 Beth Livingston Beth is a WordPress coach and designer. She owns WP roadmaps and coaching providing project and productivity management Education to WordPress consultants and agencies Beth also administers the WordPress project management Facebook group and serves as an organizer for the triad WordPress meetup group is that that sounds dangerous the triad Swimston Salem Greensboro in High Point, Carolina Where she has hosted several happiness bar events for those needing help put your hands together Beth Livingston Hi, everybody. I'm really happy to be here. Don't you just love word camp? It's like it's like summer camp for geeks. I love it So I love being here Today I'm going to talk to you about how to leverage your project management methodology to set yourself above and apart from your competition First let me give you a little bit more detail about who I am now full disclosure That was a professional headshot. I had done in 2006 2006 when I did a little theater work and I'll tell you another little thing about theater It's when you get up on the stage and you're pretending to be somebody else very easy No nerves, but when you're up here being yourself in front of all your peers That's somewhat my mouth is dry. So that's why I have this lozenge in the side of my mouth here I apologize for that So I have a master's degree in education and when I got out of Graduate school I keep forgetting there's a screen up here When I got out of graduate school I started as an instructional designer and then that morphed into working for As a business analyst in IT for 20 some odd years And that's where I really cut my teeth on project management work for some really brilliant men who actually were much more Visionary than even they realized at the time and I'll tell you a little bit about that And it's just a second then in 2009 I started building a web app for you know I was when the couponing craze was the whole big deal, right? And so but I hate couponing so I wanted to create a system where you could save money on groceries Just show me where my stuff is on sale right so I built this web app And I was trying to build it and I had this friend helping me who is dot-net programmer and then he got a girlfriend and so He was never available when I needed to be available. So I said come on Chris. There's got to be an easier way I'm highly technical. You need to give me some some tool I can work with so he sent me Juma. I didn't get that But then I discovered WordPress and that's when I started using that to do my own websites And then I started working doing that for other people. I left the corporate world in 2016 and Decided I was going to build these roadmaps these training roadmaps for WordPress people right like how to do a membership site front to back top to bottom everything you need to do a membership site Or everything you need to do an e-commerce site. Well The any of you know Adam Preiser Wp crafter anybody know Wp crafter Well there was no need of me trying to come to compete with the man he can he creates 20 videos a day and He does exactly that so he was doing these roadmaps for people, you know complete solutions So that kind of threw that idea out of the window and then and that's how you change town What my business is like I told you I would tell you that today But and if anybody has new people that need training His Facebook group and his YouTube channel can really get people To the finish line a lot faster. He's really good. Sometimes I have to put him on fast speed because he talks kind of slow But his stuff is really good and he also keeps abreast of all the stuff That's happening in the in the you know, like this plug-in is having a security issue or whatever He keeps up with all that keeps everybody informed. I mean his Facebook group to okay enough about him So I just I started going to word camps and I started hanging out with you know, our peeps and I kept hearing people complaining about the same things scope creep getting content from the clients getting the projects done on time Within budget and still having a happy client and these are things that I learned how to do in corporate IT And I so I've got the magic sauce for all that so I thought well Why don't I put that together and start sharing it with people? So that's part when I first launched WP road maps and coaching it was about doing what Adam's doing But now it's about real life project management skills for you guys because what I'm finding is and it's nobody's fault It's just that you know, you these small agencies are forming and you've got this great programmer and a talented designer and They even know they even have really good business skills But they nobody ever taught them how to manage projects and it's a skill It's not like a whole discipline so you need to kind of it's not something you can most people Can't really be successful at it. Just I'll figure it out. It does. There are some tips and tricks to make this stuff work Okay So what I'm going to tell you about today is the importance of a project management methodology the key elements of a project management methodology and how to craft those key elements and then how to use your project management methodology as A unique value proposition when you're competing against other people Now here's the very most important thing if you want to leverage your project management Methodology the very first thing is that you must actually have one Okay, so how many people in here have a written project management methodology or development methodology that you follow? See About maybe one-third of the people in the room What a project management methodology is is a set of guiding principles and Processes that defines how you work and communicate and it's important for your client to know that up front And you need to know what it is if it's not written down and you haven't discussed it with your team Or maybe it's just you