 How's everybody doing this morning? Good. I'm the first speaker on Friday, which I think automatically makes me the keynote. So I will be the self-appointed keynote today. Show of hands, very quickly. Who has an agency? Okay, good amount of you. Who's a freelancer? All right, so the rest of you. And then I think you're in the right talk. I'm going to start at the morning with a very complex algorithm. I hate to make you think this early. But here it is. Communication equals profit. I know. Soak it in for a minute. A lot of what I'm going to talk about today really comes down to simple communication. And it really does lack in our industry. And we'll be talking about that a bit. One of my rules for communication is tell your clients what you're going to do. Tell them what you're doing. Tell them what you did. It is impossible to over-communicate. I dare you to try it. The way I communicate and the way I treat my clients is I'm constantly asking questions. I ask questions all the time because I want to know what's happening on the other side of the table. I want to know what my clients are thinking. I want to know how we're doing, right? I want to know if something's wrong. One of the worst things you can do as a freelancer, as an agency, or even as an employee, is be in the dark. Not ask questions, right? Find out after the fact that you could have saved the day, could have done something different. So I've got a list of some of the questions that I asked. These aren't all of them, certainly. I just picked out a few. But at the start of the project, one of the key questions I like to ask is, how will you measure my success? And that's an important question to know. Because you don't want to assume that just writing good code means that you've succeeded on the project. You don't want to assume that just because you love the design means you succeeded on the project. Your client, who is on the other side of the table, may have a completely different benchmark. And so you won't know if you don't ask. So that is a question I always ask. I ask it over my prospect. I ask it at the beginning of the project. I want to know how my success will be measured. I also ask a key question is, what is the process for getting paid? And I find that this is often missed. Very simple question. And you'll actually learn a lot from this question. You'll learn about the corporate structure that you're facing. You'll learn about who signs your check. You'll learn quite a bit. You're not asking, how do I get paid? You're asking, what's your process for getting paid? Right? Maybe there's a ton of paperwork that you don't know about. And you don't want to find that out after you've already cut an invoice. You don't want to find that out when you're late on a payment. You want to know those things up front. Maybe there's payment terms that you weren't aware of. Maybe you were expecting net 15, but your client pays net 60. That question will answer those things for you. During the project, I like to just simply ask, how are we doing? Away from a production call, away from an account management call, I check in with my clients often. And I just say, hey, listen, I just wanted to give you a quick call and see how we're doing. They'll tell you. I guarantee it. They'll tell you if they're happy. They'll tell you if they're sad. They'll tell you if they're disappointed. They'll tell you if they're angry. But I want to know so that I can do something about it. Because if I'm in the dark, then if there is a problem, it's just going to fester. And it's just going to get worse. I like to attack things before they become problems. Some related questions, are you happy with the progress? Then you're just anchoring on happy. I'm assuming you're happy. Are you happy with the progress? If they're not happy, they're going to tell you. But at least you're anchoring them. Are we exceeding your expectations? Now notice how I phrased this question. Are we exceeding your expectations? Not are we meeting your expectations? It's an important distinction. And I'm telling you these things because these are carefully worded, and I ask them in a very specific way. Again, by asking if I'm exceeding your expectations, I'm anchoring you on doing better than your expectations. If I say are we meeting your expectations, that's a pretty low bar. I want to know that we're exceeding your expectations. And if we're not, I want to make the change where we can do that. Make sense? Who's awake? Good. Excellent. You're with me. After the project is done, or when we're getting close to the project, I like to ask, is there anything we could have done differently? I want to know for next time. And again, I'm making the assumption there's going to be a next time. Right? If there's not going to be a next time, I'm going to find out by asking that question. I also want to know if there's anything I could have done differently for my other clients. I want to get my clients' feedback so that I can make changes for my process. So that's an important question. Assuming everything's gone well, would you be willing to refer me to your friends? Is there anybody else that might benefit from our services? That's an important question to ask because you get more business, but you're also going to find out, are they even happy with you in the first place? So I ask a lot of questions. Is there any way we can move this? One of the key questions I like to ask and really understand when I'm engaging with a new client or even an existing client is, who are the stakeholders? Tell me about who you answer to. Tell me about who's on your side. Tell me about your corporate structure. I want to know who is evaluating my work. Who is determining whether we get paid? Who's on the other