 Who's happy to be a word camp? We are really excited to kick off the 2023 word camp season here in Birmingham Hopefully there'll be a lot more in-person word camps to come. I know Phoenix is scheduled for next month And several more hopefully will be popping up throughout the course of the year It's about time right enough that we've had a lot of online word camps But it's just not the same as being in a room full of fellow WordPress folks. I'm really glad you're all here Isn't this a great venue? It's really really cool. Hopefully you've had a chance to explore a little bit Go into some different sessions and then check out some of the rooms today and our great speakers that we have And store for you this weekend. So If you noticed on the schedule at WP y'all calm There's a schedule link in the main menu. You can follow that. There's also Schedule signs outside of each of the main doors. My name is Nathan Ingram. I'm the speaker organizer this year And I'm really excited about the great lineup of speakers. We have in all these rooms throughout the weekend if you're gonna be in the business track most of the time that's in here all day and It will be in the theater where opening remarks were tomorrow This room will be the workshop track tomorrow. So it's a lot more room to move around and be workshoppy in here So we are going to get started this morning with a little talk that I call what I wish I'd known about business My name is Nathan Ingram. I'm here from here in Birmingham, Alabama I am the creator of monster contracts, which is our proven contracts for WordPress client work I'm also the host at iThemes training and I'm the founder of Brilliant Webworks a small agency here in Birmingham Where we build and manage WordPress websites When it comes to these business topics, I like to say I'm an expert by the definition of Dr. Niles Bohr who said an expert is a person who is found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes That a person can make in a very narrow field and that is me So anytime I'm on stage talking about anything relating to business It's because I've made a lot of mistakes in the years that I've been in business I started working with clients building websites in 1995. That was a long time ago and I've done a lot of things the wrong way over the years and One of the great joys of my life in this season of my life is helping people who do WordPress things with clients Avoid the mistakes that I make and speaking as part of that coaching is another part of that And I like to start a talk like this and just a reminder that as we come into a space like this where we're in with a lot Of other WordPress people maybe doing business maybe doing development Maybe whatever it is that you do that you are not alone. We really do share some common struggles You know word camps are an amazing thing But it could be that even as you walked in this morning you find yourself you found yourself clustered with some people Who started talking about things that you had no idea what they were talking about They started using acronyms that you'd never heard of before or maybe you heard some people talking about how well their business has gone through the Pandemic and maybe yours didn't go so well Or whatever it is It's very easy to come into an event like this We're rubbing shoulders with colleagues and other professionals in our area and to think that I'm the only one who has the challenges that I face And let me just tell you right now that that is not true We share common struggles So I've been coaching WordPress solopreneurs and micro agency owners for about eight years now I've had hundreds and hundreds of conversations with folks that do what we do This is word camp number 61 for me where I've presented and I make myself available to anybody that wants to talk during those word camps to help Solve business issues and all those conversations. I also do an office hours on I themes training every week It's been now for the past four years. I've answered over 2,000 questions on those webinars about business and technical issues and all that to say this I've heard thousands of questions from people who do what we do and there are no unique issues The the the details of the problem may be different, but our story is the same So I want to invite you this weekend that if you feel compelled to put on some mask to make people think that you're Something that you're not don't do that Because we grow when we're vulnerable. We grow when we share our challenges and we're real with each other That's where we can learn So don't project just your highlight footage Let people see the real struggles that you're facing because that's where we can really start to make some changes All right, so you're not alone. So what I've got here are 10 lessons We'll see if I can get to all of them depends on how we do if not, there'll be like eight and I can give you the slides later But there's at least 10 things here. I want to share with you and it starts with this The first thing that I wish I'd known about business was you don't have to know everything Do what you do best and find trustworthy partners for the rest So back in the early days of my business. I started this thing when I was in college I was doing some IT consulting alongside working with a nonprofit, you know Just doing things to make ends meet, you know I had a few design skills like very light design skills Which in those days meant I could use Microsoft Publisher and make things look decent, you know And so I was doing some of that. I was building computers And then the web happened so I started, you know building some websites And you know, I was really just doing anything I possibly could to monetize the skills that God gave me to do You know, whatever I could do to make ends meet in our home And you know that worked for a little while But then I started to realize I can't do everything like the web thing got really big and you couldn't just be a web Person you had to decide well what kind of web person am I going to be am I going to be like a coder am I going to be You know use this software like Microsoft front page Which was awesome to build, you know back in the day to build websites and all these things You know, so you get into an event like this and you might think