'll do it for $35 an email. Awesome. So I know what that cost is going to be. Eventually I'm going to need an account manager. Maybe that account manager can be the copywriter. I'm going to need a website manager also. So I'm starting to think about, you know, what the cost structure around this is going to be. And then we start putting some dollar figures on what we're going to make from the client down there in the bottom box. Does that make sense? Now how many of you guys can take this worksheet and do it? Spend an hour, two hours, do some brainstorming and then flesh out one idea for a client. Because this becomes your recurring revenue. This is how you do it. Now hopefully most of you guys who are freelance web developers, you're doing already hosting and backups and maintenance. Spread and butter. We all want to be selling those packages to every single client. That's where the majority of my recurring revenue comes from. It's just it's an easy sell. But then you start adding on additional services. And these tools will help you think through that. Now when you've done this, selling gets a lot easier, like I just mentioned. You've already articulated the games, pains and solutions. So you leverage your existing client relationships. It's a hey look we're starting this new thing. I understand how hard it is for you to do X, Y and Z. Here's what we can do. The price is reasonable when you know let's talk about this. Or do you know anybody else who could benefit from this service? Ask for referrals. That's how you're recurring revenue stream will continue to build and build and build. Does that make sense? So what's the difference this can make? Here's where I want you to broaden our vision just a little bit. Because the ultimate goal for all of us who are freelancers is this. Cover your critical expenses with recurring income. Now that's a it's a two level it's a it happens at two levels. Number one, if you're a freelancer get out of debt as quickly as you can. Seriously. Because the more money it's being sucked out of your account every month by bills is the more money you got to put into your account from work. And what happens when the stuff going out is less than the stuff coming in? What happens to my stress level? What happens to my wife's stress level? My life becomes difficult at that point right? But what happens when you've got your personal finances in order such that the amount of recurring revenue you're bringing in every month equals or exceeds the bills that you have going out. Because now you're not under pressure. Now you don't have to go bang the doors down selling to people. Now you can say no to those terrible clients that otherwise you would have had to have that revenue coming in in order to pay your bills. See this is what recurring this is the power of recurring revenue. It can completely transform your freelance business. It can let you do the kind of work you want to do instead of being forced to do the work that you have to do. So how would it change your life? What change would that make in your world? Now here's the thing it doesn't happen quickly and anybody that says it does is probably trying to sell you one of these services that I'm pitching. It takes time. It happens a hundred dollars at a time, two hundred dollars at a time, three hundred dollars at a time. But over time that adds up, right? Month after month after month. Can you see the spreadsheet in your mind? This month it's a hundred. Next month it's four hundred. The next month it's eight hundred. You're selling. Services are happening. And before you know it you're making five thousand dollars a month in recurring income. It takes time but it does work. I'm living it. It does work. Recurring income is the foundation of a successful freelance web development business. Okay questions and answers. Questions. I'll try out for answers. Who's got questions? Yes ma'am? Okay did you guys hear that question? Okay would you repeat that for the no, this kid. Okay so it's a great question. It's a question that probably everybody in this room either currently has or has struggled with and it's about hosting. Okay what's your name? Teresa? Teresa was saying, all right I like to, I don't have my clients bring their own web hosting. We provide some consultation and what kind of hosts are going to be good and what kind of hosts are going to be bad but she wants to have her clients holding the keys and so how do you, how does that all work? Right is that basically the question? So I take a different approach to that. I think and now let me just say this. The, there is something to be said for that position because then you know you're pushing all of your support onto the web hosts. Maybe you're not responsible for the web hosting and I understand that. I would bring a different perspective to that and what I would say is this. Partner with a fantastic web host. I partner with Liquid Web and the reason I do is that at any time of the day or night I can call and within a minute or so seriously I'm on the phone with a Linux certified person that can solve the problem right there. If you are, if you're not offering your own web hosting service you're leaving money on the table with your clients. You just are. When you know you can, you can charge, I can very easily charge for most of my clients $3.99 a year for a simple web hosting package. Just hosting. Okay and I have a few clients that still do that and I position those payments due in May because that's when our car tags and homeowner association is due. So you know it pays all that stuff but seriously you need to be pushing people into a backup and security package. It's maybe $100 a month, $150 a