side? So I ask, who's my day-to-day contact? Who's the decision maker? Who signs off? Who gives us an approval? And most importantly, who cuts our check? Because the person who writes our check ultimately is really the only one I want to please. Let's be honest. That's the person I want to make the most happy. I want anything to get in the way of getting paid. And usually that's the ultimate decision maker. Let me tell you a little story. And this may have happened to you. So we were working on a project. Went really well. We were dealing with an agency, an e-sports company. They had a structure that I understood or at least thought I understood really well. I understood who the day-to-day contact was. I understood who the decision maker was. I understand who cut my check. We finished the project, nearly finished the project. And then I get a lengthy email that says, our investor wants to change everything, change it all. That's a tough spot to be in. But here's the deal. Once you understand the stakeholders, write it down. Have your client sign it. Put it in your statement of work. Whatever your agreement looks like, your contract, identify the stakeholders. And in this particular project, actually on all projects, we did just that. They told us the stakeholders. We wrote it down. We agreed on it. And so my response was, absolutely. We can do all these things. Let me tell you what it's going to cost. The response back was, cost? Why? We don't like it. We don't approve. Well, the stakeholders that we identified approved. Right? And I'm happy to make all these changes, but we worked based on the assumption that we were getting the approvals from the correct stakeholders. You've now introduced a new requirement. That's not a bad thing. That's not an ugly conversation. That's just the facts. Here's what happened. And I'm going to incur cost because I have these new requirements. So if you don't ask this question, and if you don't write it down, you can get stuck. Stuck making changes that you have to eat. So identify the stakeholders, write it down, get it approved, agree on it, whatever that looks like for you. Statement of work, contract, but make sure that you have an agreement with your client that these are the stakeholders on this project. Make sense? Good. Watch out for red flags. I've been in business for 23 years. Show of hands. Anybody in the audience born in the 90s? Yeah, I hate you. Just kidding. I started my company in 1995. So I've been doing this quite a while. I still learn this lesson on almost every project because it's easy to get caught up in the moment. You're excited about a new project. A new prospect comes in, you've landed it, you're ready to go. And I do this all the time. I just, you know what? Let's just get moving. And I ignore all the red flags. And it's really easy to do when you're in the moment. But those red flags can be very costly. Does this sound good? Very costly. Is this sounding familiar to anybody? So we had a project just last year that we took on and I was very excited about it. It was a large project. And very quickly, before we even got started, there were problems. There were issues getting the contract signed. So we went through 12 versions of the contract. Finally pinned that down. There were delays in getting a signature. We got a signature. That's a red flag. Then as soon as we started, the client first was late to meetings. Then stopped showing up for phone calls. Those are red flags. I ignored them. We chugged on, we went forward. When we needed assets to make our deadlines, what do you think happened? We didn't get them. So our deadlines got pushed and we had to push our production schedule and that caused some discomfort. Those are all red flags and we ignored them all. You know what happened toward the end of the project? The client came back and said, we're not happy with anything. We did it all on our side. We did it all the way that we were asked. I thought we delivered quality work. He said, we're not happy with anything. We're going to move on to another agency. Okay. Had I stepped outside for a moment and just paid attention to the red flags, any one of those red flags, I probably could have predicted what would have happened. As I told you this story, could you have predicted what would have happened? Don't ignore red flags. And if you are caught up in the moment, ask somebody else. Just pass it by somebody for a sanity check. A spouse, a friend, one of your coworkers. Sanity checks are a good thing. And I do that all the time, but I learned this lesson over and over and over again. Can you, thank you, appreciate it. This is going to sound very stereotypical, but our industry is not known for empathy. I know, mind blown, I get it. And I know this not because I'm speculating. I know this because most of my clients come from other agencies that they've worked with and have had a bad time with or didn't get the deliverables they wanted or you name it, something went wrong. And when I hear their stories and ask questions and start to turn the project around or rescue or take over, whatever you want to say it, whatever you want to say it, what I hear over and over again is a lack of empathy. And ultimately, just having a little bit of empathy, putting yourself in your client's shoes will not only keep your business that you currently have, but ultimately win you new business. And this is something I've practiced since day one. I listen. I ask questions. I want to know what my clients are feeling. And I do my best to understand exactly what's going on on the other side of the table. And if there's an issue, if they're angry, that's okay because I'm there for them. And ultimately what I'm establishing by showing a little bit of empathy