 Well, hey everybody. It's good to see you. Aren't you just so happy to be back at word camp? I'm just so happy to be back at word camp. I'm so happy to see old faces and meet new faces and This isn't it really nice to just have conversations with people and they're about what you do and yet their eyes don't glaze over. It's really nice Yeah, yeah, I love it We'll just call this geek fest, but we mean that in the nicest way, okay? So yeah, I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about how to get paid for every little thing you do and all the sue did introduce me You know we have this obligatory Slide about who who am I? So I do have a master's degree in instructional design. I started life as a first grade teacher And then I went back to school to get my master's degree mainly because I couldn't find a teaching job Believe it or not. There was a glut of school teachers at the time. I couldn't find a teaching job I went into corporate software development where I was a business analyst and for anybody who doesn't know what That is basically I talked to the Big Bang Theory people Well, I talked to the product people and then I translate that so the Big Bang Theory people you guys can understand it and Then vice versa. So that's what I did for many years Once I got involved in once I left corporate and started my own agency which was called WP roadmaps and coaching But I recently rebanded to triad web advisors After I realized that people don't really want you to teach them how to manage their own websites. That was my foot That was my first stick, right I Started going to word camps and I started hearing people like you complain about scope creep Not being able to control my client. My client's not giving me the content on time All my projects are running over budget all my projects are running over time I don't know how to control any of this stuff. Well, that's all the stuff We kind of invented in the 80s and 90s in software development and those things that we invented still work But nobody's teaching that so I thought well, this is the way I can give back to the community so that's why I formed the WP project managers Academy and this is I still run my agency I'm I'm pivoting to more of a Because I love the business analyst part where I'm figuring out what the problem is and what the solution is I'm morphing. I'm pivoting my business back to something like that and then we're continuing to do the WP project managers Academy So I just like helping people It's my thing But most people would be surprised to know that I actually said this At one point in my life. I hate project management I will never be a project manager and that's because I was working in the financial industry at Wacovia Which is now well well Spargo and I went to my favorite boss who had moved in who had moved out of the retail department and Into programming and I went to him and I said Harrison, please. Can you I hate my boss? I hate what we're doing now. Can you please find a spot for me? I love you so much and he goes well I do have some project manager positions and as much as I love this man and as much as I hated my job This is what I said and then I went I left there and went to work for a consulting firm Where I learned how well the reason I felt that way is because if when you work in corporate Project management is just a bunch of busy work that keeps you from doing the job that you supposed to be doing because you got to Keep all this paperwork and all this stuff to make the project manager happy But that's not how project management really is in real life. And so that's what I'm gonna help you with today In order to get paid for every little thing you do there's three things you need to do You need to know what every little thing you do is You need to measure every little thing you do And you need to control every little thing you do the control part. That's the project management part So why is it that folks don't get paid for every little thing they do Well, number one is They're giving quotes instead of estimates All right that quote that when you do that first proposal That is not a quote y'all The fence builder can do a quote at your house because he can come he measures the front yard He measures the yard. He knows exactly how much how long it's gonna be. He knows what his materials are gonna cost He knows because he's done it enough times how long it's gonna take him. He can give a quote He might still have you know, what do they call it a contingency budget in there? Like if he digs a hole and You know severs an electrical line that he's got a fix so there's a contingency for that But for the most part, that's a quote We don't know enough after that first meeting or even after the proposal even after the proposal is accepted Nine times out of ten. You don't know enough to give a quote You should be giving an estimate you should make it clear to your clients that this is an estimate and Because it just as it says this estimate may change because this is our best guess based on what we know today As we find out things going through the project. Oh, here's a new requirement. Oh, you forgot to tell me about this Oh, I forgot to ask you about that that is What's gonna change that estimate going forward and I'm gonna tell you some really neat tricks So that the client is perfectly okay with that Giving two precise an estimate too soon. This is something that a lot of people do is They want to say, okay, this website's gonna cost $5,000 But they say that like I said right after the first proposal meeting right and then you can't do that We all want to try to package our businesses or make I make the end of the things easier for us So we can just say well if it's five page website, it's gonna cost the X amount of dollars. I do not Adhere to that nor do I promote that because you may find out stuff during a discussion with the client to find out that You're gonna be much well better well suited with a 10 page website So don't ever and they'll still expect you to do it for $5,000 because that's the price you gave them too early The other one is inadequate discovery. Just as I said, you're not doing a deep dive discovery You're giving that quote before you've gotten all the information and I'm gonna tell you how deep dive discovery should look as well Scope creep. All right for those of you. You don't know scope creep This is when you say all right Here's what here's what's included and then the customer asks for something and then you