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Verbatim text
Lee:
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. Welcome to episode number 99 of the WP Innovator podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show, we’re doing something slightly different where me and Pete were having a chat. And what the hell? I just figured, let’s just hit record and see where this goes. Actually, the conversation went from #warning, quite gross, through to really quite interesting and educational. So here we go. This is episode 99. This is one of 100. That is blowing my mind that next week will be episode 100. So thank you. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you listening. I’ll do all the other speeches next week, but seriously, thank you. And don’t forget, we do have a Facebook group over on WpInnovator. Com/group. That is a redirect, but there is a wonderful community of over 1,200 designers, developers, WordPress enthusiasts chilling out in the Facebook group. It’s a good, nice, and safe place to be. Okay, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Yes, so launching on Friday the 13th was absolutely my big middle finger to superstition.
Lee:
I actually have a root canal as well on the same day.
Pete Everitt:
Yes, I saw that. I didn’t envy you for that at all.
Lee:
It was horrible. It was all right. It wasn’t that painful For anyone going through a root canal, I’d probably tell them, Don’t panic too much. It wasn’t the pain that was mainly the problem. It was actually they put this plastic thing over my mouth, which had this tiny hole in it that they then put around the tooth, which is good because it creates this feeling of it’s just the tooth being operated on rather than me. It psychologically creates this barrier between you and the tooth, and they’re off dealing with your tooth and you’re listening to a podcast because I actually put the What business show on a me is just to try and calm my nerves. But the worst thing about that was that the plastic sheet thing covered your entire mouth. Therefore, you felt like you couldn’t breathe and being prone to having the odd little panic attack type thing now and again. Not a good move for me. I was just like, trying not to do that. At one point, the lady said, the assistant said, Would you like me to hold your hand. I was like, Oh. But I’ve been really madly.
Lee:
I was like, That was me saying no, thanks with someone’s hands in my mouth. At one point, she She did something where… I don’t know if she sliced some gum. If I hear her thud, I’ll know you’ve fainted now. But she sliced a bit of my gum and it hit like crazy. I wasn’t expecting it to happen because so far, so good, no pain, just lots of vibration and all that stuff. Then she did something and it just made me jump and my legs went up in the air and they hit the tray and nearly everything went off the tray and everything. I’d been so cool until that point. I just felt mortified.
Pete Everitt:
Oh, well, at least if all fell on the floor, the cause of the infection was self-inflicted. True.
Lee:
But now I’ve got this horrible temporary filling. Thirty-five years old, this is my first ever filling.
Pete Everitt:
Oh, wow. I managed something like 26 or 27 years without a filling, but then four came along at once. Thankfully, none of them root canal-esque. But I did have to go through quite a few. But I don’t envy you at all. I haven’t gone through that, I must admit.
Lee:
At one point, she fricked me out as well because she’s like, Lee, I don’t want you to move now at all because I have a very, very tiny drill bit down the route. If you move, that could chatter your teeth or tooth, and it would be, I can’t save it then. I was just like, This was not what I wanted to hear right now. Relax your shoulders, Lee. I’m like, You’ve just said you could chatter my tooth, and you want me to relax my shoulders.
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, and you’ve got a drill in my mouth. Brilliant.
Lee:
Yeah, I’ll do anything you want right now. Yeah, fantastic. Just fill it up. I was scared. It was awful.
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, I did like I did like your special breakfast that you got on Saturday.
Lee:
What was that? Oh, yeah, that was all right, wasn’t it? Milligan’s.
Pete Everitt:
Your chewable breakfast. Yeah.
Lee:
So everything chewable on the right-hand side. I can actually chew on the left hand side. People are going to think this is a podcast about dentistry. Welcome to the Dentistry podcast. Basically, guys, you’re just joining a conversation with me and Pete. Me and Pete are good buddies. We’ve been friends for a while now, and we’re having a conversation just about life. We’re going to be talking about agency stuff in a second. But welcome anyway, and I apologise in advance if you’re squamish and if you were driving and you fainted. I’ll put a disclaimer before the show. Probably should do that, shouldn’t I, mate? Because I’ll probably get sued otherwise.
Pete Everitt:
What letter is it? Because it’s obviously E for explicit. So is it A for adult-rated content?
Lee:
Well, no, then people get the wrong idea. Well, actually, that might increase the downloads. They hear my voice. I wasn’t expecting that. Not really. I suppose they do plumber, don’t they? They’ve got plummet head, you’re blooming. So it’s like we’re just talking about the dentists. Maybe they’re all expecting, thinking something’s going to happen next. And then what did the dentists do?
Pete Everitt:
And then he spoke about agency life.
Lee:
And then he spoke about agency life. That would be a pretty damn cool dentists. Talk about niching.
