 All right morning. So everybody ready for their MBA from all the notes from Christie's talk? Did you take notes during Christie's talk? Okay, because that was some good stuff. I think I have probably the worst title just because it's really really really really really long. But and we're not going to diagram it. So it's Managing clients increasing your value thinking about long term Or as I like to call it sort of in the shorthand how to level up as a freelancer Who here is a freelancer? Outstanding. Okay, those who didn't raise your hands. Were you freelancers? A few more okay for those who didn't raise their hands. What do you do? No, I mean just shout out seriously. What do you do? Are we products agencies? hosting companies Okay Business owners, okay, excellent Business owners should be up here. I Think we need to do that. Okay Anybody bowl? Anybody okay. I see some hands doing this. That's me You're like you throw the ball down the lane and maybe it's there You know those rails on the side. Does anybody use those other than me? Okay up there. Yep. I'm with you You're those rails to your clients you're those rails to your customers if you're you know building products if you're building sites You're in client services Your job is to keep your customers going down that path to their goal You want them to get there? You don't want them to go flying off. You don't want to cross lanes It doesn't count if the ball crosses lanes. I I thought I had a strike, but I took somebody else's pins out So you want to keep them going down that nice safe path all the way down to get to where they're trying to go That's what you really want to do You don't want to write code. You don't want to like Have cool images you want them to succeed So that's that's your job if you're working with client services If you're selling products that help people do something that kind of thing once you start thinking about that as opposed to Yeah, okay. I'm a freelancer and I write cool websites or I threw a plugin up on the repo or you know I came up with this really awesome template or whatever Then you're changing your mindset That's the first thing you want to do remember to keep your clients going down that path not just telling them that you write code You're developing a process for increasing your value and what you can do for your customers and There we go to work And you are always thinking about sales So taking those practices those principles The charts that aren't that old from the 80s I Hate having to say that now now. It's not like my dad, but those those principles don't change They're all still good. They're all still important and even if you're freelancing or even if you know you You just started your small business or you just you know hired your first employee. They're still very very valuable And so what I wanted to do is kind of go into that in a bit more of an app of an applied manner using these three sort of big buckets of thought first mindset I Took this from a lot of bullets and I sort of refined it down And I think I'm probably gonna have to like re-upload my deck because I changed it from what I put up there Whatever the last week or whatever Tone and what's the why are probably the best ways to sort of describe at the biggest level possible the mindset shift that you want to do and It don't worry about the order which one's on top which one second we'll start with tone How do you see yourself? How do you present yourself? That's the first biggest thing I Come from a freelancing background did it for a long time just on my own Partnered with some other people. We did a lot of collaboration This open source thing was really awesome. We could work together, but still be competitors We'd still work out of the same co-working space, but you know lean to lean back in the chair and go Hey, didn't you do this last week? Oh, yeah, sure Let me show you this code that I was working on That's awesome. That's that was amazing. It's like old-school business wouldn't do that to be like no get away This is you know, you go to your thing and but I'm gonna try to see what you're doing, but I'm not gonna tell you It was a very Cut throat not really competitive The collaboration and that also, you know, that's all awesome. It's great, you know We get t-shirts at work camps t-shirts are awesome t-shirts are great but When you're going out to the client world you're going out and you're talking to customers You can do that for a long time and be totally happy and totally cool If you want to bring things up to the next notch you want to shift your thinking you're not a freelancer You're a business person You want to present yourself as a business person? You want to present your business as a business? So Little things you can do just starting in your brain That's the first thing is once you start thinking it then you can start acting on it and it does kind of change how you present yourself That plays into all of the dealings with your customers with the what's the why who developers Okay, how many times when somebody says so I've got this problem and I need to come in here I need to get a new site and you start asking them about this, you know, okay We'll tell me what you want to do Gold you have designs. What are you thinking? Oh, yeah, okay? We can build that. I've done this, you know Yeah, the other day we worked on that you might also want to think of this But never in that train of little blurbs that I just said which are things that I've said many times in Conversations with people that I asked what is it you're trying to do? don't start with the You know the code the the what's the the you know, oh, yeah, this is you know, we can do this It's what is it you're really trying to do does anybody recognize this woodcut? It's the blind men on the up and blind men in the elephant This is a Japanese woodcut of a parable that goes back Mid first century BCE the Indian subcontinent. It's in