 How are you all today? Pretty good? Excited to learn some stuff about Roy Chris? Well, I'm Bobby Clark, and I will introduce this here, Wesley Lewis, just to give you a little bit about Wesley, and after you hear my words, the next one will be Wesley. Wesley is North-West, North-East Florida native, I think he's from Polacka, Florida. That's right, Lake City. Sure, you all agree with that, that area there. He unexpectedly lost his job and attended the WordPress Jax in 2017. This led to the bold decision to try to pursue WordPress as a full-time career. He founded 180 Digital, a small but growing digital agency focused primarily on local nonprofits. Despite the trial of trying to grow his business while also growing his family, Wesley has experienced one of the greatest years of his life and wants to tell others about the beautiful freedom that can come with running your own business. Wesley Lewis. I'm really excited about this opportunity. You don't really know how much it means for me to be standing here talking to you, because really, this talk is going to be part my story, part lessons learned. So, really, last year, and I'll just kind of get to the chase. Well, real quick, I'll tell you. Like he said, he introduced me. I started 180 Digital last year after attending WordCamp, and we're hanging out in Orange Park. He's a little more about me. I wanted to show this picture. This is my family. They play into this story. So, that's why I wanted to show you a picture. This is not just a thing to get you to do all over them. They're very important to me. Some other things about me, just so you know. Number one, I'm a dad. Two, I'm a husband. I am also a pastor locally, but I'm also a developer, which is why it's my full-time job. So, what I wanted to do is just kind of break down my story, exactly what happened to me last year. And I think, maybe at some point, you might be able to relate to some part of my story. And I think that we can go through this process, and then I'll go through kind of six hurdles, excuse me, that I've had to overcome this last year that I feel might apply to you. So, I just want to start out telling you about my worst day ever. Last year, it was right after the first of the year. I went to work. I worked at a nonprofit over 12 years. I was executive director there. Had done everything, ran everything, took care of everything. Went in to work with a normal day, just expecting a normal day. Went in, normally we have a staff meeting. Went in, had staff meeting. But this was a little bit different than a normal day because I had something exciting this year. My wife and I were expecting our fourth baby. And so, I wanted to kind of let everybody know we were super excited about that. So, during the staff meeting, I was just like, hey, you know, I got some news. We were expecting our fourth child. Most of the staff there was excited about that. Except for one person, that was my boss. And so, I thought that's kind of weird. Normally, he'd be excited for me. So anyway, he immediately had staff meeting. He went to his office, closed the door. And probably about two hours later, so he said, hey, come down, I want to talk to you. And so, I came down and sat in his office and he broke the worst news for me, which was that they were about to let me go. There were some financial issues going on and they decided that the best way to solve that issue was by letting me go. Now, there's a couple of issues with that. Number one, I was the sole income for my family. For me, that was it. I worked and supported all those beautiful people you saw a second ago. So it was all of me. My health care was attached to that. And I only had a few weeks to figure out what in the world I was going to do. So it was my worst day ever. It was really the day that my world kind of came crashing down. And I hadn't done anything wrong. I did my job well. I served my company well. Everything was going great. It kind of completely caught me off guard. And even though it wasn't the best option for me, they decided that they would let me go. So my question is, what would you do in that scenario? I probably did it. That's why I'm asking. Cry? Cry? I did that. I went home. I left, went home, and I cried. I'll be honest with you because I thought, man, I got to tell my wife this and this is going to be a lot of changes for our family. What else would you do? Go destroy some stuff, maybe? I didn't do that, but I was upset. And probably like most of you, I went and applied for everything. I was like, I got to find something now. I had some money saved up in the bank, but I knew I needed to find something as soon as possible and I had to take care of them. So that was my goal. I applied for everything. I applied for government jobs. I applied for local jobs. I called friends. And the thing was, because I was sole provider for them, I couldn't just make minimum wage. That just wasn't going to work. It would take up all my time. I still would be able to pay my bills. So I had to find something that would work for me, that would enable me to provide for my family and we lived extremely frugally, but at a level that we were comfortable with, that just didn't happen. I worked out every lead that I could find. And not that the job market wasn't well, but I came out of a job market that basically took an entire year to try to find another equivalent job. So I had a year, but I only had a few weeks of pay. So it really wasn't something that was pleasurable, but I say that to you that in that moment, I started to think about what was going on in my life and I started to do kind of an inventory. A personal inventory where I started to think, you know, I had been involved in doing building websites for friends and for companies and for people. For about 10 years, I had worked with Juma, I've worked with Drupal, I've worked with WordPress, and I'm just kind of one of those guys who likes to figure things out and do things myself. So that came in handy and I thought maybe, maybe that was an option. I thought maybe, I have just a little bit of time here, so maybe I could just think about it for a second, that WordPress full-time is an option for me. And so it was really in that thought I came to WordCamp, Jacksonville, 