65 - Evolving your agency

Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.

Verbatim text

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson. Hi and welcome to episode number 65 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is your host Lee, and you already know that because I say it every time. So if you’ve got an idea of how I could start the show, maybe I can sing, maybe I could rap, or maybe you’d like to record an intro for the show, then head on over to the Facebook group on angledcrown.com/groove. What? What you say? Angledcrown.com/groove? Yes, that’s right. The new site is live. Head on over to angledcrown.com and you’ll see our awesome new brand. Poor old Lee Jackson Dev is a thing of history. I’m still alive, but the dev bit isn’t. And we’re now a really fancy fancy schmancy name with a gorgeous brand over at adwords.crown.com. We’ll put the link in the show notes as well, just so you guys can go and head on over, have a look, let us know what you think. If you find a bug, let us know. It’s brand spanking new and I don’t want any bugs on there.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
We’re doing QA all day. Anyway, uh, enough about us. Our guest today is Matt Medeiros. He is from the Matt Report podcast, a podcast I’ve been listening to for years. So I was a little bit kind of fan girlish when I was on with him, but this is a fantastic episode full of value galore. So I’m going to shut up and you’re going to enjoy. Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the WP Innovator Podcast. And I’ve got to admit, I’m having a little bit of a fanboy moment because I have on the line Mr. Matt Medeiros. How are you doing, buddy?

Matt Medeiros:
Lee Jackson, let me tell you something. First of all, I am so envious of you across the pond podcasters with your awesome accents. You know, you, Troy Dean, I mean, you guys have it made. Like, you guys are natural audio entertainers. So number one, I’m the fanboy, and number two, I’m excited to be here.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Nice, I like that. So autograph will be in the post. Just send a cheque for— oh, I don’t know, the exchange rate’s terrible now.

Matt Medeiros:
What’s going on about it? Well, listen, that postcard might not get through border control here in the United States, so—

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m going on holiday in the States soon. I want to be— I hope they let me in. That is a huge worry. So guys, if you don’t know who Matt is, Matt is a guy who does many things. He is, of course, the host of The Matt Report, which is a podcast I’ve listened to for a long time. I feel like it’s years now.

Matt Medeiros:
Is it?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
You’ve been around— the podcast has been around for years, right?

Matt Medeiros:
Yeah. Um, let’s see, well over 200 episodes now. So it’s been probably about, uh, 3, 3 and a half years.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
3 and a half years. Yeah. Okay. That’s good. Cause I just wanted to double check. I wasn’t misremembering or anything. He is also the author, creator, and mastermind of the Conductor plugin, which is freaking awesome. We’re going to talk about that in a minute. Uh, you’re the co-founder of— can’t say it— studio— Slocum Studio?

Matt Medeiros:
That’s correct. Yep.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Slocum Studio. I’m gonna have to ask how you named that as well. And of course, the co-author of the podcast book. So mate, you’re a very busy guy. How about you give us all an introduction? Tell us who you are, your name, your favourite colour, maybe what you like to eat, and, uh, anything else that’s of interest. And we’ll go from there.

Matt Medeiros:
Alright, my name is Matt. So as you said, I do a lot of stuff in the WordPress space. That’s pretty much how I keep my sanity. A lot of people kind of look at all the stuff that I do and they say, “Wow, he just does a lot.” But you know, the underlying current to that is it’s all based around WordPress to some degree. So that helps me keep a healthy balance to it all. I am a new father, 7-month, 7-and-a-half-month-old at this point, having a grand old time. Being a father, running a business, that’s been an interesting balance for sure. I have a lovely wife and we live just south of Boston, Massachusetts, where the New England Patriots have won their 5th Super Bowl title. It is a blessed time to live in New England right now. I’m just enjoying it and soaking it all up.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, I feel the need to ask you to say “car.” Car.

Matt Medeiros:
Oh, I was expecting you to say “cah.” Yeah, no, everyone says, “I can’t believe you’re really from the Boston area,” and I’m like, “Yes, yes I am.” A lot of folks wonder why I don’t have that sort of Bostonian accent.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m guessing you’re from the posh part then.

Matt Medeiros:
Maybe.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well guys, you won’t know, but right now the image on Skype is a picture of Matt in a bow tie. So he’s looking very posh to me right now. So do you hail from Boston originally then? You’ve been a Bostonian all your life?

Matt Medeiros:
Yeah, we’re— so we’re about an hour south of Boston, which in, in all terms of Massachusetts, it’s pretty much— we call it all Boston, right? Because it’s just the drive there is— it seems like it’s just minutes away. Growing up in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, right along the Slocum River, then that’s sort of where we got the name of our agency. Because I grew up on the Slocum River, which is this, you know, it’s a river and goes out to, to the ocean, hop over to Nantucket from where we are, which is a popular tourist destination. Uh, but I grew up on that river. My father and his father before him, they all sort of grew up, uh, around the Slocum River. And that was, uh, as we started our agency, uh, I started the agency with my father. So I’m a co-founder, uh, in that regard. And when we named it, we said, well, we’re gonna call it the Slocum River. We didn’t want to go after any kind of sort of digital type name or some kind of, uh, you know, fancy sort of tech name where for us, because we’ve been in business for quite some time in other areas, especially in the community.