say, okay I just throw that in okay, and then something and then you realize that you forgot to ask them something or forgot to put Something in there so you just go ahead and do it anyway. That's scope creep Project delays, that's usually when the client doesn't give you the content on time Or they don't meet a deadline or a third party that you've hired doesn't meet the deadline so then you've got project delays which You might say well, that doesn't really affect how much money I get paid Well, yeah, if you value your time it does and now you've got a figure You've got to shuffle your other projects around or maybe you don't even have any other projects in the wings So you're just twiddling your thumbs while you wait for this so that so project delays could could be a really a Real issue and then being the nice guy or the nice girl or the nice gal. I guess I should say We just want to be nice, you know, I'll just throw that in you know because I know they want it They didn't really ask me for it, but I know they want it and I'll just throw it in That's called gold plating, but it's still a form of scope creep at the same time So this is the reasons does this resonate with anybody? Anybody see there sent themselves in that list at all. Yeah This is why people don't get paid for every little thing they do Oh, I want to say something here, too If anybody went to Nev Harris's talk this morning where he talked about If there is a recession coming or an inflation or whatever the night whatever name they're given to what is going on Be prepared. This is one way you can be prepared. Let's make sure that you're holding on to your planned profit margin Okay to know everything you every little thing you do you need a project plan How many people actually use a project plan for their projects? Oh Seriously Y'all y'all need to sign up for the academy. All right Project plan is so helpful to met even if you don't use it day to day and Managing your projects just to be able to figure out every little thing you do that you're probably not charging for You need a project plan to measure everything you need you need that you every little thing you do you need a time tracker Now some of us who've been doing this a really really really long time like Nathan I could say Nathan. How long will it take you to do X or how long will it take your agency to do X? He's gonna know right off the top of his head If you're fairly new or you haven't been tracking your time or you don't have this history to go on You really need something to keep track of your times or your your people's time So that you know exactly how much long it's taking and how long you pay how much you paying yourself or how much or you're actually You know giving yourself an hourly rate or how much are you paying your uh your team? Based on the number of hours that they're spending now I'm gonna tell you a little aside here. I don't believe in ever telling the client how much your hourly rate is Unless you absolutely have to unless it's in your contract for we will do X in X situation at our currently hourly rate And if they ask for it, that's fine But this is uh just for an internal calculation only your hourly rate. I don't believe in doing hourly work It's not sustainable and um It's just not the best way to do business in my opinion. Okay, then to control everything you every little thing you do you need Uh proven processes repeatable proven processes and that's where project management comes in Okay, let's talk a little bit about your project plan Y'all i'm not drunk. I promise I had a little ear infection recently. I'm having some inner ear problems. So I lose my balance a little bit. So Just bear with me. Um Okay, generally a project plan is broken down into phases activities and tasks You need to write down at least once and y'all it's tedious. It's it's a pain in the MMM But if you do this at least once write down every single thing involved in every single activity And I'm going to give you some hints on some things. You're probably forgetting about So this is an example of the project plan we teach inside the academy Down to the activity level. It's just the first the first four phases. Well, there are more phases But um, this is basically everything to the activity level. This doesn't really tell you much design and validate layouts Well, that doesn't how am I going to figure out how long that's going to take? Well, we're going to have to break it down further So, uh, if we break that down further to the task level design and validate layouts Just as an example comes down to secure formal acceptance of the site map Because we've already done a site map. We need to make sure that and the client has verbally said Yeah, that looks right to me You want to make sure you get formal sign off on that before you start the uh, the layouts, right? In the in the methodology that I teach we're just using this activity as an example Um, so you're going to have to select and define your theme agree on acceptance criteria for the wireframes And you'll learn a little bit more about acceptance here in just a few minutes When we talk about that I need to look at my time I started at 330. Okay, good. Um Sometimes I either go way too fast or way too slow. So I'm just trying to keep track Uh Agree on acceptance criteria for wireframes create the wireframes review the wireframes with the client Update the wireframes from client feedback Secure client acceptance and update your project plan and your project notebook By the project notebook. I'm uh, we and one thing we teach in the academy is to keep all of your documentation in one spot Used to back in the software development days in the 80s and 90s when I was carrying that portable computer through the airport like this Because it was weighed 40 pounds and looked like a sewing machine Um, we actually had a physical notebook I mean, it was a big old binder that you could put on the on the shelf And I'll say a little aside about that if you do that even if you do it in electronic copy now Yeah, that can actually be a value add to your client that you give them at the end of the project Here's all the approvals we did here's all the times we did we veered off course and here's why we did that and That way if something ever happens to you They have how their website was built right there. That's a huge value add for them It makes them and if you tell them that at the beginning, they know you're not going to be the disappearing Uh developer, right that that