you still need to have this Now let's make a distinction here that way now. Let me tell you why you need it first Random processes are going to always result in project overruns Which what what does that do your ROI eats it up? But if you have repeatable processes that increases your efficiency It allows you to do more precise estimating you get better over time. You have a better informed client That there's a clear understanding by everyone the client you and the team of the tasks ahead You end up with higher quality clients because you can shop for clients instead of letting them shop for you and Then sets you apart from the competition and that's what we're going to really focus on But I want to give you some background first Because you want to be like this woman. Does anybody know who this is? Right, did anybody know what show that's from? Very good. Do you know why? Rita Marino is so revered and and feared at auditions She's a triple threat. She can sing she can act and she can dance Okay, so you want to be a WordPress triple threat You may be a great designer of websites. You may be a builder developer implementer of WordPress websites I'm never sure what to call that, you know, if you don't write code You can't really be a developer, but I'm developing websites So anyway that I'm calling everyone WordPress practitioners that sort of covers it, right? Okay, and then the last thing is being a manager of website projects This makes you a triple threat and much more marketable when you can prove to your client Hey, I know a lot more than that next guy does about getting these things done on time But I want to make a quick distinction here because Adam's not in here Adam Silver No, I listened to one of his podcasts the other day He was talking about project management methodologies and how he's trying to choose the one that was right for him And he did some research, but what I noticed about his podcast and I did tell him this in person I would not just say this without talking to him first is that he was calling all of these things project management methodologies And they're not if anybody's out of corporate IT you or any kind of Formalized IT you probably have heard of waterfall Waterfall software development lifecycle. Okay, that's a development methodology project management methodology As I said before is a set of guiding principles and processes that define how you work and communicate And here's some examples PMI. Has anybody ever heard of this Institute the project management Institute? And they have a book called the Pembok, which is the project manager's book of knowledge They're a pure project management methodology. So is six sigma and se I see it CMM Which is the software engineering institutes capability maturity model those things those are all project management methodologies But a development methodology is a life cycle for developing or maintaining a product application or service So it's a little different and some examples of that are waterfall rad Which is rapid application development and then application maintenance just some examples But then there's the con the there's these methodologies that have combined the two and the most popular being Well, these are where they're combined most popular being agile If those of you who have ever worked in a formal environment, then you've heard of this And Kanban and scrum are both versions of agile. They're not different They're different But they're people are referring to these as three different things and they're not because Kanban and scrum are versions of agile Just so you can all be educated about that Now back in the day when I worked for Keen, which was a big cut software consulting firm based in Boston John Keen he was an old IBMer and he Uh formed this consulting firm and the projects kept running over time and over budget So he did what any IBMer would do any higher to consultants To come in and study that and out of that study came these are where the bottlenecks are these are where the problems are And he came up with the six principles for productivity management for software development I've taken those same six principles and modified them somewhat for WordPress So I'm just going to go over these quickly and then we'll get to the meat of what we're talking about John Keen talked about defining the job in detail But what I've done is changed it to define the job in detail with a content first approach. How many were just in Jennifer's talk? Okay, so I have a different viewpoint of content first and Jennifer does so I'm just gonna I do wait until I have all the content before I begin the work and because I Structure the payment schedule so that I make sure I get paid for that detailed discovery That's a whole nother topic for another day, but The content first thing works for me But she is right that you have to judge that based on the size of your client the technical expertise of your client you have to Nobody can give you a Roadmap that is perfect for everything you do you got to take that stuff and then modify it for the specifics of your client and Your niche or whatever the second things is get the right resources involved John Keen was get the right people involved But we know there's a lot more resources to get involved like plugins and blocks and Themes and things like that estimate the time and cost But here it's estimate the time and cost often because estimating is not just a one-time task It's something you need to do across the project break the job down. This is where John Keen was so What's the word? He was very forward-looking He he defined something about agile before they even knew about agile and that was the 80 hour rule He had us have a deliverable every 80 hours now That might be a little overkill for WordPress project But the point is break it down into chunks and you have a deliverable every so often so you always know exactly where you are in the