 Well, I guess we can go and get started. Maybe a couple stragglers coming in, but yeah first of all Thanks for coming to my talk training day My name is Cameron Campbell. Yes, that is the same shirt. I work from home. I don't I don't need to have that many shirts Honestly That's the great thing of working from home. So yeah, I am a front-end developer and designer at web dev studios I get to work with some cool clients like Microsoft and NBC and Discovery Channel and Prior to that I was a freelancer for a couple years just locally in the Asheville area and worked at a couple different agencies and I even started a little agency with a friend of mine that lasted like a year And then we realized that running a business was hard. So we kind of we were like, okay, let's go get jobs so That's kind of that's that's what I'm doing now. I Go to a lot of word camps just all over the place or read a lot of blogs follow people on Twitter And I see, you know, we're talking about all kinds of cool stuff like sass and grunt and plugins and themes And there's all kinds of cool stuff to talk about but I haven't seen a lot of people talking about client training or client handoff and It's interesting because in our industry like we're so good about like like here's how I like design a photoshop comp or Here's how I code a function We're really open with our processes in that regard But I don't see too many people saying like this is how I train clients or this is kind of my business process So I'm hoping to maybe like open that discussion up a little bit and that's what I'm going to be doing I'm just gonna like take you through my process and hopefully you can kind of just adapt it into your own workflow I mean you don't have to do everything I say You can pick and choose hopefully and just come out with hopefully better prepared clients and kind of having a better relationship with your clients So without further ado, I guess we'll go ahead and jump right in And actually I'm gonna do something weird first. I'm gonna have everybody like close their eyes I'm actually like legit like close your eyes for me like play along. No play along play along This is actually just to help me. I'm gonna do the whole talk with your eyes closed. This is my first talk I'm nervous. No, I actually want to I want to paint a mental picture for everybody, okay? And it's a scenario. I think we've all been and So you just finished a project up, okay? You were on this project for four months The the site you just launched it. It's killer. It looks great. It checks off everything on the the clients wish list It just generally was like a really awesome project And you're going to the wedge and you're celebrating you're having drinks You're hanging out with friends and you're like, all right time to get on the next project So you go in the next week and you start on your next project and you're like you're focused in on it and you're just kind of chugging away making progress on it and Out of the blue you get a call or a text or email or carrier pigeon or fax from the previous client and They're saying I forgot how to make a post or I forgot how to do the widget thing you showed me or My sky my site is just a white screen now Can you fix that for me? So thanks for thanks for playing along with me and being good sports You can open your eyes Like show of hands how many of like experience that where you finish project and then like some time later the client is like Hey, I need help with something or I forgot to do something so a good many people that happened to me a lot and I Eventually realized it was because I really didn't have a good client handoff process or client training process It was mostly like build the site at the end of the project Show them how to do a couple things and then like send them on their way so it wasn't surprising that You know a non-techie non-wordpress person You know they get this big new site and they're they're unsure of how to how to work it So that's that's kind of the root of those problems that were coming up for me so I kind of like through trial and error developed my own little process for client handoff and client training and Basically my idea is to Teach the client how to fish instead of giving them a fish So it's like the old adage of you know if you can feed a man for a day If you give him a fish you can feed him for a lifetime if you show him how to fish so what I try to do with my clients now is Educate them early on and give them a good fundamental of you know Understanding WordPress and how it works so that they're not coming back to me in a month or two months And they have all these questions and problems because you'll find that as your business grows and you know scales up And you have more clients you're gonna get more of those calls and emails and those can take up a lot of time and You know not only your time, but the client's time and that can be kind of frustrating from their end so I'm gonna go ahead and jump into The first part of my process which is just giving the client a tour of the dashboard So so introducing them to WordPress and the way I do this I have an onboarding process for clients and basically I have like some PDFs that are like hey Here's my process. Here's my timeline include a little info on my pricing and I give that to clients and In addition to that stuff. I also provide a little little video. I made it's a little screencast and It is a reusable screencast because it's it's literally just like I'm giving them a quick tour of the dashboard And I'm showing them some concepts like this is a plug-in. This is a widget This is how menus work and it's just like five minutes long But it's something that I have clients check out before I actually have a talk with them So that I don't have to explain a lot of