just leaves and now they don't know how their website was built or how to do anything with it Okay, so what's missing? Let's drill down to this first uh first task Which is secure formal acceptance of the site map. What's what what's really involved in that? Okay Well, if we drill down to the sub task level, we have to prepare an acceptance form We have to submit that form to the client then we have to store the form in the project notebook Okay, those seem like tiny things, but they take time, right? So if you go through your entire project plan and you drill down to this level You can be sure that you have noted every little thing you do Okay, does that make sense any questions so far? Nope, okay Is it tedious? Yes It's very tedious to do this. You generally only have to do it once or let's say that you've always done brochure websites Now you're gonna like veer venture into the world of of e-commerce. You'll have to do it again But it's so important to drill down and and look, you know what even if you Just take your best guess just get something down Take, you know, even if you if you miss a couple of activities or you miss a couple of tasks Take your best guess you can refine it later after you measure, right? Take your best guess at how long you think these things are going to take Now this is a spreadsheet that we use what we do with What I I have for my students in the academy So we use a spreadsheet we break it down to that task level and then we estimate the hours We estimate the low rate and the high rate And then we estimate and then we get the totals This is going to cost as little as $500 or it could cost as little as as much as $1,500 This is that range estimate I was talking about earlier that you don't give a Definite price at the beginning, you know, you can give a range and say This website's going to cost between five and seven thousand dollars or this is going to cost between 10 and 15 thousand dollars Um, and then you adjust it after the deep dive discovery, which we'll talk about in a minute Okay time trackers Because it's just me and because I'm an og and have been doing this a really long time I already know how long this stuff's going to take me. I don't use time trackers But this is from an article that zapper you're put out recently about all the best productivity tools And this is their list of the best time tracking apps And we just somebody mentioned that we do a friday chat in my facebook group every friday morning and you're perfectly welcome to join us Um, and we talked about this recently and everybody's using something different, right? It's good to know what everybody's using. What do you like about that? What do you don't like about that? But it really doesn't matter as long as it's keeping track of your time so that you can use this going forward to create better estimates And know that you're getting paid for everything that you do All right controlling what you do There are five essential processes for controlling every little thing that you do First you need a two-step proposal process or some other way. I'm going to show you what my what ours looks like, but um Some other way of making sure That you get paid for discovery Excuse me just one second. My drink is over here. Oh, can you get it for me melanie? Thank you I'm getting a little dry now. It happens when you get up in front of people You know I used to do a lot of little theater I can get up and pretend to be somebody else and I'm never nervous a minute But I get up in front of all you people my people and then you get nervous That that's the yeah, thank you and and you get all dry mouth and stuff I know you're not judging me anything any worse than I'm judging you which I never do But still it makes you nervous to be up here All eyes on me So a two-step proposal process or some other way for making sure that you get paid for the discovery You need a process a repeatable process for estimating somebody had a one of those clear like a What do you call those balls with the water and I'm in the In the anyway, I'm talking about a crystal ball. That's the way we usually use it to to estimate projects Right a crystal ball. You got to put away the crystal ball method of estimating There are better ways to do it. You need a process for deep dive discovery Not just discovery deep dive discovery. It's painful. It's tedious, but it will pay off in the end And change management And acceptance management and I'll tell you in a minute why I call that acceptance management And not approval management Okay All right, the first two kind of go together the two-step proposal process and an estimating obviously So here's how it's typically done You have a meeting with the client you you draw up a proposal You start designing You go to validate that with the client And they say no, no, no, that's not what I wanted at all. So you do a revision So you go back to design and then you do it again And then you do it again It takes a lot of time because you jumped into design before you had all the details, right Then you go to gather content you go, okay client Go get the content now that we've got the design also go get the content And that's where the project stalls because they don't get it done on time Or they just disappear entirely and you never ever finish the project That happens a lot more than you think it does So they finally deliver the content and now you got to validate again because it probably affected your design So now you got to go through that again It's not a good it's not a good way to do things Our two-step proposal process that I teach my students Is to start with phase zero. I call it phase zero because if it's not if the proposal is not accepted It's not really a project in my opinion You estimate the content This is another thing people leave out is they don't estimate the content activities because they're not doing it They're clients doing it. They just say okay I'm gonna give you three weeks to get the client the content done no discussion with the client No estimating of how much content is there actually to be created or we've already got this content But we have to gather it together. We have to organize it We have to put it somewhere that it's easy to get to when we start to build the website So you have to estimate all those activities So you come up with initial estimate stated as a range And then see if they if the proposal gets approved If the proposal is not approved, that's the end of it end of project They didn't approve