Holds everybody accountable, and you know exactly where you are in the project timeline Now everybody in this next to the last one establish and stick to a change procedure just about everybody's got a change procedure Problem is we don't stick to it A lot of people you know, I'll just throw that in you know, it's gonna take too long to go through the change procedure I'll just do no That's what that's about oops wait. Let me go back They get the last one establish interim and final acceptance criteria A lot of people say when the site is live we are done That is not Enough of acceptance criteria for your client to sign off you've got to have a lot more detail So that's that was what that principle was about and doing it for the interim deliver rules as well So there's never a question has anybody ever had this happen where you you know You've done exactly what you all agreed to and you hand it to them and they go oh wait That's not what I asked for But it's not written down what those check-off items are well if it meets these criterias You're not allowed to say I don't want I don't like it because you already agreed that that's what was gonna happen And when you do that up front it really does save a lot of problems with scope creep and things like that Okay, now on to the elements of a good project management methodology Well, the first thing it does is it defines how you estimate the project you need to share that with the client How do you kind of you come up with this estimate? And I'll tell you a minute about the crystal ball approach and why that does not work But that that needs to be a part of your project management methodology proper and good Estimating and have it documented how you do that. Oh, then let me go up on my set box for one second Stop calling it a quote a quote is when the man comes to build a fence in your yard and he can measure the front He knows exactly what the materials are going to be he knows exactly how long it's going to take him And he knows exactly how big it is But unless you're doing a detailed discovery in that first meeting with the client. That's just not true There's no way you can so it's an estimate until you get the detail and then you can give a more precise estimate And oh, and there's also no such thing as an accurate estimate You see why? Because an estimate is an estimate so it can't be accurate Okay And the next thing that you need to have in your project management methodology is How are you going to manage the resources? How do I know that you're getting the right people involved? How do I know that you're getting the right plugins involved? How do I know that you're using the proper theme you need to have a method by which you determine those things and You need to have that written down You need to work breakdown structure for your standard way you do business It only takes one time of doing this and then you can reuse it over and over and over And so does anybody know what I mean by work breakdown structure? activities of phases activities tasks Because you need that in order to estimate properly a lot of times we just kind of take a grab out of the air But that never works you need an approach to content collection Are you going to use a content first approach? Are you going to do sprints where the content is the deliverable at the end of that sprint or 80-hour rule or 120-hour rule or whatever you decide to use So you need but you need to have that documented and what's going to happen when the client doesn't deliver the content Are you going to keep working? Here's what usually happens. Well, they missed their deadline I'm going to go ahead and finish the website then when they get the content finished. I'll just plug that in Then they never get the content done You've done all this work for free because you only got that little deposit at the beginning So that's why that old way of doing things doesn't work and I've got a lot of stuff on my website I'll share with you in a minute where you can get some more information on this, but I Have a content collection process that works because of the all-way I also structure the payment schedule and then change management, of course You've got to have a really good change management plan and acceptance management So there's six sections that you really must have in a good project management methodology Proper estimating resource management work breakdown structure approach to content collection a change management procedure and acceptance management plan any questions Okay, so let's dig a little bit deeper into those things proper estimating I think that's going to take us about 10 hours, but you know just be safe. We'll put down 12 That is the crystal ball approach and it never works Especially because if you're doing this estimate and trying to come up with a precise estimate in your proposal You're most likely not going to hit the mark because there's no way after an hour and a half Discovery meeting you can I use that I use a range in the proposal Then I do a more detailed statement of work Then I get a deposit that covers me creating the statement of work Then we do a deep dive in a much more detailed statement of work I always give the client the option to back out at that point if the if the next quote Excuse me estimate comes in too high Higher than that at that range then I give them a chance to back out, but I just hand them the statement of work They already paid for it and I walk away That way everybody's happy at the end of that right? It's not any argument or anything So this is why you should need to abandon the crystal ball approach Don't try and estimate what you don't know so this needs to be part of your estimating process If you can convince a client that you don't estimate what you don't know and that's why we have to do this deep dive first So that I can find out everything make sure that I've got you a proper estimate They usually