this stuff to them It's it allows me to go a little more in-depth with with some WordPress talks and it also Kind of gets around that whole topic of you know, is WordPress right for me So, you know, they're checking out this video and they can see like the power of WordPress And they can see all the stuff that it can do so that that kind of negates that whole question coming up And so yeah, we're gonna be making a lot of screencast So I hope you're not afraid of doing that. That's kind of like a big part of my process is just doing a lot of screencasts for my clients But don't be too afraid because they're all like really reusable like you put in a little bit of time making them up front But it's something that you can reuse over and over You may have to like update it every like now and then like now we're moving a lot of stuff and WordPress into the Customizer so like you may want to take your widget video and your menu video and just do like a customizer video But for the most part like I haven't had to update any of these videos So the so the very first Well, you know the next step really is just to start really educating the client And I found that this is a really good step because clients and especially a lot of my clients are not super technical They're you know, maybe this is their first time like using a WordPress site so just giving them the education like sending them that video before you start the project off and just giving them kind of an introduction to WordPress really helps and I've found that in talking with clients and volunteering on like the WordPress support forums I've seen a lot of clients say, you know, I don't really know how to use WordPress I'm like just I'm new to this or my you know, the developer didn't train me on it So I'll go to like the forums or a tutorial site and I'll try to figure out how to work my problem through and What I've had a lot of people tell me is like they they you know The answer they get is like step one and then like blah blah blah blah blah They don't understand any of the middle stuff and then your problems fixed So it kind of like reminds me of this little spongebob cartoon Where he's like voila it's done so that's what that's what that's what clients tell me and I'm like that makes a lot of sense So so yeah, so that's where this whole education thing comes in like educate them ahead of time And they won't like hopefully run into that problem So the very first thing that I start talking to them about is hosting and I really really really really try to like convince them to get on a good host and not a bad host And what do I mean by a bad host? No, they're not like bad guys and villains But I mean like shared hosting plans that are generally like really cheap and there's gonna be like subpar support More security risks, you're not gonna have as good of an uptime as you will with a better host So I really try to like convince the client to get on something like WP engine as opposed to host skater or go daddy and the the reason that I do that is because what we're trying to do here is set the client up with a Culture of like self-learning and independence like we want to stay in contact with them We don't we don't just want to like throw them to the wolves and be like I never want to hear from you again We do want to stay in touch with them But we don't want to like solve every little problem for them after the project's done because we're not getting paid for that anymore So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a business model so what we do is we we try to educate them and the hosting issue I Started I started talking to them about hosting because I had some clients that were You know they're on like a really bad hosting plan like one was on like lowest hosting calm or cheap hosting or something It was like really terrible and the support was just like so bad Like they were they would tell me like they would wait on the phone for like two hours and give up and try to send an email And they would never get a response And I was like man I'm trying to do this new process of like teaching them how to learn for themselves and do for themselves But their host sucks so bad that like they're running into these walls And it's kind of like counterproductive to what I'm trying to do so I said why don't I just like you know? skirt around that issue and get them on a good host and You know don't make it about the the money like if you just if you just talk to them about like well Go to these $5 and you know media temples $30. They're gonna go with go daddy every time So don't make it about the money like if you have to tell a horror story like yeah I was on hostgator support for 10 hours, and I missed the birth of my first child Like do it like like do it like you know convince them to get off of the bad host and get on a good host because it's gonna help you in the long run and That kind of gives you a good segue into talking about like WordPress security because that's that's a big issue when you hand off a site to a client and You know they're the concept of like securing a site is going to be kind of new to them so what I found where a lot of clients getting a trouble is plug-ins, so I kind of like touch on that a little more and Basically I go through and say look don't go to some random dudes website and download a plug-in Just go to the WordPress repository. That's where you should get all your plugins and Then I teach them how to evaluate a good plug-in. So I say, you know, when was it last updated? What's the star rating? Is it compatible with your version of WordPress? It tells you all that on the WordPress, you know in the repository when you're looking at a plug-in so teach them to evaluate those things and Then they're not gonna run into as many issues where like