Matt Medeiros:
We wanted something that, uh, the community could, uh, recognise and, and also have something that just has a little bit more heritage to the name.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s beautiful. And a lot more thought’s gone into that than I— I mean, if you’re listening, you’re an agency and you called this, then I’m sorry, but I mean, I see so many agencies nowadays called things like Strawberry or Tomato, right? Tomato Creative. I’m like, what’s that all about?

Matt Medeiros:
Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, it’s sort of that strategy of that online digital strategy is like, hey, you know, what’s the easiest domain name that we can get? You know, that kind of— and, you know, and ours sort of flies in the face of that advice, but, uh, you know, it’s important to us to have some kind of heritage there.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
No, I like that. Well, okay, so like we said, you’re the host of a podcast, you’re, you’re running two major websites. You’ve got the Slocum Studio where you’ve got your themes, your plugins, you’ve got the Conductor plugin, you’ve got a book. What were you doing before all of this? How did you actually get into running an agency? Because I’m guessing Slocum Studio came first before all of this, and that is just a guess.

Matt Medeiros:
Yes, that’s correct. Um, the, the sort of genesis of it all started when, uh, well, let’s just— I’ll try to make this story— it’s a long story, so I’ll try to make it as fast.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’ve got loads of time.

Matt Medeiros:
Um, so my family comes from a history of entrepreneurs. My grandfather used to sell shoes door-to-door, and then he started to sell automotive tyres when that was a thing, when you could actually be a salesman selling car tyres. And then he actually started one of the very first Mazda dealerships in the United States back in the early or late ’70s. And then it was just a, my father and his 3 brothers sort of took on that business and And as I came of working age, which was about 10 years old, I was working at the dealership and we were a General Motors dealership at the time, which was Chevy, Cadillac, GMC, Pontiac, you know, the whole wide range of General Motors brands. So I grew up in car sales, but I really grew up, like I said, from 10 years old pulling weeds around the dealership, you know, doing landscaping stuff around the dealership to washing cars to delivering parts. And then eventually, as I got older, sort of doing the sales. And when the internet came about, which was I think mid-’90s for General Motors, when they started rolling out websites, I was the, you know, I was the young guy who kind of liked computers and I was into that kind of thing.

Matt Medeiros:
I started managing our dealership’s website, right? And that was the sort of, you know, the internet was, you know, again, consumer internet was coming of age and that started to— that spark And that’s where sort of the digital technology side really caught hold. And then of course, growing up in running a business, it’s all I knew. So I sort of combined those two. But I went to school, I, you know, I went to school for actually computer networking. I was super into, you know, building things with open source software, Linux, LAMP stack, that kind of thing. And I got a job at a— for experience because I just really love the field. I got a job at a local internet service provider, and I was actually there for 6.5, 7 years. And when I went there, I was the only person who knew like this open source stuff. And I, and I put that in air quotes because it wasn’t really like, it wasn’t really talked about as much as it’s talked about today. Yeah. They were all, they were running on all, you know, Microsoft ASP and.NET and all this stuff. And then all of a sudden I came along with all of like this hand-grown Linux knowledge.

Matt Medeiros:
And they were like, “Boy, we’ve always thought about installing shared hosting with cPanel and Linux. Can you do that?” And I said, “I think I can figure it out.” And I went from being a lowly tech support rep who was helping people with their dial-up modems to being their product manager for their Linux-based shared hosting, which, you know, it’s laughable now. It’s like, well, you can get that as, you know, a dime a dozen today. Uh, but back then it wasn’t a thing. Right. Um, and I sort of helped launch that. Fast forward a little bit and that company acquired, uh, another ISP in our area. And that ISP actually had a develop— a web development, uh, arm attached to it. And they were actually selling sites on Drupal. And, or using Drupal to sell websites, right?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I feel like you’ve sworn and I need to edit that out. I’m messing with you, man.

Matt Medeiros:
I’ve got no objection. Drupal still holds a little piece in my heart.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Okay.

Matt Medeiros:
And that’s where I got the experience of looking at the sort of agency model because they had a team of about 8 people and looking at that saying, wow, you know, this is really awesome. Look at how this business is running. But I looked at that and said, Drupal is just way too hard of a, of a product to kind of learn and sell for the new company. Uh, and one of the designers at, at, at the, uh, Cape.com, he said, look, Matt, he was a nice guy. I’m still friends with him to this day. He’s from India and, um, you know, living here in the States, of course. And he was saying, look, look, this, this Drupal thing, this sucks for me to design. Like, I can’t design on this, but this WordPress thing. It’s so much easier for me to design. I think we should really change the focus to that. And we did. And that also sparked my first entrance into WordPress. While we were doing that, and again, I know this is a long story, but off to the side, that designer friend and I, because we still had so many sites on Drupal, we were selling to a lot of real estate companies in the area.

Matt Medeiros:
And my first foray into digital products was actually selling a Drupal theme, which again, I know this sounds like, well, you can buy a Drupal theme at ThemeForest. That didn’t exist back then. Um, and he and I had this idea of, well, let’s just bottle up a real estate theme for, for Drupal because we’re already doing it. We know how it works. Let’s just sell it. And we were selling it for, I think back then, like $100 and it was just selling. Like gangbusters and we just, it was just like printing money.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.

