 Claro que sí, todo es español, español mexicano, español peruano, no me importa, chileno, lo que sea. En 2016, tuvimos una campanada en Albuquerque que Karn Arnold organizó. Y, ya sabes, mi negocio de negocio con WordPress ha sido, como, básicamente un año viejo. Y, ya sabes, nunca hemos ido a una campanada o hemos estado involucrados en la campanada, y así, ya sabes, he ido a la reunión y lo ofrecio para ayudar. Y así, ella me ha ido a involucrarme y se ha ido bien. Y, ya sabes, he conocido a Sam por varios años ahora y, ya sabes, creo que Sam ha tenido mucha visión para lo que esto iba a parecer. Y, ya sé, él ha compartido esa visión conmigo y me ha sido muy emocionado de apoyar y hacerla suceder. Es genial, así que la historia más importante es no hangar con Sam o podrías ser involucrado. Ya, no, pero yo estaba muy feliz de hacerlo, man. Es, ya sabes, parte de la visión fue, ya sabes, ponerse en este gran evento para reenergizar esta comunidad. Y, ya sabes, lo verán, pero, ya sabes, por lo tanto, es muy bueno. Ya, parece que funciona. Entonces, lo haces como un voluntario, ¿verdad? Esto no es tu trabajo completo. Tienes un trabajo completo. Estás viajando a una compañía. Dime un poco sobre esa compañía. Ya, entonces, mi compañía es online de 11. Y, ya sabes, hacemos desarrollo de software. Hacemos trabajo de Wordpress. Hacemos soluciones de negocio. Servicios de Servicio. Maneces. Y, ya sabes, ofrecemos algunos servicios digitales. Empecemos haciendo eso en 2017. Y, ya sabes, soy el CEO. Mi tres compañeros están aquí. Y, ya sabes, un montón de mis personas están aquí. Hola, chicos. Y, ya sabes, hemos estado alrededor de tres y medio años. He estado el CEO desde el principio de 2017. He actually started a different firm and we merged with the 11 online guys and so it's been a journey and, ya, not having kind of entrepreneurial experience before I decided to start a consulting business was a lot of learning, but it's mostly joy. What was the event that triggered you to decide to start a company on your own? I think it was not necessarily one event. It was more how dissatisfied I was at my old job and the paradigm there. And also maybe like decades of sort of frustration at not being able to express myself and be creative professionally. And so where that bubbled up was, I lived in the East Coast before I came to New Mexico and my night job was I would teach English as a second language. And that was the kind of primer because the school I worked at, they didn't have lesson plans. I had to come up with my own lesson plans. They didn't really have a ton of guidelines on how to teach. I was teaching adults. So, ya know, it was kind of my little sandbox. And that's where I got to be creative. And so when we came out to New Mexico, I knew that I wasn't going to keep doing what I was doing before. I had to do something different. And there was a little series of accidents and stumbles meeting the right people. And this is where I find myself. That's awesome. When you first started, was it just to you? No. It was myself. It was Jay Renteria over there. It was another guy, a French guy Florian Gusson that we all met at a coding bootcamp. And when we got done with the bootcamp, we all kind of decided, hey, let's keep working together and see what happens. Was that while you had another chump? No. No. So I thought when we came to New Mexico... So you all got together, put on a single parachute, jumped off the cliff and said, let's see if this works. That is a frightening way to describe it. But yeah. Exactly, wasn't it? I mean, I think that's what I heard. You had no backup plan. Not really. No, not especially. I mean, I guess I could have gone back to project management and stuff, but I really didn't want to do that. So when you were some of that first team, you were all at a coding bootcamp, so were they all developers? Yeah. So you have four developers, three developers, no designers, no business people, no finance people. So the perfect model for just initiating a company. Yeah. And how was the first year? Yeah, so okay. The first thing I realized, we were working together for a month, and I immediately realized, okay, I need to spend 80% of my time doing business development, or we will die. And so that's what I did. I didn't have any idea. Didn't know what I was doing. I had some mentors, Eric and Josh, who eventually became my future partners. They were running on consulting business. They just started. So I leaned on them, people like Sam. You just start cultivating mentors. So that was the first move. And then the kind of work we did was the kind of work where we were in support of, it wasn't the kind of work where we necessarily needed a designer out of the gate. And then we started transitioning into that work. We started contracted designers and then we brought on a designer full-time in 2017. But in order to support the three of you, and