Buddhism. It's in Sufi It's it's the stuff goes back big time You've got an elephant for those who don't know you've got an elephant and the parable is these five blind men come up in each one You know as a different part this guy's got the trunk. This guy's got an ear. This guy's got a foot Every single one of them is like oh, it's an alligator. No, it's a snake. This is obviously a big rock wall This is true throughout life They don't realize the totality of what they're looking at When you're talking to your customers, and you're talking to your clients if you're not asking them What's the business problem that you're trying to solve? What is it? You're having difficulty with what is it? You're wanting this to do If you don't start from there You know you're gonna be over here going we've got this awesome solution You come back six weeks later, and you go hey, here's this great thing and they're like well Yeah, but that doesn't really do what I need to do. I I heard that so many times in my freelance life. This is this looks great. This looks cool But it's not really what I was looking for it's not really this because I didn't ask those questions About what they were trying to solve and I didn't listen to them tell me what they were you know what they really had trouble with So I started in the wrong direction. I had a great plug-in Didn't do anything for them though So what's the business problem? That's the first big sort of mindset shift you want to do if you're doing that You're not you're doing great. I mean if you're starting from this area, you're doing great keep going in that direction. I Did devs in the room? Okay, I apologize, but don't sound like a dev If you're a freelancer You're not just a dev. You're the business owner. You're the marketing department. You're the you're the accounting department your finances Your development you might be designed to your account management. You're all that So when you are talking to your customers, you put that account management hat on you put that sales rep hat on you put That business analyst hat on So don't sound like a dev Presentation we talked about that a little bit Sort of going into that, you know not asking them What their business problem is, you know eager and helpful are great if you're a developer We want to solve problems. We hunger for that. We're like, oh, yeah Tell me something doesn't work because I want to get in there like the first thing I want to do is like view source What do you got here? Okay? What does X debug say? I mean, I want to get in I want to like solve it That's awesome. That's why we hire devs because devs want to solve problems. That's that's just amazing But don't jump the gun It's kind of, you know, slow down just a sec, you know, take a breath figure out the right direction then get into it The other thing is are you I Tried to I tried to like write down sort of a script in my head of all the times, you know You're listening to the customer and I say well, I want to do this and as a dev You know, like I don't know if we can do that, but Okay, right there. You just killed the conversation. I don't know if I can do that or no It doesn't really work that way It sounds silly if you've never thought about it, but just saying things with no, I Don't know that uncertainty that that Negativity even if you're still saying well, yeah, we can do all this stuff, but I don't know about that That little verbal tick is a killer Because remember the customers over here they may or may not be technical but what they are is they're trying to solve a problem and They may be just nervous and the minute you say no Whatever just came after that even if it's an awesome idea. They're still hearing. No, they're absolutely hearing. No and I Was very very very skeptical that if I was like you got to be kidding me. I just said we could do this Well, yeah, but right over here. I said the word no You know, and I'm you know, my mother was a teacher My dad was an English teacher. My mom was math computer science. So for me. I'm like no wait No, let's I said we could do this these words came out of my mouth. They were there You're yeah, you're laughing, but you know, you know, it's like they're like you said no over here So everything that else just came out their brain stopped. They're like crap. This guy doesn't know how to do this Okay, we're gonna find somebody else We're gonna have to go over here and the sales gone. That's it. It's it's done. It may come back But that opportunity just got lost because the word no came out or I don't know if we can do this. So Yes, and Cream knows that phrase he's not looking up. Yes, and million times better than no You know, you you you want to say let's say like You know, I want to build this and that and you know, and you're thinking Okay, I don't know about that You're like, that's a great idea. Let's dig into that some more. Let's investigate it never in that Did I say the word? No, it sounds silly if you've never done this. It sounds ridiculous This is like pop psychology. You want to want or some freaking TV show thing where they're telling you You know if you believe it it can be done It's true Just the word shift it's part of that mental shift I learned that painfully the hard way as just a solo dev And it wasn't until somebody I had known for a while and I got to watch them do a call with a customer And I was like, what did you just do there and it took me a long time to figure that out The last part mindset are you a so who's who's a vendor for their clients? vendor Yeah Okay, who's a partner with their clients? Okay way more hands. That's what it needs to be. That's part of that mindset shift. Are you a vendor? To your clients. Is it a client vendor relationship that you have or are you a partner with your clients? And I don't necessarily mean contractually we're partners and whatever blah blah blah blah But you sit on the same side of the table of a problem with