Webbees – #AgencyLife

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Verbatim text

Lee:
Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer podcast. This is an Agency Life episode coming to you every Wednesday and Friday, where we interview an agency owner from around the world asking them the same questions. Because we’re all different, but we’re all the same. So let’s listen and learn from each other before we kick off the show. Here is a word from our sponsor.

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Lee:
Welcome to another episode of AgencyLife. And today we have on the show Ronald Gijsel. How are you?

Ronald Gijsel:
I’m good, thank you very much. Nice to hear you and to see you.

Lee:
Good to hear you and see you. And I’m appreciating your background. Is that all wood?

Ronald Gijsel:
It is. And it might look familiar to you.

Lee:
It might, it might.

Ronald Gijsel:
I’m actually sitting in Paul’s old desk.

Lee:
It’s the courtroom, isn’t it?

Ronald Gijsel:
It is, yes.

Lee:
Yes. I thought so. There you go. Look at you. Yes, that’s Paul Lacey, who seems to get mentioned on Agency Trailblazer, like every single episode now. I think I need to bring him on as a co host somehow, just for the sake. It’s gonna be the Lee and Paul show, probably so. That’s awesome. It’s a beautiful location you’re in. Well, you know the format. We’re gonna hold it at questions, we’re gonna hit you with. You’re unprepared, which is always the best way because that means the real stuff comes out. We’re all ready and waiting to learn from you. So are you ready to rock?

Ronald Gijsel:
And I’m ready. Let’s go.

Lee:
All right, then. So, first of all, tell us the name of your agency and what it is you do.

Ronald Gijsel:
So the name is Webbees. Webbees, as in busybees. This name came about a few years ago. I had a complete loss of what we should call ourselves because we had the clients, but we didn’t have a name, nor a logo nor a website. So we put something together and probably like most agencies, probably the good agencies, that is still under construction, although the website is live, it just never really up to up to scratch, as I would like it to be. Same for the logo, same for the name, but here you go, life goes on.

Lee:
I think we’re always operating, aren’t we, on the MVP minimum viable product for ourselves, but for everyone else, they get the best websites ever. So myanglecrown.com is still really something that I’d love to finish off but never get any time. Yeah.

Ronald Gijsel:
Or as an excuse that it’s still not quite as nice as you want it to be, but I suppose it’s like with anything, it’s just not enough time in the day.

Lee:
I think as well, we’re all really critical of ourselves, of our own work, aren’t we? So if I had a pound for every single time a designer said to me, hey, here’s my website, but it’s still in progress, you know, so please be forgiving. I’m like, exactly. That I would have thousands of pounds. It’s actually one of the questions we ask when people join the community and we’re like, hey, what’s your website? And everybody apologises for their website. Yeah, their websites look brilliant, but we, you know, regardless of how brilliant they look, we all apologise for our own stuff. Don’t know how to get around that one. But anyway, moving on. If we were going to have a big party in the courtroom to celebrate your birthday, how old would your agency be?

Ronald Gijsel:
The agency would. Today would be two years and nine months.

Lee:
So a toddler.

Ronald Gijsel:
Yes, yes, yes. Learning to probably, well, walking. Probably started run and jump.

Lee:
Nice.

Ronald Gijsel:
Yeah, yeah.

Lee:
And that’s when we’re the most dangerous, isn’t it?

Ronald Gijsel:
Yes, exactly.

Lee:
All right, so let’s talk about your mission as a business. Do you have a particular industry or niche that you work in?

Ronald Gijsel:
No, I don’t. Although I would. If people ask me, you know, name four words, what your niche is or are, I would say E commerce. Woocommerce. But that’s also very much combined with Google Analytics and Google AdWords. And I think that three bringing shops to market is probably what I like most. But at the same time, probably 80% doesn’t involve any of those three.

Lee:
But you prefer to.

Ronald Gijsel:
I think that’s what my main interest is. Yes, absolutely.

Lee:
I think it takes time. But that sounds like that’s a productized niche. It’s a service that you can offer people in many different industries, many people need e commerce, etc. And that sounds like that’s one where your passion is and where you’d like to drive the business. So that sounds Pretty cool. For the 80% that are not E commerce, then what do you feel the main problem is that you’re solving for those people?

Ronald Gijsel:
It’s very personal to any business and I like to enjoy working with a business owner. And whether it’s a negotiation consultancy firm or whether they selling British Liberty fabrics or a car hire, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a product that they’re serving and it’s text and it’s a picture that’s on the website. But overall, everybody wants to have the same exposure and traffic and leads coming in. So it doesn’t matter what the product or what the service is, it’s mainly the person I’m dealing with, if I get on well with them, if I feel there’s a connexion. And usually it’s a bit of a trust as well, because as web designer or consultant or ADC owner, you need to be entrusted with their financial wellbeing. And if you have the connexion and they let you into that world and vice versa, something nice can blossom from that. And that’s why sort of coming back where if the right sort of person comes to me and says, look, can you help me? And I think I can, I’m happy to do that.