2017, without a job, without any income, without anything. And I sat in this room and I listened to the speakers and it was really in that moment that I had this light bulb moment that showed me that there are so many ways to make a full-time income with WordPress. It's just unbelievable. Because there were people here who were agency owners, there were people here who were theme developers or they ran a blog or they developed plugins or made templates. There were so many different ways that people made a living doing WordPress and it was so inspiring to me that it made me just really think this is maybe this, this agony that I'm going through is really an opportunity for me to do something great for me and my family. So as I left WordCamp Jacks in 2017, I started to hear this kind of small voice echoing in my head and it sounded a little bit like this. It didn't quite sound like Shia LaBeouf but still my thought was I think I can actually do this. I think I can actually do this. I think I can actually begin to create work towards the type of life I wanted for my family but also be able to provide it in a flexible way where I could spend more time with my family. And so as I said that, I'm like I really think I can do it. So my journey leaving WordCamp Jacks 2017 I started 180 digital I started going through all these hurdles that I'm going to talk about today and this isn't an exclusive list. I started kind of a creative agency. I know there's so many different ways that you can make WordPress full-time and this obviously is not going to cover all of them but I'm just hoping that maybe some of what we talked about today you can apply. But I do want you to know that it is possible. So if you're going a different route maybe some of these hurdles that you're going to encounter will be a little bit different but for me this is what happened. So here I am a year later am I 100% full-time I want to get full disclosure here no I'm not okay. But here's the thing I am almost there. So like I have made such progress in this last year that I'm almost there I'm like I'm almost there I will be there by the end of this year 100% for sure. And so as things are growing these are the hurdles that I had to overcome. So the first thing I want to talk about and this was an issue for me especially kind of with a scenario that I had to deal with is the first hurdle I had to deal with was myself and simply put I did a serious evaluation of me. Okay I sat down I made lists I said what are my strengths what are my weaknesses I had to know because honestly I wasn't going to kind of fully commit to this if I didn't think I really had what it took and as I started to experience you know really what I had the skills and the experience that I had I started to think man I've got a bunch of administrative experience I've got a lot of technical skills I could code and I could design add some creative skills I had this web development skills I started really doing inventory I'm like I think I can do something I think I have the skills necessary to do that so I started to think well what is it my passion in life and for me my passion was to help people I love to help people if someone if I do something for somebody it helps them it makes me feel good so I started to think well what could I do that I could involve my creative skills my technical skills in the word of world press technical skills administrative skills all those things put together that can really help people and the answer to that question for me was starting an agency and I took a disc assessment if you're familiar with that which is a personality profile a serious personality profile not Facebook personality profile but a serious personality profile where you can kind of help identify your strengths and weaknesses and personality type and it was through that I really thought I think I'm the person to start an agency so as I started to go through there I kind of asked myself this question what do I have going for me and I don't mean do a serious evaluation so that you can figure out what your problems are to figure out what your strengths are what do you have going for you and when you feel like that you start to really think man I've got some skills I've got some value I've got some things that somebody else wished that they had that's important to realize about yourself because I remember last year you know somebody was talking about I was in a session with Jay Owen and he was just talking to somebody and they were just like I hate to talk about money and he said to her you probably hate to talk about money because you don't think you're worth the money and it was important for me to establish am I worth somebody paying me to do something I started to think yeah but somehow we have a tendency to become blind to that to ourselves so we don't think about that we don't see ourselves that way we think everybody else can do what we do maybe in this room but not out there in the world they can't do that so for us when you have skills and abilities identify what those things are ask yourself what do I have going for me the mistake here the biggest mistake you can make is undervaluing yourself okay undervaluing yourself once you figure out what those things are you can do that you can do that so yes first rule I had is yourself I think for me it was I had to figure out who I was and if I had it had it for me and I felt like I did so my first tip I have a couple tips in here just know who you are know yourself really do an honest ask people because sometimes not that you would have leaned fully on that but ask people do you feel like I have what it takes someone who really does you most of the time they'll encourage you to say yes but sometimes you need some encouragement alright the second hurdle that I faced was identify my market figuring out what it was for me that I was going to do best I know I was going to start an agency there's so many different things you could do so many industries so much potential work out there I need to identify exactly what was my market I need to define my focus and my niche and understand who I could relate to best you know it isn't about necessarily being exclusive to them it's about identifying who you had the greatest potential with