and caring is trust. We're not perfect. We've got problems. Things go wrong on projects. I've never, in 23 years, I've never had a perfect project. It's how you handle it that is a differentiator. And that's what your clients care about. They don't expect you to be perfect, but they do expect you to handle it like a professional. And they do expect you to care about their project because they're spending money. So having a little empathy will establish some trust. And if you're not good at empathy, because I'm naturally not good at empathy, fake it till you make it. Again, ask somebody else when you're about to send an email or a letter or have a phone call. Do a sanity check. Pass it by them. Say, you know what, am I showing enough empathy here? Just taking those couple of moments to prepare for those emails or phone calls will go a long way, I promise you. And so our clients, some of our clients have enjoyed a 10-plus-year relationship with us. And again, those relationships are not perfect. It's been a roller coaster ride. We've had problems, big problems. Problems where we've cost our clients business. Problems where sites have been down for hours. We all have those problems. It's how you handle them that's going to be a differentiator. And where you start is having some empathy. One of the things I like to say when a client calls with a problem is, first of all, especially if a client's getting animated, the first thing I do is take a breath. I was a runner in high school. I can't run today to save my life. But I was a runner in high school and one of the things they taught me is how to breathe. So I know how to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. And so when a client calls and they're upset, and I can tell it's going to be not a comfortable phone call, I start breathing. Because that helps me calm down a little bit. Helps me not react. And then I just start listening. So if a client wants to talk, they can talk as long as they want. I will sit there and I will listen. And I will wait until they're done, which can take 10 minutes sometimes. I had a call just this week where a client was upset. And he yelled at me for about five minutes and then talked for another five. That's okay. I sat and I listened. And what I do is I breathe, I take notes, make sure what I'm hearing what he's saying or what the client is saying. And when they're done, what I do is repeat back the key things that I heard them talk about. I've written my notes. I say, okay, here's what I heard. Am I right? Are we on the same page? No? Okay. They want to talk some more? That's okay. I'm there to listen. When they're done, no matter if I agree with them or not, one of the first things I say when it's my turn to talk is you're absolutely right. I don't care if they're wrong. You're absolutely right because you know what? They are right on their side of the table. What they're expressing is their truth. It's right to them. So I just show some empathy by saying, you know what? You're right. We screwed up. We did that. I take responsibility for that. You're absolutely right. And here's what we're going to do next to fix it. So by saying things like that, your client understands that they were heard. You care. You have some empathy. You're with them in this. That's all they want to hear. It doesn't matter that you screwed up. Again, we all do it. It's how you handle it that is the differentiator. Make sense? Everyone in this room is an expert at what you do. You're all experts. Don't undervalue that expertise. And here's what I mean. I work with a lot of coders. And I've worked with a lot of coders of the year. I myself am a coder. And when I do something, especially when I do something really quickly, I get excited about it. Hey, I solve that in two lines of code. Awesome, right? Don't undervalue that. So what will happen if you solve something in two lines of code, or just install a plugin to solve a problem, or make a quick call and fix it, is typically, or not typically, not typically, but what I've seen in the past, if somebody will say, you know what? I solved it in 15 minutes. I'm going to build for 15 minutes of time and I'm going to move on my day. You've just undervalued yourself when you do that. It doesn't matter how long it took you to do it. The reason it took you 15 minutes to do it, or two lines of code, is the years of experience leading up to that moment. The reason I can solve something in 15 minutes is because I've been doing this for 23 years. Thank you. Thank you. So that is important, apparently. That is important. Don't undersell yourself. Don't undervalue that. And here's what's important about that, is your client values that. You solve something quickly. That's valuable. They have no downtime. They don't have to spend weeks solving the problem. They came to you because you're the expert. That's valuable and charged accordingly. Thank you. I'm passionate about it too. I'm mad. I'm not mad. So you are the expert. However, don't let it go to your head. Thank you. We're all wizards. You're a wizard. Your client thinks you're a wizard. But don't have an ego about it, right? Because ultimately, your job is to make your client look good to their stakeholders, to their clients, to their customers, whoever it may be. One of the ways you can identify that is asking this question. I know this is going to sound like rocket science. How can I make you a hero? Ask it. Again, it goes back to the original question of the measuring stick. What can I do today to make you a hero? Let's get a win. When you say things like that, you then become a trusted partner. I'm skipping ahead a little bit. Along with ego, one of the important things is to make sure that you stay in your lane. We are