it if they do approve it we get a deposit for the entire first phase of deep dive discovery This is how we make sure we get paid for discovery We get paid upfront for at for at least that now sometimes that's 50 percent You know the whole 50 percent upfront 50 percent later thing that doesn't work But sometimes this is 50 percent sometimes it's 60 percent or 70 percent because that's when most of That's where most of the time is is in the deep dive discovery because Listen, let me ask you a question If everything you needed to build the website was like sitting there on a shelf Here's the theme. Here's all the plugins you need. Here's all the specification for the plugins you need Here's everything you need to build this website. How long would it take you to build? Let's say some five page website. How long would it take you to build it? About 20 minutes Right. I mean, well, that's an exaggeration, but you're right about a day It's not going to take long if everything's already planned Everything's already put in one place the development part easy easy where you should be spending the time Planning talking to the client figuring out how it should look Sorry, I get into my wp grandma mode and I start telling you what to do. I apologize. It just comes with age All right, so if that uh, so when we we get that deposit to cover phase one and we go to uh Phase one that should say go to phase two No, no, let's go to phase one because we were in phase zero This is where we're going to do our deep dive discovery So while we're doing this deep dive discovery chances are we're going to find requirements that we didn't know about We're going to find all the client goes. Oh man. I forgot to tell you about those five pages. We need we need a page for each Executive with their bio on it. I forgot to tell you about that. Okay Accessibility I forgot about the disability So you're going to find out new requirements right that that come up during this process Uh, it may be something you forgot doesn't really matter But because you've already set the stage with your client very very early on that look We're going to do this deep dive discovery and chances are we're going to find new things That's okay. We don't want to squelch anything simply because we've carved things in granite too soon So we're going to add those new requirements Then we are going to adjust for any of those new requirements We're going to update our project plan And we're going to um adjust for that. We're going to now do a detailed statement of work That is where we're going to put all of that detail that we that we pulled together for the deep dive Create this detailed statement of work with a new estimate based on what we found during deep dive And we're going to say uh now if that estimate Exceeds what was in the proposal estimate we give the client the option to cancel They hardly ever do Because they were right there shoulder to shoulder with you when you discovered these new requirements They know you didn't intend you didn't include them in the initial estimate. They're they're usually normally normal Why is thinking business people they're not going to say well you didn't think of that so you don't you can't charge me for it They're not going to say that so this usually this works nine times out of ten So if uh, if the new estimate does not exceed what was in the proposal We just continue on because they're already under contract. It's still going to fall within that first range that we gave them If they do they can cancel and then we uh, did I get that backwards? Did the client elect to cancel? No, they didn't we go to phase two If they do elect to cancel we hand them that detailed statement of work They can go to fiver or wherever they want to go to try to get somebody else to do it The difference is that doesn't hurt your feelings because you already got paid for this part So you haven't done any work that you're not getting paid for this is how you make sure you get paid for every little thing you do Okay And that would be the end of the project All right, so we've covered the two-step proposal process and estimating now. We're to the deep dive discovery How do you do that to make sure that you get paid for every little thing you do? Well, you break it down. This is one of the we have six principles of WordPress project success that we teach and one of those is break the job down Quit trying to do it in these big chunks that might work for you. It's never going to work for your client If you break these things down and get these and get uh, I call them incremental approvals on the pieces of the website You're gonna um, you're gonna you're gonna get a lot It's easier for the client to get those things approved And then when when you've already got it approved and then there a change has to happen to it You can charge for it because it's already been approved um And we do use a content first approach I also teach that that we don't start any development till we got all the content that way you're not work Because you know what usually happens is you say, all right, they're not ready for the content Let's just go ahead and build out the rest of the website then when they are ready for the content We'll just drop the content in but then they don't come and they don't come and they don't come Well all that work you did to thinking you're getting ahead. That's just wasted time of yours and wasted money where you've You've allowed it to eat into your project profit So we're going to start with a site map then from that site map. We're able to create a content rough order of magnitude Okay, we've got this many Mostly text pages with a few images. We've got this many pages that have to have videos on them We've got this many pages that have a table whatever the content is you do a rough order of magnitude of that content This is the best way to teach you to convince your client not to do their own content Because if you try to tell them that they don't have this the the grammatical skills or the literature or the writing skills to do It they'll push back But if you show them how much time it's going to take And you have a business to run you shouldn't be spending all your time doing this Most of the time that's when that's when they'll sit about acquiesce and say, okay fine We'll hire a copywriter or I'll let you do it. Oh, did I mess up my my sound there? I'm okay still Okay Talk with my hands too much You validate that rough order of magnitude with the client. That's when