 All right, everybody. Thanks for coming. I always get put after one of the most amazing speakers first was Chris Lemma And it was James Laws Man, it's not fair. It's not fair if you're somebody who is starting an agency raise your hand If you already have a well-established agency raise your hand, please leave I'm just kidding So this talk is called the seven lessons and I'm notorious for coming to a word camp having my presentation finished Talking to people at the word camp and then changing it the night before I Thought of that last night and some friends and I were sitting around the table You know what also just comes down to just add some zeros to the end of the invoice now Maybe don't do that. No, maybe add some more zeros. No, maybe we shouldn't do that either Maybe we should just keep adding more zeros and just see where this takes us. Oh MFG Why do we get into this in the first place and it sort of just comes down to let's get a plan, right? One thing I like to ask I just where I get sort of theoretical with some of this stuff is who are we and where do we want to go? How many people just want to build a boutique agency? 6 12 20 people maybe the max that's where I'm at six person shop I really like to have control over the team the size of the team How many people want to build sort of a high-powered agency 10 up web dev? Nice awesome Where else does anybody I didn't see all the hands raised so what other agencies aren't awesome two people? so a little bit of a warning and This might resonate with some of you is I'm not a developer not a designer. I Don't play one on TV. I grew up selling cars and my co-founder of my agency is my father who spent 40 years selling cars so I say this because there's An emotional thing. There's a can I really do this thing, right? So when I started my agency so did Jake Goldman of 10 up He and I were working on the same projects at the same time. We helped each other out a little bit Jake Goldman has a hundred and sixty people working for him. I have six, right? So I say that because I want folks to realize that you could be like me and feel like boy I just I just don't measure up to the Jake goldman's or the web devs of the world and that's okay I also say this because this is from my own perspective my own perspective You might not use everything I say today in your own agency, but I hope you do. I know I said there's seven lessons Really, there's only one for me and it's building the relationship with the client. It's not the features It's not we're using WordPress or not or we're using rest API or not. What theme are we going to use? All the business 90% of the business I should say 90% of the business is all built off of the relationship that we've nurtured with our clients Still the number one way to get business for us is word of mouth referral. They liked us. We like them They referred us to another another client in their vertical So it's super important To pursue the relationship how I'm going to structure this talk today is I'm going to show you a slide deck that I actually present to clients who I know will have pricing problems with our Proposal right We're still in the range of 5050 where people aren't just saying yes Here's our money back the brink struck up to our agency door take whatever you want and we'll just build the project Unfortunately doesn't work that way. I still have to Hustle eat the streets knock on doors and a lot of folks are adverse to spending money. What a big surprise and The talk that I actually give to my incoming client is hello. My name is profit, right? We explain to them That we're a profitable agency and why that's important and what that means to them sometimes What I'll do is if we have a local client Is I'll do this Very similar to this graph So if I have this dollar 80% of this dollar Goes to building my clients product, right? So I will tell the client when we price this stuff Like James was talking about if you were here earlier all the overhead marketing expenses Payroll all of that stuff is built into our price a lot of folks don't get that for whatever reason I don't understand why just because we're punching pixels. They don't think there's a real cost But I'll say that 20% of this goes to profit 20 cents goes to profit right it varies of course for project But to set to sell the idea of we're real business, right? There are real costs associated with this and if you drive down my profitability There are certain areas there we get to a point where we cannot be a run a profitable business Which means we can't support you we won't be around any longer, right? Again, 90% of our clients need us there after the project is done That's actually where we make the most business that's where we make the most money support contracts ongoing support iterative iterative development So I'll explain to my client is the more scope creep we get or the more Diverse we get away from the original Purpose of the project the more you're bringing down my profit Right. It's so obvious But so not obvious to clients a lot of the time So I like to have this discussion to just explain to them The more you bring this down the harder it is for us to work together. Are we a square peg in a round hole? Do we even fit our? Model of business your team my team your project can can we handle this project? We we like to spend time to make sure that they understand