month and you're providing the hosting, regular backups, security all you know in that in that whole package and you become the web person for them. It's important I think to position yourself and quite you know when I'm working with clients if there's ever a problem with hosting it's affecting everybody. There's rarely a problem with hosting so I would rather have all my eggs in one basket in a sense than to have to deal with 30 different hosting c-panels and all those things. So when there's a problem I've got one neck to strangle liquid web and fortunately they're really good at it. So how much do you charge? Say again. How much? What's the dollar bank charge? So all right I used to do a lot of hosting only packages and I've stopped doing that because of security issues. I have a couple clients who are still doing that but that's usually it starts at $3.99 a year for hosting backups and maintenance WordPress plugin updates starts at $100 a month adding on security starts at $150 a month depending on the complexity of the site it's an e-commerce site it's a membership site a site where people are logging in and out that price goes up quick. Yeah it makes a lot of sense and I think you're exactly right. No and matter of fact in the proposal that I give to a client the price is contingent on them hosting the site with me. If they're going to host somewhere else we're going to have a discussion about that and it's usually a red flag with me that if the client is pushing their own hosting company unless there's just a really good reason it's usually a nickel and diamond kind of reason that's a red flag that I'm probably not going to want to work with that client. I'm looking for clients who want to host that I'm kind of their outsourced web guy I'm the person they're bringing in to handle all this stuff so they can handle their stuff right. So yeah who's next? Wow okay go ahead. Great question. Yeah vacation what's that? That's why I have a solicitation with somebody. Sure okay um how frequently do you have a real hosting oriented issue? Depends on your host. Great answer that's awesome. Yeah that's why you control the keys and you don't give the client access. There are very few reasons. I have no clients that have the keys to their c-panel are you kidding why would I be a client to their own c-panel access? That's asking for trouble that's like you know I've got who do I always have here going to this candy shop and I'll be back in 10 minutes you know are you kidding they're going to get into everything there what does this button do you know so you know there's a principle I create it's Nathan's rule of client entropy never underestimate the ability of a client to screw up their website they find new and creative ways to do this and so yeah I'm so they don't have access to that and I don't provide email support email I stop providing email support because 80% or so of my inquiries we're all about email I want to deal with email are you kidding they go to google apps now so the only time that there's a hosting issue is if there's some massive catastrophic failure at the web host yeah so but to answer your question all the first level issues I somebody that works with me that handle support requests but you know and so you get to a point where you can't handle supporting anymore then you bring somebody in and a VA is a great way to do that they're pretty inexpensive yeah fantastic what's your name Nathan great question did you guys hear that over here okay so early on I had a model that it was called strategic partnerships right and some of you guys may do this where you have a copywriter and you have a videographer and you've got a logo person you got this you know and that's great and you have maybe a set referral fee to those people and you can do that the problem is you start to lose money in the recurring area it's much easier if you're bringing all in under your hat now the other thing I would say is this those of us who are freelancers tend to be we're very we're very careful about our reputation and we should be okay refer all of my work comes by referral and so you know it's it's important that my name stays good however customer eat let's say the worst thing happened and you have a copywriter and they completely screwed up a project it was awful the problem is not necessarily that problem it's what you do next it's how you respond to it so even if the copywriter screws up your client can differentiate you from your copywriter and you just keep an open dialogue with the client saying look I realized that was a problem here's how we're going to fix it we'll bring somebody else in you know and you find a new person you just have the right people and that's what I'm saying it's not an easy quick process you have to identify the right partners and resources but when there's a problem could grief the large web firms have problems everybody has problems I mean you talk to the Fortune 500 companies on the web how much of their social traffic is complaints everybody complains about something the problem is not the complaint it's what you do after that yes sir pricing from web hosting and making it because I deal with a lot of startups and they just when I design a website form they're kind of you know just take a shot from the price ideas and with that and then I say okay now we've got the paper web hosting and then you're like wow paper there's also yeah so I'm ignoring my prices I'm wondering how do you charge more for your web hosting make these plans and still survive okay so nobody else in here has problems with pricing right seriously and with all the freelancers I've coached and helped along everybody struggles with pricing