 I'm Nathan Ingram. I'm the creator of Monster Contracts. I'm also the host of iThemes training, which on last Tuesday became Solid Academy. iThemes became Solid WP. I've been working with clients building web things since 1995, so many many years. And I've been a micro growth coach for micro agency owners for about 10 years now, coming up 10 years. So let's talk. How many of you are in that vein? You are an agency owner working with clients, freelancer, however you choose to describe yourself. Excellent. So let's talk about some common problems. What are some of the common problems you face working with clients doing your work in your agency and your freelance practice? Say again. Time. Does anybody struggle with getting content from clients? That always gets a laugh. Okay. What else? What are the common problems do you face? Scope creep. Many hats. Many roles. Clients ghosting you. Okay, yeah. So let's talk about that. Wouldn't it be nice if you had no problem clients? If you didn't have to worry about those content delays. What if it took you less time to do everything and you were more accurate when you did it? Sounds great, right? Sounds like, you know, a fairyland cartoon of some sort. But the answer to all these things is what we're talking about today, which is systems. I've had over a thousand coaching conversations with people who do what we do, doing WordPress things with clients since sometime in 2014, middle of 2014. And what I can tell you is virtually every problem that we come across in business can be solved or at least minimized by good consistent systems. Seriously. When it comes to business and systems, this is the way. So let's talk about that. This is where we're heading over the next hour or so, or 50 minutes or whenever Erin tells me to stop. We're going to talk about, first of all, what is a system? The value of a system, an overview of what a system might look like. How to create your own systems and then the arduous process of refining your system. So let's get started. What is a system? So I think putting some language around this is helpful. So we know what we're talking about. Because some people think about this a little differently. So when you look at what is a system, my definition is a system is a collection of processes. That's it at the root. A system is a collection of processes that you use to run your business. You use them every project, every client, every time. Consistency matters when it comes to system. So a system is at its root a collection of processes. Now let's put some visual around this. So if a system is a collection of processes, what is a process? A process is a combination of tasks, tools, and templates that you use to do your work. All right? A system is a collection of processes. A process is some combination of tasks, tools, and templates. And then you might have many processes inside of a system. Does that make sense? I had a high school math teacher that said never waste the opportunity to use a good Venn diagram. So that's kind of close. All right? So let's dig into this. Again, every client, every project, every time. And here's the key. It has to be repeatable by somebody other than you. That's the real difference. Because if systems are in your head, it's memory. It's not a system. So the first thing I want to poke at you a little bit on, how many of you are solo operators? Freelancers, solopreneurs, whatever. Okay. Here's the challenge. I worked that way for many, many years. The systems that are in my head are not the kind of systems that I'm talking about. Because there's this thing, my first business coach told me, look, you got to stop being a hero. And here's what he meant by that. You've got to focus in your business on process, not heroics. And what I mean by this is, if the getting of the thing done requires me putting on my cape and swooping into action, that is not a system. That is heroics, process, not heroics. And so another way you might look at this is how much of my business is run on my intuition versus intention. Intentionality is documented. It's repeatable by somebody other than me. If it requires me to strap on a cape and swoop in and save the day, this is not repeatable. It's not scalable. And at some point, I'm going to run out of energy. And I'm going to burn out. I'm going to get tired. So intuition does not scale. Or if you get ready to sell your business, intuition does not sell because it's all dependent on you. Right? So we have to get out of the mindset of being a hero and get into the mindset of building systems and processes. So let's talk a little bit about the value of systems and why this is important. Even it doesn't matter if you're an agency of dozens of people or if you are a solopreneur. Systems are critical. And a lot of the work that I do is with micro agency owners, freelancers, one, two, three team members, right? And I get a lot of pushback when I start talking about systems. And so the first objection that I'll often get is this one. Look, I do custom work for every client. So I can't create consistent systems. Now, okay, how many of you have said that to yourself in your head? Just be honest. Yeah, I did two for years and here's my response to that. Yeah, no. It the reality of the situation is this, no matter how custom your work is, you can still create repeatable systems. You can because my very first business coach pushed me to do this. And I started to discover the world works a lot better when I do it this way. And I can take off the cape and hang it in the closet and never have to go back to it. Here's another objection that I've gotten in coaching conversations. I can't build systems and processes that will constrain my clients. They don't they won't like being constrained by systems and processes and my response to that once again, it's not true. The reality of the situation is systems and processes keep problem clients fenced in that's my friendly monster down there. clients are friendly monsters. You don't need contracts and great processes for great clients