so that you can go out there and target them first because if you were like me I needed to make money and I needed to make money quick so I needed to figure out who those people were so that I can do that my dad is an avid fisherman and you know he says this you gotta know what you're fishing for you can't just put anything on a hook and throw it out there you gotta know what you're fishing for and so I would identify it's kind of a silly question but what am I good bait for if I'm the bait here who's going to buy to that who's going to want to be the person who works with me who's going to want the skills and abilities that I have and identify that market so find the needs in that industry when you figure out maybe now for me I had a lot of skills and abilities and nonprofits and understand how that culture works so I knew that that was going to be the industry that I was going to primarily focus on first so I started to think about what are the needs in that industry specifically because I knew it well I knew what the needs were so I could kind of tailor what I was going to offer to somehow help someone else's need because that's it you gotta find somebody else's ache you gotta find their pain okay what's aggravating them then you have to solve that now whether that's a new website or graphic design or managing their social media which for me most nonprofits hate that okay they don't like doing that so that was one way that I was able to kind of offer a service to them that they felt was valuable so I asked myself this is an interesting question what language do I speak what's the language that you know well now we're talking about you can speak all kinds of languages but in an industry you know the lingo you understand how people talk in a certain industry you know the co-phrases you know the acronyms you know all those things that's a good way to help you understand what specific area or market you can go with I started out this thinking man I'm just going to go and try to do everything for anybody and it was too broad too early for me I realized really by trying to do everything for everybody I'm not really going to accomplish a lot really to kind of get going to get traction at the beginning I needed to focus on this specific market another good reason that this was my market is I had a ton of connections so therefore it was going to be the fastest way for me to get going was hurling over this my market and figure out who that is the third hurdle that I had to overcome was figuring out who my client was so if I identify a market that's a little different than who your market is because your market is you're understanding an industry your client is questioning who is really looking specifically who is looking for someone like you and for me networking was the key to try to figure that out I needed to understand who was out there and I began to talk with people I had lunch with like a million people I just started to get out there and put my name out there give people cards just get my stuff out there to the people that I thought were in my market to see who might be my client networking is so important because working in is a great networking opportunity here get out there and talk to people and let them know that hey I'm trying to start something and you'd be surprised at how many people actually want to help you start something they want to help you be a part of that they want to see people succeed so they're willing to go out there kind of on a limb maybe recommend you when you don't really have a whole lot of portfolio you know and you kind of go out there to try to do that so understanding who is looking for someone like you another kind of phrase we can't build a bit of we don't have basements in Florida but you know if you were up north maybe you can't build a business from your garage we'll say that we got garages here you can't stay at home all the time and expect your business to grow now for me in my industry that is true now if you're a blogger yes okay that probably could work because you're just getting content out constantly but for me part of me finding those clients and in that network was that I needed to get out there and find those people go out and find them and so I asked myself who do I want to work with who is it going to be enjoyable for me to work with who is it that I understand I can communicate well with and I identify those people and the mistake that I think is made sometimes in this place and let me say I've made these mistakes okay I put these up here not because I didn't make them just because I did make them thinking everyone is my client not everybody is your client especially going to be a good client it can be your client you have to find someone who is just right for you you're looking for someone that is looking for someone like you who has a problem that you can help resolve so you're the best bait for someone figure out who that is and go for it it's not like you're not going to fish in the rest of the pond it's not that you're not going to do that but at least at first for me because I needed to get this done as quickly as possible I needed to find that person so that hurdle for me was identifying who my client was and I want to just talk about this real quick about building relationships over customers for me as starting an agency I knew from the beginning partly from my experience with nonprofits that relationships pay off again and again and again okay through referrals through reviews if I work with my clients and I really intentionally build relationships with them that's a two way street they're going to start to trust me and then when they trust me they're going to bring more more work my way I'm going to become their guy if I'm their guy, quite a few different people I'm going to have a full time income so I want to become that so I want to build relationships so I'm just going to go out there find somebody to do the work and turn it over I want to build a relationship with them that's going to happen there there's things that need to make sure that you can build somebody something and send it off but it's not going to stay that way because they don't know what they're doing so understanding building relationships I just want to say