Pete Everitt:
That is seriously niche. A dentist to the creative industry.
Lee:
That’s brilliant. I like this dentist.
Pete Everitt:
He’s obviously taking all of the advice that he gets on this podcast.
Lee:
Indeed. I tell you what, I’ve been doing WP Elevation. That’s why I was late, mate, obviously, as you know. And they were talking about UVP, Unique Value Proposition.
Pete Everitt:
Right, yeah.
Lee:
And we were just messing around with I was this morning because I didn’t really realise how important it was. We’ve had a UVP for a while, like saying we convert designers’ websites into working websites. That’s actually not what it was. I think it sounds a lot better than that. And that’s what we wrote a while back, but it doesn’t really say much. We came up with the new one. Do you want to hear it? Go for it. Give me your thoughts on it. The new UVP is our statement, and it will evolve over time, but for now it is, We empower design agencies to offer hyper transforming custom websites to their clients.
Pete Everitt:
Nice.
Lee:
It is, isn’t it?
Pete Everitt:
Nice.
Lee:
The thought behind that is, is obviously we do build those websites. That’s our bread and butter. But I was thinking of the wider picture, and actually, we offer the consultancy as well. We consult on those bills. Sometimes we don’t even do the build. We actually just do the consulting and we connect different people together to build it. But also we got this podcast, which empowers people to build because that’s what this podcast is about. We also do the videos as well, which again empowers people to run their agency, empowers people to go from print to digital. I was just like, actually, it’s quite important to have a UVP So I’m going to put you on the spot, mate. Have you guys got a UVP, some statement?
Pete Everitt:
Well, the nearest thing we’ve got to it at the moment is the 8G specialists, which was something you picked up last time we spoke on our existing website. We also have, as you know from last time, we’re developing a new website and it still isn’t live. Although I think actually I did send you a link to the Stage Insight week or two.
Lee:
It’s Yeah, everybody.
Pete Everitt:
The new one that we are working on with that, but it still is a work in progress and is subject to change, is we create and develop breathtaking brands. I don’t know whether listeners are aware, but basically the business I run is split in two halves. I work with my business partner, Steve. He was a branding consultant for a number of years. The reason so came together was that I was having a chat with him in the pub one day as you do, getting fed up for the day job. I’d had an idea to put an agency together. He said, Well, look, I’m I’m in this branding consultancy company, but I’m losing business because I’ve got no digital offering. We put two and two together and made four, and so came out of that. At the moment, the word brand particularly harps back to, I suppose, Steve’s input into the business. He did bring the first few clients to the table. But also to do with the wider meaning of branding, not just being your logo and what you like and that thing, but actually the values that you live by and how that translates into your business and then the return upon that investment and that thing.
Pete Everitt:
I know you’re majoring at the moment developing a personal brand, which I know is far more than your logo, your bald head.
Lee:
It’s actually now a cap, by the way.
Pete Everitt:
Well, that’s true, actually. You have adopted the cap, haven’t you?
Lee:
Yeah, I’m wearing it right now, mate. I even wear it at home right up until before bed, and then it goes on the bedside cabinet, and then I get into bed. Really? Yeah.
Pete Everitt:
Really. Then after you’ve washed your hair in the morning, it’s bursting up.
Lee:
I don’t have a back in it. Shut up about washing the hair. Rude.
Pete Everitt:
After you’ve shampooed your eyebrows in the morning.
Lee:
That’s right. Yeah, that’s all right. You have to do the tweak test. If you can hear your eyebrows squoaking, you know they’re clean.
Pete Everitt:
So that’s our As I said, at the moment, we’ve got a live one, but we’re in the process of developing a new one. Now, I think that’s the third iteration of the new one that we’re working on at the moment. But we’re going to have to get this website live sooner or later. But life has just been too busy, which is a really good thing, but it doesn’t help you develop your own website, unfortunately.
Lee:
That’s true. Now, I can tell you’re in a different space, which is really cool, mate. Tell us a little bit about your new office and why you’re in your new office as well, because you’re aware, people will be aware if they follow us on social media that we’ve moved. Also, you’ve been posting in the Facebook group over on Wpinnovator. Com/group. If you’re not a member, go check that out. Pete’s been sharing cool pictures of his new pad. Tell us about the new pad.
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, well, the new pad with the lights that now work is 400 yards from my front door. The so is a business that is remotely set up across the country. So I’ll just mention my business partner, Steve. I’m based in Sheffield, in South Yorkshire. He’s in Margate in Kent. Then we’ve got a team of eight or nine people that are dotted around the country. All of the business is based online. So ever since the business was put together, we’ve worked from home. I should say my wife works with me as well. So there’s two of us that have been working from our house. But with a mix of children and client meetings and the need to… I suppose business is growing and you need to move up to that next level. We were literally driving past some traffic lights a few yards from home and saw a sign that said offices to lease. So knocked on the door, came upstairs, viewed the office, signed on the dotted line, and here we are.