necessarily. But you can never tell the bad ones from the big ones at the beginning. That's why we have to have great contracts and great processes and great tools and templates for all clients every project every time. Systems and processes keep problem clients fenced in but here's the hidden value also is you know what they give good clients confidence. One of the things that I started adding into the sales process was an explanation of how we do things and why and what I discovered by doing that was these the clients realize no these people know what they're doing like they've been doing this for a while. And the way that they're operating in this in a project it makes sense. And so there is a way to do things. There is a pathway forward a pathway to success and it gives good clients confidence rather than putting them off. By the way, if your client if your potential client starts pushing against your systems, it's a great red flag at the very beginning of this is not the kind of client I want to work with. Alright, how about a third objection? I don't need systems because I'm not trying to grow my business. I'm not trying to sell my business. I just want to do my business. So I don't need to take the time to invest in developing systems and processes and the answer to that is Yeah. So here's the thing. You may not be trying to grow or sell yet yet. But that day may come. My advice to any of you who are in this room and you're kind of just doing work and you know, see to the pants freelancing, every project is a little different. My advice to you is get your systems and processes streamlined because there's benefits you may want to sell one day. But even if that's not on your radar, you know, the two things that make an agency sellable, repeatable systems recurring revenue, those are the two I mean, there's other things. But those are the two things that are the biggest factors and the value of your agency if and when you ever want to sell it. So start the systems early because even if you're an agency of one, there may be a day where you're no longer able to work. A family crisis may happen. You may have an injury or an unexpected illness or whatever what's going to happen to your clients then if everything in your business is in your head. So I met a person at a word camp Atlanta back in 2016. I was giving my talk on clients or friendly monsters. And after after that talk, we started we had a conversation, we entered into a coaching relationship, we had one call. And then the next week, he was mountain biking and died 30 something years old. What do you do when you have a business? And there's these, you know, if you have repeatable systems and processes in your business, that's even bigger nightmare for your family, right? What happens if you can't work? And honestly, even if that doomsday scenario is not in play either way, systems and processes will make you more efficient now, even if you're an agency of one systems and processes make you more efficient. So having systems and processes is the difference between working for yourself and owning a business. And one of this is one of the most important concepts I try to get across and people that I'm starting to have a coaching relationship with, particularly in the agency of one scenario, you have to differentiate between your business as an entity and you as a person. If you can make that transition in your head, it is one of the most important things you can get your head around, because it lets you make really good decisions. Whereas if I'm mingling my identity in my work, that causes all sorts of problems. Systems and processes is one of the main ways to separate you from the work you do. All right. So let's look at an overview of what a system might look like. So where do word camp? We build WordPress websites. So let's take ourselves through the system of website development. So I love board games. We grew up with board games when I was a kid. And so we're going to drop into our board game. Here it comes, our friendly monster client. And we're going to walk through this board game of our process of website development and see how this thing is going to work. Now this is a very top level overview of the process that we use to build websites for clients, every client, every project, every time. And it will give you an example of how you might do it. So when the client comes into our world, we start with a discovery conversation. Where, first of all, where is this client coming from? Is it a referral? Is it, you know, they filled out a discovery form on the website? How do we understand who this person is? And by the way, take pictures if you want. The QR code will give you all the slides, all the things. I'll have that up again at the end. So where do they come from? Because we're going to handle that a little differently if they're a referral. Or if they just filled out a form. We're going to figure out, are they actually serious? You can do this a number of ways with, you know, a minimum price to work with us or asking some specific questions on your discovery form. All of a sudden things aren't clicking, so that's really not good. Alright, here we go. That starting price is critical. How many of you have gotten into a conversation with a client and, you know, you have in mind it's a five, six thousand dollar project, they're thinking 500 bucks. Right? So these are things you want to get away, get out of the way right at the beginning. And so they're going to complete a discovery form where some of these things become clear. And once they do that, we're going to move them to the next phase, which is a discovery meeting. Don't put your calendar link in your email signature, please, because people will use that and take your time and you're not spending so much time without pre-qualifying the client. Make them just go over a little speed bump in your process to see if they're serious. And so when we do that, we're going to schedule our discovery call for a limited time and our tops, we're not going to sit there