well if I'm not a developer You know those people over there in that room If I'm not one of them that I'm not really a web professional or you know if I'm not really a designer Then you know, I'm not really doing web design What I've discovered is when we talk to people in the WordPress space We tend to fall into one of three very broad categories and think of it maybe as like a spectrum Across the you know what we might be as identity in the WordPress space on one end way down here We have the developers. These are people who love to code. They know where the semicolon goes and all those PHP statements You know, they know when to use the squiggly bracket and the other things and all that which just you know I know enough PHP for self-defense. That's it And they're way down there on that end of the scale and over here on this end of the scale We have the designers, you know developers can make things that work They just make them bright pink and they don't look nice. But down here on the On the design scale they might be able to build something that looks really pretty But it might not necessarily work But then there's all this space in the middle between developers and designers where I find that a lot of people In the WordPress space rest and it's what I would call in a similar people who can take You know themes and code and maybe page builders or Gutenberg or whatever and you can Take things that other people have done maybe some design ideas or some code ideas and put them together Into a solution that solves a problem for the client and that's great And there's a lot of money to be made in that space The interesting thing is the people who occupy that space Which I would say is probably the middle half of people doing WordPress things with clients We tend to have identity crisis like I'm not really as good as designers I'm not really as good as developers and so I had this imposter syndrome of everybody else knows more than me and is Better than me and it's just not the case So if that's where you find yourself in that a similar category, you're in good company. How many of you say I'm an assembler. That's what I do Yeah, I think you'll find that happening so My point here is that you can't know everything Wordpress is too big. You can't be an expert at everything in wordpress You can find yourself some middle ground where you can do some great work on the foundation that really smart people in our ecosystem have Done and you can make good money solving problems for clients that way You don't have to know everything so partner with people who do if you're not a pure designer Find somebody that does design if you're not a peer developer find somebody that does development and work with them Together to solve a problem for the client. We're gonna have some Pardon me We're gonna have some boards out to connect like if you're looking for work if you need help in a certain area We're gonna have some whiteboards out throughout the weekend where you can sign up there, right? We're going old school this year, so you don't have to know everything if you if you have realized that it's a good thing My seventh grade prealgebra teacher said never waste an opportunity to use a good Venn diagram And so this is what we tend to think like this is what everybody else knows and this is what I know But the truth is really more Something like this I know some stuff you know some stuff sometimes that stuff overlaps But oftentimes it doesn't like you there's some things that you know and things that you can do as your superpower That maybe nobody else can do as good as you the trick is finding those things and then finding a client that wants to hire You to do those things All right, so do what you do best find trustworthy partners for the rest number two You are your most important asset Don't neglect your physical or mental health and by the way you are not the exception to this rule So physical health y'all is critical for what we do Back in 2019 I went on a fitness journey and I lost a hundred pounds. It was a big deal for me I went on an eating plan that was built on layers of micro habits and those things have Pretty well stayed the same You know, it's like drinking enough water eating correctly getting enough activity sleeping well all those things It I cannot describe to you the cascade effect that those changes have had in my world I it wasn't just in the physical health area. It wasn't just a weight loss thing It was like a transformation because when I started changing some of those habits Notice to me like I'm more productive at work like I'm doing things now that I wasn't doing before we can't neglect our physical health It's super important. Our mental health is perhaps even more important for the space that we work in Early on I had a mentor that said you can make a decision at this point in your life Whether you want to make a living working with your body or working with your mind Because you can learn a skill and make good money in this world Matter of fact, you know the skills gap is huge today Like, you know the trades that they're looking for people and you could make really good money in those areas But you have to make a decision am I gonna work with my body or am I gonna work with my mind and Whichever you choose make sure you take care of that because you are your most important asset And I think for some reason we find it easier to relate to the taking care of our body part and that's important But in our space where we make a living with how we think and process and do We don't take care of our minds and By that I mean, you know, we understand that if you know if I work really hard I need to rest like my body says I am tired But when I work really hard with my mind and I find myself dealing with anxiety or depression or whatever We just tend to want to power through that And that's it's a danger. It's a real problem Not realizing that we need a mental break Is a mistake Therapy can be a powerful ally and I'm grateful that one of the things that's happened through the pandemic Is that a lot of the stigma around mental health is really it's One of the things the pandemic has done is take away some of the stigma to helping our mental health And that's a really good thing in my view great services like better help