you weren't all living in one house, right? You each had your own places. Yes. You had your own bills. Yes. Right? I'm going to presume that some of you were not living with your mom. Is that true? In that context. Is that true? Right? Sort of. Yeah. In that context, you guys had a decent amount of money you had to make every single month. Yeah. Which isn't just a function of work. It's also a function of collections. Yeah. Right? I mean, you could do all the work and deliver it and that didn't equal money in the account. Yeah. And yeah, we definitely had a collections problem in the first year. So what did you do to work on that? Well, we badgered. I mean, we didn't know much about structuring a contract properly or structuring payments properly. And, you know, the only thing I can say is we learned the hard way. And we had a couple of, you know, clients that basically, you know, held the last payment, which we structured wrong. It was a big payment for work we had already done, held it hostage and kept kind of moving the goal post and stuff like that. And I think the big thing we learned is just how much prep is involved putting together a contract to make sense, an estimate, a scope of work, and, you know, I don't know, I have a hard time learning things every other way, but the hard way. So... So, today your contracts look different, right? The structure, your payment structures are different. Oh, yeah. What does it look like today for the folks that are thinking about jumping out on their own? Well, we have different arrangements with different kinds of clients. We have sort of parts of our business that are somewhat productized. So, we have a good sense of, you know, the effort involved. And so, for those we do, you know, we do a fix because we have a good sense of what kind of profit margins we're going to make. There are clients that are on retainer that we, you know, we can kind of reliably depend on, you know, every month we have this much work and, you know, we work by the hour. And then, you know, I think the big thing for us in 2018 is just thinking about how we can further productize. You know, I don't know, is Pam here? Oh, there you are. Yeah, we had a conversation last night and we, you know, kind of both in, you know, service companies and, you know, just talking about, how are we going to get away from the sort of one-to-one, you know, our time and, you know, revenue, right? So, you know, it's something that we've been slowly trying to do and I think we're going to try and ramp that up in 2018 is productize and I think there's an incredible opportunity with Gutenberg in the WordPress space and so we'll be taking a look at that. No? Okay. You have real-time feedback in this session, which is awesome. No, Eric just wants me to be quiet. Is that news to anyone? I mean, come on, whatever. You were not born in the U.S. No. You were born in Lima, Peru. Yes. My last name is Lema. When I say my last name, some people think it's Lima. Oh, yes. Then they say Lima and then they spell it L-I-M-A. I've never been to Lima, Peru, but I hate Lima, Peru. Because it ruins my name. Yeah. Funny story relating to that is I hate Alfonso's. I hate Alfonso's and because everyone calls me Alfonso. Alfonso and you're like, there's no F. No, no F. And I actually, this past year, I met an Alfonso and I went up to him and I was like, you know that everyone calls me Alfonso, drives me nuts, and he was like, everyone calls me Alonso. So, yeah. I hate Alfonso's and Lima's actually a really cool, interesting place. It might be a little much for gringos, sorry, for lack of a better word. It's a crazy city, a lot of traffic, a lot of activity, a lot of stuff going on. But it's really dynamic and awesome. How long were you in Peru? So, I moved to the states when I was very young. I was just five. But, you know, I had lots of family there. We, you know, the first probably ten years we were in the states. We'd go back every summer. And, so yeah, I mean, you know, I have a deep affinity and connection and there's still things that kind of you feel a little bit alien to the American culture in some ways. But, Sure. You were teaching ESL, you said when you were on the East Coast. That's right, yeah. Do you do anything with inclusivity or outreach here in Albuquerque? Yeah, in Albuquerque I've been teaching a Spanish conversation class at the library for free, just volunteering. I mean, the selfish reason I do it is to speak Spanish on a regular basis. And so, Yeah. So to preserve the Spanish I have, which is very accented and, you know, when I go home, when I go to Peru, my family, I'm done, you know, you're gonna go. But, but, you know, so selfishly for that, but also, you know. But do you teach some different sentences? So instead of saying where's the bathroom, you're like, how do I install WordPress? It's just the cover. I mean, because there's a whole