for three hours at a Starbucks and unpack their life's problems and talk about their cat and all those things. It's a limited time, because you've done that, right? Like I have, and you've spent those, yes, okay? And so there's a checklist for that conversation, it's part of the process. There's a set of questions we're going to ask on our discovery form and then to unpack the information that was submitted. It's a constant checklist because you know what's going to happen. If you don't have a checklist for that conversation, you will inevitably forget the single most important question you should have asked that client in that conversation, right? Because I do that too. So we need a checklist for that. Two goals for this meeting. Number one, should I even write a proposal for this client? Is this going to be a good client for me? Number two, I need to get all the information from that client that I need in order to create that proposal. So that's our goal in our discovery conversation and once we pass that, then we're going to move down into the next section which is our documents and deposits. So we've decided this is a great client that we want to work with. It's going to be a fun project. So we give them a proposal. So I hate, really hate that I missed Christine's talk in the last hour because she talked about AI and all the goodness and the ways that it can help these things. Hopefully you caught that talk. So our proposal is going to contain a scope of work to let you be very clear on what it is we're going to do, the price to build the site, the price to manage the site. I take a very skinny approach to proposals. I don't like marketing language. Marketing language goes on your website, not in your proposal. That's just friction because people are going to flip to the last page to see the price anyway. And if you haven't sold them by the time you give them a proposal, you haven't done enough work yet. Anyway, that's a whole other call. So the proposal is a scope of work, price to build, price to management, payment terms, payment method, sign on the dotted line. Then we're also going to get a contract or a master services agreement signed. Do not work without a contract. It's a bad deal. So they're going to agree in that contract to your processes that go into building their website. It's going to talk about the specifics of their build, the specifics of management. The contract, by the way, has the rules of the road for every single project. They don't change. The proposal has what's different about this project and what we're going to do. So all of these things, they're also going to give a deposit. You can figure out how you want to do that. So usually at least half of the project up front and it's a non-refundable deposit. So once they give us the documents in the deposit, we're going to move our little guy around the corner here and get into everybody's favorite phase, which is content, right? Now by the way, each of these sections, if we move backwards, that's going to cost money. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. So our content phase is critical. One of my great takeaways from years ago at WordCamp Atlanta was content first. And the phrase that was given in the talk that absolutely unlocked all the things to me was no code before content. You're right. You were in that talk. Yeah, no code before content. Revolutionary to me, because we would do lots of design and things before we got content. And then we'd have trouble with design sometimes. And another little tidbit, I don't think it was from that talk, but from another talk here at WordCamp Atlanta, was design problems tend to be content problems in disguise. So we don't know what we're designing for yet, right? So let's get the content first and the way we do this. And by the way, the way to get content first is not giving the client an open Word document and say here, type your content because they're like, I don't know what to do with this. So first we start with content definition, what needs to be on the website. Then we're going to talk about content architecture. How are we going to, you know, take this content and shape it and put it in certain places and build the way that how the site is going to work as far as content goes. Then we're going to give the client a guide to extract that information. Either they provide or we bring in a writer, depending on the project, but there's a process to do it this way. There's tools for each of these areas that are defined. So once we get the content from the client and they sign off on the content, guess what? If the content changes later, there's an extra charge because we're moving backwards. We don't move backwards without charging more money. That's in the contract. So now we're moving to a design phase where we're going to render maybe a home page, any of the handcrafted inner pages, samples that we might do, a standard text, only one column type page, whatever, maybe what a blog post looks like, you can figure that out. Whatever this particular project needs as far as a design approval, as long as the client has the opportunity to approve the colors and typography and the design language used on the site, there's a design approval form we use that they're going to sign off on this and once it's set, it's set if we go backwards it costs more money. What we don't want is for the client to change their design approach right when we're ready to launch the site because that has happened to me, has it happened to you? We decided we don't like the way all those headers look. We decided we want to change all the fonts everywhere, which you know, all these things are complicated. So if we move backwards it costs money because they've approved it. So now we move into a development phase and in development phase we're building all the things. We're starting off with our base theme and plugin stack which is a single site that we build every other site from. It has all our plugins and it has all our standard settings. Our plugins are licensed already