have come along to do virtual therapy And it's great. You can connect with a therapist and you know, I'm a huge huge fan of therapy The problem is we can think we're the exception to these rules, but we're not we're not Our minds work similarly and we need somebody outside of us That we can be real with To help us sort through some of the things that we struggle with And it's important So one of my friends mickey trivet was supposed to be here this weekend and he had a great talk called The cost of doing business mentally and physically mickey has a great story. He was going to share But he had to make a decision a couple of weeks ago to back out because he was having some health struggles And I applaud him for that like I would love to have seen mickey this weekend He had a great talk to share but he made a great decision to say, you know what as much as I want to be at word camp I've got to prioritize my health and so good for mickey. Hopefully he'll get to come to another word camp later this year and share that So You are your most important asset don't neglect your physical or your mental health number three completely shifting gears here debt Man debt is a ball and chain When it comes to business debt Is a ball and chain money mistakes will cripple your business I in the early years I had to learn this lesson the hard way being in business is like running a marathon Debt while you're in business is like running a marathon with a ball and chain around your leg It's just it's very very very difficult You know debt buying something today on the assumption. I can pay for it tomorrow You can't assume that in business. How many of you right now if you looked at your your numbers for business They kind of look like this up down up down up down. That's life In our world. We have good months. We have bad months. We have good seasons. We have bad seasons You know in my in my story Back in my 20s I got into huge debt like by the end of my 20s I was 30 000 in credit card debt because I was I made some really stupid decisions Didn't know any better. Was it really I had some great training in other areas did not get good training in financial areas So I finished my 20s with 30 000 dollars in debt I got in debt in my 20s got out of debt in my 30s and it was a hard lesson to learn I know it maybe that's where you're at right now Like I know what it's like to sit around the kitchen table with that one light bulb kind of dangling above my head Like I'm in a police interrogation looking at the bill spread out on the table wondering who's going to get paid this month And who's not like I've been there. I know what that's like. It sucks. It's just it's horrible The stress of that is incredible And it's really difficult to be in business When you have that sort of Ball and chain around your leg they cripple our business and it it comes sometimes in unexpected ways Like there's a direct connection between having bad clients in my business and having money problems Because what will happen is you'll come you'll find this client that comes in and immediately like five minutes into the conversation You're like, this is not somebody I want to work with But you have to work with them because the bills are coming due and you take this bad client and that causes this ripple effect Because you start you start giving all of this mental and emotional capital these bad clients And you're exhausted and you can't do as much work and you're not enjoying your work And then you still have money probably it's just it's this cycle that just continues on and on and on debt is a ball and chain so If you are in debt as a business owner my advice to you is do whatever you can to get out of debt as quickly as possible There's an old proverb that says Free yourself from debt like the gazelle frees himself from the hunter and I take that literally like that's You know, have you ever seen those wild kingdom? Uh, you know documentaries where the the gazelle is you know, there comes the cheetah chasing it That's what it's like. I get out of debt as quickly as possible get out of dodge Get those problems solved When people ask me a lot of times I'll have conversations at a word camp or wherever and they'll say, you know I'm thinking about like I've got this full-time job, but I really want to go on my own What's your advice and there's two pieces of advice I give and this is the first one get out of debt as quickly as possible You do not want to start a business with a lot of personal debt It's going to cause problems the second piece of advice I give them is number four Which is build recurring revenue as quickly as possible Get out of debt as quickly as possible build recurring revenue as quickly as possible because I promise you It is virtually impossible to survive in our business without recurring revenue long term. It is virtually impossible Uh, this is another one of those things where you might think you're the exception to this and you can just live on project by project by project It lasts two or three years. I promise that you'll be working for somebody else. I've seen it happen over and over again So we eliminate recurring expenses by getting out of debt and being very wise with how we spend our money in our business But then we build recurring revenue, you know a great thing that we can do as wordpress People is to you know have a recurring wordpress care plan that sort of thing. That's a whole separate talk But you know great hosting and backups and wordpress updates and security and all those things we can provide in a monthly service to clients For every single website. It just grows and builds. It's not quick. Usually it's slow But gradually it happens and you know I've got a graphic in a minute. It can really produce freedom in our lives and the interesting thing here is um How many of you have taken on a rescue client? And a rescue client is a kind of client that comes to you and says I was working with this developer and now they're poof They're gone. They're like gone They just evaporated And I don't have access to my domain or my hosting and I got this website I don't have to do with it and whatever this is my suspicion I don't know but like I don't have a crystal ball, but my suspicion is Somebody was doing some wordpress stuff right and they're