 Well, good afternoon. It's exactly 345 and I promised to finish at exactly or before for 45 My name is Steve Parks. This talk is how to run a Drupal agency If you are here to find out about the Drupal render pipeline, you're in the wrong room So now is your chance to shift you might prefer to hear about that anyway. It's upstairs So I'm from a company called wonder with the largest Drupal agency in Europe But not doing too much yet in the states that may change in the future And as I say the talk is on how to run a Drupal agency now the prime focus for this talk is Those people who are in management positions in a Drupal agency already and want to grow it or deal with some of the issues They're facing or those who would like to run a Drupal agency But there are secondary audiences to this talk those who work in Drupal agencies and want to understand the part They can play and the way that things work kind of up top and those who are contractors or freelancers I want to understand a little bit more about the business of agencies and whether that's something that they could do themselves as well Now I want to just stress that like everybody in this room. I am an absolute expert at this topic There is that disclaimer. So this is just literally the stuff that I've tried stuff that I've failed at some stuff That's worked and it's sharing it. We do have a policy within wonder of Extreme transparency and the policy is open by default. So we're willing to share practically anything except our HR records For example, but anything else is out there to share and I'll provide you with URL of where you can download all the sorts of tools And resources that we develop but before I get on to anything geeky. I want to take you on a road trip California, it's beautiful, isn't it? I arrived last week and I decided to rent a car and travel up into the mountains And I went up to the Sequoia National Park. It was an amazing place Driving up the mountain roads with all these huge trees growing up by the side getting higher and higher filling the air get thinner and the freshness of the air as well Such a beautiful experience and such a great drive, but these Sequoia trees are quite incredible They are the world's largest Living thing by volume and they grow to some incredible heights, but also some incredible widths So for example, this is the general Sherman tree in the Sequoia National Park and it is huge I mean the photo almost can't do justice But look at a normal tree to the right and then look at the tree look at the general Sherman. It's huge. This is The largest living thing by volume on the planet this actual tree the general Sherman. It's enormous And all the trees in the forest are absolutely amazing and the longevity as well. This tree is 2200 years old Wouldn't it be incredible if we could know that our businesses could last as long And if we took cross section through a tree like this This is a tree of kind of almost the same age But just counting the rings and you think of the history that it's seen the troubles that it's been through all of the adverse Influences from the weather or fire or whatever else, but it's survived as a lot older than that Until this fateful moment So if we took a slice through a Drupal agency, I wanted to kind of have a feel of what we would see What is it that makes up a Drupal agency and I think there are these things So first of all clients team and tools are are equally important Clients and team are fairly self-explanatory tools Kind of think of it as like a carpenter's tools. Yes He does have all sorts of tools to use, but it's also his knowledge his technique his expertise These things together that make an agency of any kind or professional services firm and these things together that form the brand Don't think for the brand as a logo. The brand is everything that you mean as an organization And we're going to step through each of these within this session. So let's first of all focus on clients Now the sections in this we're going to look at selecting the right clients because that's really important Establishing a solid and equal relationship with the clients the billing principles and managing the account And we as Drupal agencies tend to be pretty bad We're in a very very lucky position where for years Clients have just come knocking on our door We're lucky clump turn up go. Oh, yeah, we want Drupal. We hear it's the cool thing We need a Drupal agency, but the thing is the Drupal world is going to get a lot more competitive It already is look at the size of this conference Look at some of the companies that are moving into the space We're seeing now Professional digital agencies who have been around for years who are adding Drupal to their list We as an industry need to step up and adopt more professional processes But also we need to be better at satisfying our clients. We've kind of had a little bit of arrogance Haven't we in the Drupal world like yeah, we're Drupal. I'm a Drupal rock star. We're amazing But not so great at the customer service and holding the customers hand through the process So first of all, let's start with selecting the clients now a great agency knows that they're defined by the word Know It's about that selectivity It's about really knowing what you are for as an agency What are you the best in the world and which clients should you select to support that if you're not as selective with the clients as The clients are with you Then you've got a problem You're just taking any work that comes in and that's going to lead to problems for you It's going to lead to problems for the clients. It's going to lead to unhappy relationships So it's really important that you are selective with your clients I know it's hard when the phone rings or that email comes in goes. Yeah, we've got a great project for you Come in and talk to us. It's so exciting But is that really the right project you should be taking on to grow your agency to the next level? So you need to know what your kind of client is For your agency What kind of clients do you want and select and stick to selecting only those now for for us It's these now. It's a lot of words on a slide. I'm not going to go through them This slide is mainly here for if you just want to download the slides from the talk page afterwards and review these or watch the Talk online. They're also available on our site. We put very publicly talk about the right kind of clients for us But one of the key things the bottom there be willing to work in an open and transparent way. So we assess our potential clients From this list and we are thinking about are they a good fit with us because if not, it leads to a whole load of pain Not just for us as a business, but for our individual staff members and for the clients themselves So Knowing the kind of client you want to have you then take them through a sales process now at first You get the initial contact whether that's an RFP or you have an idea about who you might like to serve And you have to make a stop go decision then and there as early as possible Too much time is wasted by Drupal agencies and any agency Chasing sales