with all, you know, and then you can just replicate that into your new build and it saves you a ton of time. We got a spin up checklist to make that stuff start to happen for a new project. We're going to render the design in the plugin stack. We're going to enter the content. We're going to build the functionality and then we give it to the client to take a look at for review and revision. So there's a certain amount of revision time that's baked into every project and once they do that we move them right over to we're ready to launch. There's a launch approval form they complete that says the scope of work is complete. You have my approval to launch. We're going to send you the final payment and we launch the website using our launch checklist so we don't forget anything because if you don't have a checklist you'll forget things when you launch a website. And then once that happens we're going to drop them into a management bucket where they now live with all of our other clients. This again is another system. We use the acronym Hubs hosting updates backups and security to keep all of our clients taken care of and so we just stack all those clients in our little management system right. And this happens every client every project every time. So when a new client drops into our world they follow the same process. Does that make sense? Okay it's not hard is it? Yes it is. It's really hard. And I'll talk about that. Alright so when you start to look at this idea a business really is a family of systems. So we just talked about our website development system that has various processes within it. Each process is comprised of some combination of tasks tools and templates. We're going to get into that a little bit more in a second. But think of your business as a family of systems. So there's a web development system maybe you have an SEO system a website management system and whatever else you do they're just a bunch of systems. And we are consistent with how we perform our work in these systems every client every project every time. So how do I do that? How do I create these systems in my business? So I'm going to make it as simple as possible. It really just starts with a couple of lists. Two lists. Number one what are all the systems I need to have in my business? What are all the things that I'm doing? What systems do I need to create? And then a list of processes for each one. It all starts with two lists. Now please start with paper not software. AppSumo is not the answer to this problem. Anybody else spend too much money on AppSumo? Okay am I getting a little too close to home? Software here is not the answer. It can be the answer after you've figured out what questions you're asking. But plan your processes first. Get it on paper first. What do I need to create? What are the tasks tools and templates that are involved? And then find a software solution that's going to work to do this. You'll hear people all over the web in our world talking about you should use this solution or that solution or whatever and they're usually selling you something to make this solution or that solution work better. Figure out what you need to build and then find the tool to do it. So let's dig into this first. Let's talk about tasks. So I want a checklist for every task. So when I we did the monster going around the board in the website development system I talked about checklists in a number of cases and that's those are the tasks right? Things that need to happen consistently. A brilliant thing happens when you start to put things in a checklist. There's a great book called The Checklist Manifesto. If you've never read it it's great. There's also a summary of the checklist manifesto that's on Amazon that is like all just just give me the meat and potatoes of the thing. It's that's when I would read if I were you. It takes all the stories out. But if anything you're doing depends on your memory, putting on the cape swooping in to save the day. If anything you're doing depends on your memory take off the cape and put it on a checklist. And don't even worry about making that checklist perfect at first. Just make the list and every time you run the list you can massage the list and move step eight to step three because it makes more sense there. But just write the list first. Write it by the way as if someone else is going to follow it. Which means use videos if you can. Tools like Corina mentioned Loom. Loom is great. Whatever tools you have that can record processes. There's really cool tools that will do this. There's many options out there but just remember process not heroics get stuff out of your head and into a list. And this amazing thing happens when you do that. If you unload and offload all these things out of your head and put it on a list you don't have to remember that stuff anymore. And it's this magic wand that waves. I'm sure somebody with letters after their last name has words for this. But like it frees up your mental bandwidth. And you start to be able to focus better. Because I don't have to think about the next thing to do. It's already there. And then you realize okay if I move step number eight up to step number three then everything else flows better. So you get better and you just revise it as you run it. Alright so that's the past. Let's talk about templates. I want a template for everything in my world that repeats. So how many times have you written that same email to clients. Right. Why not save it. Right. Just save it. How many of you like me have written one of those emails and you worded it like it was it was awesome. Right. You got it like the synonyms are right. It's just the right amount of action and you know empathy and all those things. Save that thing for heaven's sakes. Right. I mean AI makes it a lot easier to write some of those these days but just why not save it. Anything that repeats make it a template if you're going to do it again. Make a template. Never start from scratch again. But here's a thing. This can be overwhelming. So don't try to do