that we have a good rule we can have a good relationship and Everything is thumbs up before we even get to scoping the work right and when I do this like I said I grew up in car sales and you know When people can either afford something where they can't or they're not going to be the right fit on the car That they're purchasing they really don't like the color So this comes over time that you kind of hone this skill, but it's so important that You don't listen to clients and they say well how fast can you get this done? How cheap can we do this? Or my favorite is my last developers left on me I you know it was their problem. They just didn't want to do the project anymore. Those are all red flags Right, so immediately you start to say things like I need to add more zeros to the end of this estimate Right, so will we be a good fit? We'll be able to communicate right some some clients will Want phone support they don't want to do email right they don't want to be put into a project management system Right if these if this is not how you've structured your business be wary of that make sure that All lines of communication are open So a lot of people we talk about a lot of folks who talk about project management We talk about sort of all the major milestones well You're gonna make sure you do discovery right so you get a good estimate and you can plan the project correctly in the Middle sometimes we have to make sure that we're doing the work correctly we're presenting wireframes the right way We're doing q&a the right way make sure we're hitting goals And the deliverable you know do we actually get the project right can we train them correctly? Do we do it on time? But what I found over the course of eight years of doing this is everything Everything that goes wrong happens in the middle of those milestones right and the number one way to squash that is To keep open lines of communication with the customer because a lot of times we'll go yeah It's a milestone meeting we finished the mock-ups. What do you think? Oh, it's great. Just change this color blue to this color blue Okay, we'll be back We'll talk to you in a week and then week goes by and they were they're wondering hey What's going on a actually doing the work right it's filling these gaps I don't have a perfect method for it, but it's filling these gaps with stand-up meetings Envision app is a great app that we use to demonstrate our mock-ups and the client can sort of iterate on top of it But keeping these knowing that these channels these pockets in the project is where a lot of communication is lost This is my favorite slide and One that really sort of opens up the eyes to the customer is here's what we see in a project right? So we see the intake we see the discovery we want to learn their business who's on their team What is their process like then there's the actual work like we got to get it done right? Developers and designers and project managers have to be deployed on this project to actually get it done Then there's the testing browser testing feature testing Q&A walk-through training And then there's a long-term support or then there's a long term which is support Will we be around 30 days 60 days 9 days a whole year to continue to iterate on whatever this project is and all the While the client only sees the leaky faucet right why can't I just hire somebody to fix this thing and you can be often on your way so this is the big Birds-eye view of what really changes the perception of how valuable a project is somewhere in the middle of this there was the balancing act of Project management what the client wants what they actually need and what are the goals of the project right? That's the number one thing that we try to outline in every project. What is the goal right? Because mr. Or mrs. Executive. It's not the color blue that you like or how big your logo is It's the goal of the project So if you're trying to get more conversions trying to sell more product trying to grow an email list Those are the real goals for the users of the website But all the while we're balancing, you know the corporate decision or the group decision of the color blues and the logos And that kind of thing and that sometimes will their wants will sometimes outweigh the needs So we try to let them know up front with a slide like this that we're really doing this for the project for the user not just Because your nieces nephews cousins next door neighbor who builds websites said this is the way it should be done and that looks better It's also important to let them know that software and development. It's never a hundred percent We're never going to get to this level where Everything is checked off all the eyes are crossed all or all the eyes are dotted all the teas are crossed because it's Versions right it's iterations. They have lofty goals that you simply can't afford right now So if we're doing this in phases or if we're doing this in sort of iterative development We're letting them know that not everything is complete right out of the gate not everything should be right Every sometimes they'll come to us with a plan that's going to change halfway through They're going to go into a new sales cycle and things are going to change for their business So they shouldn't expect it to be future proof, which is a great line that we get a lot right? We want to build a site that's future