working for somebody else Or maybe they had their own business and they started doing some wordpress stuff and they tried to live project to project to project And they had all these clients And finally they got like I'm not making any money like I'm struggling like I got debt maybe or whatever And they got tired of the up and down up and down. They said forget it I'm just going to work for somebody else and who gets left on the hook. It's the client Right and so we end up taking these rescue clients of people who have disappearing developers And if you want to avoid becoming that next disappearing developer build recurring revenue as quickly as possible Here's why This is a little graphic that I use sometimes and this might look like a Typical way that a lot of businesses are structured budget wise So like we've got this much expenses every month Maybe a teeny tiny little bit of recurring revenue And then every month we got a sell sell enough projects to make up the ends meet to get to what is called the burn rate This is how much money you burn every month And so, you know, these are my expenses and I've got a sell enough plus maybe some recurring revenue Just so I can break even and for a lot of folks. This is where they find themselves in business And it's it's fairly normal now the trick here is maybe you have a good month And your project revenue goes up or maybe you can lower your expenses And you have a little bit of gap there and that's a good thing So whether you can sell some more or whether you can get out of some debt or Make good decisions with business expense to bring that down. That's great. That gives you some teeny tiny word over their margin Little bit of margin a little bit a little bit of breathing room and that's a good thing But what happens when we start to do some work here to uh grow our recurring revenue Ooh, look, maybe we can keep working to reduce our expenses and grow our recurring revenue And with the project revenue staying exactly the same look how much breathing room we have now Look how much more margin we can have uh in our business finances And as this if you continue to grow your recurring revenue at some point something magic happens Your recurring revenue hits your burn rate meaning The stuff that you have to pay every month in business is just automatically covered by that money That's coming into your account. This is the magic moment of Freedom which means that even if I don't sell a lot in one month My expenses are still covered. I can still say no to those bad clients Freedom now as you continue to grow your recurring revenue something else beautiful happens When your recurring revenue exceeds your burn rate This is going to give you some flexibility to do some new cool things Maybe to take some risks. Maybe to bring somebody into your business So you can maybe work less or do something different or whatever This is where we want to be in our business. This is magic And this is something I help people to do in a coaching situation And it's something that I've experienced personally. It's a beautiful thing So build recurring revenue as quickly as possible. It's virtually Impossible to survive long term without it. All right number five Focus on process not heroics Systems and processes will make you better. Now. Here's what I mean by heroics Do you ever feel like in your business that you have to put on a cape and tights to show up and save the day? Like you're the only one with the answers You're the only one that can solve the problem and you've got to change clothes in a telephone booth and pop in That shows my age doesn't it and pop in and save the day, right? That's heroics That is not scalable Heroics will exhaust you because none of us has an s on their chest probably if you do we can talk after but probably you don't Heroics is exhausting heroics means you can't ever take a real vacation Focus on system on process Not heroics, you know, we live in I live in Alabama. I'm a bama fan That's gonna make some of you happy and some of you not so much. That's okay But we have a coach at alabama who's the greatest college football coach probably of all time and he says focus on the process Of what it takes to be successful. Don't focus on success Focus on the process that gets you there And we need to do the same thing. It's a great lesson to learn So what this means is how do I get everything out of my head? That only I can do And put it into lists of things or short videos or whatever that somebody else can do And as much as you like to think that you're indispensable I promise you you're not and if you think that you're indispensable and that gives you joy I want to gently suggest that you alter your perspective on what it is that you're doing Because if you are indispensable, yes, it makes us feel good that we can solve problems and that's a good thing But if you're indispensable, you're also not replaceable, which means you can't leave you can't do vacation You can't rest you can't take a weekend. You are Locked into your business forever And that's not good It's not good So my suggestion to you is to incrementally start to improve your processes There's a great book that I recommend to everybody. I thought I had a graphic, but I don't it's called the checklist manifesto And it teaches you how to make checklists if you are not a great reader Then there is a summary of the checklist manifesto also available on amazon That's like the cliff notes to the book and it just leaves out all the stories and it's just as good You can read it in a couple hours So we just put everything down like start getting things out of our heads and into lists And it's hard. It takes a while and you don't don't do it all at once It's just the next time you do a thing that you're going to repeat write it down And then the next time you do that thing Look at what you wrote down and improve it again every time you iterate and iterate and make it better and better And gradually you start to build a system that works. Here's how I represent that visually not a Venn diagram, but close So we're going to say the system. This is our business Our business is the system of things that we do And within our system, we're going to have a process. Let's just say how many of you can launch a WordPress website? In