everything at once. Like don't make your list of all your systems now after write 82 emails. No, no, no. Just the next time you do the thing save the thing. Right. The next time you do it. Save it. So this what I want to prevent here is overwhelmed because it's really easy to hear a talk like this and think I've got 8000 things I have to do. No. You just have some things you need to do on Tuesday. So save them. So when that comes up again you don't have to do it again. Right. All right. So now let's talk about tools tools. We love tools because we're geeks. I want a standard tool for every process. Standard means I don't change it every 10 minutes. Standard means I don't buy the next app sumo thing that comes around. Unless it's really awesome and then I have a crisis. I'm sure nobody else relates to that. Chris from my team is here and he's laughing at me because we're we're always trying to find a better ticket system. And ticket systems suck. Okay. Anyway. Pick your toolset and stick with it. Like don't don't just change because the next new shiny thing happens. Right. We're still using a theme and plug-in stack that we've used quite a while has had very little changes. And the benefit to that is all the sites we manage use the same theme and plug-in stacks. There's not 800 different plugins doing different. So we know these things. It's easier to manage the site when the updates come in. It's pretty easy to know if they're going to break or not. Right. So don't change things all the time. Standard standardize your tool stack optimize your tool set for your workflow. Resist that new and shiny temptation which I think is just part of the nature of being who we are. So can we do this. Yeah. Right. OK. Now if you want something that might make this a little easier I have a sheet of paper with boxes on it that I call the advanced process generator advanced coaching is my coaching practice. Here's what it looks like. I think it's helpful. OK. And by the way there's a QR code it's in the slides you can download it printed out blank. So what's the name of the process what does the client need to do what do we need to do what are the tasks templates and tools that are involved in this most important part. This process concludes when what happens when the client signs off on the form when we submit this to whatever it has a starting and an ending point. Right. And then there's a spot at the bottom to write out what are the processes what has to happen who's going to do it what needs to happen what resources are involved. This is just a brainstorming canvas right. There's nothing magic about this. I think it's helpful and I still could you put this in a fillable PDF. Yes. But please print this out on paper and take a pen or a pencil if you have a fear of commitment and write the process go to your favorite coffee shop go to your you know wherever you can be productive right stimulating environment quiet environment whatever but get away from the screens and just work through your processes. Brain dump it out if this it works. So here's the qr code. I'll have this up again at the end all the slides and things. I'll look it up for one more second and take a picture take a picture scan the thing. It'll be up again at the end. Okay. Oh they say okay refining your systems. So let me give you a don't miss this point. Let me say that that way. Your system is never going to be perfect. It's just not it's never. It's never going to be perfect. So take a breath. And that's just reality. Okay. So just start. One of my mentors in the WordPress space is my friend Corey Miller and one of his favorite phrases is done is better than perfect. I had to learn that because I'm a perfectionist and my perfectionism has held me back from doing so many things I should have done because they had to be perfect. No no no. Just do it. Done is better than perfect. You can iterate later. Just start just start fill out the forms and start writing your things and saving your templates and just start building your systems. A little bit of a system is better than no system at all. And every day you get a little bit better. Right. So don't let this overwhelm me. Now here's the problem. Geeks tend to get frustrated with this approach because we like everything perfect. And there's just great quote that I found it says anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first. So if you really have in trouble it's fine. Talk to other people in our space. See what they're just you know have conversations bring in a business coach bring in somebody that can help you work through and think through some of these things. But just start and realize it's never going to be perfect. The second thing I've said this earlier but just refine it as you run it. Right. You got to start somewhere and you know it'll get better every time you run through a system like every time we launch a website let's run a systems check. Did this work. Did this break. Did the client love it. Did the client hate it. Don't change everything if there's a problem. You know ask yourself OK this really fell apart is this the exception because the client was a total lunatic or is there really something wrong with this system that we need to fix right. But just do a set run it refine it as you run it make it a little better every time and that it absolutely does work. So I'll tell you systems are hard. They take a lot of work but they are 100% worth it and here's what I want to leave you with before we go to questions. If you took the next six months. And you focused on building systems and processes for your business. How different would your business be. Little bit every day making things a little better adding templates adding tools getting standardized. How much better would your business be in six months if you just started this process. And really the question is how much better would your life be as a result of that. How much less stress would you have because you knew the way things were going how much less you know anxiety would you have about