respect that you want to get rid of the pad as your method of change control And let me tell you why You can't measure it All right If I if I say this project's gonna cost $5,000 and then you know me and Johnny decide well Let's put 20% on top of that just in case we had problems Well, that might happen and you might eat that eat up that whole amount that you added on top and you still come out Okay, but you don't know which places you messed up or which places the client didn't give you what they needed There's no way to have a lessons learned from that because it's an arbitrary number and you never tracked any of the stuff that was that was That was caught that you used out of that money now what I and then never present never Provide a precise estimate in your proposal now what I use is a change budget But I'll talk about that when I talk about the change procedure, which is different than a pad and I'll explain why Okay, the next section Excuse me. I'm gonna take a little swig of water here. I'm getting a little dry mouth. Oh You need to define what your approach is to getting the right people involved the right plugins involved The right hosting involved the right blocks involved and then other resources that you're gonna need so Like for plugins Most people have a standard set of plugins that you like to use write up a description of those You modify it based on the needs of the client and so that deliverables pretty much done before you ever start, right? You just have to tweak it each time for each client or the open-minded to a better plug-in coming along because sometimes that does happen You want to switch? Let's see what else I don't want to tell you about this That's it Okay, then you got your wet work breakdown structure. So I put a picture of the waterfall here to indicate I use a waterfall approach Which all that means is that one phase activity or task leads into the next one and into the next one the output of one Becomes the input to the next It also has milestones or breaking things down into chunks the 80-hour rule that we talked about or something similar and a work breakdown structure that uses incremental approvals If you can get your client to approve the design in little pieces Then when you get to the end of the project There's nothing hardly left to approve because they approved everything in pieces, you know that last section where they're have to Approve the entire website can sometimes drag your project to a screeching halt But if you've got good acceptance criteria to find up front and then you use this incremental approval process It can really make things so much nicer at the end so that you all go have champagne together instead of going well I'm glad that's over And then which approach to content collection are you going to take which came first the chicken or the egg the content or The design most people talk about a content first design approach, but I think it goes deeper than that I think it is a content first development approach now when I say I get I don't do any development until the client gets Me the content. I don't mean that I don't do a stitch of work. I Do some preparation I set up and I will I will install some plugins Especially if it's say a forms plug-in or something where I'm going to need to create a form to get them to approve When I'm doing the design, then yeah, I'll go ahead and set those things up first But in terms of doing any real design without having done Then and here's the other thing When you if you do the content first stuff, right? And you do a run random order of magnitude of the content before you ever start like how many paragraphs are gonna be in each First you do your site map figure out what the pages are then you figure out Well, how much content how many text that how much text is gonna be on that page probably how many videos how many pictures How many you know, whatever and you show that to the client They will most if they were planning to do the content and you don't really want them to because you know It's gonna slow things down that will usually convince them that it's too much work for them That they need to get a third party or if you offer that service that you need to hire them to hire you to do it It's a good selling point sometimes when you show them what it really looks like in little bits and pieces Okay, so you in this in this approach to your content collection You need to define how you're gonna determine the content requirements and here's the other thing a lot of times So the approach we take is okay. Well I'm gonna I'm gonna figure out how many pages we need and everything and I'm gonna figure out how much And I'm then you go and you know what content needs to be on the pages. So you go go get it, but we don't ever really Devise the requirements for the content and we don't ever estimate the content if we're not the ones doing the work But I contend that it's our job to to estimate the whole project Even if the clients doing that big chunk so that they get a real good sense of what that means And that's a lot of the problem with getting the content from the client is they don't understand the magnitude of the work Yes, sir. You have a question. I Try never to have the Copywriter contracted to the client the copywriter should be contracted to you Going I mean, that's just how I've always done it because for that exact reason And you just build that into the cost of the project once you get the client to agree to it And that way you get to work with copyrighted You like and that y'all work well together and that sort of thing It lets you bet that and that's the way you sell it to them is look I already got a copyright that can do this for you You don't need to go hire anybody if that's the way you want that And your content collection approach needs to set the proper expectations with the client regarding content the magnitude of the work Who's going to do