your sleep probably I mean, we've done it right. We can figure it out How many of you have a list that you follow every single time you launch a website far fewer hands? Yeah, that's the way it works Okay, so we're going to say that this process is our website launch process It's a checklist that we run every time And when i'm coaching people through this process Uh, I'd say a process is a collection of some combination of these three things Tasks templates and tools So within your system, you have multiple processes Each of which are composed of some combination of tasks templates and tools checklists tasks Templates may be things that you type over and over those emails that you send every time at certain parts of a project You just save those like don't Think about those every time. I mean chat gpt is great But I don't want to have to go to chat gpt every time I write this email to a client You know So templates things that repeat and then tools like use the same tool set It starts with the way I build websites from a common theme and plugin stack every single site is built around that You know, uh, the the thing that I use to manage in a dashboard of site every like there's Things that they're consistent tools that I use throughout everything I do So there's consistency and the more you do something The better you get at it And by the way for those of us who struggle with imposter syndrome And that's probably every single person at one level or another When you start to use the same tools over and over again, you get better at it It starts to make you feel better about yourself and you will be surprised How much less of an imposter you feel like because you're great at using your tools It's this weird extra little benefit of doing this So in your business you have a collection of processes And if you look at your business and you right now and you go, I'm like, well like this is not even near where I'm at That's okay. We start somewhere. We start with one One system start with how you launch your website start with how you onboard a client Wherever you want to start start somewhere and gradually improve and over the next couple of years You'll find that you'll start to have much more of a system than you have today. Does that make sense? All right number six There are seasons in every business don't waste the slow times We talked about this earlier up and down up and down my revenue, right? And we struggle with that and here's how it tends to go in the conversation. I have with myself between my ears Oh my gosh. I have so much work. I'm so stressed And then maybe two months later. Oh my gosh, there's no work coming in. I'm so stressed What's the commonality between those things? I'm so stressed, right? Because I forget the fact that business goes up and down. It's just I mean, I've never found a way to to change that It just is what it is What I've learned to do though is not to waste the slow times Look at this picture That is the Costco in Hoover, Alabama, which is about 20 minutes that way This was taken in early 2020 when I went to get gas And look what they're doing This was freaking brilliant I mean our Costco we have one in Birmingham and it is always busy. It is stupid crazy busy all the time But it was the pandemic and nobody was there. So what did they do? We're going to seal our parking lot That's brilliant Because when else are they going to be able to block off half their parking lot at the time and let somebody come in and do Asphalt work is brilliant So how does this translate to my world? For my world, I keep a someday list I got a big Trello board full of someday ideas some blog posts that I read some great webinar that somebody presented on iThemes I thought that's a great thing. I need to do that And I don't have time to do it right now because I'm busy But I'm going to stick everything over in this someday list the tool by the way doesn't matter It can be a word document or sticky notes, whatever. I mean whatever works for you Just keep a someday list because one day you're going to be you know bored It's going to be one of those down times and instead of being stressed about it you get to be excited of Yes, finally I get to do this cool thing that I've been thinking about for three months Instead of worrying and being stressed about the fact that there's no business What I can tell you is that virtually always the business comes back Especially the longer you've been in business Virtually always the business comes back. It's cyclical So there's seasons in business Don't waste the slow times and by the way sometimes don't waste the slow times means take a vacation Take a break Right or just work two hours in the morning to clear the deck of the email and then go do something fun, right? Don't waste the slow times. All right number seven Bad clients are never worth the hassle I touched on this earlier They are never worth the hassle They always cost you more in mental and emotional capital than they ever bring in on the revenue line always There's very few things I will say always to and this is one of them. I've learned this the hard way How many of you have taken a bad client to put food on the table? Yeah, me too Um And we get that like that's sometimes you just got to do what you got to do But when things are going well How many of you have also taken a bad client because you're like, huh, it's money Me too Yeah The money you make from a bad client is always always always going to cost you more than they ever bring in on the regular On the revenue line. It's going to cost you mental and emotional capital. It's going to cost you functional chaos in your business It's just a mess. It's not worth it. It's not worth it So when you start to meet with a client for the first time, remember that a client meeting the first time is like a first date When you go on a first date with somebody You're getting the best version of that person that you're ever going to get They're on their best behavior, right? And it's the same way with a client So when you meet with a client and you're like Something just not right here Listen to that because that's just the tip of the iceberg Clients don't get better over the relationship. They tend to get worse It's this rule of client entropy. They tend to get worse over