Matt Medeiros:
Um, not ridiculous money, but a few thousand dollars without doing any kind, um, a month without doing any kind of like, you know, uh, SEO. I didn’t even know what SEO was. I didn’t know what marketing was at that point. Um, to a degree. And that was my first experience with product. And then when I started our WordPress agency, You know, the whole concept of agency and selling sites, I had experience from the other job and I started to dabble in digital products. So all of that is to say, I’ve had this burning desire to, you know, run a business and have products and have services for the last 8 years. So that’s the longest-winded answer I’ve ever given to that question.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That was an epic answer and it almost felt like, uh, we should have been kind of getting all that transcribed to be like the introduction to your next book. That was awesome. I can take from that as well that you are one of those people who— you’re an entrepreneur who has this burning desire to create and create solutions, but being creative in that. I love the idea that you were selling a Drupal theme back in the day when it wasn’t— you know, the market is kind of saturated now, isn’t it? You can probably quickly run a search for real estate theme and there’s probably a gazillion. I’m not even sure if that’s a real number, but it’s, you know, there are stacks of stuff out there and obviously there’s a lot of crap out there. It’s kind of hard to weed out what’s good. Um, and you know, for the, for the good ones to stand out, but that’s beautiful. Oh, for the days when we could create a theme, um, that would, that would generate that sort of income. How many years ago was that then? I’m presuming that’s like 8 years ago or something.

Matt Medeiros:
Yeah. I mean, I would even say that’s, it’s probably even more than that. Um, you know, I, that was at the time a Drupal 6 theme, uh, right when Drupal 6 first came out. Um, and you know, like I said this before, I was talking, I was on another podcast the other day and we were talking about that. Uh, you know, I really miss Drupal. Like I want to get back into it just to see what I’ve. What, what has happened over the last, you know, 6, 7 years that I haven’t even looked at it. Yeah. Uh, so yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, there’s no reason why you can’t. I mean, I’m WordPress through and through in my blood, but I, it’s at the same time I have these other hobbies and you were talking about Linux and everything. I’ve got right in front of me 2 Raspberry Pis. I’ve got the Raspberry Pi 1, the Raspberry Pi 3, and I’ve been running Debian on them and doing all sorts of stuff, trying to teach myself different languages that I have no reason or need to know. but just for the hell of it, it’s sometimes good just to take some downtime and teach yourself something completely randomly different. Uh, so, uh, take some time on Drupal, man. You got my permission. So Slocum Studio, how, what did it start? Was it just a case of, oh, I’m gonna go straight into building themes and, and plugins, or were you first building websites for people?

Matt Medeiros:
So that started, um, you know, I should also say that there, Again, the passion to run my own company was obviously always there. 4 years ago, if anybody remembers the financial crisis, which I think struck globally, we sold that dealership. Our family sold the dealership about 4 years before that. We could actually see the writing on the wall with General Motors. And at one point, General Motors had the most cash in the bank than any other company on the planet, which is laughable now because they went bankrupt. And so we sort of saw that writing on the wall, the way they were running the business, and we got out of that. And my father had always pursued, or has always been a professional photographer. I mean, he started ever since he can even remember with cameras and really learning the craft, and he’s really sharpened that over the years. Anyway, he sold the business and he started, you know, just doing photography stuff. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it. He was just sort of enjoying a small down time after selling the business and running it for 30 years. And he got a client one day that they were a jewellery store, like a sort of high-end handcrafted jewellery store, and they wanted some photos.

Matt Medeiros:
And they said, “Hey, can you give us a website too? We need a website.” And he asked me, he said, “Hey, what do you think I should do about this?” I think I can help out with that. I mean, I know this WordPress thing. And we did it. And then we just, you know, because we can’t stay away from running a business, we were like, well, maybe we should make a go at this. Like, let’s get another client that way. And he got another client that did it. And that really spawned it all. And you know, there’s a lot behind growing an agency and growing a boutique agency is what we label ourselves as. But you know, the short storey is when we started that, I started going to WordPress meetups, kind of try to see like what the temperature of the market was. And there’s another agency out there called 10Up, and that started, uh, with a friend of mine, uh, Jake Goldman. And we were, he and I were in the same WordPress meetup and I saw, excuse me, I saw him start his company and I was sort of starting mine at the same time.

Matt Medeiros:
So I said, wow, look like I have to, I have to find people who are really good at WordPress because he’s finding people who are really good at WordPress and he’s getting a lot of business. So I need to do the same. Yeah. Uh, so. I started, I started with a small team, actually. One of our friends in the community from the business had recommended their like neighbour’s son, and this kid by the name of Jonathan. And he started as our sort of first employee, if you will, helping us code WordPress sites. And he had two other friends that were also into WordPress. One of them now is my lead engineer, Scott, who helped me develop Conductor and does all of the lead engineering at our agency. And Jeff Galinsky, who actually now works for Jetpack Automatic. And Jeff works for— or excuse me, John now works for Boston University. So, and he had worked at another agency before that. So it really just spawned as like this idea to, you know, help somebody with a website to turning it into a full-fledged business. And we kicked right in to 6th gear right away. So it was an interesting, interesting ride.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
And you’re still, despite having the ongoing products and that, I presume you’re still building websites to this day?

Matt Medeiros:
That is correct. It’s still our primary revenue channel is client services. Although we definitely now over the course of 8 years, 9 years, whatever it’s been, have definitely gotten a lot better at it and what types of clients that we sort of want to work with, what works good for us in terms of, hey, how do we run an agency and build products at the same time, which is a tug of war that is never easily solved. But we are starting to, you know, again, 7, 8 years, 8, 9 years into this, finally realising how to find a good balance in that by getting the right clients where we can also sort of have time to do client or have time to do product work. Same time.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
8 years is a very long time in that, in that field. There’s been a lot of stress. I’m surprised you are still sane.