lot you can do with that, right? Today, class, we're gonna say, right? And then you're like, oh, I learned WordPress in Spanish. Yeah, not too much WordPress talk, but we just talk. It's just conversation, different levels. Sometimes I'll bring the paper and we'll just talk about what's going on in the news. Just talking. We don't go over infinitives or, you know, do any grammar or any of that stuff. It's more for people to just start to feel comfortable hearing and speaking. Exactly right. Now, one of the things that's interesting to me about that is when you're teaching conversational Spanish or conversational any language, right? A lot of it is just getting comfortable with all the things that you're just gonna hear, right? And even if you don't know an exact word, there's context and you'll just navigate through it and it's getting comfortable with things you may or may not know. And a lot of what we see when we're teaching people WordPress is helping them get comfortable with things they don't know. I'm on screen and they're like, what do I do here, right? How has doing one of those things, right? Conversational Spanish helped you in the world of the WordPress work that you do. Yeah, that's an awesome question. I think just having the teaching background was critical, especially when we were starting out and we were working with small business owners and you know, I remember when we were starting to kind of devise what is it that we're going to offer our clients, right? Training. So then we had to think like, what does that mean? How are we gonna structure that? How are our clients gonna get value out of that experience? And so we put a lot into that on how that works and I think, you know, this is something I say in the office all the time and they're probably sick of hearing it but I'm a big fan of Dune. Fear is the mind killer and whatever strategies that we need to, you know, use to, you know, get out of the fear mindset and for some people it's just kind of, you know, bang your head in the wall or just kind of getting through it and pulling the bandit off all at once but for other people it's a more gradual experience and so, you know, you have to kind of assess that in everyone person to person and that can be tricky sometimes but, you know, sometimes one of my issues sometimes I can intimidate people because I like to talk, I like to get into the conversation and so... You're good luck. Yeah, thanks. But, you know, so that's something I think about all the time like how can I make it so that people don't feel like that? And, and teaching has given me some of those tools. That's awesome. We talked about Gutenberg. How many people in here work for an agency? That builds websites for customers? Come on, guys. Raise your hands. Yeah, so, a third to almost a half. We talked for saying you said you're excited about Gutenberg. Do you have a lot of sites you've worked on that you no longer have a relationship with that client? I don't know. For better or worse, I don't... Actually not really. Because what strikes me is it's one thing if you have an ongoing relationship with your customer, right? You're like, hey, heads up, there's going to be a change of the editor and some of the things we used to write that we're using, say, ACF or some other plugin could potentially have an issue with Gutenberg and so we're going to get in there because we have an ongoing relationship, we're paid monthly, we have a retainer, we're going to go in and tweak that for you what dynamic is. We built 100 sites, we don't have any relationship with them and it breaks. And then who has to go back and fit? Like, is it on us? Is it on you? Do you have to tell them how to explain it? And then you're like, but Gutenberg's really cool. I'm like, my wallet doesn't think so. So as you think about the opportunity going forward for agencies and Gutenberg, right? How do you think through this whole construct of who's responsible for keeping a WordPress website still doing the thing that they paid it to do when they paid for it to do it? Yeah, I don't know if I can answer that question, but I can tell. Well, Matt's going to watch, right? I mean, so, give him a really good answer. Yeah, I mean, what I can say is that we just had the situation happen where we had an old client that didn't renew their domain. You know, didn't have a maintenance plan or a retainer with us or any of that stuff. And, you know, just kind of slipped through the cracks and, you know, they just sort of called us in desperation and we fixed it. But that's different, right? Because the amount of time it takes to fix that is what? Yeah, yeah. Right? So if you have a 20, 30 page website, several different pieces that are displayed because of ACF and all of a sudden Gutenberg breaks it. Yeah, it's not going to be a two minute fix. So let's just we'll play for a second. I'm the customer. You built the