you create your proposal Take that after the proposal is approved the first thing we do after that is wireframes a lot of people don't believe in wireframes We do now what a wireframe is we use low fidelity wireframes black and white No no design at all the minute you introduce design your client's not going to look at anything else Until later and they're going to come back and say well, I don't remember you just doing blah blah blah blah Well, that's because you were focusing on the design and I was trying to get you to focus on the layout So we do the layouts in the form of a wireframe That allows us to refine our content needs because now we've got a block for every place where we need content Every place we need a picture every place we need a paragraph So we can refine those content needs and say oh, you know, here was what we estimated That's going to be a lot more than that or here's what we estimated and it's actually going to be a little less than that So we don't have to do as much. It's not always more sometimes it's less you validate that with the client Then you move on to the content specification You get that approved And these things together the layout specification the content specification the functional technical requirements and the branding and styling guy Specification all of those things together. I didn't show that all broken down But that's basically how you would break down the deep dive discovery And that's what goes into that complete website specification that I call the statement of work Um, and then it also includes that updated estimate So that's how we break that down to make sure that we get paid for every little step we do Okay, so we've covered the first three of the essential processes the next two Go hand in hand together and these are probably the most powerful Processes in this list They're all good, but these are probably the the most powerful So in those first ones that we covered we covered these three reasons people don't get paid these next two processes Cover scope creep and project delays So to control screed to control scope creep You need to establish a solid change control procedure Who has a change control procedure that they tell their clients about before they start a project Are you kidding me all of y'all need to sign up for the academy You need a change control procedure You need to explain that to your client at the very beginning change happens embrace change It means more money for you It means a better product for the client at the end of the project project So change is not something we always talk about well the client came back with all these changes at last minute Blah blah blah and we complain about that But you can control that if you educate your client on the front end about that change is going to happen Look Change could be something as simple as I've got this kick-ass developer Who's working on this project and she had to go out on maternity leave But she went out two three weeks early because she delivered early wasn't so you didn't plan for that But now you got to make a change to the project right that's probably going to affect the timeline She probably can't find somebody right away Or maybe you already had somebody in the wings But their junior this person was a senior so it's going to take the junior longer to get the things done So that's why you definitely need to Establish a good change control procedure a good change control procedure controls change to the cost The timeline the requirements or the resources even if it doesn't affect the cost You still implement the change control procedure because that's your paper trail. That's your paper trail to I keep making the same mistake. I keep estimating this wrong. Now I can fix this on my next project That's why you do the change control for every and see Most of us are like that's a 15 minute change I am not going through the paperwork on the change control process for 15 minute change You need to do it because anytime you skip it your client's going to expect you to skip it the next time It needs to use a change budget What a change budget is is an invisible bucket of money that you've established in the proposal That says we're only going to use this money for change I usually do that at 20 to 30 percent of the of the total project So let's say the project's going to cost $5,000. I'll take 20 percent of that and say, okay We need to establish this change budget. You know, it's not part of I don't get a deposit on it I don't I don't ever get it paid to me if there's no changes But if there is then this is what we do Um, and I'll explain a little bit um in more detail about the change control procedure in just a second Oops, let me go back. I didn't mean to click. It's invoked without exception. I think I made that clear Without exception. Okay, did I make that clear? All right. Um It's part of your contract. So they've signed on to that. I'm agreeing to this, right? I'm agreeing to this change control procedure You discuss it with the client upfront and repeat it as much as necessary Because repetition is what Enhances learning it doesn't matter that you have to repeat it over and over And did I say that it's invoked without exception? Yeah, that's the big deal. Okay Um, so here's how this works Anybody can can submit a change request the client can do it You can do it a team member can do it somebody sees that a change needs to happen So it's only a request at this point I get I get um I get annoyed with the term change order Because that implies that it's already been Decided that it's going to be done. No, this is just a request And so it did it get approved if it did Are we going to take that so then is that money going to come out of the change budget or not? This is a great way to prevent frivolous change requests Could you look I found I liked that color blue, but now that I see it I'd really like for it to be a little lighter. I need to be carolina blue. Okay No But but if you say, okay, that's going to cost $500 Because it's going to take me, you know, it might only take you five minutes depending on the way you built your website But they don't know that and it's a pain in the ass to do it So they should have they should have approved that to begin with you can charge them for whatever you want But okay, we're going to take $500 out of change budget to cover that right? Okay. Is that okay? Well, you know, I think I'll be okay with that blue. That's what usually happens So you get paid because