Lee:
So I think the difference there is, instead of you just being somebody who builds a website for you, which is very specific, it’s like, I will just do this one thing for you. I think what you’re saying here is that your difference for your clients would be this, that you become a partner with them. They have to let you in, as it were, on those financial things so that you can help them and be transparent with them as well, to help them achieve those financial targets, the leads they want to generate, etc.

Ronald Gijsel:
Absolutely. I’m solving their problems.

Lee:
Perfect.

Ronald Gijsel:
Unfortunately, sometimes you get asked as well whether you can connect a printer, but that’s very quickly. So.

Lee:
No, we get that as well. Hey, we’ve got a problem with Windows. The updates crashed. I’m like, I’m so sorry, you’re gonna have to call your IT department, sir.

Ronald Gijsel:
We get that a lot. Just coming back on the financial part, just to highlight, especially if you run AdWords campaign, you need to know what their costs are, what the acquisitions, and have full financial insight. So, yes, there is absolutely quite a lot of trust that we have to go through.

Lee:
Yeah, I mean, if you don’t know that information, you’re just going to go ahead and start something. You could be spending too much, the cost per acquisition could be way too high and it could lead to a bad relationship anyway. So, yeah, being able to have an open and trustworthy relationship is absolutely essential. Let’s talk about marketing. How are you generating your leads?

Ronald Gijsel:
As a business, word of mouth is absolutely vital and I’m really good at looking after customers, I like to think, because I think every customer has or client has some sort of link to one another. You can create a spider web and all clients are linked within that web, starting from one person, and within that web, quite near to the centre. I think Paul Lacey is there as well. He has helped me find sort of new avenues as well, and that’s purely by attending WordPress meetups and we met each other at a WordPress Birmingham meetup and the rest is sort of history.

Lee:
Was he wearing his Beaver builder cap?

Ronald Gijsel:
No, Beaver Builder didn’t exist back then.

Lee:
Oh, wow. You’ve known him well.

Ronald Gijsel:
Probably did exist, but it wasn’t mentioned. No, we were talking very different things. It’s actually good to think back of what we were talking about, what our problems were back then. And this is only about two, two and a half, three years back, I think.

Lee:
Yeah. The biggest problem I know Paul Lacy has is mislaying his Chromebook. I think he lost it three times at the wordcamp London meetup. We had to go and find it for him.

Ronald Gijsel:
I think we need to spray paint it into a different colour, the bright green.

Lee:
Yeah. So he can find it. Very long leash. Well, speaking of problems, then we’re going to go into confession time and this is where you open up to me and just a few thousand listeners around the globe. So don’t worry, your secret will be safe, I hope, with all of us. What do you feel is the biggest problem that you have as an agency at the moment?

Ronald Gijsel:
Charging the right amount and trying to explain to clients how much things will cost. Not quite knowing yourself how long, how much time it’s going to take you or somebody within the organisation.

Lee:
Yeah. So it always feels like a big risk, doesn’t there, as well? You’re not sure if what you’re quoting for a week’s amount of time or effort you think you’re going to have to put in. There’s always that danger, isn’t it? It could actually be two or three weeks, et cetera. Have you had those experiences?

Ronald Gijsel:
Absolutely. And of course you try to explain that you’re adding value to that business, so it shouldn’t be cost it as your. The cost of time, but as what it adds to them. And I find that quite difficult to explain that. I’m Not a natural salesperson. So, yes, I think that’s probably the biggest challenge.

Lee:
Definitely something we struggle with. There’s definitely the value aspect, but there’s also just making sure that we haven’t breached the amount of time that we have put aside, because then that really starts to erode that profit, doesn’t it? Or starts to smash into other projects. That’s one thing that we struggled with quite often is having multiple. One project going overtime and another one starting. So you have this horrible overlap.

Ronald Gijsel:
And September is notorious for that. And I think January, February as well. September being that everybody comes back from the holidays and full of energy. It’s like, I want to have this and that.

Lee:
Let’s get started. We had the exact same thing this year. So over July and August, everybody was on holiday and it was lovely and quiet. And then again September, everything’s just gone crazy and we’re. Everyone’s flying around, oh, we need this by then, etc. So. Well on that. With the crazy life of an agency owner, it’s okay if you don’t have an answer to this, but we’re all trying to learn from each other. We own our own businesses. We’re constantly thinking about our business, the projects that we’re working on. Have you found any ways of being able to switch off from your business?