that a they can't win B. They shouldn't want A huge amount of wasted time and one of the biggest differences you can make in your business in terms of making your time more productive He's been more selective about the RFP's you respond to all the customer inquiries How many frustrating days have you had? Writing proposals going to pitch and at the end to get that rejection email You wouldn't get it anyway And you could have saved all of that time think how much that's worth So the stop go decision. This is how we do it We just have this spreadsheet where we're assessing some of those things again the prints quite small It's designed for if you want to review the materials that you download afterwards But we're assessing things like the procurement process is reasonable for the project size Have you ever found that not to be the case? We have a kind of rough rule of thumb Which is one page of proposal one page of RFP for every 10 grand or every 10,000 of budget So if you've got a client that's you know pitching a 50,000 pound budget to you and they've got a 200 page RFP walk away So that's a good point for clients as well because it's wasting the client's time all of this as well And we're checking things the project delivery time scale is reasonable And our resourcing things we have the right people available for the dates and so on There's a lot else that we're checking and we have two people review the RFP or the opportunity And score it on this basis and at the bottom it comes out with a score But that is not a decision the automated calculated score is not a decision It's a starting point for a conversation And we have that conversation and then the humans decide whether it's a go or no go You can't have some spreadsheet that decides what business you're gonna pitch because at the end of the day There's an amount of gut feel or there's you know what's in the pipeline or whatever and one day You know a total score of you know 72 might be a go another day It may be a no-go because you're too busy So you can be as selective as you need to be but it's a starting point for a conversation So have this kind of formal process where you are Assessing the opportunities you get and you're scoring the client because you know what when you send your proposal They will score you like this What why shouldn't it be it should be an equal approach between client and supplier all of the time So back to the sales process. We've done the stop-go decision. We've run that spreadsheet and we've decided that this is a go Next you come to discovery Don't leave this for starting the project don't just automatically read the rfp and assume that's the extent of the information in the discovery in the sales process you want to really understand who this client is and Who the key people at the client are you want to be knowing who are we trying to impress with this? Who are we trying to connect with what buying power do they have what are their worries? What is their background? So you want to build up a little map of the people on the client side that you know you'll be dealing with and what matters to them What are their kind of key motivators and also you want to be discovering about the project? What is the history of the project? What's involved? What are the unknowns and map out the risks as well? So that discovery phase is really important Then you want to have the prepare and prove stage now that's very important that there's both words You're preparing to pitch for this, but you also have to create So in the preparing stage what you're doing is you are Understanding what is involved in the project and then you need to provide actual proof that you can do that And it's amazing how often we don't do that as agencies. We just go. Oh, yeah You need to download this module you need to do that you need to do the other and we'll do that for you And here's the price whereas what you what the client is wanting is they've got a number of worries in their mind They might be worrying is this agency large enough to handle this project? Is this agency too big to care about us as a small customer? Do they really have Drupal experience? Do they have experience in our sector? So in the prepare and prove think about what their worries are and then think about what proof you can provide to answer those then you write the proposal and Possibly also do a presentation those I will leave out of scope for this talk today but then you come to the agreement and This is really key and we'll talk a little bit more about this later on But it's it's an agreement I call it an agreement rather than a contract because it has to be an agreement both parties have to be an agreement And it has to be equal, but it has to state really clearly what the parameters of the project are and set the expectations and all too often the sales process tends to stop just before then You get the email saying congratulations. We've selected you and you get all over excited And you rush into the first meetings and you start delivering you have to make sure that there is a proper agreement in place You know because the relationship seems fantastic now, but you want a framework for this is how we are going to work together Then you want an internal retrospective so you can learn from each sale that you do and then you want to get the project set up For delivery, but never skip out the retrospective stage. It's exciting to give a new sale But you have to learn from it continuously learn all of the time So once you have the client one you need to establish a relationship and I can't emphasize enough How much the equal nature of the relationship matters? too many client vendor relationships Abusive Based on abusive relationships where one partner is kind of kept down and under the whip the client is there I've got the budget you do whatever I say And the agency has the experience and has the knowledge and may know from previous experience what the best direction is But the client has the budget the budget does not outweigh Your expertise and experience the client is hiring you because you are expert and experience And can deliver what they need that has an equal weight. That is why they are paying you that money They're not saying you know what we'll pay those people a lot more than their worth They are paying you this amount because you are worth that amount That's an equal relationship. We get too hung up on money talking Money is just one half of the equation that needs to be a quality in the relationship And that means both parties need to have input into all the key decisions Both parties need to have open communications and collaboration All the way through it has to be an equal approach to the project But you do have to have this relationship defined now this can be in the contract But also I really recommend doing a client on boarding process Just as you would with a new staff member Because the client doesn't know all of your processes and approaches and you know the way that you do things That you just suddenly turn up and you start hacking away at stuff Do a client on boarding process so they know what to expect so