it's that money's coming out of now sometimes depending on who the client is somebody I've worked for before I'll just add it to the end of the project most of the time I'm going to invoice for it right then because it's a change you go ahead and pay me and we'll do it Even if I'm not doing the change right then I'm doing it in this phase I'll still go ahead and invoice for it I'm going to tell you all in a moment how much money this has made me this year Okay, if it was not approved You make a phase two list here's another here's a way that you can get your foot in the door for the next set of improvements, right? If it goes to phase two and they choose you to do it you get paid to say you get paid for every little thing you do All right, I have a furniture store client supposed to be a six-week project All they wanted to do is take their catalog site and make it a true e-commerce site so that they people could buy off the web I personally would never buy a sofa without seeing it in person, but people are buying cars that way So who in the hell knows that's what they wanted to do. So I added e-commerce Everything was going smooth. I mean that's the beginning part went really well Till we started trying to move their point of the data in their point of sale system in the store To WooCommerce Not because WooCommerce couldn't handle it because that POS system was a POS I mean it was built POS stands for piece of Because it had been it was built back in maybe debase y'all. I think it might be debased It's like like still got eight character limits on things and so they've got this this code for what they you know A living room sectional with a sleeper sofa is this code, but then they forgot what the code was so they got it all mishmashed up I've been spending the entire Last year helping them straighten out their data So that wasn't part of what I agreed to in the initial proposal So I've done change request after change request after change request. It's a $12,000 project has now $25,000 Well, the client hasn't balked hasn't even blinked Because they know i'm doing stuff. I didn't estimate at the beginning And they they knew about the change process before we started So this is how you get paid for every little thing you do even when a even when a project goes I mean that project's over a year old y'all. I keep going. When are we gonna add the store? We've got everything else in place I forgot the point. I was just gonna say anyway This is how you make sure you get paid for everything you do The other thing is adopt an acceptance management process and this is what Is typically a good acceptance management process is it focuses on acceptance rather than approval Because approval y'all words matter sometimes. Okay the connotation of words matter approval means Well, melanie I'm not sure I approve of you. I'm not sure I approve of what you've done But if you agree up front that look here's the acceptance criteria for this deliverable whether that deliverable is the The the site map or the functional requirements or the design Here here's what has to be in that piece in that deliverable For it to be accepted And if you can do if you can go through and check off that it meets all those things the client cannot come back and say Yes, but I thought I wanted it to I thought you were going to do so and so Or I thought it was going to include this really because up front you agreed that this is what it was going to include So it becomes a check it becomes an acceptance thing not and less of an approval thing It defines rejection without cause That's what I just described that the client says, but I thought No, we have it all on paper. We have it all documented. This is what you agreed to It requires establishing that acceptance criteria up front for each individual deliverable and also the project In writing. Yes in writing. Thank you Um, it also is part of your contract And you discuss it with the client up front and repeat it as necessary All of your processes And there are actually 10 truly essential processes, which I'll show you in a minute All of those processes those last two bullets Are true should be part of your contract the client agrees to it And it should be discussed with the client up front and as often as necessary So in terms of why folks don't get paid we've talked about All of them except project delays because both acceptance management and the change control procedure together Is what helps control Um scope creep So when it comes to project delays You need to include the client when determining the timeline. This is another thing we don't do You sit down with the client and say, okay, here is what I've laid out as a first draft Are you going on vacation? Are you expecting any delays? Do you have a big product push that's coming up? So with my furniture people they have the furniture market twice a year I need to know when that is because they're not doing anything except that right They're not talking to me on the phone. I can't get them on there unless I go down to the high point furniture market I'm not going to be able to talk to them. Okay So you want to make sure that they are involved in deciding what the schedule is going to look like Use a content first development approach Does does everybody buy into that? Yeah, or I mean It's been a topic of discussion for many years in the wordpress space or in web development space. Anyway Is you got to have the content before you do the final before you do any design really because The content should drive the design not the other way around How many times those of you who've done this and I have in the past when I was new and first started Um, you do the design They approve it. It looks great Then they send you all this content and you as you as you're looking at the content you're going God, I need to change that layout because that's not going to work for the amount of the same content They sent me Unless you unless you do the control on the front end. That's typically what's going to happen Now you've got rework to do on your design Clearly layout penalties for not meeting the dates and provide incentives for meeting the dates um You'd be amazed what people will do for a sports shirt Or uh, uh gift certificate a amazon gift gift card y'all i'll do just about anything for an amazon gift card quite frankly um You'd be amazing what people will do But so like what I'd usually do especially on a big project. I'll say look Now this is not a pad. You never pad A project a pad