Matt Medeiros:
You know, and what I— I’m glad you brought that up because I think about that every single day. Because, I mean, there are so many people that feel, you know, stressed out and sort of like, boy, can I really make it in this world of digital? There’s so much competition. There’s so many people who you know, might be better than me. If you can make it 5 years, I mean, you pat yourself on the back. If you can make— if you can make 2 years, 1 year, and you wake up every day to keep going back at it, you need to pat yourself on the back and say you’re doing a goddamn damn good job. Because, you know, it’s not easy to run this stuff, and I applaud anyone who can withstand the markets and client services.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I totally echo that. I’ve been in this industry myself for about 8 years, 8 to 9 years, and, uh, there have definitely been some stressful times. But that journey— I, I am interested in, in the journey of kind of understanding how to get better clients because it’s something that we’ve gone through over a long period of time. And we’ve had some howlers of some projects, not necessarily the client’s fault because, you know, originally I wasn’t asking the right sort of questions, I was making assumptions, etc. And we’ve worked on some, you know, terribly unprofitable, stressful, awful projects, etc. And we’re a hell of a lot better now onboarding and finding the right clients. But what was the catalyst for you? You know, at what point did you recognise, oh crap, this is our ideal type of client and this is how we’re going to go ahead and find them?

Matt Medeiros:
You know, it happens every, every year, right? I mean, I think that you have to— in a perfect world, you’re learning from your last project at every single project you’re learning how to get better, right? You find what went wrong and you change it on the next one. Literally from, you know, your— if you thought you priced it, you know, $5,000 too cheap, on the next project you simply throw in the other $5,000 that you thought you missed it. From every single engagement, um, I’m always finding, um, I’m trying to find a better way to hone that process and find new opportunity. A lot of people, they try to sort of just say, “Well, I’m gonna raise prices and that’s gonna be my method. My method to finding new clients will just be raising prices.” I still look at everything that comes in as a potential opportunity. If somebody comes to me and they say, “We’ve only got a budget of $500 or $1,000. What can you do for us?” I say, “Well, I can hop on the phone with you for a few hours and we can do this consultation thing and we can kind of sketch something together for $1,000.

Matt Medeiros:
You wanna do that?” And just see what works. I don’t have many people who say yes to that, but I’m always, I’m always open to finding a way to, to do that. Um, I’m, again, I grew up in car sales. I know what it’s like. There’s 2 feet of snow on the, on the ground right now. Um, where I am, nobody’s selling, nobody’s buying cars when there’s 2 feet of snow on the ground. Nobody wants to go look at, look at cars. So I know what it’s like to run a business when it’s feast or famine and when downtime is downtime. It’s a cash crunch. So I’m always looking at opportunities and finding that best client has come with a lot of those horror stories. Like I’m sure you have. And it’s just learning from those lessons and putting them, putting them into the next project that you go into and really understanding, you know, one of the things that I see biggest problem from, you know, spending time now in, in in page builder Facebook groups and, and doing tutorials on my YouTube channel, I’m finding that a lot of people who are just doing this stuff are getting in way over their heads, right?

Matt Medeiros:
They’re getting way in over their heads. They’re just saying yes to everything that comes in. And because they think that they can solve it with these sort of easy-to-use plugins, uh, and I’m guilty because I have a plugin called Conductor that helps people out to do these things, uh, they think that they can tackle absolutely anything without having sort of the fundamental knowledge of how technology works. And that’s the biggest thing is don’t get in over your head. And if you do, be ready to spend some money on hiring a professional to help you out. Don’t, don’t try to tackle it all, all yourself. So, you know, finding the right client means just as much to understanding what the, what the projects are that you can do best and that you can do with quality and with confidence that you’re delivering a good product every single time. Doesn’t always necessarily mean raise your prices and you’ll get better clients, because I hear that stuff out there too.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Sure, it’s encouraging to hear you say that you’ll even take on some of the smaller, perceivably smaller projects. I mean, we do that quite a lot, and I sometimes worry that maybe I’m losing focus. But what I’ve always found is by taking on those small projects where, you know, there’s only a few hundred quid in the pot, or pounds for people who don’t know what quid means, um, but you know, someone need a little bit of help, it’s only a small project, it’s going to be a few hours worth of work. I still do it because what tends to happen is they, they actually become quite a good relationship. Whether that relationship turns into more business or not, um, most of them do. Most of them will either turn into more business with that person or they will recommend you to a perfect client that they know because they’ve had such a great experience and they want to share that with somebody else. So we actually You know, accident— I guess it’s accidentally, you know, because I just want to help everyone. If someone comes up to me and says, hey, I’ve only got a bit of money but I need to achieve something, I’m like, how can I help you in the best way possible?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
And, uh, you know, just by doing that, we tend to get other clients as a result or ongoing work. So I nearly turned down— I hope they don’t listen to this podcast— but, uh, we actually, where we are, where we’re based, we’ve got a company that are a few doors down from us, and I was actually going to turn them down because I thought they wouldn’t have enough budget for the work, etc. And they just needed some simple updates. So I just threw a small invoice and said, “Hey, if you want, we can run some updates for this much.” And a few— couple of months later, we’re now being commissioned on a new site. So sometimes it’s— I think it is a good idea to see how you can help and look at all those opportunities. And I love what you said as well about playing on your strength because yes, it’s there. You see these panicked messages, don’t you, in Facebook? “Oh, I’ve got a client and they said they wanted to do this and this plugin is terrible and I don’t know what to do.” and you’re just like, oh my gosh.