your client Not on the opposite end of them saying I'm going to pay you for this and you're like great cool Here you go. Here's your thing. It's it's that that way you approach Troubles that your client has problems that your clients have when they come to you and they can't figure something out It's we it's not I It's it's that that inclusivity that you want to foster there because that yet that keeps them coming back and when clients come back You're that's that's where you want to be you want them to come back. You don't have to go market to them again So they're there they're there with you and they're there. Hopefully they're with you past the initial project onto more and more Okay, process Process is For me. This was the hardest thing for me to do as a dev Because it was boring. I Hated it. I don't want to be paperwork. I don't want to sit here and like model stuff out. I just wanted to write code But this will save your butt Process creates order order is the mortal enemy of chaos and chaos is never never good. You don't want chaos Scared clients run away. They don't come back so Take the time Do the business process stuff do that business logic stuff sit down and get your paperwork squared away It's boring. I want to write code. Yes. I know I get it This is my voice in my head all those years I was I hated this stuff but do it Because once you do it once you have a process in place you can iterate on a process You can revise it. Don't try to make it perfect out the box, but get something in there and stick to it Documentation as well. That's part of it which everybody loves documentation so process when you're talking with the client and They say okay, I want to do this awesome. Great. You walk away Do you know exactly what it is that you're doing is everybody clear on the next steps? Do they know what they're doing? Do you know what you're doing? Do they know you know? Do you guys have everything clear? Do they have to hosting setup they know when you're getting designed do you know when you're getting the designs? You know, you're supposed to start development here. Did you get those designs? Is that in paper somewhere? Did you get a date? When when did they want to launch when was that? Okay, we got to work on you know, you got to ask all these questions You don't want to be launching over Christmas been there Sitting in the truck going up to grandma's house with the laptop tethered because I didn't get the follow back Follow up from them on when something was gonna happen So The process is that you want to put into there make sure that everybody's on the same page So that's your contracts. That's your development timelines. That's your follow-ups that's Responding back to them in emails by restating the problem by just saying even if you know everybody said the same thing Putting it in that email because that way can always go back and refer to it or they might go Oh, yeah, I forgot all this so that's one other thing gives them an opportunity to re-clarify everything with you. So Getting everybody on the same page. That's the one of the biggest advantages of process and coming up with that So make sure that that happens Are you sure everybody's on the same page? You know No, seriously, I mean I've asked this of devs who talked to the customer and I'm like, okay So when you know, I just immediately I can think of three things to ask Go ask them again, don't tell me um if you start with um, just go, you know Go ask them again because if I'm gonna be up late, they're gonna be up late Okay, what this is doing is this is setting clear expectations Our COO will hammer this into your head until it is tattooed on the inside of your skull And he's right in the setting clear expectations It's not being a jerk about it. It's just being look. This is this this is this this is this the sky is blue The floor is brown the trees are green. We're all good here. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay, boom It's the same way with the process. We're launching win Okay, we're launching here. Okay. When are we doing our QA? Okay, our QA takes us long Okay, what day is it today? That's here. Okay, that's this much time. Does everybody know that it's this much time Does the client know it's this much time? Do you have those five things from the client? Well, okay, when are you gonna get those five things from the client? I mean, it's just you've got to drill it in over and over and over again Clear statements of work That's your lifesaver that sets this Freelancers anybody who has good contracts It needs me more hands than that Who has contracts? Okay, great So that Delta between all the hands that were up just now my hands that were up earlier That's the difference. So that you that's let's bring that closer together More hands came up that said they had contracts that is awesome Start with that make sure that you can Bring those up iteratively over time and improve them a bit by bit because when you get that clear statement of work Delivery item one is this and it's gonna be here. It's gonna come in on this date Every item two is this and it's coming here. It's gonna be on this date all that stuff Just there's no questions, there's that certainty there's that lack of fear clients love that Clients will yell they'll scream. They'll holler. I don't know about this date You know, whatever can we push it back, but you've got something on paper and everybody agrees to it. They signed it Everybody's on the same page. You can work from that things are obviously gonna change I mean, who's ever started a project that at the very beginning and at the end was the exact same throughout nobody did it did anybody go through that and Not get a change order. Did anybody just not get the other stuff. They asked about done. I've done that. I Don't know if we can do that that goes back to that saying no Things should always change It's just how it goes. You start a project something