Ronald Gijsel:
I have two kids, two sons. They keep me very busy, so they forced me to switch off and think of the construction problems or other things they want to discuss. I think I can be very good at switching off. Also, when I go to sleep, I can sleep within three minutes. So somehow I’m probably more natural in putting things at the back of my mind and deal with it the next day. And the old classic, write things down, make a list. I mean, one of the tools I use, and it’s a freemium tool, and I use the free version is Asana, which is not going to be my main tool, which I’m going to suggest later, but it’s on my phone, it’s on my desktop, it’s everywhere. So if I have anything in my mind, if I forget something, it’s just write it down. So it’s really. Yeah, there’s no golden. What do you call it? Golden tip. For all the listeners that somebody else.

Lee:
Said something similar about writing it down. Once you’ve written it down, you can just allow it to no longer be in your mind. I think someone said, if you remember, you need to go and buy milk. You write down to buy milk, and then you forget about buying milk because it’s been written down and you can come back to it later. You don’t have to think about the process of buying milk then for the rest of the day and stressing yourself out. Exactly.

Ronald Gijsel:
And set deadlines and send reminders. And the cool thing about Gmail as well, you can resend the emails to the next day. For example, if you have a lot of emails coming in and they’re not urgent, you can snooze them and they appear again the next day in your inbox.

Lee:
I do it all the time.

Ronald Gijsel:
It’s just have a clear road ahead and focus on one thing. But I must say, I make a mistake all the times and if you look at my desktop now, you’ll see 15 tabs open. And being I have five open, I’m good. You’re good? Yes.

Lee:
On this window, there’s probably one hidden away, minimised. With hundreds more open, it’s very easy.

Ronald Gijsel:
For me to say what people should be doing, but really?

Lee:
Yeah, exactly. So, all right, here’s another question as well. This is something that I often struggle with because I don’t find the time necessarily. How. How, if at all, are you enabling to ensure you’re being healthy as well?

Ronald Gijsel:
I have joined the gym, believe it or not. Yeah. And it’s. It’s five minutes walk from. From the office. I cancelled it over the summer and I rejoined and they offer me three months, half price. My bike is packed, but I haven’t been so. But I am fairly good at going at least once a week and that has made a difference.

Lee:
That’s good.

Ronald Gijsel:
But it took me a few years to admit to that, that I need some. I always thought I can be healthy. I have a garden. I live in a countryside. I can’t walk any of that, which I just don’t because there are a hundred excuses for not doing it because it’s raining, because it’s cold. And I have this to do, I have that to do. But I realised that I need some machine to make me walk, whether it’s a running machine or rowing machine. And it’s just the way we are today that we need technology and machines to make us.

Lee:
And it’s the perfect time to listen to a podcast as well.

Ronald Gijsel:
Yes. So absolutely, completely in audible and podcast. But I know where you’re going with.

Lee:
This, so be sure to cheque out the podcast. You’re already listening to it. If you’re listening to this podcast, you already have it. Take us to the gym. It’s a great place to take us. It might even Help me lose some weight. So that’s fantastic. Well, we’re on our final question, which is. And you ought to pick one tool. You have to be really, really strict to yourself and you’re not allowed to say Gmail as in G suite, because that’s lots of tools. So if that was it, I’m sorry, but can you name one tool that you feel has been essential in your agency’s success and why Formidable Forms has.

Ronald Gijsel:
Been my probably the best tool ever enabled me to do so many interesting functionality additions within lots and lots of projects. And I had a support request and the lady who owns or created Formidable Forms looked at my account, said, gosh, you’ve got a lot of projects enabled on this premium account, but it’s the best money I’ve ever spent and it can do so much that I never could dream of because I’m not a natural programmer, I didn’t come out of school learning new how to code, et cetera. I’m a fairly late comer to the web game. And yeah, a tool like Formidable, which is premium and just works, you can do so much with it, has been absolutely vital for me to create solutions.

Lee:
To problems that my customers have absolutely wholeheartedly agree. With Formidable Forms, they’ve got the Zapier integration or Zapier integration as well, so you can put things on into third parties. The conditionality is great, you can also edit the output as well. There’s so much inside of even the standard system.

Ronald Gijsel:
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. You can create E commerce, you can create calendars, booking forms, obviously, but it’s the customer, the visitor views and they can change their own input. So creating membership forms so everybody can edit their own details, description, name integrates.

Lee:
In with payment solutions as well. So you’ve got the whole nine yards. It’s a phenomenal product. Another one I like as well is Caldera Forms for the very same reason. It’s very similar with regards to all of the customization that’s available as well. So that’s a great shout out. Well, thank you so much for your time. It’s been brilliant learning about your agency. We will make sure folks, that we put the links in the show notes so you can go and cheque out the website and also go ahead and cheque out Formidable Forms if you’ve never seen it before. Mate, thank you so much for your time and we will speak to you soon.

Ronald Gijsel:
Thank you very much.

Lee:
Cheerio.

Ronald Gijsel:
Bye for now. Bye, everybody.