this real quick and we'll fly through this what customers they want it now they want it for the lowest price they're not loyal to you but if you focus on building client relationships like I said it builds trust relationship with them they're going to give you great reviews I have no problem giving reviews when I ask somebody they're like yes I would love to hear from you they do that for me so they go on there and they give me a review part of that reason I do that I don't want to take this for granted because building relationships is easy for me I just have a lot of experience with that some people it doesn't come naturally my wife is introvert she's an introvert that's kind of obvious but I just want to make sure how do you build relationships with clients I really listen to them I sincerely listen to them and I ask questions about the things that they tell me I want to know more about them and it isn't necessarily questions that completely revolve around work or the project I'm asking them questions about themselves sometimes because especially when you're trying to design something for a client you need to know about who they are as a person so that you can design something that really represents them well so through that process I get to know them ask them questions and I'm honest with them I'm like hey I'm starting business here I'm trying to get things going for my family they want to help me and I try to be genuinely helpful I give an example today I was working with a marketing client she never used Pinterest never used Instagram she's all about Facebook and I'm like you need to be on Instagram and Pinterest and part of what she paid us to do was to set her up on those so we set her up on those I had to sit down and show her on her phone how to use Pinterest and how to use Instagram now did I have to do that no was that in my contract with her no but that was me being helpful to her when she sees that I'm being helpful to her she responds in kind so that's how I build relationships just really simple so you do those things, you're likable people like you, they're going to like your Facebook page they're going to give you great reviews things of that nature as long as you're doing good work I say you do that and do good work things will be well the fourth hurdle that I had to face was building a team because do you remember when I talked about understanding who you are the first hurdle part of understanding that is understanding who you aren't what your weaknesses are so once you understand what your weaknesses are you identify who you need because if you're not good at something you don't need to be doing it there's things that you're going to have to do as the business owner but at the same time those things that you're not good at you take up the most time you're the least efficient at them so at first you might think I don't have the money to hire someone I don't have the money to pay somebody to do that that's not true you need to find someone who's better at doing something than you are pay them a little bit to do it they're going to do it faster they're going to do it better which is going to make your client happier so understanding who you need as on your team identifying those people by understanding what your weaknesses are that helps you to know hey, these are the people I'm looking for so through this networking that you're doing this how I got the people it was through referrals hey, I know somebody okay great, I want to define people who are local so I like to meet people kind of meet them face to face stare at them or something like that so I understand who they are make sure that they're a good fit for me so I want to define somebody right around me so I'll look first depending on your type of work-press business I want you to look online and find someone but for me, I wanted to invite them to do to be part of my process I wanted to invite them we have meetings every Monday if I have a client and I have something that's pertaining to them I bring them with me and we go through that it just helps me, to me in my opinion it helps to be more efficient and build a better end product so for me, I'm trying to do what I do best that's my goal, I'm not there yet I'm trying to do my best I don't realize for me, orchestrating this whole process is what I do best I've realized that over this whole year that my gifts and abilities I know about Photoshop I know about coding and am I a pro at all those? no, but I can understand I can speak all those languages I can understand the problems so my gift and my ability is to administrate all that but either way, identify what those things are find people who compliment that ask yourself what don't I have time for? now this is a question I'm asking myself right now as things get busier and business starts to build I'm like, man, I just don't have time to get this done I don't have time to do this and maybe it's even something I'm kind of good at but there's other things that are more important like meeting with clients and I want to be the person who does that so I ask myself what don't I have time for and then I'm going to try to find people specifically to meet those needs now, I work with all the people that work with me are freelancers I pay them well they're freelancers so they're working on hourly rates so if I need to pick somebody up I can pick somebody up and find somebody mistake is at first I try to do everything myself and it took me forever to get projects done it took me forever and I thought that's not helping my client relationship that's not helping me be efficient so over the course of me starting out trying to do everything myself to realizing I needed a team the fifth hurdle that I had was my process for me because I'm kind of an administrative guy I love processes I just love them I love figuring them out I love figuring out how work flows together trying to make things efficient for me, efficiency is the key to my organization now we the most efficient, no but we're trying to get there and part of what we're doing that is understanding trying to make work easier and understanding how I work best figuring out my project flow and for me this process is priceless because here's the cool thing about this is that