that you are setting the parameters for the relationship You may even need to do client training because we only do agile projects We at the start of all projects Do two days of agile training with clients To make sure that we're all on the same page with the language we're going to use the methods we're going to use And all that kind of stuff And all of this is to set the expectations which is really important And it's what we mostly fail at most of the time when projects go wrong when clients are unhappy It generally comes down to miscommunication and the missetting of expectations And also what's important is think for this zipper effect Normally in a project you have project manager talking to project manager and none of the others talk to each other You want a zipper effect everyone talking to each other you want to engage with the stakeholder level project manager level Developer level all the way you know all Points of the zipper you want to be connecting because that creates a really strong bond of good communications Billing we price ourselves too cheaply as an industry We don't value the work that's been done and that means that it's really difficult for Drupal agencies to reinvest in good processes And good training and good development So make sure that you're setting the right billing terms for your agency the right billing rates And the right payment terms Don't let clients make this an unequal relationship Make sure that the client is paying properly for what you are delivering the level of experience And make sure also that they're paying you on time because that's just simple respect The point of invoice that's your money you've earned it They don't pay their salaries late You need to be paid on time and enforce that as a matter of respect Stop projects if invoices become late pause things They'll soon get to pay it's just a simple matter of that equality the trust and respect So the relationship is key other things with the billing Billing by hours is really inefficient and complicated. You've got the context switching all the time You've got developers constantly thinking what now what was I doing there and what was going on there? Clients should be booking on any reasonably large project clients should be booking People by the day or even by the sprint we sell sprints effectively and you know for the project Okay, we're gonna have 16 two-week sprints and each sprint is going to be costing this much And therefore here is the project budget. Here's the budget burned down. Here's how we're going to bill and we bill at the end of each sprint So at the end of each sprint we have a sign off with the client And when they've signed off the invoice goes out and they've then got 30 days paying terms And that means the client has always real visibility on how the project budget is doing Because that reassures them as well actually we find clients like this because they have visibility transparency all the time And don't undervalue your talented people. We keep doing that. We keep under billing as an industry The one thing you can do though clients who are good clients You can reward them with discounts because if they can help you improve your utilization That is the percentage of potentially billable time that can actually be billed If they can help you improve that by say committing to booking 10 sprints Or whatever it is then you can offer better rates, but it's a trade It's an equal trade. If you help us improve utilization we'll provide a discount That's the way that the discounts can work Never offer just a discount because they ask for one because what you're instantly doing then saying, yeah, we're not worth as much as we said we were That's fine So stick, you know, you've got a rate never offer discounts for no reason So if the client needs a discount to fit their budget, then you have to negotiate what comes out It's all back to this mutual respect and trust this equal relationship that sets things up fairly and honestly This is the thing that we are worse at as agencies and it's sometimes embarrassing Because um, we kind of win the client and then we bury our heads in our laptops and we download a load of modules and we heckle it together And ta-da You really need to manage client accounts and clients want this We've actually been seeing rfp is recently where the clients specify That they need this because they have been burned And this account management is just simply someone who's taking a higher level view of the relationship with the client So we appoint from our side a project director to each project And their job is not to get involved in the day to day ever Not to do all the stuff relating to the project But simply to engage with the stakeholders on a regular basis at the client side And also to keep an overview on what our team is doing and any issues and blockers and things that are coming up That should create alarm bells and check that we are following our ways of doing things in the correct processes So they have regular reviews with the client, which we call steering groups Once every other sprint they have a steering group with the client And they meet the client's senior stakeholders and they run through a standard slide deck about the project Which is covering the budget. It's covering the timeline. It's covering the risks It's covering the you know the all the changes that have come into the project It's covering all sorts of things that are relevant to the high level stakeholders So that kind of regular review that steering group is really valuable in building that relationship And you're always of course looking to demonstrate your expertise Because that's the thing the clients and we hear this again and again That the clients will often say oh the previous agency just came in and they did the job fine But they didn't give us you know any kind of steering or advice. They didn't give us any ideas. We got nothing from them They they just built the site The clients are really thirsty The digital world is so complex. There's so many things going on all the time. They feel a bit lost I mean face it. If we're honest sometimes we feel a bit lost So and we're the experts working every day and there's always something new So your job is to be their radar scanning the horizon looking at what's coming up what they could do So for example, this google google mobile get an update recently You should know about that and you should be flagging up to your clients well in advance and suggesting they prioritize Getting their sites ready for that and demonstrating why So that kind of expert advice is really highly valued by clients The other thing it's really important to remember is that no customer is forever And I know it's hard to grasp for us as agencies because we think we're the best in the world Why would they go anywhere else? We're amazing. Look how much fun we have But it happens they will get a new person at their end Who will want to make their own mark on the project or they will just have different expectations or something will happen And people want change after a couple of years anyway. So even if you've been