wizards. We are experts. But we're not experts in everything. And so your clients are going to appreciate when you stay in your lane. Somebody asked me what I do. Zeke Interactive builds websites, mobile apps, SaaS products. We're primarily developers, although we are a full-service agency. We have designers that we don't keep on staff. We outsource that, and we can provide design if you need it. But that's what we do. We are primarily developers. That's it. And we stay in our lane. Our clients hire us primarily for good, solid development. Now, it doesn't mean I don't have SEO expertise. It doesn't mean I don't have design expertise. It doesn't mean I don't have ad expertise. But let me give you an example. One of our recent clients is called theblast.com, the site I'm very proud of. We built it last year. So the number two guy at TMZ left started his own company, partnered with us to build their site. We built it. We maintain it. They have many people working on this site. We are the developers. We are their technology partners. But they have an ad guy that specializes in making revenue. It's not our expertise. So I would never step outside my lane and tell the ad guy what he's doing wrong. I might give some advice, but again, staying in my lane. Now, if you do have some expertise outside of your lane, that's okay. But ask permission to step outside of your lane. Your client will appreciate it. Again, it just goes back to communication. I'm allowed to say, hey, I have some expertise in this particular area of advertising. If you'd like it, I'm happy to offer it to you. But don't just step outside of your lane because it's not going to be well received all the time. I've said this in many of my talks, and this is something I firmly believe. Vendors are a commodity. Vendors get paid based on price, and vendors are expendable. If you're a vendor, you are bidding at the lowest price, negotiating on price, having conversations about price. I never have conversations with my clients. It's about price. Price doesn't even factor in. The reason is because when I come into an engagement, I treat my client as a partner. I let them know, hey, we're in this to win it with you. We're on the same level. So your problems are our problems, and we're going to get through this together. And that doesn't happen immediately. It doesn't happen at the beginning of the engagement. It happens over time. It happens by establishing trust. But if you do some of the things that I've said already, you are going to elevate yourself to partner status. And a partner doesn't talk about price. A partner sends an invoice and they just get paid. I don't get questions about invoices with my clients. And if I do, we have a discussion. I let them know the value and I get paid. You want more business? Answer your phones. There's a new app. There's a new app that just came out for this that'll get you a lot of business. It's called the phone. I know you laugh and I make jokes about this, but again, I get a lot of my business from other agencies that have been subpar. And one of the top complaints I hear is they ghosted. Now, I'm 47. I didn't know what that meant. I had to look it up on the internet. Right? I know what it means now. My kids taught me. Thank you. Don't ghost. Answer emails very quickly within whatever your established timeframe is. Return phone calls. More importantly, pick up the phone. Nobody uses the phone anymore. You're going to differentiate yourself as an agency, as a freelancer, just by making a phone call. I know that sounds crazy, but your clients will thank you for taking a phone call. What's the worst form of communication? Email. Second worst is text messaging. No communication at all is the worst form of communication. Thank you. Excellent. But if you are communicating, the worst form of communication is email. Second worst is texting. Best, face-to-face. If your clients are close, go meet them face-to-face. When they want to have a meeting, we have all of our clients are set up on a weekly call, some of them on video chat. But I look at every client and at least try to go meet with them face-to-face if they're local once a month. You'll learn a lot during that face time. A lot that you can't get over email. So a couple of things from a... Those are all sort of from the client standpoint, but a couple of things from an agency standpoint, a business standpoint. Who has fun at their job? Yeah. Thank you. I have a blast. I've been doing this a long time and I still look forward to going to work every day. I love this job. I love this industry. It's a blast. Don't forget to make a profit. I know that sounds crazy, but you need to pay attention to the bottom line. It's easy to get carried away because you're having so much fun at your job, right? But when you're having fun, you can miss change orders. You can miss scope adjustments. All those things can be missed and you let them slide because you're having a great time. Don't do that. You're running a business. Don't forget that. It's a fun business. I look forward to going to work every day. It's the best job I've ever had, but don't forget that you're running a business. It's my only non-movie slide, by the way. Anybody know who this is? Yes. I didn't go to business school. I went to the school of hard knocks. That's actually not true. There were no hard knocks. If you didn't go to business school and you want some advice, some free, good, quick advice, watch The Profit. What's that? Sure. If you want some entertainment, watch Shark Tank. I'm kidding with you. I like Shark Tank as well. I watch them both. The Profit. Marcus Lomonas talks about people, process, and profit. And while it's boiled down to a TV show, there are always some good lessons in every