time not better And you know Just look for those red flags. Do they interrupt you? Do they not listen to you? Do they always talk over you? Are they rude to the server if you're at a restaurant? Listen Watch out for those red flags If your gut says go go It's not worth it So I wrote a book about this a couple years ago three years ago something like that pre-pandemic. It's a lot of fun It's on amazon. It's a kindle. It's a print on demand that sort of thing Grab that. I mean, I highly recommend this book But Here's what I'll tell you good clients Are not like unicorns like they actually exist Sometimes we can get in a group like this and we hear people in business talking about how great their clients are And I've got some really great clients today and you might think I've never experienced that before Here's the way it happens And you know, maybe you're you're just getting started out in your business and you've never really experienced the client that values Your opinion completely that pays you what you're worth and that stays out of your way while you do it Isn't that like the holy trinity of clients right there? They're out there I promise you They are out there and usually what happens is this You'll have a ton of bad clients. That's like like you cut your teeth in business That's just how it goes and then one day through some connection It's usually a referral this magical client appears in your world that Pays you what you're worth and listens to what you say and stays out of your way and just lets you do your job And you do get to do great work for this client and you're like I am never Gonna let another client treat me bad again because I've seen what it's like And one client one good client tends to lead to another I think for two reasons first of all good clients refer good other good clients to you Good people refer good people to good people. It's just a law of human nature Good people refer good people to good people. You just got to find that first good people But also you start to realize I'm not going to let them treat me that way anymore Right we start to grow backbone in business So it kind of happens that way one good client leads to another good people tend to move in packs And pretty soon you've got a whole business full of good clients. It's a great thing All right number eight we actually might finish these number eight don't be a hero Fixing the client is outside the scope of work Don't be a hero So you've all probably heard of imposter syndrome That's a thing that gets talked about a lot blog posts word camp talks all that sort of thing Imposter syndrome is when I feel like I'm the only one that has the sets of problems that I have There's something else that I've defined several years ago. I called it hero syndrome It's almost like a codependency Where like something in me needs to be seen as the hero to the client and like my Value as a human being is that I can come in and solve a problem and get the pad on the back No matter how much it costs me personally to do that like y'all. I'll just tell you I suffered from hero syndrome so bad in the the early years of my business so bad like My daughter's for a four-year-old birthday party I left early because I had a client that had an it problem that I had to go solve I'm embarrassed to say that But I had it bad y'all like I needed to be the hero I'll never get that day back I will never get that day back. It was stupid But I needed it, you know, that's why therapy is your friend. Let me just say therapy is your friend Hero syndrome is when I have this need to swoop in and be the hero fix the problem I need the client's affirmation I'm crushed if they don't give it to me if the client is critical. I can't sleep Right. Is that I'm sure nobody in here has that issue I'm this is completely hypothetical. It's just it's just me But if your if your self-worth Lies in How other people view you then you're setting yourself up to be abused by poor clients because they're clients that will bleed you dry if you let them so Fixing the client is outside the scope of work and here is how this usually works And it's a lot like any other codependent relationship that you see You know the person they're dating and this person they're dating they go, oh, they're not that bad I can fix them Now we say oh no like I've heard this story like there's lifetime television movies about this sort of thing happening, right? But we forget that it's the same principle in business like I take this client. Oh, I can fix them. I can make them Okay, they'll behave once the It's the same thing Fixing the client is outside the scope of work unless you're a therapist then, you know, okay So in the book that that I wrote I called it building fences around friendly monsters And so we need to build these fences around problem clients to keep them in check And don't try to fix the client like if they're not going to obey they need to go find somebody else They need to go make some other web developer successful. You can't fix the client. It's outside our scope of work Okay, by the way, there's more to life than building somebody a website This is not worth it. Okay number nine Your business should serve you not vice versa So set your own priorities. What is your why behind what it is that what she what it is what you do? Uh having your own business is a beautiful thing. It lets us set our own schedule It lets us set our own priorities, you know for years my story was I worked in nonprofits for about 20 years while I was doing business and building my business and my business was great because The nonprofit could afford to pay like 20 30 hours a week and I would just fill the gap with business And some weeks the the demand on the nonprofit side was more and so I could be flexible with what I did there And sometimes a business was getting I could kind of flex backwards the other day It was it was a great great partnership between what the two hats that I was wearing back in those days But about 10 years ago I made the pivot to go full time and it's it's it's I was able to do all that because it was my business and it was my priorities and I could set The priorities for my business to be whatever I wanted them to be whether it was to make You know just enough money and like there's people I've