amazing change will come but also You may change as an agency and you should be The clients you won Three five years ago may not be the clients you should have Next year or the year after There's a time to move on on either side And you should constantly be reviewing your client list and seeing are these necessarily our right clients now If you started as a five person agency when you're a 50 person agency You're probably not the best person for the first clients you want And you may be running around like crazy dealing with really small bits and pieces And in not giving them the best service so be ready for that change and reviewing and pruning that client list It's best for the client and it's best for you But do manage it smoothly find them another good agency And help them through and even if they fired you give them time and help them transition in a really professional way So we've talked about for the clients selected the right clients establishing a solid and equal relationship Setting clear billing principles and managing the account. That's the client section. Let's look at the team And these are the sections that we're going to be covering in this part. The right person Is key We again is a Drupal thing we would hire people like oh my god, they're a Drupal rock star We've got to get them Now they may be amazing, but they may not be the right fit for you as a company because what you need to be recruiting for mostly His character Because you can't change that You can train people you can develop people if you get people who are kind of middleweight Drupal developers You can provide them so much training and support and resources and mentoring from others in the the company But if someone just doesn't fit the culture That's a much trickier thing and it's important to recognize that so recruit for that at the start And that means knowing the kind of person that is a your kind of person That fits the agency culture So, you know, it's like for example somebody works at google would probably hate working at microsoft And yet they're not a bad person. They're an amazing person And somebody works at microsoft would probably hate working at google and they're a great person So this is not about whether someone is amazing This is just about whether someone fits your culture and there are very different cultures and different companies and there should be It's a sign of a really good strong culture If there are some people who would hate it And not fit in that's actually a sign you've created something strong and durable and lasting So with every recruit you are building the culture of your company Matt Mullenweg at wordpress Personally interviews every new recruit because he knows this is true. He is building the culture of automatic So therefore it's better to be really selective. Don't just hire people because they're available and you've got potential projects Higher people only when they really do fit your culture and it's better to slow down your growth than take on people who aren't right As part of the recruitment process we have a policy we never ever use recruitment agents Because they do not have the same incentives as you do for getting the right people They just want to get someone in the role so they can bill you and six months later They'll be ringing up that person and trying to get them to move somewhere else So uh, we don't use them. We put it all over our job ads. We have a special web page explaining Why we don't use Drupal agents and it's been shared a lot However every week I get an email or a call from recruitment agents saying I know you don't use recruitment agents But and they have some reason why they're supposed to be different But it just doesn't work for us. It's that personal connection You need to be responsible for the people in your company not outsourcing it somewhere else It's only you So therefore what you need to do is have a process that you use for bringing these people on board And a process that you use for people to be able to find out that there are vacancies So think of all the places that you're going to advertise So instead of that paying that fat fee to a recruitment agent How are you going to use that potential fee? To advertise for people and spread the word widely. There are lots of great people out there looking for jobs Use your networks use all sorts of ways to track them down But then you need a good process for selecting people Now because our culture is such a strong thing for us our approach is peer interview So a manager so for example me in the uk or for a consulting business I will meet with someone and interview them, but that's pretty short We then have someone who does exactly the same job as them Spend an hour and a half or so with them talking much more in depth And again, it's equal like the client agency thing This isn't us interviewing them. We want it to be them interviewing us as well And we want them to get a feel of what the company is really like And they can only do that if they're talking to someone who does a similar job at a similar level So match them up with someone similar and do the interview for that There are other companies that use videos. They get I know lullabot get people to submit youtube videos They've talked about that and that's been very successful for them And all sorts of ways that you can use to just You know check is this person right for us Now for our culture the kind of person that's right for us is someone who is Really keen on learning really curious always keen to learn more stuff always got side projects Someone who's a great communicator. There isn't anybody in our company I wouldn't be happy to put him in front of the chief executive of any one of our clients So someone who is a great communicator and someone who is very professional They care about the detail. They care about the job that we do How we're perceived the results that the client gets they've got that professional approach and they want to have the professional tools to get there So one way you can do is give people a chance to try out At some companies. I think automatic are the same with this as well They give people a chance to do a small project for them in evenings or weekends Just a really small task just to see how it's done. They pay them for it But it's a chance for that person to check out. Do they like working for automatic and for automatic to check out Do we like this person? So you've got to be very selective on that Okay, let's be open about this. Let's be frank. We don't talk about money much But there are some ways that agencies structure their rates and structure things that are done And I think it's really important and there's triple agencies We tend to overlook it a bit and we end up with kind of very squeezed margins Which creates unstable businesses So this is kind of a good rule of thumb. This is not an absolute rule It's a rule of thumb But the pay package for staff should be roughly a third of their likely billing for a year I'll come on to why in a moment And that you know, there's quick formula there But essentially it's saying 176 days times the day rate