 How's everybody doing tonight good? All right. Everybody can hear me in the back All right Still trying to catch my breath. I ran a 5k this morning. So give everybody a second name get their seats Alrighty Before we get started just a little bit about me. My name is Adam Susie I'm a wordpress developer sometimes now as it because I'm now the CEO of dinosaur iceberg, which is an Orlando based agency But I'm also the chief marketing officer and a fill-in bartender at my family's restaurant called granddaddies And that's a lot of what I'm going to be talking talking about today so One thing we we all love about client relations Because this job would would be great if it wasn't for the customers At the end of the day though it is all about them because the customer is always a right it's the most cliche thing in the world and If you talk to if you talk to Randall from clerks He's going to say the customer is always a colorful word, but at the end of the day, especially in this business The site is their baby not yours, and you Especially developers have a hard time getting over that because it's my code. I know I created it I gave I gave birth to it, but it belongs to someone else and you have to remember that When push comes to shove you may make make a recommendation and you use the term it is my professional recommendation But at the end of the day, it's their choice They may want to use comic sans. You know, it's a bad idea. It's worse than papyrus But it's still that if they insist on it for whatever reason It's at the end of the day They're right even when they're wrong. They're right Now Sometimes they want to make a change But it's maybe it's out of scope. Maybe it's something that you've already built this and we're you know We're at the end of the project and suddenly they're like, you know what I know my color scheme was you know Primary colors now I've decided everything's neon because we've just changed our branding Now you have to go back and do Redo like ten hours worth of work to fix everything. You shouldn't just do that for free Changes are okay But they come with the cost Even when it when it seems like it's in scope if it's gonna something that's gonna take you a whole bunch of time I mean ten hours. That's a day. That's over a day's worth of work or if you're like me half a day's worth of work so You want to make sure that you're getting your money's Your money's worth as well because your your time means something and they they should have to pay for that Beyond that you want to make sure that you're projecting a positive and image and energy Kind of like I'm not doing right now because I'm so nervous Your appearance really matters not just the way you dress but the way you present yourself when you're talking to a client This is something a huge thing that I learned when I was it when I worked at Disney Everyone jokes about like do they really write people up for not smiling enough and the fact is yes, they do But there's a reason for it When you're walking around Disney and you may be having a bad time But you keep ceiling seeing all these smiling happy people that are working there even though you know that their job suck You start going well, maybe this maybe today's not going so bad just because Enthusiasm is contagious Why do you think so many people start? Their presentations and their talks with how's everybody doing today and they're all jumpy and happy and excited It gets everyone to feel better and suddenly they're in a good mood no matter What's just happened suddenly they're feeling they're feeling good Even if it's for five seconds but that five seconds can make all the difference in how they perceive what you're about to say especially When things go wrong What I caught the the end of one of the talks before When I first got here and they were talking about being in the wise mind And I thought that would it's a very except pretty much what I'm talking about here Client emails you everything is blown up if you're just like well that sucks They're not gonna handle that well that's gonna make them freak out even more than they already are But if you're like no, it's all good. Everything's fine. We're gonna take care of this. I'm right here with you We're a team. Everything's gonna be fine. They're gonna suddenly calm down feel better Keep trying to tell myself that might right now calm down feel better. Everything's gonna be fine Every custom customer ever is gonna ask you something that you've probably already asked them and they said no, I'm fine Like can I get some mayo for my sandwich? I've lost count of how many times I would ask someone when taking an order. Is there anything else you'd like on your sandwich? No, I'm good. I dropped the sandwich off. Oh, could I get a side of mayo? There have been times where I said Like I recognized the customer for having asked it a previous visit Would you like mayo on your sandwich? No, I'm fine. I dropped the sandwich off Could I get some mayo? They're always gonna forget something they actually really need like hosting You're like, oh, yeah, I That's why I always ask about hosting at the very beginning of a conversation of a conversation with a client and They're like, oh, yeah, I don't have that yet. Who do you recommend? I've got a couple of recommendations. I won't talk about them just in case Bias or anything like that, but You got to make sure that you think about the common questions and prepare your answers Bringing this back into the restaurant context think about you go to a McDonald's They actually are really good with their suggestive selling techniques it everyone knows about would you like fries with that? That's that's the famous one What you may not have noticed and maybe it's because I go to McDonald's way too much They've shifted a little bit especially when they come to you get an extra value me instead of just asking like oh What size would you like they ask you would you like a coke instead of just saying what would you like to