Matt Medeiros:
Right. And that goes to exactly what you were saying. Like, I don’t understand why. I mean, I do, right? So you can take two paths, right? So again, like I said, I started my business the same time Jake Goldman started his business called 10Up. 10Up has what, maybe 200 employees right now? And I have 6. So two huge different paths. Uh, you know, one going very much the sort of corporate route, right? Where you’re sort of, uh, going on these sort of big arduous sales calls. You’re flying every place, uh, you’re going, you know, all over the world, getting on a plane all the time. That’s not for me. I don’t want to do that. So what I want to do is build a boutique agency and be as profitable per person as I possibly can and work it that way. So if somebody comes to me with $500, I’m gonna figure out how I can be the most profitable in that $500. Mm-hmm. And I don’t see anything wrong with that. Why should I take on a $50,000 project and only make, you know, 10% profit when I can look at my $500 project and make 90% profit, uh, and get it done in an hour and have somebody super satisfied and I’m not stressed out.

Matt Medeiros:
Now, of course, economics of scale, I totally understand all of that stuff. Um, but the idea is people have to look at this, this stuff and say, well, if I just do, if I’m really good at building a landing page, I’ll just build a landing page for somebody and I’ll just put that on repeat and I’ll just do that over and over again until I’m the person who everybody turns to for landing pages. Right. And I’m only making maybe $100, $150, but if I can do like 10 of those, uh, a month and it’s easy for me to sell, it’s like, that’s another $1,000 in the revenue channel and you diversify. Right. And you’re not just solely stuck on, you know, building out a custom website every single month and all the pains that come with that. So that’s my, that’s my soapbox rant.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I love it. No. And building out those custom websites, there’s a lot of work involved. You know, we can probably only cope with maybe 3 or 4 in, uh, you know, going on at the, at any one time before all of us are tearing our hair out. You know, there’s, there’s 4 of us. Um, and I don’t want to grow quickly at all. I’m not the sort of guy, like you said, the idea of kind of travelling the world and everything else like that and having huge meetings, it all just sounds like too much stress for me. I just like, I like the quiet life where we’re chilling here in Wellingborough. Getting on with our work, working on cool projects and talking to nice people all around the world, you know, from Skype. I like that.

Matt Medeiros:
Right. Um, yep.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
But, uh, yeah, that, you know, we can only really cope with, with about 4, and, you know, they, they are the big ones that bring in a lot of revenue. But a lot of those small things, you’re totally right, you know, it’s so good to be able to run some updates for someone. If you’re good at doing updates and testing sites, you know, hey, there’s, there’s some revenue in that. There’s opportunities in all sorts of things, isn’t there? And we’ve You know, we do tend to sometimes feel a little bit bad, and I have to remind people about this, but we’ll do something for, say, £500, and it maybe takes an hour, and you know, you can see the almost guilt on people’s face in the studio, and I’m like, no guys, remember this took you an awfully long time to learn how to do this in one hour. You’re really good at what you do, and the value you gave to that client, that’s a really, really happy client there, so stop feeling guilty, chill out, and enjoy the fact that, you know, we’re We’re generating income and we’re a profitable company.

Matt Medeiros:
There’s 3 things in that statement, um, that people should understand. Number 1, profitability is the lifeblood of your business, right? Sales and profitability is what keeps the freaking lights on and the paychecks going out. Um, so there’s a lot of people, again, like I see in Facebook groups, who— I’d only charge— I’d only charge somebody $30 to make that update because that’s all I would pay. Well, guess what? That $30 isn’t going to help you when Christmas time comes around and all of these people that are building websites, or you’re building websites for, they’re not making decisions. They’re taking time off. They’re spending time with their family. Same thing, end of the summer. This is a seasonal business. As much as people maybe don’t see that, the summertime comes and, you know, the clients that we sort of play with now, they’re, you know, they’re taking time off. Anybody in the corporate or higher ed space, they’re on vacation. They’re not making any decisions. They’re not making any decisions at the holidays. So that $500 that we made 90% on back in, in April, that’s helping us now in December.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly.

Matt Medeiros:
When nobody’s making a move. Second thing, um, for the freelancers who want to charge $500, you have to, you know, this sounds good. The 90% profitability sounds good, but you have to set the expectation with your customer. Like you said, you only want to work with customers that, that you get along with because it’s better for everybody, everybody’s sanity. Everybody gets a better project that way. But it’s also about setting those, um, setting those expectations and those restrictions, I guess. Um, because you don’t want to, you don’t want to fix somebody’s site for $500 and then all of a sudden, you know, they’re calling you up on Sunday, you know, knocking on your door with their laptop saying, hey, can you fix this for me? No, no, no, no. Like that, that $500 was for that one other session. Totally. So yeah, I mean, if, you know, you need to be able to prove that value, um, and put up those gu— and put up those expectation barriers so that they don’t just keep knocking on your door for that same $500 over and over again, you know? So that’s super important. Um, I had a third thing, but I forgot it since it was that last time.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m just like nodding like a maniac in here. This is, this is all music to my ears, right? This is, this is awesome stuff. Uh, what I’ll probably do, guys, I’ll probably get this episode transcribed as well, so this will make great bedtime reading, just, just to remind yourself that, you know, this is all encouraging and edifying. Uh, you know, be confident in what you do, don’t people take the mick. I don’t know if that’s slang over there. I don’t know. Well, don’t let people take advantage for that $500 because you know what you’re doing. You’re good at what you do and they get value from that. That’s such good stuff.