divided by three gives you a good rule of thumb guideline There are many other things that you may want to factor into that But that gives a fairly good guideline And this is because this is how the finances of your company should be structured To have a healthy agency that can survive and weather the storms team costs So imagine you're billing on a project team costs should be about a third Of what you're billing the direct team costs The rest should be a contribution to overheads Another third should be a contribution to overheads. This is funding all of your training It's funding offices if you have them. It's funding the laptops. It's funding trips to Drupal con It's funding all the stuff that makes you what you are And also the management overhead the support for the staff It's the expertise that they can call on within the company. So all of that stuff that is their backup And this is what makes an agency Because if you don't invest in all that you're just freelancing As an agency as a company you're investing in a team of people And you're investing in the support and the resources for that team to do a great job And then you need a third allocated to contingency and profit Because you have to make sure you have good margins Because times will not always be good will come on some of the problems in a moment But that that third is a good metric to aim for that will boil down to at the end of the day It won't boil down to making that amount of profit at the end of the year because there'll always be other stuff But it gives that contingency for profit levels themselves your net profit as a company If you're making 10% or less you're in trouble. That's going to lead to cash flow problems 10% net profit a year or less 10 to 15 percent Okay, 15 to 20 percent is good. That's that's fine 20 percent. You're amazing or more So yes, you want to be in the 10 to 20 range at least under 10 percent You really need to start addressing the way you structure and run the company because you are if you hit a problem You're done for So you need to be making that profit. It is the responsible thing to do for your staff and for your clients Your clients do not want you to suddenly go bust or to be too focused on a cash flow problem sort their problems now Your staff want job security and they deserve it for working here So do make sure that there is a good profit being made Then when you have the staff you need to make sure you're not making lots of stupid rules Because again It's really tempting particularly we coming if anyone comes from a technical background It's all too easy to fall into this idea that humans are programmed Programmable and if we just create a big list of rules that we do in the company then everyone will go away and do that So you need to be setting people free hiring really talented people And setting them free to do their job really well. You are hiring knowledge workers after all This is not some factory in the 1920s or whatever it is. This is modern day highly educated workforce highly trained highly experienced knowledge workers Use their brains Set them free set parameters that they can work with them But not lots of rules and the main rule is that it's your job to look after the team They will look after the customers you focus on looking after them And so much of your time as a manager or as a leader of the business needs to be focused on looking after the team Then let them look after the customers So rounding up the team section these the points that that we've covered there So let's move on to the tools section Now this is again what differentiates really good professional services companies really good agencies From those that just kind of tick along In the you know, a lot of agencies they just have the kind of team and the clients And then the tools is a fairly random thing. You know, it's fairly random. Yeah, we use But if you can develop a way of doing things in your company, uh, it can really transform you So let's take a look in this section Documenting the way you do things we have Put a lot of effort into this We fly people from all the different countries to a retreat somewhere. We have a great time. Yeah, there may be a bit of Beer drunk maybe a bit of whiskey But we work very hard and we really capture what we do get all the project managers together all the consultants And we document what it is that we do as a business and how we want to do it It's not management saying this it's the teams getting together and deciding this is the way we will do stuff And it's been so valuable in the business because then that's a resource for training new people And it's also a way of explaining to the client. This is how we do the thing we do and this is why we're great This is why you should hire us. We actually make this public I'll give you the url later on and it's uh creative commons So if anyone wants to copy it for their agency go ahead We want to be as open with our business as we are with software in the troop community and want to share everything So we have actually One business purely because Well documented processes we have one large client recently who just said I've seen the way you do stuff It's music to my ears because we've had so many agencies coming in and just doing stuff But you have this process. So if you document the way things work Then it's a really persuasive things for clients as well as giving a stable base to your business Um in terms of other tools just use the simplest things that work one of the things I keep seeing is as we're Drupal agencies We think we need a system to manage our clients and our billing Hex build it in Drupal Uh, don't do that Because so much time is absorbed on internal projects and that time just vanishes into the ether It's unbillable and it seems to never end because there is no client Saying that's you're spending too much on this So use the simplest things that work. There are great tools out there that agencies use whether it's harvest for time billing Or trello for a simple board of cards We actually so we manage the group board at wondercraft is managed in an agile way And we're all we're working one month sprints with weekly stand-ups And we just use trello for managing all of the stuff we're changing in the business That's all it needs use the simplest things that work Um, and there are so many tools there and share with other Drupal agencies what you use and what works well Train people in these things and then all the way through measure track and report Now if you have the way that you do stuff You can all the time review are we doing this in every retrospective on every project or in every retrospective on a sale Are we doing this the way that we said we would can we improve the way that we do things and what can we implement now And then you can continuously improve that Now wonder our tools are managed by this man He is a wonderful man. He deserves a name check steve hunton has is the kind of keeper of the wonder way And he works across all our countries now sharing that experience and helping knowledge move between the countries And he has taken the entire way we work