when I get better and I get more efficient me and my team my company overall gets more efficient if you're a blogger you're going to get more efficient at doing your content and cranking that content out there now always your content is going to get better you're going to get it out there quicker and the quality of it is going to be better so the people are going to pay more for it so the thing is the more efficient you can get in your process and delivering that better end product you're going to spend less time on it and you're going to get paid more so I knew that that was a goal that I had I needed to get projects done as quickly as possible as I can but still deliver that best end product and I do that and so investing in that efficiency is part of how I try to get that forward and keep that going so this efficiency is crucial to keeping projects on timelines understanding what needs to be done what it needs to be done, what does it do so that's not holding up other work all those sorts of things so we actually have eight depending on nine possible stages of development and depending on the project and we work through those stages we understand what stage the project is in I'm a visual guy and I'll say this too with our process I'm still figuring these out I'll tell you one thing like Asana can you all use Asana in here to develop a few people I'm feeling better now I'm pulling two people away with their hands I guess because I'm a little bit creative I'm visual so I have a hard time using it for workflow it's what we use right now but I know there's got to be something better out there so if you have suggestions let me know but it's part of my process right now but I know it's not the most efficient and I feel like I'm learning to do things the Asana way which isn't what I want to do I need something that works for the way that I work so figuring out your project flow ask yourself how can I make things easier how can I make things easier and easier not so that you deliver a worse in product but easier for use that you can be more efficient to deliver a better product my mistake that I made was just talking to everybody how do you do this, how do you do this I got started, I subscribed to stuff that I did not need and you used this, okay I would subscribe, sign up for it use it for a few months why did I use this I haven't touched this in like 2 or 3 months so I would cancel that I started doing things like everyone else that's not how you're going to work so figure out how you work and what your process is this is something that I had to learn don't let learning hinder doing don't let your learning hinder doing for me I do, like I said I started out trying to do everything myself I have so much stuff to learn I have so much stuff so I signed up on like Code Academy and this class and that class I had some cash I was trying to invest in my business but I realized I'm sitting here doing all this work I'm doing all this learning but I'm not doing any work if I'm not doing work then I'm not making money so I need to balance this learning and doing together so don't let your learning hinder doing and I find that this is true I went to school straight through I was 7 years through school, okay, masters degree all this kind of stuff and there were guys that were there with me who were working and they took them twice as long to do it but they knew what they wanted to do and so I feel like for me when I go back and I take a class for something I don't know specifically exactly what kind of class I want to take and how it's going to help me how it's going to benefit me how it's going to make me more efficient so don't let your learning hinder you're doing the last hurdle is pricing so I did all those things I realized who I was who my market is who my client is who my team's going to be what my process is going to look like how much that's going to cost me and everything and ultimately I came to okay now what do I need to charge how do I need to deal with that price well just from my experience the number one thing that you're selling is yourself the number one thing that you're selling is you so if you go to talk to someone and you're able to make them comfortable with who you are whether that's over the phone or in person they'll be much more likely to go with you why because I had clients come to me they got proposals and they talked to people over the phone I like to set up a consultation before I tell someone what their price is going to be I like to meet them face to face yes that takes up more time for me but it helps me establish that relationship with that client so I like to get to meet with them and I talk to them I tell them about myself like hey I'm a dad I'm a normal person I'm a regular guy but this is my job this is what I do and I find that when I present myself in that way people are more apt to go with me even if I do charge a little bit more than other people other thing don't be afraid to talk about money people are coming to talk to you they are expecting you to give them a number so don't be afraid to talk about it and think like I said earlier as you get better you can charge more what I charged a year ago what I charged down is much more than what I charged a year ago but I knew I needed to get something started I knew I needed to get the ball rolling and I wasn't as efficient back then I wasn't as good as I am now so I realized that as I got better I could charge more because my own profit is going to be better now because I work in the world with nonprofits who don't typically have very much money there's a ceiling there I know that but I'm able to say here I am not just as some guy who works out of his house who can build a website but I'm an agency who has graphic designers and developers and marketers a better in product a better solution to your problem now I can charge them more and also when you're thinking about your pricing think about your long term goals for me I knew that I wanted to provide an income for my family I had done lots of reading and one thing that I knew that I needed to do was establish reoccurring income and depending on your type of WordPress business especially in kind of a creative agency you know you're just hopping from one project to