Matt Medeiros:
I saw a comment the other day from somebody in one of the Facebook groups and she had asked a question like, how do I hide all of these plugins that I’m using and themes that I’m using so that people can’t see that, you know, and somebody added like, why would you, you know, want to do that? Why would you want to spend the time to do that? She’s like, well, I’m afraid, you know, other people will look at the fact that I’m using a page builder and I’m using sort of these contact forms and I didn’t hand code it all myself. Who gives a shit, right? Who gives a shit?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly.

Matt Medeiros:
You’re getting paid and you’re providing value that your customer otherwise couldn’t find anywhere else. They couldn’t couldn’t do it themselves, number one. And if they tried doing it themselves, it would cost them more money, not only in the short term because they’d have to sit down and figure it out, but in the long term because they wouldn’t be getting any business because they wouldn’t have done it right. So, you know, just because you use the page builder, so what? I mean, we’re, we’re finally looking at page builders more seriously now because they’re getting better, they’re getting faster, the code’s getting better, and it’s saving everybody a boatload of time. It’s like an Aflac commercial. If you guys have Aflac over there, save a boatload of— oh no, Geico, sorry. I saved a boatload of Insurance on my, on my car insurance, right? By switching to Geico. And same thing with page builders. I switched to a page builder. I save a boatload of time, uh, on coding websites. I don’t understand why people— I do understand why because of the, the legacy stuff. Mm-hmm. But now they’re getting better. So who cares, uh, about what you’re using?

Matt Medeiros:
The point is, is you care that you’re doing it the, the right way in terms of providing value for your customer and you’re gonna be there for them when they need support questions. And you’re going to update those plugins and keep it secure. You’re going to put them on good hosting. Those are the important things. If you use 50 plugins, I don’t care. Keep them updated, pick the right ones, and, and put out a good product. Just don’t be the ones who buy a theme that has, you know, contact forms built in, custom fields built in, and sliders built in for $30, and then sell it for $3,000, and then walk away from your client and never help them again. That’s what I, I don’t want to see. I want to see you using 50 plugins, but you care and you put them on good hosting and you keep them up to date. That’s another rant. Sorry.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
No, this is good. And guys, do be encouraged. I mean, we’ve talked about page builders a lot of, a lot of times. And I mean, we as an agency took the shift a year ago where we were using ACF, um, to, you know, using repeating fields and all that sort of stuff. But we are now 100%, um, an agency that use Beaver Builder entire, entirely. So we still do a lot of hand coding for that, you know, for your for all of the, um, the modules, etc., so that they’re all at— the output will look exactly like the design that we’re supplied. But for the actual builds of the page for the client, now they will just be dragging in and signed-off elements, design elements, and building up the content of the page with all of those modules, etc., because it’s just so easy for them to use. It’s great for us as well, um, you know, because we can get a lot of the structures done really quickly with something like Beaver Builder, etc. And we don’t feel bad for it. We tell the client we use it, they know we use it. They love the fact that they can use it and it makes sites so much easier for them to edit.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
But talking about tools that help you get things done faster, tell us about your Conductor plugin because I love— I watched a video the other day, uh, it came up in my feed about how you could build up, um, queries. So you could actually create— you’ve got a post type maybe of items and you could then create a post list page with with lots of beautiful layouts, et cetera. Tell us a bit more about how Conductor started and what that does.

Matt Medeiros:
Conductor started, again, when we started to focus heavily on helping traditional publishers and people who have maybe regional magazines or local newspapers, that kind of thing, even sort of like geo news sites, like really focused in news information sites about a particular area. Our customers at the time wanted to be able to say, hey Matt, on the homepage of our site, we wanna show, you know, 3 blocks of our current news. And then below that, 3 blocks of the sports news, 3 blocks of the business news. And from time to time when we have a breaking story, we wanna have one big block of that storey at the top of the page. So, you know, we were doing this stuff over and over again. We’re sort of building these custom widgets for them or building it directly into a template. And we sat back one day and we were like, man, we get this request a lot. Let’s just turn it into a plugin that we can just use internally. Like, uh, we could just use it every time we’re gonna get this question cuz we get it a lot. And it became something of, uh, well, they started using it on custom post types with custom fields.

Matt Medeiros:
So just like you said, they wanted a, you know, a grid of, um, inventory or, uh, a team page or a locations page. So we started building that and we’re like, wow, you know, this make a pretty nice plugin to maybe put out there and sell. And again, you know, go calling. We already had themes going, right? So we had theme sales happening. So we’re like, well, this would be a great addition. So let’s, let’s turn this into a plugin, which started now 2 and a half years ago. And finally, when I tell you the struggle is real, running an agency and doing product, finally, 2 and a half years later, the website got a new— or Conductor got a new website at the end of January 2017. Um, there’s a whole story. There’s a whole storey of the struggle of balancing and, and selling that, that product. Uh, but yeah, we rolled out a, uh, a query, a query builder add-on. So you can build your WordPress query. So show these posts and these pages with these fields in this taxonomy and show it in this order. You can build that, uh, custom WordPress query and display it in, uh, blocks or grids or tables or lists, um, and drop it in.