coached They just wanted enough money like I want to work eight hours a week And I want to make those the best eight hours I can make them Right great You can totally do that or I want to work full time and I want to you know be able to you know Optimize as much of this 40 hours in a week as I can do awesome. There's people I've coached who I had a coach incline in the uk who She had some significant health issues So what we focused on was building enough recurring revenue in her business So that she could take time off that she needed to for her health There's another client that I coached up in canada who wanted to take six months off to have a baby six months off And she worked like crazy and did it To build her business structure things put in systems and processes bringing some help and she took six months off When she had her baby There's another person that I worked with a long time ago. He's now a member of my team Who at that time was a missionary to ukraine that came back because of the war But they had adopted several kids with special needs And he's like we need we're gonna go to ukraine and do the same sort of work there that we've been doing here with kids With special needs and it's awesome And he needed to make enough money to take up the gap for support there They had raised for their the ministry they were doing there And so he was doing wordpress stuff It's like I need to work this much and be as you know make as much money in that time as I can So I can do this thing that I'm really called to do awesome. Let's do it That's the beautiful thing about having your own business. What is your why why are you doing this today? What is your why? The challenge is a lot of times our business can take over And we forget why it is that we're doing what we're doing So just remember what is your why why is it that you're doing What you're doing and let your business serve you and not vice versa and last of all It's gonna work out. Well two minutes and we'll do q&a number 10 Being busy is not a badge of honor Being busy is not a badge of honor I still I still to this day answer this question like this mindlessly sometimes how you doing I'm busy Like busy is good It's like one of these mindless responses. I don't know why it's just in there I'm good busy busy like when did that start to become a mark of success Because that's a relatively new phenomenon The harvard business journal wrote about this in an article back in 2017 called crazy busy the new status symbol Because it used to be like in the last generation The the symbol of success was not that you were busy all the time but that you had leisure time That's you could spin how you wanted it And they actually did this test where they made fake facebook profiles go figure of you know people Doing different things and like one person was always like at the beach or playing golf or whatever And the other person was always you know posting things like i'm working late. I've got this thing I've got and just had this success and whatever And which of these profiles are the successful ones And it was like two to one people picked the ones that were always busy and had all these things going on about what they are Doing rather than the person who was showing all the leisure time Like when did that happen? I'm not sure when that happened people with more letters after their last name to me You're gonna have to figure that out, but It's a thing isn't it like why is being busy a badge of honor I don't know But what I do know is that we need to create margin in our life for what really matters And that goes back to a lot of the things that I've talked about with finances and You know systems and processes and getting our mind on straight about how we deal with clients It's about creating margin margin for what matters you get to define what that is What is you know, what is it margin is a mechanism that allows you to make an impact in whatever area you want to impact Maybe it's your kids. Maybe it's you know, some cause you believe in maybe it's like I want to retire 10 years early So I'm going to use the margin that I build to work more and that's fine Just have a goal in mind and know why you're doing it and just don't mindlessly go through the process of being in business Sometimes you have to say no to good things. So you have margin to say yes to the great things So thanks very much. My name is Nathan Ingram I'm going to be here all weekend. I would love to chat with you about anything going on in your world That's why I'm here this weekend also to put up signs and stuff because I'm an organizer So we've got about 10 minutes for q&a and or nine minutes and melanie. You've got the mic, right Please use the mic. We do a video crew back here and the mic will let your voice get captured on the video for wordpress tv questions Comments night remarks all of the above Hello How long did it take you to get to the point where Your recurring revenue Was paying all the bills Once you realized that you needed to focus on that let's put it that way From that point forward, how long did it take you to get there? Yeah, because those are two different questions Yeah, as soon as I it took me far too long As soon as I realized oh, I really need to focus on recurring that was about 2008 And by about 2013 that was happening Yeah, now also in the middle of that I had a I stopped working in the nonprofit world And so I had to make up 100 of that revenue that I was making there as well. So about five years And it happened one website at a time one care plan at a time It's slow, but it's so There was a day back in 2008 where I lost a third of my income And health insurance for my family I walked into a business It happened to be a very swanky hair salon here in Birmingham I know you look at me and you think this is clearly a guy that does work for hair salons But you know y'all remember 2008 like it was bad finance Right, and so they let me go and you know I was doing web and graphics and it for them And it was a lot of money and the health insurance for my family And I made a decision that day in 2008 where I said I will no longer I will never let that happen again I will I got little kids. I will never let that happen again And that's when I made the pivot. I would I just really found wordpress