new in Chinese comes out. We want to add it to the project What's who has a good way of addressing that? How how would you address that to your client? Oh, can we do these three things? What's the verbal response I'm just curious if anybody has like a this is how I would answer that You are the man. Yes That's a great idea for phase two You didn't say no The clients like oh cool. I can get that and you just got their mindset for a change order Never ever, you know, give up an opportunity for somebody to give you money So you should underst you should have that anticipation of managing change If you don't have a change order template started make one Okay, if you didn't write it down, it's not real This is gospel Absolute gospel. This is even I think I said earlier, you know Recap the call send them the bullet points in an email thank them for the time all that That's why right here Yes, it's it's friendly It shows that professionalism and you have that extra opportunity to be courteous with your client everything else It's great, but this is right here because in six weeks when they yell at you for whatever whatever Kill them with kindness don't yell back, but forward the email back to them, you know, et cetera as seen here Yeah, we'd love to have a conversation about this, you know, yeah, yeah Most of the time they're gonna be like you're absolutely right Okay. Yeah, I forgot. Thank you for reminding me Every now and then you get the ones that are just it's probably best to walk away from The other part of this is This is that documentation bullet here. This is documentation Documentation is not just formatting the the little notes in your code It's understanding your clients make a dossier on your clients. Who are they? What's their business? What market are they in what's their growth look like I mean some of them, you know You may not you may not know like the the Hoover's business analyst profiles of all your clients They may not be in there None of my clients were when I were from the answers, but you know, we had the the dry cleaning shop They were opening for new locations. Okay, I wrote that down. That was a note because they're growing They've been around for 50 years. Okay, they're not going anywhere. They're stable. I mean these little notes these little details Who are the stakeholders in the business? Who are the people that like who's their head tech guy? You'll go find out who that who's or tech guy tech woman I mean you just you got to know these things so these are those little details of understanding the client because then you Can anticipate the things that they might need That makes you more valuable Know your own stuff too Which projects are most profitable for you which types of projects are the most fun for you. That's hugely important You know know these things and look for patterns because then you can you know kind of go go beautiful On everything and just go. Ah, this is the type of work. We want to do. This is the type of client want to work with When you have that opportunity to learn those things That's that's when you do your growth and that happens because you write things down okay Third bullet sales opportunities never ever ever pass up a chance for someone to give you money Be the snake charmer be the person who can who can have those conversations with clients and instead of saying no and instead of saying You know that's the limit, you know work with them help them through those difficult times because they're gonna they're gonna remember You're the one that helped them solve that problem. They're gonna come back to you scope creep I Used to hate scope creep Hate it. Hate it. Hate it with a passion. It's context switching I'm in my brain space. I'm working through code I'm writing all this stuff down and then the client goes here's a wrench and you got to change direction and That's it. My brain's derailed. I've got to completely rethink the problem I've got a completely rethink the solution all of that that scope creep. It's a horrible horrible thing Except it's an absolutely wonderful business opportunity It's the phase two. It's the change order It's the that's a great idea. Let's look at that in terms of scope and budget for the project and That's that opportunity to be the partner with your client to sit down and hat when work through them with them What they're looking to have done? Not to tell them no, but to sit there and go awesome. Let's look at it and then Carry them to that realization of okay. Well, yeah, well, let's let's we can do with that that for now But when could we get that in there? And you get that change order template throw it out there retainers and maintenance, this is a another Sales opportunity if you don't do it. It's something to think about doing this You know connecting dots as a freelancer. I had a couple of good years. I had a new one year where it was like It was like being on one of those roller coaster rides where you literally think your stomach liver and spleen are gonna come up. I You know feast or famine for projects committed once I'm one person I'm not sleeping for a while they all launch And I ain't got crap Now I got to go chase more projects and So I'm down here and then I get you know, and so it's just your business cycle looks like this After doing some research on clients after studying them a bit figuring out, you know Who got me the most money who got me the most return projects? What types of clients were they? What type of work was I doing for him? I was like, well Set up a maintenance agreement, you know X amount of Bandwidth a month something like that figure out some maybe you know, I was gonna do the package thing You know all the little plugins have the little three comparison column things that every single bootstrap website has on put that on my website 30 bucks 80 bucks 200 bucks whatever and This you get this many hours of work and this much work and this much work and I