Matt Medeiros:
And, um, you know, for the last 2 and a half years, it was strictly just a widget and it was strictly just used in the customizer. And, um, that was a struggle onto itself because a lot of people just aren’t into using the WordPress customizer and it’s getting better, but it’s taking a lot of time. And all the while, page builders sort of have their own flavour of a customizer.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Medeiros:
So we need to be compatible, right? We need to, we need to work in those environments. So with that query builder, you get a little shortcode that it spits out. And for now you can use it, the shortcode. Obviously in any page builder. Just drop the shortcode in one of those blocks and it’ll be good to go. But we have plenty of, you know, things in the pipeline to make it even more compatible with page builders. But it’s exactly that. It takes content from within your WordPress site and allows you to display it. You know, it really makes somebody, you know, if you’re a beginner developer, like you understand HTML and CSS and you know what a database is, you just don’t know how to write the query or show a collection of content. Conductor helps you do that, and we’re excited about it because we use it on 90% of our projects. Saves us a boatload of time coding sites, so it makes us more profitable, and we hope that it allows somebody else to do the same.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s cool. And you’ve got some great developer documentation on there as well, guys. If you cheque out conductor-plugin.com, if you’re a developer, head on over as well into the docs section. There’s some good developer docs. There’s a whole load of actions, hooks, philtres, etc., so you can really get serious with this. But this is certainly a plugin that looks like it’s going to save an awful lot of time. I’ve never actually used it, so I’m going to have a play with this this weekend.

Matt Medeiros:
Yeah, cheque it out.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s going to be my pet project.

Matt Medeiros:
There is, uh, so Conductor Core and the Query Builder are both on GitHub. So if you want to try it for free, use it in your projects. Um, you know, people can do that, uh, free of charge and they can, um, you know, explore it and cheque it out. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s quite an interesting product. We have other add-ons coming, like, you know, if you want to display a grid of or a table of Gravity Form entries or Ninja Form entries. We’re going to have that coming soon. If you want to display your WooCommerce products, you can do that as well and sort of fine-tune the display of your WooCommerce products. And that already exists. But yeah, it’s a fun product.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I like it. I remember an episode a few years— maybe a year ago with John Perez, and he was talking about using the tools that are available to do things. We don’t need to code from scratch every single time or reinvent the wheel every single time. There are some cool tools out there, and this certainly looks like it’s going to be one of them. I actually learned about it when you were back on— Do you remember John Lee Dumas? You’re on Entrepreneur on Fire.

Matt Medeiros:
Yep.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. I’m so jealous you got on that.

Matt Medeiros:
I mean, I tell you, like when I launched— So just a quick product storey for people who are interested in products. Like again, launching this 2.5 years ago officially as a paid product. And, you know, a year before that, it was sort of in development, you know, internally at the studio. The day I launched it, uh, was on Carey Dill’s podcast, Office Hours. And, you know, that was the day that I launched it. We had a promo code, a lifetime licence for $100. You know, I didn’t have like— there was very little documentation. Uh, we had some, we had some videos explaining it. I was explaining it on air and we sold, I think, almost $5,000 worth of licences during that 24 hours. And let me tell you something, Lee, I was already picking out the colour Porsche. Porsche that I was going to buy when I saw the $5,000 coming in that day. Like, I was like, this is amazing. Like, I have, I have figured it out. I have struck gold. And then the next month, collectively, the 30 days after that, I sold $800 worth. And I was like, well, maybe, maybe not a Porsche, right?

Matt Medeiros:
Maybe a Hyundai, right? Maybe I can get a nice Hyundai, green. Um, and it’s been an interesting, uh, an interesting challenge to say the least. With marketing, branding, and competition.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I get you. That’s good. How have you kept that going though? You launched with Carey Deals. Are you investing in Facebook ads, etc.? Or is the podcast your vehicle for getting more exposure?

Matt Medeiros:
The funny thing is, the podcast isn’t something that— People say to me all the time, “Why don’t you talk about your products more?” Because one, I just don’t want it to turn into an infotainment show of just my stuff. But it’s definitely definitely sort of a more organic reach that way. I’m just starting to look at doing some kind of Facebook ads, but man, you know, it’s like when I get into doing something, like I need to like know everything about it, and I hate just like swiping my credit card for whatever, $50, $100, and putting an ad out there without really knowing this stuff. So I’m afraid to dive into that without, you know, taking, you know, going through the weeds of learning how to do this stuff 100%. So for now I’m doing everything organic. I mean, the one thing is, is I put out a lot of content and it allows me to, um, to talk about it from time to time. And that’s, that’s my best avenue right now. Um, you know, when we have those, when we have the Gravity Forms and Ninja Forms add-ons out, those are very much more specific and I can really, uh, we have a WooCommerce add-on that’s already out, so that’s specific too.

Matt Medeiros:
But, um, I’m really gonna maybe hit the pavement running a little bit more with sort of paid ads and paid acquisition. Um, but for right now I’m just building up, uh, organic content marketing. And doing it that way. Cause that’s, that’s really what I love doing. I love doing, uh, YouTube videos, podcasts and things like that, blog posts. So that’s the avenue for right now. Cool.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So we’re, we’re gonna make sure we get all of these things you’ve mentioned in the show notes as well. So that includes the YouTube channel. Um, when did you launch that? Whew.