to be through being iso 9 7 iso 9001 certified So it's a quality standard that clients recognize saying yes, we do do this stuff Now I know that sounds very serious. So I want to show you that steve hunton is not always serious So this is him at weekends um, and So that's the tools document the way you do things develop a process A great example of this is we decided recently that all of our countries have kind of evolved the discovery process on projects in different ways And there were all sorts of good ideas around but it needed unified So we flew everyone together for two days of working on this and we developed the wonder way of doing discovery And again, that's going to be shared out as well But it's the stuff that really works developing all these modules that can be put together into a good discovery process And that tool then creates value for the clients Because they know that whoever they get on their project knows how to do a discovery process the same as anyone else And will follow through the same tools and the same processes and has been trained in delivering that discovery And they know that they it's going to be delivered efficiently because you're not making up as you go along with So having these tools is a really valuable thing to do to create a good agency So then we get on to the brand now the brand is kind of a mixture of all of these things and the brand is not about the logo The brand is kind of who you are as a company how you are perceived You need to differentiate yourself in a market where everybody looks the same That differentiation is is key because from the client's point of view A web agency is a web agency Is a web agency Why are you different? Why should they hire you? Now for us we tend to we try to focus on delivery being the differentiator It shouldn't be a competing factor in our industry, but in the in the uk at the moment it is But delivery and the processes that we use is a differentiator. So we focus on that. What is it for you? What makes you the best in the world at what you do? Now dris has spoken before about focusing on a real niche or as you say in the us niche and You know, so whether that is a very scalable Drupal sites in a huge amounts of traffic or whether it is very you know marketing automation focus sites What is your area of expertise that could be a sector? It could be a particular range of skills It could be a way that you approach things Or it could just be that you're really fun to work with And you want to pitch at the creative industries. So your usp is that you're fun So what is your differentiator? And it will come from all of those three things around the outside the client the team and the tools Somewhere in the middle there will be your differentiator. Think about what that is And then the name of your company the branding people get far too hung up on this You know, you make the name What you want it to mean it doesn't need to start being amazing think of some of the the big brands in the world Walmart things like that When you start if you had a big branding session and sat down and said, yeah, we're going to call this Walmart Would everyone go oh my god, that's an amazing name. It's so cool No, uh, so it doesn't matter for you. Sometimes the simplest things work best Keep it simple No need to go over the top with these cool fancy names The main thing that matters way more than the actual name or anything like that Is that sense of purpose That comes out of your differentiator it comes out of a real want to do something different and it's what will motivate you Every day and it's what will motivate your team And it's what will motivate your clients Is that sense of purpose? That sense of you are going to do something great for them And they're going to love you for it. What is your purpose find your purpose? And that's one of the key things about making your agency different So that's a very short section on brand and now Not everything Always goes smoothly for the redwood trees as much as for a Drupal agency Forest fires can sweep through problems out of your control Now the trees are very hardy at dealing with this here. You can see some of the you know Thousand well hundreds towards a thousand year old trees and they've got these it's hard to see with the light But they've got these black marks up the trunks This is where forest fires have raged through the area But the trees have survived they've built themselves to be so solid so tall so thick That they can survive this fire. They can you know survive all these big black marks And if you look, I mean that's a close-up of one of the trees I saw It's basically charcoal This part of this tree But if you look up It's green shoots at the top the rest of the tree is surviving and these trees actually heal round And over the years they heal themselves and can then survive the future fires that are coming through And the other great thing about the forest fires Is it's actually really good for the forest And it seems counter-intuitive doesn't it a fire raging through Destroying some of the trees damaging others and it's great for the forest Now what happens is when the fire comes through it's at a fairly low level so it you know Damages the trees at the bottom, but the heat that rises Makes the pine cones open up and drop from the tree And they drop into ash which is a beautifully fertile Soil to drop into and they grow and you see within a few years all of this amazing new growth So what would that be like if it was for your business if uh when big problems happened you could survive them But you could use it for new growth. You could use it to regenerate your company. What would that be like? Well, let's look at some of the typical problems that we come up against Do you recognize any of these? I think we need a quick show of hands if anyone has ever had any of this happen in their business I'm including me here Okay, everybody. Yeah Nobody is on their own going no actually I run the perfect business and we've never had any of that happen to us Uh, it just doesn't exist The top of the list there is of course all of the financial stuff We undervalue our time massively all the time We are terrible at estimating projects and we keep going into fixed everything projects So, you know fixed one get out of fixed everything projects Um, and also under billing that kind of thing of oh, well, yeah, I did work a few extra days on this or even a few extra weeks But don't tell the client I did it. Um, and so all the time there's this free work that's been given away But you know what people still expect to be paid their salary So we've got to make sure that in the same way we respect the people that work for us and we pay them That our clients respect us and the work we do and pay us and we have to earn that respect Don't get me wrong, but we have to make sure that we get paid for what we do Another big problem taking on the wrong clients projects. That's very common Here's a key one that we do all of the time in Drupal. We focus on building the sites And there's nobody focusing on building the business Every single member in a small agency will