drink? Would you like a coke because a? McDonald's has a marketing relationship with Coca-Cola, so they're going to push the primary product. That's part of their job But also they know most people are probably going to order a coke Even to the point where the last time I was there The guy didn't even bother to ask me what I wanted to drink. He just gave me a coke That I was actually that's taken it a little bit too far You never just want to set somebody up like oh, I like this hosting company, so I'm gonna go ahead and set it I've set up your account. Everything's good What do you mean? It's 45 dollars a month. Oh You mean that wasn't in your budget? Yeah, don't go that far, but have a couple recommendations So if you know it's a perfect The dichotomy of the two two hosting companies WP engine starts at $30 a month if your clients entire budget for the project is a thousand dollars You're not gonna recommend WP engine. There's nothing against WP engine It's just you know, they're probably not gonna be able to afford it So you're gonna want to make sure you have a backup option even if WP engine is your go-to source because they're a great company You want to make sure that you have a backup No matter even even if it's even if it's something that you know That's only like three or four dollars a month have that available to you And I always remember that you could still afford a doctor if you bought a PC I'm pretty sure Bill Gates said that and please tell me somebody gets that reference Epic rap battles of it. Okay. I figured David would but okay, so More than anything this is this is the hardest lesson my family's restaurant has actually learned because we're in a very small town Your market determines your success our restaurant has actually Especially the last few months has really struggled because the town itself is going through some struggles the people that live in the town have been hit harder by the economy than Even though like most of the economy is improving things are not so great in this small town and Even though we're right outside Orlando and Orlando is actually doing pretty well this small town called Harmony is Actually filled with people that they bought their houses really cheap because of the economic downturn And now that property taxes have gone up and they're starting to get a little bit buried They don't go out to eat nearly as much as they did even a year ago That's not good when you're the one of two restaurants in town and you were a lot you rely on those people so if People can't afford To go out they're not going to they're not going to intentionally overspend There are a lot of potential clients not all of them can afford your prices, which is why you have to think about we could have a whole seminar on Properly pricing a project But at the end of the day you can only charge what people will actually pay you So you could decide I'm charging ten thousand dollars minimum great You're gonna go out of business if Nobody in your market can actually afford that if every there may be a hundred different clients all wanting your services every one of them has a maximum budget of Three grand if you're charging ten they're not gonna pick you Because they can't afford you they're not gonna put themselves out of business just to keep you in business And that's it My slides are actually already up and I think it's been tweeted as long as Twitter's auto tweeting thing worked I'm at Adam Susie on Twitter. My website is Adam Susie calm my company's website is not done So please don't go to it. I Think you might have time for questions. I went faster than expected. Anybody. No, I'll be right on that I'll play I'll play. All right. Oh There we go a lot of it has to before you go into business you should have a pretty good understanding what your market is When you're coming up with your initial pricing, that's not so It also works in the positive way because if you notice that basically every time you send out a contract or a proposal They're signing without asking any questions and without complaining that all this seems like it's a little too much You're not charging enough so It were it does work both ways, but when you're when you're first looking at things you want to make sure that Like look at you know was it what kind of businesses are you going after if you're going after startups? They're gonna have limited budgets, but if you're going after enterprise clients They usually have a budget for things The one exception that this it's a weird. Maybe it's a weird Orlando thing. I don't know about the rest of Florida There's a huge hospital chain down here called Florida Hospital They seem like they're a really big corporation and you know in one sense. They are because they do make a lot of money But the way they run their business is very different than me Most people realize in that each individual hospital, especially on the marketing side has its own little budget and In that sense they're run very much like small businesses So at my old agency that before I went freelance and then founded this company One of the things that we did was we did a lot of work on small hospital sites Usually internal stuff and we're thinking they're Florida Hospital They of course they've got the budget for this When we after we did a couple of them because they were really happy we just we were in the process of raising our rates They were the first people to say well if you guys do this we can't afford you anymore So we thought they would be able to afford it and they just they were honest They said if you guys change your prices, we're gonna go somewhere else So you have to just kind of be aware listen talk to your your potential clients talk to your your current clients if they're like hey if It's been it's been a year since we've got read on your site if we were to start the site today Pretend we never work together if we were gonna start today. How much would you be willing to pay? That'll help give you a much better