Matt Medeiros:
Let’s see. So, uh, PluginTut.com is a tutorial site that I also run and that’s where I do most of my, um, YouTube videos and that’s youtube.com/plugin-tut. And I launched that in end of June, so right before I had my son, or we had our son, of last year, June of last year. And I just hit, well, I hit 1,000, I wanted 1,000 subscribers by the end of the year. I didn’t realise how hard it was to have a child, so I didn’t realise how much work goes into it. So that got pushed to the side a little bit, but we just hit 1,000 subscribers at the end of— at the end of— or mid-January 2017. I’m just about to hit 1,500 or so subscribers. So that’s been fun. And YouTube is a whole new world in terms of creating content there and what types of content works, what doesn’t. So it’s been a fun ride.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I thought you were going to sing. I felt like there was a Disney song about to erupt from you. So let’s plug into— but you’ve got to— haven’t you You’ve got the Matt Report channel as well.

Matt Medeiros:
Uh, the channel as well. Yep. Uh, youtube.com/thematreport. And, uh, that’s sort of when I was doing more, uh, Matt Report videos. Now it’s something that is, uh, for people on my newsletter, I send out videos to them. Um, it’s a much more private sort of intimate, uh, video setting. Uh, but when I do, sometimes I’ll do some live shows and I’ll put them on, on YouTube as well.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
And then the Slocum Studio, is that one still rocking and rolling or is that one phasing out?

Matt Medeiros:
Yeah. And nope, that one’s just going to be for products, right? So that’s just for products. Um, you know, that was, uh, again, we started YouTube, we started YouTube content marketing, uh, about 4 years ago and we built that up to about 7,200 subscribers right now. Uh, but a lot of that is through our products, right? People are coming there to either watch demonstration videos of our products and that kind of thing. And so that’s where that’s going to ex— that’s how that’s going to exist moving forward.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Sweet. All right guys, well, we’re going to get all of this content. There’s tonnes of good content available to you from the ever eloquent Bostonian, uh, or Slocum— I can’t even say that— Matt Medeiros. Mate, you, you’ve been an absolute legend. Just listening to your storey is fascinating, and I kind of feel like I’d want get you on at some point again soon just to keep unpacking your storey because 40 minutes just isn’t enough. There’s, there’s tonnes of questions I had to ask you. Um, so maybe if— maybe you’d be interested in coming back on again soon. Maybe we could talk about podcasting and your lessons on that journey as well because that’s something I’m always trying to encourage people who listen to do is to start your own podcast because it’s been a pretty much a life changer for me. Um, so it’d be great to get you on. In the meantime, people can find out some information about what— sorry, about your book. You’ve got a book on podcasting, that’s thepodcastbook.com. So guys, you can go and cheque that out. And what would be the best ways for people to contact you, mate?

Matt Medeiros:
Best is Twitter. It’s my favourite social network, even though it’s dying.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, that worries me, that does.

Matt Medeiros:
Yeah, they can find me @MattReport on Twitter.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Matt Report. And obviously guys, if you don’t listen to the podcast, go ahead, listen to the podcast, subscribe on iTunes, and if you like it, leave a 5-star review. And if you like this podcast, why not leave a 5-star review as well? Because that always helps us lovely content creators.

Matt Medeiros:
Two for one. A two for one. Two for one.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That would be awesome. Just copy and paste Matt’s awesome review into mine as well.

Matt Medeiros:
That’d be amazing.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Just rename Matt to Lee. Actually, my middle name’s Matthew. So, you know, there you go. There you go. We kind of have something in common. Who’d have thunk?

Matt Medeiros:
Is it with one T or two T?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Uh, it’s two Ts.

Matt Medeiros:
All right, all right.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, you met with two Ts, or—

Matt Medeiros:
yeah, yeah, cool.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Buddy, you’re awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Matt Medeiros:
Lee, it’s been a pleasure, man. I had a great time.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Thank you. And there you have it, the end of episode number 65. I’m sure you’ll agree that was freaking awesome. And Matt, whenever you want to come back on the show, please do. Just head on over to angledcrown.com and go to contact form. Yeah, remember anglecrown.com, that beautiful new website with a beautiful new brand. Anyway, contact form, fill it in, Matt. Just let us know you want to be back on the podcast. That’d be, that’d be amazing. We’d love to have you back on. And if you want me on your show, mate, you know where I am, anglecrown.com/contact. Just let me know and I’ll be on your show too. Anyway, guys, head on over to the Facebook group. That’s anglecrown.com/group. And if you want to see our website as well, that’s anglecrown.com. If you can’t remember our URL, it’s angledcrown.com/whatever you want to do, really. Go to the episodes, /podcast. angledcrown.com/podcast. That’s a good one to go to. I like that. Also, if you want to cheque out what’s on our minds, we’ve got angledcrown.com/blog. If you type in leejaxondev.com, it will actually redirect now to angledcrown.com. This is one of my worst outros. Most to date, but I’m going to leave this in.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m loving it. Next week, episode number 66, is Brian Laid. He is a marketing guru, local guy. He’s a lovely guy as well, and he’s talking all about what Google Places for a startup— I learned some stuff that I never even knew. But he also talks as well about strategy with Google ad campaigns. So this is one you do not want to miss. That’s next week, episode number 66, with Brian Have a freaking awesome week and we’ll see you over at the Facebook group, UncleKran.com/Group, and also on the website UncleKran.com.

Matt Medeiros:
Thank you!