what and that sort of thing? And then you in this you got to describe how you're going to manage those content collection activities Whether you're going to do the content first approach and what your what your expectations are from the client Change management. Okay, we tend to pretend like well, you know, if we're really good at what we do there will be no change That's just dumb. There is gonna be change on every project. I don't care how small I don't care how I look I am a fabulous business analyst. I can do the best business requirements and functional requirements You've ever seen but I've never had one project where there wasn't something that slipped through the cracks that showed up later So acknowledge change as inevitable with the client just be brutally honest with them say look This is what happens on almost all projects, but I've got a process in place that's going to prevent that Say and that's means that you plan for change you manage the change You use a change budget was explained in a second and you implement change control these last two words without exception no matter how small no matter how whatever, okay, so the change budget $5,000 project I'm going to take 20 to 30% of that add it to it as a change budget and then when I present my proposal to the client I'm going to say look this look this bucket is sitting over here for you to use for changes that might occur Doesn't matter who comes up with the change or whose fault it was that it wasn't discovered earlier None of that matters with taking all the negativity out of it But that then when something when a change comes up you felt you do the change request somebody Decides how much impact it's going to have on the cost how much impact it's going to have on the schedule And then the client gets to decide do I want to take that money out and put it in the budget? And if they say yes go ahead and make the change boom invoice That way I make sure I get paid for every single change now that's not true I don't always invoice them right immediately Sometimes I'll wait till the next payment interval and I'll just add it to that payment interval that they were going to make anyway But the point is Don't do work without getting paid just to be nice Because they'll expect it the next time and the next time and the next time I've done it I know it's terrible and then we just talked we talked about acceptance management And you need a formal process of acceptance and by that I don't it just needs to be a process Everybody can follow that's what formal means It needs to be incremental as I mentioned and you need to define what the acceptance criteria is before the project begins So why does any of this matter? Well, let's be honest guys wordpress is not that hard and You know one wordpress solution for an easy Mom-and-pop website is generally going to look pretty much the same as the next guy right it's gonna have a theme It's gonna have some plug-ins It's gonna have design elements maybe some custom CSS maybe a little coding But you need something else to do that you can set that you can set yourself up as a unique value proposition So what are you how are you gonna do that? Well, if you use a two-step proposal process like mine It actually ends up saving money because if during the you get remember you gave them a range in the proposal And then during the deep dive is when you get into the detail Well, if a change comes up during that process and that does not cause you to exceed the range that you gave them in the first place No change control. You don't need to it's part of the discovery process They're with you every step of the way So they never balk on anything because they were right there when the change was discovered So doing if you do changes during that phase where you're doing the project definition zero dollars You do it during development big dollars So it costs a lot more to do changes later on so this is how you set that up If you can set if you've got a way to do this then you say to your client, you know This is what makes me better than the next guy We don't estimate what we don't net know if you can tell your client We don't pad estimates because we don't have to and you show them how you did it And then the next guy he's gonna say to the next guy. How'd you come up with that estimate? It's gonna be a little more educated We ensure we get the right resources involved and you explain to him what your process is You know, I've got this copywriter on that's in the background here if we need them I have this standard set of plugins. These are these are you know plugins that are well respected and you know You don't want to go into too much technical detail, but you get my point, right? Is you're just explaining to them the process by which you're coming up with this Then you do this the incremental acceptance process that avoids misunderstanding because And here I'm showing it as requirements. You've gotten approval on then you got approval on the content Then you got approval on the plug-ins. You got approval on the layout and branding then when you get done Where you've put it all together. What are they gonna argue about nothing because it's all just if you've already gotten to the proof Unless there's a change We design around content which increases efficiency When you discover additional content needs once you're in development often that will affect the design and then you just Got a boatloader rework, which is you know the the Quintessential scope creep So that's why we do the content first that way we make sure our design is in is headed in the right direction And we acknowledge change we plan for it We let you manage it and this is something I wish everybody would start doing is stop penalizing the client for change as if it's their fault It's nobody's fault that this change occurred or that they've decided now that they need this new feature Or they I mean sometimes