gauge of what your markets what your markets willing to do for you Okay, a lot of it is It's going out there and talking to people like I was saying is Talk to other developers in your area. Are you more of a developer designer? Okay, talk to other designers in your area go to go to the local meet-ups Be mindful that depending on who goes to those meet-ups You may have a lot of freelancers versus a lot of agency people or People that have been established for a long time can charge a lot more than someone that's new It's just the reality of the business No, even if your skill you may be infinitely more talented and because I've seen Brand new people that are infinitely more talented than people that have been doing this for 10 15 years That's just some people are just really good at what they do and they've just never put themselves out there so you have to be aware that Just because you've been doing it for a long time doesn't mean you can you can necessarily Markets tend to value experience more way more than they should over talent Talent eventually was out in the end But at least when you're starting out you kind of have to get your feet wet a little bit and build yourself up that's Marks talk about building your brand How you're you don't own your reputation at the end of the day that's part of it because you're new nobody knows you You don't have a reputation, but this person's been doing it for 15 years So make sure when you talk to people you keep that in mind as well That's an excellent point. She's just so in case for the recording what she's talking about is To get started a great way to do it is to become basically a white label service for a smart for an agency where? You're never actually directly interacting with the clients. You won't for you yourself You're only managing one client, but they're doing the managing for five ten fifteen clients Exactly it helps you keep your low prices It's also a really great way to to grow your business to the point where my my new company is actually comes directly out of that Relationship I was doing dev work for a company that had recently lost their developer They were very good with marketing, but they they needed someone to build the sites that they were trying to sell We enjoyed our working relationship so much that we decided to go into business together So it's a great way to it's a great way to not only meet new people But also help grow your reputation with a little bit of a safety net as well That's a great question. The question was is it better to approach local franchisees versus or the parent company? Especially if you're a freelancer, you're gonna want to go with the local franchisers But also be aware that they may not have the final say We actually as we were putting together our company We were we had a chance for a really big project that if if we started as as for people Everyone as a partner in the agency we would have immediately had to hire at least one person if not two if we got this contract The problem was we were a tiny upstart company competing literally against the wix.com So when the court is well even though we had a great in with the the person we were talking to at the end of the day they Their corporate structure Felt much more comfortable dealing with an established company with a huge name regardless of their quality So it's for them if the name Especially when you're dealing with it with bigger bigger companies like that name really means something Because they also feel like they can utilize that some Leverage a partnership or maybe find some other way to work together that saves them even more money It depends. Um, I'm not a lawyer. So I can't care. I can't really speak Definitively on this but it probably depends on the franchisee and what they're allowed to do Because they may execute a contract with you and then you find out after use you bill them and they disappear and you You know, it's obviously worst-case scenario, but You know that they disappear and they don't pay you and you go after them and like you try to go after the corporate You know like let's say you're dealing with the McDonald's franchise You're going after corporate McDonald's and McDonald's is like we didn't authorize them to do this They never had the right to get into this contract. So there's nothing we can we can do for you So you have to be very careful when it when it comes to that make sure that and really this is the case for any Contract relationship you get into is make sure that the person but that's putting their name on the contract is allowed to Because if they if they're not someone can overrule you and suddenly you're dealing with a whole different set of legal problems And you're still out money. Yes The question was the two greatest lessons. I wish I would I'd known before I started the first one is Make sure that you have a lot of money saved up Because the beginning of Starting any business the beginning of going freelance I I took a huge risk when I did go freelance because I knew I had some stuff lined up But if I hadn't I would have been in big trouble because I'm not the best person at putting myself out there and just trying to sell Once if you give me a warm introduction, I'll talk their ear off, but I have this innate fear of talking to people that's it's a miracle. I'm still I haven't passed out so Make sure that you have a nice nest egg that can pay your bills Otherwise, you're gonna be like me sometimes where I'm going I don't know how I'm gonna pay the mortgage this month just because it's been a slow month in sales or I know March April and May are awesome because we've already booked these clients We're gonna be invoicing them on March 1st April 1st and May 1st But it's February and I haven't gotten paid in six weeks That and those things will have there's weird dry spells Last year when I was going through this I Got ten leads in January From from just my basic contact form without even trying I didn't get any the rest of the year