proof. We don't want to invest in it anymore We just want to build it once and it's done. It's impossible. All right. It's impossible. We're always going clients will always need to reinvest Something that's never 100% either is the engagement with the relationship with the client People come and go in your agency people come and go in their business, right? Making sure that they know it's human beings dealing with human beings not just robots, right? Not just laborers Which leads to? Trusting both sides right and that's the number one thing that we underline in a project in a discovery in a presales call And I just ask them. Do you trust us right? Do you like what I'm saying? Do you like the referrals that we've had from past clients that I've put you in connection with? Because if you don't trust us, it's going to be a hard road, right? I mean, I don't know about you, but we don't finish large multi-scale sites in one week. It's 90 days It's a hundred and twenty days even the smallest five-page site can go 120 days that's a long-term relationship, right? We're going to be talking to each other for a while Let's hope we like each other right? Let's hope we trust each other some of the ways we combat this Does anybody have an onboarding plan? Gonna get an onboarding plan So what I've walked through right now is a slideshow that is part of the onboarding plan And when we onboard customers to our agency, we're letting them know how we operate right again I've seen ninety percent of freelancers and boutique agencies That somebody sends an RFP out we go and we build the proposal We say it's twenty thousand dollars. We email it to them and we say good luck. Let me know what you think That sucks right that sucks not only because I came from car sales where you're actually closing the deal in an office I take your keys. You can't go you can't leave right now. Just kidding But you you need to have those discussions It's not fair to your business in the time that you put in because can't writing contracts and proposals sucks It sucks So why spend all that time and just email it off and say you know good luck Let me know let me know when you want to send me the deposit right? So you need to have this onboarding system It's also important that a majority of customers don't know what's going on behind the scenes right I made the reference to the leak the leaky faucet before in a plumber people can just go to the plumber and just watch them Do it right I can see what you're doing right that doesn't happen in our world although I received an RFP the other day and the Requirement was over-the-shoulder screen sharing and there's no way that's gonna happen And the list of requirements was it had to be like seven paragraphs with bullet points And but number one was over-the-shoulder screen sharing and I said no, thank you And he said thanks for your honesty Can you tell me why and I said because nobody's gonna do over-the-shoulder screen sharing with you on the project Right. It's not gonna happen So we're opening up the eyes of What goes on behind the scenes? How many people have solid contracts god I better see those hands now you're all afraid you just want to raise hands, right? so I Should take a step back and say that Like business this is all agile right this whole process this onboarding contract building This is stuff that you have to realize is always in motion for yourself, right? I've had I don't know 10 contract versions Over there our eight-year span like this stuff is always changing because I'm always Failing at one thing realizing oh shit. I should put that in a contract, right? So I don't get burned again In my favorite one. I don't know if he's in the room No, but I Added this thing called the pause clause does anybody have a pause clause nice So the pause clause is when the client doesn't respond in X amount of days There's a charge right Obvious right so obvious something that we went years without doing and one of the main and that's one of the major things Right. We've been hit a lot of times. I'm sure many of you have again staff changes Budget changes or they're just like I don't have time for this anymore. You're just the web people We don't really care. We have bigger plans going on here, right? So a pause clause and a solid contract is super important and the pause clause is by the way Arbitrary numbers if they don't respond in I think we have 14 days Around a certain milestone that if they don't respond in that in that range There's an upstart charge again 500 bucks thousand bucks whatever it might be to re-kick and restart the project yes and it's Right they sign it And it's it's also you know You're keeping it's overhead right it's overhead on the business So if you're if you have a project sitting around you have staging environments yet github accounts You have to mentally keep that in mind people who fall off like we've had clients fall off 6090 days Especially over the holidays It's it's impossible to just like keep that stuff and then they call you up and say we're ready to go again Holidays are over all back from vacation. Let's kick this project Start get this project started again. There's got to be a cost Involved that because you're pushing milestones away from us. We're not getting paid This is my favorite and this is something that does anybody have a belief document Very easy. This could be