be hacking away developing sites or designing something or doing cool stuff And nobody will be there doing the building of the business the hard graph to really grow it Then there's not knowing how you're doing you kind of oh finance is boring I don't want to look at the numbers I don't do spreadsheets all that kind of stuff. You need to know how you're doing all the time for the safety of your staff's jobs One day this will be a good motivator for you get all of your staff together for a party Perhaps a Saturday afternoon picnic or something and get them to bring their families including the kids You stand there and look around and you look at the children that depend on you for the home and the food That depend on your business going well and being safe going forward Do that And then buckle down and check your finances and plan ahead. Have a good cash flow Know what your profitability levels are know the profitability levels of each of your projects Know that level of detail because that's what keeps the business safe that builds your tree trunk nice and solid So that you can withstand the forest fires And wasting time it happens all the time whether it's internal projects or gang clients You shouldn't whatever it is look for where you're wasting time and learn to fix that So here are some of the quick fixes Based on those some of these You may be able to go away and do after this Drupal con if there's something that kind of speaks to you that thinks yeah You know what I want to do that in our business could be one of these it could be something else But do take a look at this and see is there anything that you do in your business Because I know with me and mine and my business partners business There's always stuff. We're learning and we're fixing all the time. We're looking to learn The key thing is this is Michael Gerber. He did a great book years ago called the emith And the key message from it was this as the business owner the business manager Your job is not to work in the business doing the job of the business So you shouldn't be the one building Drupal sites for designing Drupal sites or whatever Your job is to work on the business You are growing the business establishing the business making it safe and solid that big thick trunk So it will grow tall that should be your focus But you know what? We're really bad at it because we're stubborn And we're like that aren't we all of us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know that's what I know that's bottom But I I'm I'm better at doing this. I'm gonna focus on doing this So you sometimes have to stick to the hard stuff and do things Um just to improve the business and learn lessons and maybe that you know, you haven't always been doing the right way I know I haven't I've made so many mistakes. Have you ever seen um, I think they have it over here as well They're the gordon ramsey program where he goes around to different restaurants and fixes them. Do you ever see that? And so there you've got this international Michelin starred chef one of the most highly rated chefs in the world He goes into a small town diner And gives them some advice and they go Nope, you're wrong. No Not doing that. No, we're not changing. Yeah, I know we're nearly out of business, but we're not changing We're not gonna do anything So the fact is this there's always stuff we can learn even if you're not at a pain point even if your business is going great There are so many ways to improve it all the time. Uh, so let's not be stubborn about it So what we want to do is start a culture of sharing within the business community within Drupal We all share code Freely, I mean, we get that we get that it's valuable What else could we share? What could we share about the way we run our business? So we've started open sourcing all of our processes all of our stuff So this is the website is at way.wonder.io. It's the wonder way Um, and we're sharing everything so that's spreadsheet for evaluating new rfps is up there All of our sales process details are up there everything and we're gradually putting it all up there But we would also like to encourage other businesses to do the same What would Drupal be like is if in the same way that a module is released By one company and another company releases bug fixes and improvements that model What would it be like if it was the same for the way we ran our businesses? What would it be like if you know, we released a way of evaluating new sales processes and someone else, you know Acquire for example, or you know anyone else said actually we've tried a different way and it worked great. Here it is So let's share stuff. So maybe think about what you can open source within your business what you can share What processes are working for you? So we now have 10 minutes for questions I've reached the end of my kind of my bit So does any is there anything anybody wants to know? We've probably got time for about four questions Maybe depending on how long there are who's got the first question this chapter So you've talked a lot about things like trying to maintain 20 percent of turnover how without Not committing more than 20 percent of turnover to one company. How do you manage that when you're a very small company? What advice would you give to smaller companies? On the really large projects where it starts getting above that 20 percent seek to partner with another business Spread the risk between different agencies I know it's tempting to go out there and grab all of the money And you see this great big paycheck that's up there that they want to give you all of this budget But you will start to fail. It's more than you can manage as an agency Or the the horrible thing of you know, you take it on and it comes 50 percent of your turnover Suddenly the key contact of the client leaves Someone new comes in and they have their favorite agency from the last job and you're out Your business is doomed So I would say at that level start spreading the work between different agencies and you'll then build relationships You'll show how collaborative the Drupal community is and you'll spread the work around Okay, we had another hand up just here come to the chat and then you're over there. What's your question? You mentioned the one to three ratio of Employee pay packages to revenue. How do you empower your employees to grow their pay in that measure? That is such a fantastic question because that's what we're looking at at the moment. Um, and There's a couple of things that we're looking at to enable that One is uh transparency So make it very clear how everyone's pay is calculated what the formula is and how we approach this But also showing how clearly it's linked through to you know The key stuff of what clients pay us and what we're valued at and therefore showing that the extra pay rises are available through becoming either more billable being more productive or By being billable at a higher rate and that's increasing your expertise and your knowledge So therefore we provide you know training development budgets and a lot of you know times go to conferences and whatever else So therefore