having to swoop in with the right answer because it was a checklist that you started already. How much better would life look if we just started this process and started to build systems. Yeah. My name is Nathan Ingram I'm a growth coach for micro agency owners and the founder of Monster Contracts. There's the QR code and we're ready for questions any questions. Jesse is going to get her steps in. So how often do you get about halfway through the systems and process of development and then kind of panic. I've been working at systems and processes for about six months and you reach these little spots where you're like open word what did I start you know or what did I think it was doing. So I'm just curious how common that is or it's just my case. No. So great question. I think that's pretty common Kate. Let me ask you a question. Are you working on lots of systems at once or just one. She's shaking her head up and down so as to indicate an affirmative answer. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So a lot of times what happens if you get stuck it's because you're doing too many things. Right. So let's work on one system. The primary thing that you do like for us that would be building websites. Right. So let's figure that one out first and get it decent before we start to add something else. I think that'll help. But yeah if you if you get stuck you know there's nothing that we do that's unique like everybody in this room is doing kind of the same thing and you know maybe a few little changes but just talk to people that the WordPress community is great. There's lots of great online communities where there are people who do what we do and just ask our community tends to be pretty friendly. Yeah. Kate did I answer your question or just talk all the way around it. OK. Hi. So my question would be in the military we had some common standard operating for SOP. OK. So would there be any kind of like market or need for like an internal SOP that your company can use it's not on the web. Yeah. So are you asking me if there's room for a product that would solve that problem. OK. OK. Yes. They exist. And in my opinion they I mean I guess if you want to buy one of the you know a project in a toolkit kind of thing there's a lot of great things out there they may save you some of the time but you're always going to have to change it for yourself. You know right. Right. Customizable and maybe a better version would there be a market for that. Yeah. I think yes. And they exist. Not that there shouldn't be more necessarily right. But you know there's people that have all the scripts written and all those things and you know that can save you some time. I've never taken that approach. But because you know I'm going to have to spend time revising in any way it's not going to be in my voice but there are certainly lovers of those products that are out there. Yeah. Hey so great great session. Does this process suck for everyone. Or can it be like fun and awesome because sometimes like I'll use software you mentioned ticketing system of ticketing systems and I've just gotten to the place where I like I don't want to use software that sucks I want to use software that I like to use it's like delightful to use and inspires me to use it and I kind of feel like everybody that tries to implement these things it's like a grueling process of forcing people to use these systems and constantly nagging people follow the process follow the process can this be made fun somehow. Yeah. So there are these delightful people in the world called project managers who love this stuff. Man can you make who self identifies as a project manager in this room. God bless you all. All right. Do y'all enjoy this stuff. Yeah. OK. See. OK. See here's like I had this realization in my business years ago. You know I was constantly six months behind on QuickBooks reconciling accounts and I had this revelation there are people in the world who enjoy reconciling QuickBooks. They're called bookkeepers. I don't understand them but they exist and I can pay them money and they'll solve this problem. And so I don't know I'm being funny but you know it's yes. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. So once one thing Christine and I were just having a conversation before the session started. There's this there you know you want to talk about a market for something be a fractional project manager for micro agencies. I would hate that job but some people would love it. So it was my idea we were doing a lot of traffic factors asking a team member to follow the process sometimes they'll say I want you to follow the process and I also need your help to make it better. Yes. So that way they're not just doing follow the process. Yeah. Yeah. So for the video the comment was involve your team if you have a team involve your team in the process to make it better. If you're a solo that's a little harder if you have any team whatsoever you know let the team member build the process or you just kind of start it and let the team member fill it out because usually they're going to do it better than you anyway. Yeah. Thanks so much Nathan a quick question about content. I think that's the bane of all of our existence is when you start on a project everybody's all excited and then the month goes by and then you're still waiting and waiting and sending nagging emails and is there some way to I mean do you literally not start anything on a website until all content is organized? Yes. Well virtually always yes there are certain projects that have technical requirements where we did some of that first there's reasons but in virtually every project yes I want all not only the words but the pictures the videos the PDFs yes. And so one of the dreamy things I said at the beginning was what if delays on content never bothered you again there's a process that says when you start the project it's a 50% upfront and you can you can solve like why do we hate being delayed on content because we don't get paid by the client right? Okay well what