the simplest thing for your onboarding Process and these are the things that you just believe in as an agency so like all the stuff and discussing how we need to be profitable because We need to survive and we need to be there for you when you need another project bill The belief document sort of outlines all those things It could be one sheet ours as a slideshow like I said with the profit talk that talks about our business Talks about us as as founders a father and son team. How long we've been in business has some client testimonials in there Talks a little bit about their project really just gives an entry to You know customers that just come in cold leads or leads that contact you We always follow up with our belief document And there's a question in there that says like, you know, have you read our favorite quote, which is Same one that Corey Miller uses If you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together that kind of thing We say did you get our favorite quote and they're like no what quote? I'm like you didn't read the belief document. Did you and they're like, oh, I guess I didn't get that far So we kind of use that as a gauge to see how Communicate communicative these clients will be This one's kind of cool. We work with building cuffs. We've worked with building a project charter With our clients. It's just a loose 50,000 foot view of where we think the project will go in a given time span So again, if it's a 90 day prior 60 day project We'll sort of scope out and get them to sign off on the milestones that they'll also be responsible for right gives them a Global view of hey in four weeks Design mock-ups will be done. This is where we think we're going to be in the project It's not a hard date, but do these meetings make sense to you? Mr. Or Mrs. Customer Do you think you'll be available at these points to have these discussions and more importantly? Will you have the decisions of these discussions done by the next project, right? So we bill in Sprints so we'll do sprints and they'll have to pay their invoice before we proceed to the next sprint Right. So that's how we could sort of Factor in our invoicing. This is just a great way to get them to understand where we'll be going Coms communication. That's the most obvious thing sort of what this whole thing is about It's being as transparent and communicative to these clients as possible. It's super important. We use We used to use base camp then we used to use a sauna Then we used to use something else that lasted like 30 days and we couldn't we couldn't take it anymore But now we're just using a fresh desk, which is a support desk Software and you just get a ticket number and we just track all of that in that email They can log in they can see the paper trail of communication share files and all that stuff just a great sort of Email-based communication tool right simple. It's easy. It works for us Then we get to the magic bullet the thing that does it all The number one ingredient in the secret sauce nope because there isn't right and When I go back to talk of earlier in the discussion was what kind of agency are we boutique high-powered? Who do we specialize in right so when we started? seven eight years ago We said we did everything we did photography we did videography we did graphic design we did business cards Yes, right and websites, of course right We printed out this is back when like people were still like what's Facebook like I can make a business on Facebook So we printed out these things and we did social media management. That was like our How do we do a cash grab to build a business right throw the fishing net out there see what we can scoop back in So I think we did like four posts a month for $60 It's just like stupid money right and we thought we would build a business that way And we couldn't over the years we finally formed the team to specialize in WordPress. That's where we started to devote our time Now we specialize in higher ed traditional publishers like magazines and newspapers and business to business accounts and Over the course of time you wish that there is a magic bullet to say no to work But this is agency life, right? agency life isn't as Beautiful as it always seems to me. It's that's the game the game is finding out what you and your team can really rock out at and Pursuing that particular client building a business around those specialties It's why that you can it's why you can sign contracts for $1500 websites or $15,000 websites or $50,000 websites There's a dynamic in there of selling understanding your client Knowing the way that they speak and knowing what you can really do That makes sense My name is Matt. I do something with a podcast on mat report calm and my agency is locom studio I'm happy to answer any questions sure We have a clause in our contract again We're building everything on WordPress. We're not building any proprietary software except for a select few But until the contract is complete fully paid Then we reserve the rights to hold any of the custom or custom code that we've created We don't have anything specific for content But in the contract is once they're fully paid everything is released to the client But we're not doing anything proprietary in the sense that we would hold back anything else That's a great question Again all of our like the themes and everything we publish is GPO if