they install a plug-in that hasn't been updated in three years and They get like malware on their site So we're trying to avoid those kinds of problems so that they don't have to call us and say, you know, my site's broken You want to definitely make sure that you're you're really telling the client to update their plug-ins and themes? Because I've had so many clients come to me where they you know Maybe they were at a smaller agency or something else and they're like yeah I didn't know I was supposed to update this stuff and now like all the links on my site are going to some pharmaceutical website Like I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me So like really just try to drive home the importance of updating plug-ins updating themes and even you know having some backups You know if they want to buy a plug-in like backup buddy and just have scheduled backups But just make sure that they understand the risks and of not doing that and just try to you know kind of enforce that idea So The next step and this is like the most crucial one for me like if you don't do anything else I say like try this out at least Get the get the client into the dashboard early. So traditionally a lot of us will will give the client a Login credentials at the end of the project and we'll say you know here at log in and you can Go to town on your new site, but what I found is a Lot of times clients are kind of scared of breaking their site because it's like it's this polish site And you know it's you put all this work into it and they're really afraid of like breaking something So they're not going to be as confident and trying out like you know making a post-repage or you know installing plug-ins So what I do is I get them in the dashboard early and I put them You know I get a staging site set up with like a fresh install of WordPress. It's just you know, you know freshly downloaded and I Put up whatever starter theme I'm using so I use underscores, which is made by automatic and It's like a super super minimalist like blank theme that like I just love the theme because there's no styling or anything It looks really ugly out of the box and I've had a lot of clients say like they're not afraid of breaking anything They're like what could what else could I break it? It already looks like crap So they're not afraid of like going in and breaking it can be like their little sandbox where they can test out some Of this stuff that you're trying to train them on So what I do is I give them more training videos so what I did is like I've got about eight videos that I made and They're on topics like making a post making a page Here's how to go install a plug-in and set up a widget, you know things like that and What I do is like I reuse these from project to project So I'm not like yeah I'm putting a little time up front like creating these videos But I'm not having to do it for every single project and I'm not having to retrain the client every time on these things Like these basics of WordPress because these are things that are not going to change a lot So you can kind of make these videos once and then send them to all of your clients And it kind of reduces the the load of training that you have to do and So here's like my favorite part of this. I have the client enter the content I don't like does anyone here like entering content. I Really hate it. She does she's weird I Like on the last site that I did it was like this really really old organization like a hundred years old and they had 600 pages on their site and They did not have any backups of the database. So they lost all of their content everything was in like old like What was the thing before word like word perfect? It was on word perfect documents So we had 600 pages of content that had to be re-entered There was no backups if I had to enter all that content myself Like I would have lost like five weeks of the project and probably killed myself I So I had the client and their team like they were entering the content because I had gotten them all these videos And and it's like, you know go watch the video on how to make a page and go make a page or go make 600 pages in this case But it took such a load off of me Like I was able to actually on this project do more like cross browser testing more device testing And I was able to come out with a better product because I didn't have to waste a lot of time entering content and The best thing is I did not have the the issue of getting an email where they're like Yeah, we showed it around everybody and we want you to change all the content because there's a you know We want to change these paragraphs and you misspelled the president's dog's name and like we just need to start over like that didn't happen So that was like that's my favorite part of this process So if you know if you don't do anything that I say like definitely get them in the dashboard and get them entering content And entering their own content Because when it comes time to like actually launch the site you're like skipping a whole thing there Like you don't have to like like build the site and then enter content. It's already there So you're saving yourself a lot of time and you're also for the length of this project like Allowing the client to slowly learn WordPress because they're going to be they're doing like real use cases. They're not like Practicing uploading a plug-in or making a post. They're actually you know, they're writing real posts on their site They're you know, they go grab a MailChimp plug-in and enter their credentials and get a real widget setup So they're they're practicing this and imagine like your project is like three months long They're practicing this for three months. So by the time that you get done with it They're going to already like have a really