update WordPress and you know It's all this stuff and it it worked. I Got three four clients on that You know, I did no contract. I did like no no long-term contract It's like month-to-month, but I had cancellations in there I'm like you're not gonna cancel on me on the 28th of the month and tell me you're not gonna pay me It's like, you know, you're gonna give me four weeks notice before you cancel Like somewhere in there I got to kind of do some protection for myself But and you also can't bank all your stuff until the 28th of the month and then tell me you want to get it all done in two Days, it's not gonna happen. So, you know some of those little things I Had to do some mental mental hooves and sit down with my wife who had her MBA and go Okay, help me out here and she helped me write all that but the point of it is is those roller coaster dips started flattening out Because when I didn't have all those projects come in I had the retainer stuff there that You know, it wasn't the same by all means, but I wasn't dipping down to here and freaking out for you know For however much how long that ramp up to the next projects were It may or may not be you it worked great for me and And I would you know, I would encourage you to look at it as something you might think about You know with managed hosting providers a lot of the basic stuff of I'll update your plugins. I'll update WordPress Which manage hosting providers don't do that these days? So you got to think of more creative things to have that value add to your customers But it's it's worth looking at especially if your customers are coming to you over and over again for Little smaller piddly little stuff. Oh, I want to you know, new page template or something like that Maybe figure out a way that that type of work you can just sort of Push into some sort of you know monthly contract kind of thing if you don't do that yet and this is a You know something that you bring into One of the great benefits of it is you build a portfolio of contracts That is business value So your business value for however long these contracts are you're just you know, oh, I'm worth this much I'm worth this much. I'm worth this much, you know because those are contracts You've got those contracts in place That brings with it a sense of stability. You're in for the long haul You know, that's a promotional thing that you can use that that you know You're not the guy sitting with the laptop in front of the coffee shop Just kind of chilling out writing projects launching websites. No, you've got a portfolio You have a business You have you know professionalism Okay perfect timing This is me Pat Ramsey director of technology crap favorite and I thank you Thank you very much Pat How many years have you been working with the crowd favorite and and how long have you been working in that space? How much experience would you say you have my first version of WordPress was 1.2 beta So so he knows a little bit about a little bit So you're talking to us about asking the business problem Could you give an example of a time that you backed out of a web build? To actually analyze and look at the business problem identify that the question is is there a time when I backed out of a backed out to just kind of say okay, we got to stop and let's look at the business problem. I did there was a social media marketing company in Ten two thousand nine two thousand ten This is this is when all of the the companies would Send like three interns to South by Southwest and say you're the social media managers go and so everybody was getting into that How do we monetize that space? How do we get the numbers for big business in social media? so I was working on a new website for them six weeks into it they Completely just kind of like well, I want to do this and we're also going to do this and when I showed up for a meeting They had one of the the VP's there like we're also going to do this whole new thing over here and We just I just said no we got to stop we can stop we got to step back We can't just keep going this way and and it took two months of kind of back and forth and wrangling with them to Reset all the expectations about what was getting built what was being delivered when? Because they're you know if we hadn't done that there was just no Connection at all between what they were wanting to do and what we had already decided to build It was like these these things will never connect if we don't stop You know and reset everything That answer Absolutely. Thank you very much So you've worked as a freelancer you've worked inside small agencies large agencies you discuss a little bit about presenting yourself And and positioning yourself Is there a particular example that you think freelancers might Find value and how you presented yourself To their they they seem they might seem silly and tiny but they were they were there's a lot of value in knowing these things The first is all the communication is we and it's never I And that's that's big in all your writing. It's we can do this let's do this It's that collective tense when you're when you're speaking in your writing The second one is and he'll of this one is when you're doing these conferences with people and you're not in face-to-face Make it look like you're kind of in an office You know the patio is great. The garage desk is awesome But not when you're on a video call with a couple of directors and business people type stuff with suits on Just there there's there's a disjointedness there So have that sort of professional demeanor in in there If you are meeting them in person put a collared shirt on You know guys don't wear the the sneakers just I work from home. Don't trust me. I work from home It's shorts. I'm lucky if I put shoes on half the time But when I'm in face when I'm in person in that in in person means video to Have that presentation. It's it's just important Thank you very much Pat Ramsey crowd favorite