they decide to do that that's totally up to them There's nothing that we're doing to sort of stop that most client most of our clients would never go into that position although We where it is a concern, which again why these things are always dynamic and kind of go back to these things is If they move on from us Now the the new agency has our work, right? And we've been in positions before where they've taken our you know our great code And they don't know what the hell they're doing with it And they're like how did you build that like what plug-in did you use and like we're not using a plug-in dude like This is all custom coded So it is a concern for an agency that might take that in the future, right? So it's great concern. I don't know how to solve it yet Yes Yeah, so where does the pause clause come in a majority of the time? It has been from when they just simply disappear and a lot of it has to do with again change of changing of the guard in their company and People like you know our point of contact or a lot of marketing people Damn you all right, right because as soon as the holidays come forget it, right? These folks like they've already you know their budget set. There's no problem and now it's the holiday season So they're deadlines that it's not really super important to them, right? And that's just really where it comes in. It's just that they don't they don't follow up on the timeline, right? And it's just not fair to us to have that pushed out, right? So that's where it comes into effect absolutely Right, I mean this is like Right, and that's why I call it the game right because I don't know if anybody else is just getting leads every single day And you're closing them every single day, but every like I have a number I have to go make and I'm the sales guy. I'm the business development guy so I'm going to go out and keep selling and fill our pipeline to a manageable point and And like great agencies are always like what two three months away from going bankrupt, right? Because you're still getting in work and you need to get the work done and they need to pay us on time, right? There's retainers and stuff like that. We're getting a little bit more into that As of late, but it's still a hustle still still making the work. So I thought there was another question over here. Oh, yes Yes, that's a great question You know, I get it's always going to be the answer is always like it depends, right? So I get a bit of a rant there's sort of people who really go with the value-based pricing and You really have to take a step back and say what type of client do I want to serve? So in higher ed I'm not fooling anybody with value-based pricing, right in the corporate world I'm not fooling anybody with value-based pricing because they're doing RFPs They have vendor select vendor list and if we're all going like hmm boy If you're you know, you're sign up is worth 50 bucks and you're doing a thousand of those boy I should probably charge you over the course of a year like 75 grand. They're like screw you I can do this with a theme for 50 bucks and often monster, right? So in some cases we're doing things depending on the client Do you want this do you want this pool of of hours? And it's whatever five thousand dollars, right and within that pool That's the retainer will work out of that You know, otherwise sometimes like with publishers and marketers They they are sold on the value of just having a team that can get it done Right, and that's where the sort of salesmanship value stuff comes in Right. I had a lead god. I hope they're not in this room This is so dangerous. So I had somebody email us the other day and they were like hey, we need help I'm putting in meta tags and and or excuse me page titles and meta descriptions into our site So I did a quick search and I had like 200 index page 200 indexed pages in Google so I'm like, well How long it's gonna take like so I asked him I say do you think you have do you need the research for? Page titles and meta descriptions like no we already have that we just need a team to implement it Implement it into our WordPress website. So I was like, all right I'm like, I just want to let you know that our minimum, you know fee is five thousand if you have other work We'll set up a retainer. We'll just pull from there. They're like, no I don't think you understand what we need. Can we have a phone call? I'm like, no problem So I have the phone call. They're like, so I say all 200 pages. You have another site somewhere You're like, no, we only have 12 pages Like, okay Both wait pages five thousand dollars. I say what other work do you have and they're like no No, we don't want other work. We just need somebody there to do it. I was like, okay So I give him a little spiel those sales dance and then I say then she says one more time It's five thousand a month, right? I was like, yeah Five thousand a month. Yes, right so and and and it's funny And it's not at the same time because these people are going to want on-demand support For those for the next request that come over time So I say that it's not like oh my god look how much money you've just made but I'm going to dedicate a developer to be there and Manipulate our pipeline so we're not taking in other work that can you know stomp on that, right? So that's my little spiel and value-based That's correct We're sitting in conversation