site two, three years ago. Whatever it was, was the going rate. I paid you. We're done. I've never paid anything else and I call you up and I go, hey, the website you built because of course I'm going to use that language, right? The website you built that I paid for doesn't work anymore. What are you going to do to fix it? Yeah, so no, we're really, really busy right now. No, you know, okay, so okay, on some level you know, part of the reason that we use WordPress a lot of our projects is to be able to hand it off to the client, right? So that they can get stuff done. But, you know, I think as part of it due to an agency you do offer people, you know, a low cost or reasonable cost service to where they can feel comfortable in case anything were to happen. Hey, we're there. And, you know, it's not as if we haven't been offering that basically since we started, right? You know, so, you know, on some level like, you know, our maintenance plans and retainers and stuff like that, it's not just an upsell. It's not just, you know, it's not just like you know, we're trying to, you know, extract a little bit more money from you. It's because... They are for this very reason. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so, you know, we want to help out our customers. You know, we want to help out our customers. We want to keep good relationships and I think it has to be one of those kind of case-by-case basis things. So would you recommend for other agencies that they start prepping their clients for retainers or maintenance contracts now before May or June ever? Yeah, I think I think it's a great idea. But I mean, I think maybe a larger issue than that is that you use the existing best practices so that, you know, the sites that you build last for a long time. And I think, you know, and it's not to talk trash on any other agency or anything like that, but I know that there are a lot of providers that don't really participate in the community and don't really adhere to those kind of best practices and for them WordPress is like a way to do a slap-dash sort of job. Yeah. And so I would encourage people to do the research on their providers so that they don't kind of engage in those business relationships. Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. Which in terms of advice for agencies and in the room, right, would also be just creating for prospects kind of an information sheet or something that says here's how to evaluate agencies just so that you know going ahead, right? We're doing a whole marketing campaign around that. Yeah. In 2018, so. I didn't mean to put your business on the street. That's all good. Generic strategy, not the specific one you're doing. Yeah. Can you go into more detail? Yeah. Let's go into detail. John wants to know. Later, John. Right. So we have Gutenberg coming up and that's going to mean a lot of different things for agencies and for customers. But there's also just a broader question whether it's how you design stuff with Gutenberg or how you design it with page builders. You have a whole bunch of page builders out now which some developers and agencies are pros. Some are against. You have people using ACF and other tools that are not page builders to display stuff on. With the total number of different ways that developers can create a visual output. What's the best way for a new developer coming on the scene to figure out how to choose which? How do they know which one... When you talked about developers should use the best practice, something that lasts forever and they go, yeah, but the new developer comes in and goes, well, I can output it with ACF. I can output it with beaver builder, Elementor, or someone else. I can start playing with the Gutenberg plugin. So, what do you recommend? For a new developer, I'd say first off, what are your goals in business? What kind of business are you trying to build? I think that's going to factor heavily into whatever decision you make on your stack. I think the second thing is I bet on Gutenberg and I bet on Gutenberg making a big impact. And I think that I think it would be smart to start really taking a look at that and really thinking about how they can create... how they can use Gutenberg to create a better product for their clients. You know, I don't necessarily know that we've made this enormous bet on it in some way, at least not yet, but I think it's probably as the safest bet in my opinion. Got it. You talked about productizing your services. Do you think you'll productize something around Gutenberg? Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I think it's... this isn't... I guess... Sorry Eric, this is not a nuclear secret. I mean, you know... Do you feel... Do you guys feel like his team gave him talking points? No, they just don't like it when I start shooting off at the mouth. So, you know, look, I said this a couple of times, you know, with things like Gutenberg and other things at technology. You hear a lot of arguing, consternation, anger. And I am more focused on thinking about, okay, how do we need to adapt? How is it that we can take advantage, otherwise, you know, as a business owner, I don't... I just... I don't... You can't get caught up in all that stuff. I think you have to think, okay, how are we going to be dynamic and take advantage of the situation? So, that's what, you know, that's our mindset. So, it strikes me that one of the themes throughout this conversation is the fact that you don't have a fear bone in your body. And so, you're like, where's a company from scratch? With no backup plan and we'll just figure it out or let's just jump into the new Gutenberg and who knows, but, I don't... like there's a whole lot of people that have a lot of anxiety about well what if we fail? right. and what if we fail holds them back in a w way that you're just more free to say yeah that's always going to be possibility let's just charge forward and take the ground right? ¿Cómo ayudas a las personas que no son naturalmente capaces de hacer eso, y todavía tienen que hacer eso? ¿Tienen que seguir adelante? ¿Cómo pueden ayudar a ellos? ¿Cuántos consejos tienen para ellos? Bueno, déjame clarificar. Tengo mucho miedo y ansiedad. Creo que he construido una infraestructura y emocionalmente, para poder venir a los términos y hacer el trabajo. Y esto es algo muy nuevo para mí. No he venido de una familia de entreprenuers. Mi familia es una familia de profesionales, y tiene un color de ropa, y un trabajo de estrés, de academia, y todo eso. Pero empezaste una compañía, y te vendiste esa compañía y te margaste con otra. Me margaste. Te tomaste en el rol CEO de la entidad. Te hablaste de los servicios de la partida, y te hablaste de la encabezada de Gunberg. Si fuiste en el Office de Physicians, y empezaste a hablar de todas las cosas que hiciste, te dirías que eres candidato para un ataque de corazón. Nunca de estas cosas son casuales. Te hiciste 5 de ellos. Te dirías que serás sorprendido por otras personas que no tienen la... ¡Vamos a hacer eso! ¿Cómo te vienes adentro de ellos? Entiendo que te han desarrollado algunos sistemas de fuerza, apoyo, apoyo para el siguiente paso. ¿Cómo te ayudas? ¿Cómo te encuerdas de las personas que están nerviosos para el siguiente paso? Ok, así que, en el campo de encabezada de Gunberg, voy a todos los cojertes que tengo, voy a hablar con ellos. Y... Yo creo que una gran parte de mi mensaje es intentar ponerlo en sus brazos, que actualmente tienen un poco más control de la forma en que las cosas pueden ir en sus vidas, que piensan. Y una parte de eso es un esfuerzo, un trabajo difícil, y hacer sacrificios. Porque he tenido que hacer eso. No puedo vivir la misma vida que viví en mis 20 años. Y así... ¿Sabes? ¿Sabes? Me dice mi historia. ¿Sabes? Yo era el víctima de mi propia inercia y la satisfacción y la satisfacción de mi trabajo hasta que me empezé a cagarlo. ¿Sabes? Y así... He sido muy raro y he caído un par de cosas, y antes de saberlo, he entrado en la situación. Así que... es muy... pero es difícil. Y si no puedes hacer sacrificios y poner en el esfuerzo, no tienes la oportunidad. Puedes ser la mejor persona en el mundo. No tienes la oportunidad. Es cierto. Bueno, tenemos un par de minutos para una pregunta o dos de ustedes. ¿Quién tiene una pregunta? Alonso. ¿Tienes una pregunta para mí? ¿Tienes una pregunta para mí? ¿Tienes una pregunta para mí? Sí. ¿No es lo que siempre dice? Sí. ¿Dónde está la avión? ¿Dónde está la avión? No. ¿Cuánto hace tu marketing 2018? Llego, John. Sí. ¿Qué te pregunta? ¿Qué te pregunta? ¿Quieres responder? ¿Estas y las puntos. Sí. ¿Tienes una conversación con ustedes sobre las actividades de la oficina la estructura de tu asociación. ¿Tiene una nueva oficina también? No, no. Sí, sí, sí, yo puedo hablar de eso. En el principio del año que hicimos, el año pasado, nos preguntamos a todas las personas en el Albuquerque, el Centroferio, nos preguntamos a las personas a venir a trabajar, cada vez una semana, a una oficina. ¿A tus empleados solo trabajan 2 días a semana? Sí. Y nos damos un buen deal. Sí, yo voy a intentar extender a tus amigos. Pero nos preguntamos a los que vayan a la oficina 2 días a semana. En el principio del año decidimos hacerla 100% opcional, trabajar de casa si queréis. Nos movimos a una pequeña oficina, nos convirtimos en personas que no tienen la mejor situación de trabajar de casa. Y luego me damos mesas con algunos de nuestros clientes locales y cosas como eso. Eso es una gran transición. Hemos trabajado de casa por parte de tiempo, tenemos una infraestructura, está en nuestra DNA, pero es definitivamente un gran movimiento. Vamos a intentarlo y ver lo que pasa. Voy a dejarlo saberlo más. Muy bien. Vamos a dar un aplauso. Gracias, chicos. Voy a tomar un momento y luego vamos a estar de vuelta.