at that point And I had a few clients with large numbers and that's risky And I decided I'm going to go more clients smaller numbers and I've never looked back Good question a couple of hands up back here Thank you, Nathan In terms of good clients bad clients, I'd like to comment about how one good client will attract another good client Do you think What is what is the role that plays when you have a good client and your confidence goes up and your I guess your your skill in dealing with a client and putting proper fences up Can you train other clients who maybe aren't necessarily bad but clueless on how to deal with you? You train them to be good clients. Do you think that's a thing or do you just jettison them? Oh, what a great question okay, so um You know you watch those shows like Caesar. What's his name and he can take any dog in like three minutes and they're just fine I don't think that works with clients so Yes, you can train a borderline client train is such a bad word. This is a human being You can train a borderline client to be a good client There are some clients though that are Whose psychology is such that they will never treat you well I'm trying to be nice Some people are just jerks y'all and they don't get better and you know who they are So just don't make excuses for them in your mind And if they need to go they need to go There was just a discussion on a facebook group. I'm part of the other day of like, how do you tell a client? You're a bad fit and I'm like Keep a list of other wordpress developers. You don't like and refer them to them Don't do that though. That's not nice But yeah, give them the opportunity to make some other wordpress developers successful I think some can be trained but it comes down to this you've got to have a great process You don't break and sometimes it's simply as simple as the wording can be just like this This is the way we do it Our process looks like this When before we can move into the development phase you have to sign off on the design phase or however you're set up And you don't vary from that and if they push back on it. I'm sorry. That was in the contract you signed Blame the contract, but yeah Great question Dorian flowers here. Um over the five years Um, what method of recurring revenue worked best for you? Was it coming in like coming up with like custom services that you built that generate revenue? Was it like affiliate sales marketing or like just doing your own hosting? Yeah, so, um My I'll just answer for me. Thanks Dorian For me the core business is building and managing wordpress websites, right? So we're building websites for clients every wordpress website unless You know virtually every wordpress website is going to need somebody to manage it So if i'm building a site it just makes sense for me to offer hosting and backups and security and wordpress updates and occasional content updates and I put those packages together. I've never done affiliate marketing any well I won't say that like teeny tiny a little bit but just It's all about the wordpress care plan Yeah, and I'm happy to talk more about that throughout the weekend I just want to give a plug for the process idea A couple years ago. I I signed up for an online course Um, I decided that I think it was 2019 was going to be my year of the process Because of so many screw-ups and mishaps um We're going to do some work in our kitchen And the company we picked had a very set Organized six step process boom boom boom boom as The client it makes me feel confident That I have a clear understanding of what they're going to do and how it's going to work and what the costs are um I was able in in in my business to create this um Sort of an intake form and if somebody doesn't want to fill out that intake form And it's not super lengthy. It also has some numbers in there pick your cost range that you're interested If they're not going to fill out that form We're just not going to do business. I mean This is how it works. I you know I'm a business. I'm not your buddy. I'm not your therapist But when you think about it in terms of home renovation or or a major plumbing project, you know You're not going to sign with somebody who's just going to tell you something verbally and you fling them a Venmo You you want The assurance That there's a process in place. So it's a win-win for both sides 100% could not agree more. Thanks for that Maybe one more question and we're out of time I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about How you think about the balance between products and services because I think monster contract is a Product or a SaaS kind of type thing rather than a service building website So how do you think about that balance in your own business? Oh, it's a great question So I do a lot of things right like I've got the agency stuff. I've got items training I've got coaching and I've got monster contracts The only way that I can do all those things and stay sane number one. I have good help. I've got a great team member The other thing is all of those things are aligned So everything I do comes out of the client work that I do that informs the training that I do The monster contracts is my agency contract that over 20 years. We've made bullet proof The coaching I do is based on my experience, right? So then everything is aligned. It's in the same Sector. I just took something that I did and turned it into a product If this was something completely way out here on its own, I mean, I wouldn't be able to manage it all Yeah, so if you're it maybe you're you're in and you have an agency you're doing something And maybe there's some secret sauce that you have that like that you do really well productize it Like you guys did that, right? Like if y'all this is amber hind. She runs equalized digital World renowned accessibility expert in the house, right? She's doing the accessibility workshop on sunday, which I would highly recommend You guys took the work you were doing in your agency Accessibility remediation and you built the plugin that helps with that. It's a very similar thing, but it was aligned Just like you guys. So that's the only way I can do it and stay sane I highly recommend it because I use it for my clients. Yeah All right, y'all. Thanks very much. Next up here is somebody