another and there's kind of a feast or famine cycle that goes along with that and I read enough to know that from the beginning I wanted to work on those relationships with the clients so that I could have that reoccurring revenue so that I could establish relationships with them so I'm not broke all the time and even still over this last year it's like a roller coaster I get paid but then I don't get paid the rest until I finish a project and I'm like man I got to get this project done because I need to get paid but understanding what your pricing is by knowing what your process is what your team is what your skills and abilities are all those things play into what you're able to ask now yeah figure out what everybody else is doing figure out what the going rate is but if you're just starting out you're not going to be able to ask that you're not going to be able to ask that but figure out what that is to set yourself a goal you can do it and really for me the question I ask myself in this whole process is really how can I bring value or more value to my clients how can I bring them a better value not just they're going to pay me but how can I give them more for their money I'm going to start asking for more money but I need to give more when I do ask for more money to give a better product I'm not talking about money being apprehensive about talking about it when I meet with a client I hear about the project I want to know what they're really looking for what are they hoping to accomplish with that that all helps me to build that relationship with them and then I don't give them a price for that consultation I think about what they're saying I kind of use a more value based pricing strategy I hear them, I talk to them I get to know them understand how this project is going to benefit them I go back and do a proposal and I send it to them and then I talk over it with them I learned this never do anything for free I should build a little little asterisk there but free doesn't mean for not any money you can do things where your payment isn't necessarily money maybe it's a referral maybe flight it's going to be good for your portfolio maybe it's going to be good experience for you maybe just know how something is going to benefit you have an understanding from the get go that this is going to benefit me this way this is going to benefit me exactly how whether that's a great experience for you I have a few projects right now I'm doing for free and the reason I'm doing them for free is because I need to add them to my portfolio they're not a lot of work I can kind of do with my spare time but for me it helps give me credibility into my industry specifically growing outside of my nonprofit market my investment project for lower amount or almost free or something like that to understand I'm also usually get some recurring revenue from that so I don't actually do it for free but it kind of helps introduce me to a sector it helps me introduce me to a new thing so just some ways for developing recurring revenue each one of these hurdles could be a whole session in and of itself especially this one maybe next year I'll have more insight into this and I'll give you some more how do I do that through retainers number one developing ongoing relationships with those clients whether that's maintaining their website supporting it we do graphic design retainers marketing retainers social media support retainers we do a lot of that kind of stuff so we can really help our clients whatever the problem is typically we can help them with that but understanding that these are relationships so from the beginning I knew I wanted to establish retainers I knew I wanted to offer them I knew I wanted to price them hosting this is something that I do and this is something that I've created but it's something I've partnered with an existing post you can use like type host here you could talk with I use dream host as one of the sponsors they have some WordPress optimized hosting and here's what I do I offer that to my clients I manage it for them I maintain it for them I install premium plugins on there for them so I offer them a value added service that they appreciate that they're going to get for less than if they were to try to go out there and get it themselves and the last way and I kind of call this my icing on the cake because if you get these other two things going on and then you have these other projects but repeat business somebody comes back to me again I know this maybe isn't reoccurring technically but repeat business when somebody comes back to me and I just did a great project for them and they have a little bit of something extra like hey can you design this project or can you design this booklet for me hey can you do this and kind of maybe optimize this social media post for me okay sure I've established a relationship for them so they're going to come back if they have any needs and I've already established a pricing structure with them so they know how much it's going to cost and the great thing for me is that's like icing on the cake that's like extra money that I can figure out what to do with so for me those are some of the keys to long term success is developing that reoccurring revenue and that's very important so I just want to kind of in conclusion say this in reality the reality is that you can do wordpress full time now I'll stand here and say I am like I said I'm not complete there but I'm almost there in one year going from not having a job to deciding to do wordpress to starting an agency to going through all those hurdles okay it is a process and it'll take you some time but it can be done and what I love is that there's so many ways to do it there's just some with wordpress flexibility there with ways that you can make wordpress your full time income let me say this part of part of what I do for me is I love spending time with my kids I love being at home I love the flexibility that comes with me doing wordpress full time I make my own schedule I take projects or I don't take projects or I delay projects according to my schedule and that's great okay for me because I want to spend as much time as I can with my family so you can do it and it can be the best thing so for me my journey over