firm grasp on WordPress and they're going to be kind of ready to take it to the next level and so You kind of get to the the final stage Which is client handoff and this is traditionally where you would You would actually do the training and give give the client the login credentials and get them set up in WordPress Or at least that's how it worked in a lot of the agencies. I was that But at this point the client's already been doing all that so now that you're in You're in the client handoff phase. You can actually focus on some different things like Educating them and showing them how to use like Custom functionality on the site like if you made a little plug-in for like showing all their locations on a map You can show them how to add new You know add new locations to the map or you know, whatever custom functionality you set them up with And you guessed it you're going to record it So the cool thing is here if you just get yourself like I don't care if you use quick time or camtasia or whatever But just record it like show them on your screen how to do this stuff on it Record it and then hand it to them like you're not you're not like recording a video and then training them You're just recording the session and it's really you're not Causing yourself to do extra work And they also get you know a good reference for later on And that's like I know it's pretty short, but that's literally my process. So it's it's pretty quick And it's easy to integrate in your own process. You just have that time of making the videos up front So at this point When I get through explaining this to people a lot of people are like that seems like a lot of stuff to do Like I just want to build websites and make some money from it So like why why do I need to do something this in depth? And I always answer them with a quote from my personal hero Mike Montero And he says, you know, if it's something that helps you do your job Or if it's after read it because I can't remember anything anything that helps you do your job is part of your job So, you know, if it helps you do your job better and helps you better prepare clients then that is your job You should be doing it and if you're if you're providing a better service, you should definitely bill for it So since I since I started doing a more sophisticated client training process I've started charging a lot more for sites or not a lot more, but you know, definitely enough to cover my time doing it and um because when you think about it like if you if you learn javascript And you can provide that skill to clients now you're going to say, hey, I'm actually worth more So I'm going to charge a little more What's the same with this you're providing a better a better training experience and you're better preparing them So go ahead and bill more for it I have yet to have a client push back like when I'm giving a little proposal and I like I have a line item for training I have yet to have a client like push back and say no, I don't want that You know, they may push back on like I don't want research and discovery or I don't want this, you know 20,000 hours of design time, but they haven't they haven't pushed back on this So don't be afraid of doing that bill more for it Your clients will will actually thank you for it So I've got a few resources for you The first one is actually a co-worker of mine at webdev studios chris reynolds He just made this post like five days ago. So it was like perfect timing for this talk He actually goes through like making a screencast and like how to make it really really well And it's like it is super in-depth. It's a long post. Don't try to do it on your lunch break You should probably like grab a coffee or maybe like a hard drink because it is pretty long But it is like it's super good and You know, you could You could get away with doing like a really like I'm just going to sit down and do these as fast as I can And I don't care how they look but if you really put a little extra time into it and make them look good and Just make them look professional. I think that's going to make you look better as a business owner as a freelancer Um, I think that we should kind of strive to do that and whatever we do Like whatever we're handing off to clients We should try to try to you know, make it look as good as it can and and be as helpful as it can Now I have had some people say that they they just don't want to do screencast Like they're like that does not interest me at all. I'm not going to do it. You can't make me and to those people I'm like, that's fine. I can't force you to do anything Um, so there there are a couple options iThemes They have some like free screencasts that are like introduction to wordpress and like how to do a post or whatever Those are free iThemes is a great company. I trust them. I use a lot of their plugins Those are free Wp 101 They have some really excellent screencasts and those are paid. I could not tell you how much it is But it's like, you know, check out the url. I think it's like Maybe like a monthly fee of like nine dollars or something But you know, if you're charging more for your sites, it makes it up for that So kind of the the last thing here is If the if the client comes to you and they're like, look, I don't care how much you show me or how many videos I watch I'm not going to do this. I'm not I just I know me. I'm not going to update the site. I'm not going to update plugins I'm not going to do this In those times like don't just uh Don't just say, okay, whatever, you know, you it's your site. You can get hacked if you want Like really try to invest in them and in your relationship with them and say, well, you know Can I offer you a maintenance plan like, uh, you know Offer like a recurring billing kind of thing where you're like, okay, I'll go