an estimate to take care of things you don't know yet That's just because you can't measure it. You don't know what it was used for. That's just arbitrary Not why it's estimating But what I do is I will bump the estimate by whatever number $500. Let's just say because it's easy math Um, and then I'll say guess what if you meet all your dates that you've agreed to already I will give you a $500 discount It's not really a discount because you added $500 to the estimate, but for them it's a discount, right? Um, so but not everybody's motivated by money. Some people are motivated by a sports shirt Don't know why or dinner out at a fancy restaurant or just a beer with you You know, there's all kinds of things you can use as incentives But you also have to clearly spell out penalties for men not meeting the dates And I'll tell you the best place that I have seen for how to do that Is monster contracts? So everybody know that's nathan's product Uh, that's the contract I use. It's a contract. I teach my students Um, uh, because it it covers it's got a great way of laying out if you're this far behind This is what's going to happen if you get this far behind This is what's going to happen and so forth and so on So I've adopted the way that he does it And he's adopted the change budget, you know So it doesn't matter how long you've been doing this You're always going to learn something new never stop learning never stop Listening to other people because you're going to hear something and go That's going to help my business if I do it that way Um Oh and make sure that you invoke your change control procedure Without exception and you ensure that your acceptance management process specifies turnaround times and consequences for non-compliance Just like with everything else you're gonna um, so you're holding that carrot out in front of him saying You know do your thing the right way and here's what you get These are the elements of a good change control process procedure You don't have to take a picture of that slide because I have a Download for you along with the slides that you can download a list of this But I'm just going to go over this real quick Uses a change budget defines what constitutes a change because some people don't understand that so you have to say Basically, if there's a change to anything that has already been formally approved That's a change So it defines what constitutes a change it identifies who can initiate a change request Establishes that all change requests are in writing Identifies who will assess the impact to the project because that change request comes in somebody's got to say how long is this going to take? Is it going to impact the timeline the cost the scope? What is it going to what is it going to affect? Uses a change request log That's really more for you than than anything else because it's another way for you to come back Look at your look at your project documents capture your lessons learned and turn them into best practices So by keeping that that change control log you can go back and say you know what we did that We had to make that change on this project and this project and this project Let's see how we can improve our process is to not keep making that change, right? Um specifies where the change request will be maintained where your project notebook is going to be Who will approve or reject the change request? That's typically always the client Um specifies how long change approval or rejection should take What happens if the client does not respond and when is the payment for the change request due? That's pretty much the elements of a good change control process The elements of a good acceptance management process are that it identifies all the deliverables to be approved It specifies acceptance criteria for each deliverable and the final project Sometimes you can do all of those up front. Sometimes you can just do each acceptance each deliverable separately as you're getting ready to do it It identifies who's responsible for ejecting or reproving I kind of use approval and acceptance interchangeably until we start talking to the client Specifies the turnaround time clearly states what happens when the turnaround time is it met defines rejection with cause and describes when and how the rejection with cause is applied Um, so all of this too This is acceptance. That's why I did that that photo on there because That's uh, it's acceptance is more than approval Okay, so these are the 10 so we talked about the five that you need to control every little thing you do But there are really 10 essential project management processes processes that you need in your agency One is the why did I skip number two? I'm not sure I don't remember uh animating this slide actually There it is. It's estimating Um Let's just go and do them all Okay, so here are the 10 Two-step proposal process estimating requirements definition issues management risk management Um, that's not related to what we're talking about today, but still very important Content first development. How are you going to do that? Your technical approach is typically your tech stack your plugins. How are you going to configure those plugins? Client management and communication. That's you know, basically Nathan's book on controlling friendly monsters Client management very important change control and acceptance management Now Are there any questions at this point? See that means one of two things I suck at what I just taught you or I taught you so well that there's no reason to ask a question Okay Now if you want to learn more about this what yes Yes Yes, ma'am Thank you. You were very very good. I would love to take whatever you have. Okay. I'm getting ready to tell you about it Yeah, I kind of lost the question I Do you usually have to do the content for the client to speed things up? It depends on the client There are some clients that are great at writing their own content And but most aren't I do it for some because I used to be a technical writer But the stuff the problem is the stuff I write sounds like technical writing. I'm not a good marketing writer So if if the client isn't going to do it, I'll hire a third party a copywriter I truly believe in outsourcing to the people who do those things best I've got the mic. Who's got a question? Nobody okay. Well, all right Another question follow up. Yeah, thank you. I was thinking about doing planning websites for customers at one point I was this seems like this is something that I'll probably