this last year started kind of an agony but I would not change it for anything okay because this year not only am I happier I'm better okay maybe my income isn't quite what it used to be or quite where it's going to be though it's not quite there yet but it will be and I'm sure of that but for me I have existed in this world wordpress for this last year just full time guns blazing and it has been the best year of my life so I want to encourage you all to do the same if you're there if you're on the fence like me probably not most of you guys are probably already doing this but for me if you're on the fence it can be done and if you need some help you need some coaching I'm just kind of maybe I'm a few hurdles ahead of you I'd be happy to help you any way that I can but you can do it so I appreciate y'all how let me have this opportunity to speak this morning it was my it was you know the last year I was like maybe it really wasn't just a thought in my mind maybe I could speak next year things go well okay here I am I'm super excited about that not to answer any questions we got a little bit of time here let's see we've got still only five minutes so this may be did you walk us through a typical full day for you okay depends on what day but typically I'll say Monday Monday is probably my favorite day we wake up I'm getting up I'm getting my projects ready just kind of helping to understand exactly what needs to be done over the course of that week I'm going through going over all my to-do lists making sure that all my projects are on time we have kind of a staff meeting at 10 we go over all the projects their current state where they are what needs to be done that week assigning those responsibilities and after that point usually on Monday I have client meetings so I'm going out talking with clients and usually in the afternoon usually lunch meetings so after lunch I come home and I'll work on projects myself so depending on the project I might do some work on Tuesdays I have a co-working membership at level downtown I go down there work all day but also it makes for this I do a lot of meetings and that's part of what's saying what don't I have time for I don't have more and more meetings which are paying off for me this last month I landed the biggest retainer that I've ever had partly because I had invested in a relationship a year ago so that's a long time I know to invest in it but those meetings and talking with people getting referrals is mostly what I do and then I do some of the development I gather from something you said you don't have any full-time employees they're staying as contractors I wonder if you could talk a little more about that how you found them how that works just from like from a business standpoint technically paperwork and working with them in and what yeah, luckily for me all the people that work for me right now I know personally some of them I've got to know this last year so most of those came to me by referral so as I was out there everybody found out my friends networks was like, whoa, Wesley lost a job so that's a big deal so for them, what do you do it I'm like, hey, I have to work here I'm like, I think I'm going to start a digital agency okay I know this person, I know that person so it was networking through my existing network that led me to the people that work some of them, one of them Steve, I worked with him previously so I knew him now everybody's got typically a full-time job so this is something to do with their spare time as things grow yeah, I want to hire full-time employees I'm not there yet because I need to make a full-time living for myself and not that that has to be a great huge amount, a big figure but I need to be there really for me, but I go a long term just to do that but for right now, I mean, when you go online Trevor actually is one of the guys that works for me it's back here in the back we find people at Upward or some of those other sites where you can find and a lot of those people the issue is a lot of those guys are overseas so sometimes there's a language barrier especially when you're talking design you need to really have good communication when you're talking about design I have a question about pricing without getting some nitty-gritty of it like what's coming up front I know you have this struggle you need money immediately and you're trying to start out full-time workers so like how do you negotiate when you're trying to get a new client what comes up first and what comes later and what you're offering I was wondering if you could elaborate on that yeah, when I had that first consultation meeting which was part of the reason I love to have those is I get to know that client I try to figure out exactly what their project is not in extreme detail but almost and then I really understand I kind of do more of a value-based pricing which is I understand the value that I'm bringing to them because if I'm going to make them a ton of money I have a right to charge a little bit more because it's more valuable I'm not talking about I don't charge $10,000 but I understand what the value is and I'm bringing to them also in that meeting I also help to communicate I communicate that value to them so I'm helping them understand how I'm going to help them here's the things that we could do here's that and so it's through that relationship that I help them understand how I'm going to benefit them I learn more about their project I go home and I think about it I don't always do this right I just blew a previous job third day because I overpriced it that happens too but I think about it I say you know they're at this level they can afford to pay this I bring a lot to the table for them so I'm going to adjust my price accordingly with them so basically I go back and I have proposal software so I put it together I have a basic understanding of some standard rates that I charge especially what my costs are to people that do freelance informants I have that established so I can do a basic estimate how many hours it's going to take me how many hours it's going to involve from them so I can get a good understanding of what my cost is going to be and then I can kind of go up from there alright alright I appreciate it thank you all very much