in and update your plugins your themes I'll make a backup. I'll make sure everything's working with the site properly If that doesn't interest you like if you think that's a headache find someone else that will do that because they're I mean, there are companies that offer that service and there are other freelancers So, you know, find someone to do that. Don't just like let them get hacked And as kind of a bonus resource I want I want everybody to go buy this book. It's called you're my favorite client. I didn't write it. It's Mike Montero I'm his fan boy So it's it's uh, it's not a wordpress specific book, but it is it's about customer service In in web design businesses and it's that's where I think a lot of us lack Is the customer service department and he really goes through like, um, just How to how to interact with a client um from from really basic standpoint Because we have all these sites like clients from hell We've all seen those where we're like we like bitch about our stories Like yeah, this client made me like grab a logo out of a word document Like we can we can do that and yeah, that is frustrating But when it comes down to a client like they go to a grocery store every day and they shop and they're used to that They don't like get a website every day. They're not used to this They don't know how to work with us So this book really goes through like how the client should interact with you and how you should interact with the client And he actually Recommends like getting a copy for yourself and then getting a copy for the client and giving it to them at the start of a project And it's like a pretty light read and he's like a really funny author So I thought I would throw it in and just say, you know Go check it out because it kind of it kind of goes along with what I've been talking about here And I think some of what adam was talking about So that is it for my very short presentation. Thank you for coming I do there's like a lot of time for question and answers if anybody has any Yeah, uh, you have a question. Yeah Yeah, so the question was um, you know, if if you do this process and the client does come back and say, hey I'm sorry. I watched all your videos, but I still broke the site What do you do? Um, do you offer like, okay? I'll do it for x amount that that's personally I think that's up to a lot of you to decide. I personally like I've I've gotten over the whole freelance thing where I'm like, I'll just do it I don't I don't deserve to get paid for this I like I swear to god if I have to drive to their meeting I charge them for my gas there I I'd charge for everything. So I would say like if that happens You know say I'm going to um, I'll charge you x amount to fix it. Um, you know, you you had the videos So, you know, you you had all the training. So it wasn't like I didn't train you and prepare you for it So definitely I would say charge them Um, but I saw a couple other questions. Yeah Yeah, it's Mike Montero and he runs a design agency in San Francisco And they're like they're like really cool. Like what kind of one of my heroes? I think it's it's actually called mule design Um, but yeah, definitely he's got a couple other books He's got one called design as a job and it actually like changed my freelance career Because it like it actually talks about getting you over that whole hurdle of like, I don't want to charge I don't want to you know charge too much Like the opening paragraph says this book has a spine after you read it you will too Like I love that book. It actually changed my career. So go by design as a job and go by uh, you're my favorite client Yeah, so I I set up a staging site Yes, well, so actually what I do and I would leave this up to you like you can do whatever you want But for me, I set up a staging site And I put the theme there and that's actually where I like push all my changes Like I use github for like version control and so like I'm working on the theme And when I get done with like a chunk of it, I just push it up to the site And that's the site that the client's working on And so it's it's so everything's kind of in one place and they can actually kind of see the site grow as you build it And I haven't ran into any errors there like since I've been doing it with this process I mean if you did like you may want to just be like, okay I'm just going to keep these two things separate But I personally haven't ran into any issues with that So, you know, maybe give it a try So that actually happened the first time the very first time that I started trying that process out Like they were like what happened like I was doing this thing and this page disappeared So I actually I started having a talk with them beforehand and I'm like Just so you know, I am going to be pushing changes up to this site So you will see some changes if you're entering content. It's not going to disappear It's in the database if you have an issue or something disappeared. I can get it back for you No problem. So I just kind of warned them ahead of time But I haven't had any issues since I've been warning them ahead of time But again, if you do like you may want to just separate it out But I think we had another question back Okay, cool Well, um, we got plenty of time we can play a game or do more questions or Yeah, okay, I'm not playing that with you I'm not playing anything without them Yeah, sorry for this talk was so short. I was like thinking like I've been to like so many word camps and on the last day like the last talk It's like it goes right up to the hour and I'm like, man Like my brain hurts from all this information. So I was like, I'm going to keep it short for you Um, but if you have like any additional stuff like that, I didn't cover like just shoot me an email Um, or actually just follow me on