need. I don't necessarily want to do everything I just kind of want to sit down with the planning Right Yeah, I don't see you know people talk about niching the niches are in the riches That's why it's not niche because when work niches are in the riches it doesn't The riches are in the niches it doesn't work riches are in the niches that is a way of niching down In fact, I have just changed my business To focus on the business analyst part the figuring out the problem and figuring out the solution But I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to build the solution for people anymore I just want the recurring revenue I want to I want to farm out to you guys I want to farm out to other people to do the actual work and pull that team together at that point I've now behaved as the project as the business analyst and the project manager So if all you want to do is act as the the planner If you I think that's there's a definite need for that, but you know who I'd go to first is Uh digital agencies who don't have people doing that In other words, don't try to go to the end client go to the digit Go to a marketing agency that needs that that skill set from you That was my advice another question Yeah, the question I have is do you that for every single project no matter how much it costs? Do I do what do you do this for every project? No matter no matter what how much it costs. Yes, but sometimes a scaled down version Yeah, what I teach people is the They told me not to use this phrase because I think it means something nasty, but I use the mac daddy version That I give you the Cadillac version This is everything you could possibly need to do an enterprise level project And you have to scale that back if it's a mom and pops in a five page website, right? So you need to go through all these steps, but you could combine some of them or make them shorter All right, so look we'll go into more questions in a minute But if you want to learn more about this and more about how to get your projects done on time and within budget Then I invite you to join our academy and this is where you can learn how to consistently complete your work This is my elevator pitch already Learn how to consistently complete WordPress projects on time within budget with features that meet the business the client's business requirements without Sacrificing profit because we can usually do it by working 60 70 80 hour weeks To get it done when things get behind or get off kilter, but that is sacrificing profit when you do that So we have a basic membership. That's free. That's to let you get in there figure out if it's going to help you or not But you can upgrade to the premium at any time or you can cancel at any time So the basic membership is the project management 101 stuff We also have a certification program where you can get certified as a WP project manager, which gives you additional social proof and credibility But here's here's here's something interesting. I just did you might already be a project manager and I just put a Self-assessment on the home page of my website so that you can answer these. I think it's 12 questions And and figure out where you fall in the expertise in project management spectrum. Okay And I'll show you the url on our final slide So let's review for just a minute what we covered and then we'll go back to questions You need to know every little thing you do you need to measure every little thing you do You need to control every little thing you do if you want to get paid for every little thing you do You need to if you want to know everything you need to do that every little thing you do You need a project plan to measure you need a time tracker or history To have to be able to have measured that That time and then in order to control every little thing you do you need proven processes that control all the stuff that we complain about y'all can actually be controlled if you know how to do it. And that folks don't get paid because you need to stop giving quotes instead of estimates don't give too precise an estimate, inadequate discovery, scope, creep and project delays. Your essential processes for controlling these things is the two-step proposal process or some other form. Some people will do the discovery as a separate project and get paid for that, then they hand it to the client. I like to do it my way because that way if we come in with inside the range we already gave them, they're already under contract. They can't just take it and go somewhere else. They could, but most people adhere to contracts when they sign them, not everybody, estimating deep dive discovery, change management and acceptance management. So that's my talk y'all. And here's all that contact information if you want to see my stuff. You can get the slides at WPRedMats.com forward slash speaking. I don't think that's the right URL. Try it and see what happens. Well I had to redirect. I renamed the page so I'm not sure if this is really where it goes or not. You can go to the home page. There's a title. They're in the main menu. It says speaking. Go there. But the other two I know are right. Okay. Sorry. Time for questions. Anybody have a question? Any more questions? So back when you were talking about documenting all of the activities and continuously breaking down, what if what you're being contracted to build hasn't been built before? And so you don't know what's going to be involved in those activities yet. You take your best guess. You give the estimate as a range and say as we find things out we will do, we will adjust this estimate. When we do the second, we do the big statement of work where we found everything out, then we'll tell you, you know, we'll give you a new estimate and then we'll go from there. It is? Thank you. The URL is correct. There's just one last thing that's just interesting to probably everybody here but I asked a question earlier. How were we getting those transcripts? I didn't know if that was AI or whatever apparently and I think the guy back there knows it's human. There's people typing that almost in real time. And I thought it was fascinating. I thought we'd end up with a fascinating note. Beth, thank you very much. Anybody else? Any questions? I'll be around. You know, come talk to me if you're interested in learning about this stuff or you just have some questions. You didn't want to do it in an open forum. I'll be at the party tonight. I'll be all here all day tomorrow so please come talk to me. I'd love to help you.