if you solve that problem with the process and the process is 50% down 25% is due 30 days later the last 25% is due at launch or 30 days after that whichever comes first and if you want to take a year to get me your content that's on you I'm paid if you delay longer than a year maybe we renegotiate the price because our prices went up but those are things that can be solved with a payment process to your point content like that's a whole other talk right but content client first of all most clients are not qualified to provide content for the website right it's just not their thing and so they get white white page syndrome and they can't figure out what it needs to be so that's why a content definition is such an important piece at the beginning of this is what we need here's some questions to think about to supply some of this or you know maybe the process is we bring in a content writer for X number of dollars extra because you've been hung up on this for two months how much money have you lost over the last two months because your website's terrible so let's just give a content writer one two three however many hundreds or thousands of dollars it takes to come in and sit down with you and extract from you this content and put it into some format for the web yeah but it's yeah it's a challenge so I struggle with timeline so I see your whole process let's say the content is complete you go into design mode design mode technically you plan for a long iteration including a couple iterations of that design so the design is in progress you know you got your copy that's the structure around the design and client comes back and says oh we need a little time to think about the content and how it's structured around the design so at this point it's about two weeks they have two weeks left or we have two weeks left before we go into development mode so how do you and always they go over the timeline for the design so you're shortening the time for the development and that's the problem that I face a lot because development need their time so how do you talk to the client or explain hey we're getting into overtime in this phase it's going to take more money or you need to make a decision now how do you yeah so is your question there's a hard launch date and we're running out of time to hit okay great okay so as part of again this is process in the beginning in the checklist of questions we ask is there a hard launch date if there is then in the proposal are some milestone dates got to have content in by this day you got to have design approved by this date in order for us to launch on this date if you miss any of those milestone dates we can't guarantee a launch on that date so the you know the anxiety is now off of my shoulders in place to where it belongs which is on the client's shoulders that's probably not a I think there's more there yeah you still want to have a hard launch on the development you can develop it in three weeks well now you're going into development straight well okay so can't the question so for the video the question is that if they still want to keep that launch even if they've missed a deadline this is where your contract comes in it the contract is a good a good balance of expectations and consequences right so if you didn't meet the expectation of approval we can't just wave a magic wand and make this happen so in order for us to hit our launch date our developers have to work overtime which means there's a rush fee of an extra billion dollar amount here to make that happen or we can push the launch date but this is where it's so important to have a contract that spells out these processes and what happens because then it's not I'm being a bad person by making you pay more money it's not we agreed to this it's in the document so the dot the contract becomes the basis of my communication with the client on this and I'm happy to chat more about that I think I think there's a lot more in your question that I think that wasn't a hypothetical situation so kind of address this problem in my processes also so I'm an IT project manager so I'm a project manager so in project management we have a concept called the eye and triangle right so we look at it we evaluate three different things time, resources, and money right if you wanted to go fast we need more money and more resources you want less resources it's going to take more time so when I work on these projects and I have projects similar to yours where they want to keep a firm launch date but they delay I always have to let them know great we can keep your launch date but I've got to bring on additional resources which are going to cost you more money so do you want it fast and ugly and not working or like how do you want the output of your yeah it's good fast cheap pick two yeah there's a great there's a website that does that if you Google it it's really cool like you try to pick three and it moves one out it's really great Jesse's going to run I wanted to go back to the topic of templates you had said one of my things was how do you store and store in a really good searchable way for the templates you created man okay so solve that problem and you're the next WordPress millionaire seriously the best we've got is Google Docs and we don't like it anybody got a solution for that notion notion wicking which is just like a knowledge based website that we use internally and has a default WordPress search function nice I really like closer here comes mine not that April needs a microphone because yes uh... I really like closer uh... this basically built for documentation and uh... we have like all of our different sections of our business separated out it's been very very helpful anyway we have time for one final question in the end I had a question that's common for documentation yeah you just have to understand github yeah but yeah github for I saw a talk that I did using github as a like a note-taking thing like that is fantastic and I will never do that but I mean if you're a developer you love github probably