twitter because that's where I'm like on all the time Um, I am just at bezier I was I wanted at bezier, but like the bezier curves, but it was taken So I was too lazy and just add an er onto the end of it But yeah, um any social media dribble will get hub. That's that's my username reach out to me I'm pretty friendly and we'll answer questions if if I can Yeah Yeah, so um, that's a good question She asked if I provide written documentation um in addition to the videos and I I used to do that But uh, I don't anymore I just like most of my clients were like, I don't read it Like because I I did I do like surveys with my clients a lot of times Like I'll just send them a google survey at the end of a project and I ask them like various questions And I was like, did you watch all the videos? Did you read all the stuff? And most of them are like, yeah, I watched all the videos. They were awesome. Did you read the stuff? No, I hate reading so I I don't do that anymore But I mean it I mean it could be a good bonus to include if you want to um As long as they're like following along with the videos, I think that would be good Yeah, yeah Why is hostgator so bad? It made me miss the birth of my first child. Did you not hear that? No um, no, um, again like I I don't have a vendetta against like hostgator and go daddy But I have had clients that were on these like cheap shared hosting environments And they they had problems when I got clients on wp engine and media temple managed wordpress hosting They don't have the as many problems And for me is like my job is to kind of like reduce their problems And if I can if I can get them on a different host and they're going to have way less problems and better support I'm going to do that I'm definitely not forcing anybody to like draw pace hostgator if you're if you're using that currently But you know, you may want to at least try, you know, try getting them on a different host Have you had any like specific problems with them or have you Then have they been really good to you? You're the client Okay, you're the clients. All right I think they do sponsor, but yeah, I mean It really is just like, um, I used to use hostgator and what was there's like one with the cow for a logo it's like I don't even remember but I used to use those and I I started using media temple and wp engine and like If I had a problem that I couldn't fix like the techs were so good about like I can open up a chat window and they're on with me within a minute and they're like, oh, yeah You just like you did you moved a file around and it's missing now. I'll put it back for you It's like so it's so easy and I love it and my clients generally love it. So Again, like I think I think of it this way like you're you know, a lot of us will spend $150 on a cell phone bill But we won't spend like $10 more on hosting So I'm like, this is like part of my business. Maybe I can like drop something else Like I'll drop my morning coffee and I will get a better host because you know, it is part of my business Yeah To move. Yeah Well that uh, do you have one side or multiple sides on them or do you have like a Yeah, I mean that that can definitely be kind of a task. Um, I'm like super lazy and wouldn't want to do it honestly, but I mean You could I mean you could always um, so you don't you're a client, right? You don't have okay, so you know, uh I hate to say like wait until something bad happens, but Yeah, sure Yeah, I think it's like does anyone know like I I don't personally like pay for it anymore like my company does It's like $29 Okay Well, actually that's interesting that she says that because I mentioned like two things But there's like their site ground and all kinds of hosts that are like Offering way better customer sort service and better support. So like definitely like, um, you know do some research That's pretty affordable. Uh digital ocean. That's another really good one and they're they're cheaper than go daddy I don't know if they'll be that way forever, but you know Yeah, that you do have to yeah is a good point, but Um, you got a question in the back? Okay. Nice. Yeah. Yeah So that's a good question. She's asking about She's asking about if if a client is already on hosting Do you um, and I guess this is if they do agree to switch do you provide that service? For me, that is yes, like I'll just I'll say hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna add this into the invoice this is me I'm going to switch your host for you and it's going to cost x amount And usually they're like they're fine with that. I've never had anyone be like well, that's outrageous You know, they they understand, you know, I should get paid for like taking my time to move your site um But yeah, good question Well, yeah, that's uh, that's a good point. He mentioned that bundling like hosting the site for the client and adding support in And when I actually owned a I did a I had a small agency for like a year That's actually one of the things we did for recurring income We had a support package and it was like we'll host your site and we will support you and we'll update stuff for you and it was like just x amount per month And we had we had quite a few clients that were like digging that idea I would say be careful about that make sure it's something you want to commit to because when you get Like it's it's it's kind of easy when you have like three clients But then when you get up to like 30 clients, it can be a nightmare If like they all have problems at once and you're trying to work on like another project So definitely make sure it's something you want to commit to But yeah, that can be a really good way to like create some recurring income and provide a really good service to Talk server. Sorry All right, cool. Thanks. All right. Thanks guys