So it's it's really weird how how things work the second lesson is Also, make sure that you have projects lined up to get started because you'll find Again, it's a whole separate talk but depression is hell everybody anyone that's been through it knows that a very easy way to get yourself stuck in Depression is to be a freelancer that doesn't have work It's a very scary period So if you know like if you're thinking about leaving and leaving a job make sure you kind of put yourself out there like get used to Like work at night and do a few things on the side and make sure you're used to like you understand how the you're gonna run a freelance business And you're okay with how that all works Because if you don't you're gonna get overwhelmed by all these new things that you have to do like when you're working for a company You never have to worry about an accountant or a lawyer or what happens when somebody pays with a fake credit card Which happened to me and I ended up having to pay ten grand back to the people that it was stolen from So Yeah, you asked for two third one that your clients Make sure that they are who they say they are my general rule My general rule now is I will not work with someone that I cannot at least see in person on via Skype and Have multiple conversation with to make sure that they are a real person that is going to pay me with real money That is theirs and not something they stole Because it is a nightmare to go through especially now with the the advent of the chip card has made it hell for businesses It's great for consumers, but it's hell for businesses Hmm The biggest way the conversation is the huge is the biggest part Obviously Google them make sure you can actually find out who they are Is it the same way like handle it like you would you were going to a new doctor or a new a new lawyer or an accountant? Like the same way you would vet the people you're gonna trust your personal information with your do You're do you want to do the same thing because at the end of the day Because the customer is always right and they're the one paying you if they disappear or worse They pay you with fake information You're the one that's left holding the bag either because you've done a bunch of work You're not going to get paid for or worse you've done a bunch of work You're not only not going to get paid for but you actually have to pay for the privilege of doing the work that you didn't aren't going to get paid for to the kind of different questions, but First one was do I do credit checks? I probably should But they can be expensive and they're complicated and we don't deal with the kind I don't deal with the level of client that I'm really that worried about it But maybe after that hard lesson, I probably should be a second question was do I use PayPal? I have had one client that requested it It was a little bit awkward because I didn't want to do it because it just made dealing with quick books Kind of a pain in the butt at first, but once I learned how to how to integrate it with quick books It's like any other thing. So I don't it doesn't really bother me Yeah, it can be the problem is when you're first starting out PayPal has this weird thing where When there's not a directed goods transaction like oh, hey, I got this product like eat like it does on eBay they will hold your money for up to 21 days and the client has the ability to determine whether how long that lasts because They can say like oh, yes, I've received these services. It's great Go ahead and give them the money, but they can also I think turn around and say no This was a huge problem. Don't give them my money and PayPal tends to always back the the the clients not the the business in Part because of all the horrible things that happened in the early days of eBay where people got scammed That's a that's a very good question. The question was what would I recommend if if you're dealing just through PayPal? I'd probably say is don't but Sign contracts is the is the most important part. Yeah, but um, I My general rule with everything that I did when I were ideal of clients is I Try to do everything through email once I've met them Even phone conversations. I send a recap email like within minutes usually and say like here's all the things that we talked About did I miss anything and I basically I put them in a position where they have to confirm that yes Everything that you said is correct because it it's a written document of these are all the things That actually these are the things that we discussed So that way the more documentation you have in general when something goes wrong the better it is for you But even so some comp some like PayPal like sometimes the DAC is the deck is just stacked against you And they're going to defend the the client no matter what I know I think it's American Express When somebody Distributes a charge they automatically side with Side with the client don't care about the business is all it's why a lot of companies even restaurants Don't take American American Express because they know people like I have a friend that runs a restaurant He refuses to take American American Express for that exact reason because too many people have called and gone back on charges Even though he has the signed receipt Because in a restaurant all you need is a signed receipt that says yes this person ordered all of these things they paid They signed for it. They paid for it But for whatever reason American Express doesn't care good Still got a little bit of time if anybody has any other questions Yep Yeah, the only the one client that I do have that I take PayPal from the only reason I do is because it's An established client from a friend of mine that he confirmed this guy always pays on time There's never a problem and he'd had him as a client for two and a half years Before he just became too busy and had to pass him on to someone else That's the only reason I even took him as a client any other questions. All right. Thank you