they're frivolous But the thing about that change budget is you get a lot fewer frivolous change requests because it's their money Right. They're not asking you to take the money out of your rock ROI. It's coming out of their change budget They're a lot less, you know, if they say well, we want all that Remember when I told you I wanted all these things red now one of blue, you know If there's not a business requirement behind that you can usually talk the client out of it By saying, you know, you're gonna have to take money out of change budget. Oh, you know, the other beauty thing about the change budget It's magic. You always come in under budget Because you don't use the change budget nobody you hardly ever if you if you do that percentage correctly You hardly ever use the change budget and then that again the thing about estimating is the only way to get better at it Is to keep doing it, you know and measuring yourself and figuring out where you made your mistakes and then improving Yes You set the schedule payment for the three thousand And then paid for it yet, am I right? Correct. And so in that utopia world where you wouldn't have no changes You'd never touch that budget and it's never real money. It's just a budget You know, but they they're but but it's possible that it's possible that project could cost $3,500 or even more if they exceed their change budget, but I've never had that happen As long as you put enough aside to begin with Um, so we never penalize the client for change. It's not their fault They don't they don't you know and see because they don't know how we do business and we forget to educate them on what is involved in a website project Yes No, the question was have I ever tried to take the change budget upfront? No No, but that could be a good incentive for getting the content done on time And now I I got five minutes 10. Thank you. Oh, that's what two fives me. Thanks I Think I'm close to being finished. Okay. Um Yeah, we just got to stop making the client feel bad for coming up with changes And then you can always position it as phase two item two first you evaluate the change through the change control process and they go That's going to take six more weeks, you know, and they don't want to they don't want the time extended So that so you just suggest that it go into a phase two And we'll we'll do that in another project And then you do go through the whole process of estimating the project again The other way you can incent your client to get you content on time is now this is this in this case a little pads. Okay Maybe you add 500 to the total and then you tell the client you will give them a 500 dollar rebate if they get all their content done on time The main thing is to make sure the client understands How big that job is and are they really prepared to do it and if and that's your job to help them figure that out Maybe they are maybe they're not maybe you're not maybe you need to get that third party Okay, so how does this set you apart? All right, the other guy is not really a shark. I just really liked that picture But this is how it sets you apart from the other guy You have a two-step estimating and proposal process if you were to copy what I do Estimating an approval process the other guy just attempts a precise estimate without a deep dive or detailed stuff Because he's doing that crystal ball thing The functions actually do they end up function the ending functions actually do address the business requirements Which is the deal the functions can and when the other guy doesn't the functions can't always be tied back to a business requirement Because they just well, we always do that because that's the way we know all our clients like that You know, that's not a requirement. The client didn't ask for it content first On the other guy is usually content bottlenecks and project delays Managed change with with the client in charge. He has no plan for managing change use a change budget Pads the quote to cover any unknowns and I'll have a link to these slides. I'll give you in a minute They're on my website Precise acceptance criteria does it precisely define what done means and that's not just for the final project but for each little piece And then you you use proven product project Proven productivity management techniques that may allow you to get your projects done on time within budget And with features that meet the client's needs And he doesn't Okay, so here's the kicker of once you've convinced the client that you're like the project manager from heaven Then you educate them on what to ask the other guy Okay, which is what's really going to set you ahead of the game How did you arrive at that estimate you want to hit the hand your guy to go ask that guy How did you arrive at the estimate? How do you discover and document the business requirements? What's your process for that? How do you manage the content activities? How do you plan for and manage changes? How is the cost for change determined? What are the criteria for approval of the project? What about interim deliverables and how can we be sure that the project will be completed on time within budget And has all the features we requested when you school your client to ask those questions of the next guy And the next guy can't answer them. Guess what you just would So the key In summary is to try to become a wordpress triple threat be a good designer Be a good developer slash implementer and be a good project manager And so you're going to do that with requirements discovery content activities change requests and scope creep Deliverable approvals estimates and timelines client expectations and training So in summary you should be like this Not like this If you want some more training information on different pieces and parts of this I have three freebies on my website One is a tip sheet on six ways to control scope creep in your in your proposal I have