episode, especially about when to cut bait. So he identifies when to move on from a deal. And I appreciate that. I'm sorry? Absolutely. So what the comment was, that he's able to identify resources that are holding you back. The weak link in the chain. I hate to ask this question. How many of you have a client that takes up more than 20% of your time? More than 50% of your time? 100% of your time? 100% of your time? Okay. I learned this the hard way, right? If a client is taking up more than 20% of your time, if more than 20% of your business is with one client, or one project, or one thing, it's too big to fail. You don't have any control on what's going on on the other side of the table. Anything can happen. And so it's something you need to look at if you haven't diversified your business. And so when I take on a project, I look at how big it is in compared to the rest of the projects that we've got on our plate. And I never let something take up more than 20% of our time. Because more than 20% to me would be detrimental to the bottom line, detrimental to cash flow, however you want to say it. So diversify as much as you can. It's important. And lastly, when you're running your business, don't skimp. Hire good people and pay them what they're worth. Hire good consultants and pay them what they're worth. Don't skimp on resources like insurance and payroll and accounting and legal. All of that stuff, all those outside services matter. Don't skimp on those things. Again, you get what you pay for and you'll pay the price. And so I pay my people very well. I've got great engineers. I've got a great team and I pay them well. And they perform. It's the best team I've ever had in my life. So don't skimp. It's easy to say, oh, you know what? I could save this amount of money by hiring a cheaper resource for anything I just stated. It's going to bite you in the ass. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience. One particular job that I want to call out that is important, very important on our staff is account management. Here's how I define an account manager. So we've got a project manager. We've got our developers. We've got QA and we've got account management. Project manager is really in charge of development, making sure development is on track. They're in charge of production schedule. They're in charge of budget. That's what a project manager does in our world. It might be a little bit different than yours. My account manager is there just to provide expertise on content, WordPress, support, plugins, anything that has to do with all the other stuff, non-developer related. And they're there just to call the client to say, hey, can we help you out with anything? Are you comfortable? Do you need some tutorials or some help with working with your site? That's what the account manager does. But I've trained my account manager to ask a key question. Did you know we also do this? Your account manager is the key to you getting more business from your current clients. By just asking the question, did you know we also do this? Could we help you out with this other thing? Is there anything else we could help you with? That's all they have to ask. So that account manager role is key. One of the best sources of new business for you is your existing clients. And they're always ignored. It's very easy. You can up your business right now by just calling all your clients and say, did you know we do this? Whatever that is for you. Something that they're not using you for. Lastly, I want to talk about something on a personal note. Running an agency or freelancing is hard. It's stressful. It's this is not for the fainted heart. Everybody agree with me when I say that? Yeah. When I got into this business, I kind of got into it as a dare. I looked at my boss. I said, I can do that. I can do that better than him. That's not true. And I learned that over and over and over again. People, my kids, other people look at me and say, oh, you're so lucky, right? You've got this business that you built and you don't have a nine to five job and you can take time off whenever you feel like it. And right, I get those comments all the time. And they're right. I'm very proud of what I've built. I am very proud of my agency. I'm very proud of my company. I'm very proud of my staff. All those things are true. But I work 24 hours a day. I am never off the clock. And so it's important that you have a support system around you that is able to help you through those times because this is stressful. And so, got it. I don't know. I know some of you in the audience. I don't know if all of you know me know my story. But I didn't have a support system for many, many years. I was in a bad relationship. I went through a divorce. All those things while I was running and building my agency, while scaling, those are tough things to do. And I recently got remarried last year. And I built my support system. That's what I put on my match.com profile. No. But I didn't realize how important that was until after I did it, right? I knew, I knew something was off. But until I actually rebuilt my support system around me, I didn't realize the power of that. And I got to tell you, for the past two years, since I have done that, my business has gone through the roof. Way better than I could have ever expected. I thought I was having good years. Last year was the best year I've ever had on record in 23 years. So do not discount the power of the people you surround yourself with of your support system. And I'm just speaking from experience. Again, I'm just going to go back to this. Complex algorithm. The more you communicate, the more money you make. My name is Steve Zangit. I'm the founder of Zeke Interactive. I'll be here for, thank you.