it really motivates people to want to learn and to be involved in stuff All of the time because then they can move up their billable rate Which increases their their salary rates, so it's almost in a way like a profit sharing Everyone benefits the more we can build So that's very clear. Does that seem okay as a first answer? Okay, but there's more we can learn. We're looking at this at the moment There was a question around here. Let me check that this doesn't howl over here I think this is a good segue to that question. Um, do you Do you advertise a blended rate to your client based on the sprints that you tell them about this is the day rates that you talked about or Does every person in the organization have a different rate to the client? Yeah, we we don't use blended rates Because what we want to do is demonstrate the different value of different expertise and experience So there's a reason why some people are building out at more than other people Um, and we want to make that very transparent to the client But also because otherwise what what happens is the client quickly identifies Who they feel has the most experience and expertise and demands more of their time And if there isn't a cost associated with that Then there isn't a you know an incentive for balance and you know, okay We can see some of the smaller tasks can be done by the more junior people and the senior tasks done by these people So you want to make it very transparent for the client because um, hey, that's a key principle of ours the transparency But then they can make decisions so they can say okay Well our budgets have been cut so therefore this really senior person We see the value But for a couple of you know the next few sprints or the next Five sprints we feel that they've set up the working off that the more junior team can continue and they can come back and audit the work So yeah, we don't do blended rates So so i'll just repeat that it seems like a logistical headache Not too much because you're only doing you know, you're planning and you're billing Between every sprint so you finish a sprint and you bill what was done there You plan the next sprint and you forecast who's going to be on the team And you work that way and we in fact even allow our clients to fire us as an end of a sprint if they want to We don't have long tie-ins We only want clients to be tied into us by being happy because otherwise it's a nightmare to deal with So um, so yeah, it's not an admin headache billing, you know by the sprint makes things a lot more simple We have a question just back here For presentation sir, I was wondering if you can probably give a couple notes so Of you and how you guys got started how long you've been in business when you adopted Drupal and so forth The couple of minutes is a challenge because there's quite a history. I'll give a real snapshot of you Um, uh wonderkraut was the name of the company that was merged. It was announced at Drupal Munich Two and a half nearly three years ago And it was the merger of four of europe's key Drupal agencies and each of those have been Working well been running for about four five years So there's a long history between each of the four We brought all four together Vesa palmu is the CEO and he's the guy that did the deal and brought everybody together And at the time of the merger I came on to open up a new office In the uk and start building our consultancy work as well So i've been involved since the the group was formed as it were So that's a very brief pot of history. We've always used Drupal Drupal is our thing But these days we don't build ourselves as just a Drupal shop because we're about the process as much as we're about the technology Okay, thank you one more final question and then we'll wrap up. We'll get around this side I feel like jerry springer. It's fantastic Okay, where was the hands here you What kind of expectations you put on your employees in terms of hours worked every day and vacations and things and Do uh solicit their Advice and time Well, that's quite actually quite a complex question for me to answer about us Because one of the things that we do Is we try and be as management light as possible. So there is we're a very very flat organization Um, so all of our management team are, you know, very closely actual day-to-day doing of the business There's no kind of big hierarchy in a big office somewhere. I mean a volcano headquarters. Um, but um in terms of the uh, the question was kind of about uh Empowering the employees. Is that right? Yeah, the hours Yeah, um, so what we tell our clients is that A day is effectively seven hours For us because there's always an hour of sorting out other stuff and calls and things like that um, and um, but employees when they're You know are really responsible for their own time So in a sprint you're agreeing and you're committing to the work that you're doing And we care more about the work that gets done rather than when it gets done or where it gets done So we operate with distributed teams. We're in 10 countries Uh across europe, um with very distributed teams and it doesn't really matter exactly when they work or where they work As long as things get done and the client is happy with the result So there's a huge amount of flexibility to self manage for every member of our team And that's one of the things they really value why we're able to attract some very good candidates because of that that power No, we don't track in that way. So for example, we're selling by the day. We just It's just a by the day thing all that we care about is results We do not care about is someone in the office at nine in the morning and are they there until five or six We had one client It was a large u.s company that said to us. Well, I will want to know that your developers are at a desk 10 hours a day working for us I'm saying, well, I'm sorry, but they won't be You know 10 hours a day people get burnout You are not getting the best productivity And in fact in the uk on the uk team We do only four days a week client work and one day a week training development developing our tools our systems Working in the Drupal community all that sort of things. That's what enables luis neiman Who's one of our uk team to do a lot of work for Drupal 8 is the css lead maintainer and doing a lot of front-end work So a lot of people are doing contributions like that. So four days a week is billable in the uk And the clients love that because on fridays they get to rest and catch up with what's happened Because a motivated smart team actually works damn fast and damn hard And if they're having to do evenings and weekends There's a problem and you don't want the work to creep out and hide a problem You want the problem to be surfaced. So no, we don't manage and track time to a really precise level. We track work done Okay, that is all the time we've got for questions If there's anyone else who wants to ask anything I'll wait up the front for a little bit But let me check how we're doing. Oh My goodness. It is five seconds to the end of the slot. So with that I'll say thank you very much. Goodbye Thank you