the free lesson that's part of the content collection roadmap And then there's a little mini training on those six principles I was telling you about now that many training uses a different name I was calling them the six principles of wordpress productivity And then I realized I can't use wordpress in that manner had to be four wordpress From you know the trademark thing and then two of the things is I am them I do administer the facebook project management group on facebook It's um I'm trying to get people more engaged But I do post some lives and some information there and the people that are in my group Are going to get special discounts as we move forward and I'm creating some more stuff that I that I would love to tell you About but I'm not allowed to tell from the stage Okay, so No, I'll tell you about later. Um, they're they're not it's not ready Anyway, but it's a lot of a lot of pieces and parts of this that'll help you get that job done The other thing is the admin bar um Facebook group which I am only a member of but I am in love with these guys they they really Adam's been interviewed by the admin bar, right? Yes, um, they uh They're very laid back and they're focusing They're both of them came out of different other industries one was graphic designer Can't remember what matt was but um, they came together and and they do this They do a podcast live in the facebook group And there's a lot of engagement. There are a lot of people helping people with Um more of the of the business side of you know, what tool do you use for that? Because listen a project management tool is never going to solve this problem for you. Okay It'll help you rock plug everything into the little boxes, but it's not going to solve the problem So they go over a lot of that stuff about which tool to use for this and you know How do you do a funnel if you how do you do a funnel if you actually are a? You know a software developer or a wordpress agency, so I highly recommend both those things My slides are available at wp roadmaps.com forward slash word camp That and I am at wp roadmaps just about everywhere and I would love some social media love if you liked what you heard here today And then if you want to skip all those freebies, but you want to know about this big thing I got coming out soon That's probably going to help you a lot then you can just text roadmaps to 444 999 and you'll be on my email list instantly I guess I should put that back up there So did you find that helpful? Does anybody have any questions? Yes Well, that's why if you make it as part of the as you make it if you make it as the first activity And your deposit covers that activity So they don't feel like they're paying for it and then at the at the end of that deep dive If what you could if the new estimate that you come out with at the end of the deep dive exceeds the first one You just hand them statement of work. It's like go get the guy at work to do it. I don't care That's part of the deposit Sometimes my deposits are more than 50% If it's a big complicated thing like when I had to when I had to take a weebly site and an old wordpress site And put them together and then add membership functionality and blah blah blah blah I mean it just went on and on and on that one I got a big deposit up front because I knew that discovery was going to take us a long time Yes, I usually use 20 to 30 percent sometimes it depends on the client, you know, sometimes you just got to be kind of Intuitive well, you got to be intuitive about all right. They're never going to get this done I'm making it 40 percent, you know Or this is somebody you've worked with before, you know, they're easy You know, you can you work to them so you say I'm just going to put 20 percent over there Really doesn't matter because if if you've exceed if you exceed it Then you have a meeting with the client and you showed them why it was exceeded and we need to replenish As we go forward Well, no changing a word. That's not exactly what I mean But any change that's going to change the timeline the cost or the resources Even if changing the resource doesn't change the time or cost It's still a change that needs to be documented and you know, I'm a big believer in the project notebook too You do one for each one then you before you do the next project you go back to your project notebook You like oh, yeah, remember when that happened. Look, we can't remember stuff. I can't remember what I have for dinner last night So, you know trying to remember the last time I worked for this client or what did we write down six weeks ago? That's why that project notebook is such a good resource I'm sorry. Oh, yeah bugs are your fault Yes What is that? Oh, the 80 hour rule is like an agile sprint. Are you familiar with agile? A little bit. Yeah, okay So all that means is that you have a deliverable every 80 hours Or that was what we did in software development, but the project was going to last a year and a half Okay, so in your case you might say, okay, I'm going to do it. Um, you know At different intervals in your project plan that you have a deliverable There's a sign off everybody and then that feeds into the next section and you know, that's already approved, right? So that's why we have that 80 hour rule because you never get off more than two weeks if you use 80 hours or two You know two weeks of man hours Okay, my pleasure. Yes Here's what I suggest join the admin bar facebook group. Those are exactly the kind of things they talk about on the on the business side of what the different tools they use And uh, it's not just those two guys, but the people in the group really contribute Um, Adam's a member Troy Dean's a member. You're a member Everybody's a member Any other questions? He's saying zero time. I am done But I'll be outside if anybody wants to have any more questions. I'm happy to talk to you. I love talking about this stuff on such a key