everybody the guy that says he hasn't struggled with pricing is lying to you when he struggles with pricing too everybody struggles with it I mean I I realized after a bid two weeks ago that I probably left three thousand dollars on the table I'm constantly we're all in this process of figuring out how to price our work so don't feel bad about that but let me say this the key to selling especially hosting maintenance the bread and butter package the key to selling that is education the client has to understand the value of a good host to this whole goal you're trying so you're not selling a website you're selling a package of services that help them have a presence on the web a website is part of that but ongoing backups maintenance a great host that's all part of the deal so from the very first communication I have with the client over a consultation I'm talking about you know who's going to be handling your website maintenance after this you know and talking about from that very first conversation getting them used to the fact that we're going to provide these services part of it it goes in the proposal along with the initial build so they need to understand that pricing at the beginning education goes a long way yes sir I got two quick points here first off I know and the pleasure of knowing Nathan for about three years now in this concept of recurring revenue is the better term it's called mailbox money first of all you go your mailbox and check there or better yet the senior backpacker because we're using Stripe second thing I want to tell you is you're asking Nathan to talk about his company or company that represents high fees because they have a fantastic internet-based training videos that are online all the time if you like Nathan live now you can do them on your computer when you go home tonight before you speak to him and Monday is doing a session on this app so tell us about the seminars and how to get there and how to remember what to do I didn't plan that by the way that's Barry's a plant in the back yeah so um I promise okay so I do teach at iThemes training we do two or three webinars a week sometimes more we're press developers course twice a year it's like 197 a year and you get all these live training it's like word camp all year long really plus there's 500 hours of training in the library of archives you can get to on everything from business development stuff to core word press stuff to lots of different plugins one of my favorite webinars I do every month is a plugin roundup where we look at all the plugins that were added in the word press repository in the last 30 days are updated and I pick out the cool ones and the funny ones and the really bad ones so those anyway so 35% off of that and so it's like what 140 bucks for a year you know 10-12 dollars a month and it's like word camp seriously all year long there are two, three, four live webinars every week so thanks Barry okay over here okay yeah great question so did you guys hear that how do you invoice recurring customers okay so the trick in this is my whole world is about spending as little time and quit books as I have to you know every process I have is about minimizing the admin stuff because I hate it can't stand it and I forget it and I put it off the best money I ever spent was hiring a bookkeeper that keeps my stripe and my bank account and mx and all that stuff straight because it'd be like eight months and I'd be like crap I gotta do quit books so how do you do it on mine I use stripe stripe is fantastic put the customer's credit card in there it bills on sends them an invoice when their cards billed all my billings on the first of the month it hits all at the same time it's done yeah simplicity so when you're doing recurring stuff and especially if you're a solopreneur simplicity it's worth something costing a little bit more if it saves you time on the back end they do it themselves now the man with a great hat in the back I was going to mention there's a company here that does white label support GoWP yes I'm checking them out I don't I'm not affiliated with them at all friends with the odor but they're really great it's really cheap monthly support and it's really white label it's great yeah seriously that's that's a great I'm glad you mentioned that GoWP the it's Brad right yeah Brad's wearing a t-shirt table you should go talk to him Brad's uh yeah the guy's t-shirt table he's got glasses kind of salt and pepper hair he's with GoWP you pay a flat monthly fee and you get x number of support issues they'll solve for you it's really great way especially when you're right on the verge of maybe I hire somebody maybe I don't that's a great way to take some of that pressure off when you start to grow I think one more question we're about out of time what's the biggest thing at the level of biggest change I've made most impactful thing that you can think of recently maybe that's included with reoccurring maybe it's not maybe just in general yeah well I mean personally it's been adding coaching services because I'm backing off some of my client work to do to help freelancers which is where my passion is so yeah I mean my my recurring and yeah my recurring income that's running pretty well now so I'm focusing on something else so I'm struggling with this point of do I become you know am I going to step up a level and hire a bunch of people am I going to focus more on just what I want to do it's a really tough decision yeah okay one more we got to quit yes sir okay yeah one more yeah one more question and we're done yes yeah it's at the bottom of that the more of the boxy one is it in the fine print at the bottom there's a link yeah thank you guys