Lee:
Lease. Don’t like that word. I like the word let. It feels far less scary. Lease sounds like you’re signing your life away. Let sounds like, I don’t know. Well, actually, to let. Actually, as a child, it giggles because I always want to put an eye in between. So how does it feel being in the new place? Because I’m like you, we’ve both moved at the exact same time, and I’m going to confess the amount of money I’m spending on this place is twice as much as I’ve spent anywhere and I’m completely bricking it. So that’s me. How about you? You’ve suddenly got this expense. How are you feeling about it?
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, a little bit the same, to be honest. Although I’ve got to say we got the keys on the first of October, so it’s now the 16th we in it. So I’ve had the keys for two weeks. However, the broadband only got fitted last Thursday. So I’ve actually only done Thursday and a half of Friday in the office as a working space so far. Today is actually, it’s a Monday morning. Today is our first Monday coming to work and the start of the first week in the new office. It all feels a bit new and a bit shiny. There’s still a few things. Some of the walls are still a bit bare and the phones are still yet to be put in and that thing. But we’re up. Now we’ve got internet, we’re operational, which is good. I’m more excited than I am nervous about it, if I’m being perfectly It’s good to get it out there. Sharing it on the group was great because with it obviously not being ready, clients couldn’t really come. I couldn’t put it massively publicly on business thing. You couldn’t send an email out and say, Hey, look, we’ve got a new office, but don’t come because nobody’s there.
Pete Everitt:
Being able to stick it on the group was great because it allowed you to vent your excitement knowing that you were doing so in a safe environment. Yeah, but it’s good. I don’t know how this is recorded, but it does sound a little bit echoey at the moment, so we need to get some more software machines in.
Lee:
That’s all right. It just sounds like you have a really high ceilinged room. We do. Well, there you go. Probably like something from Hogs Whartesk or something like that. It actually sounds very impressive. We’re the same, by the way, with regards to the lack of things on the wall. We’ve got a clock and one picture.
Pete Everitt:
You You’re a clock ahead of us.
Lee:
Well, there you go. The clock was wrong for the first three weeks until my wife put it out because I actually only put clocks on the wall for decoration. Here’s a confession. This is episode 99, so we might as well have the odd confession. I actually can’t tell the time. I’m one of those people that looks at those old-fashioned clocks and I have no freaking idea what it says unless I start counting from the top and working my way around.
Pete Everitt:
Is that why you were late to this podcast?
Lee:
I was 35 years old. Burn. Yeah, everyone, I was 10 minutes to the podcast. Larissa said I was doing the WP Elevation blueprint. I was actually writing my UVP right before this. And then Larissa suddenly shouted, Are you meant to be on a podcast? And I was like, And then, yes, I was meant to be on a podcast. Thankfully, Pete being a mate was cool, and he was actually having problems with his lights in the new place. So we’re all good in the hood, aren’t we?
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, absolutely. It was only a joke, but it did seem quite a lot.
Lee:
Yeah. So we’re going to get a digital clock for me because that’s how I tell the time. Remember the old Casio watches?
Pete Everitt:
Yeah.
Lee:
I used to look at H Samuel and stand outside the window staring at them, looking at the calculator watch thinking it was the best thing ever.
Pete Everitt:
Nobody outside of, I don’t know, the Midlands and maybe London is going to know what H Samuel is.
Lee:
Okay. All right. Well, for you, American and Australian folks and every other country out there, H is a jewellery company, and they always used to have a little section for watches back in the day, and there’d always be this little run of black plastic-strapped Casio watches, which for me back in the late ’80s, early ’90s, just It looks like the height of technology. So age 10, all I wanted was a calculator watch. My daughter, age 10, all she wants is an iPhone 7.
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, absolutely.
Lee:
Sure. I’m going to buy you a £500 phone.
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, I’m the 8 Samuel wasn’t a high-end jewellery establishment type.
Lee:
Was to me, mate. I was a poor child.
Pete Everitt:
Well, it was jewellery for the masses.
Lee:
There you go then.
Pete Everitt:
When we got married, we were- This is him and his wife, not me and Pete, just for the record.
Lee:
I know we sound like we’re a couple right now. Sorry.
Pete Everitt:
When my wife and I got married, we’d been students. We got engaged while we were at university. We got married the summer after we We graduated, so we didn’t have a lot of cash. But the one thing we did say we’d buy for each other was our wedding rings. We went to H. Samuel and we bought the wedding rings from there a few months in advance. Then about two weeks before, we got matching wedding rings. About two weeks before the wedding, we thought, Hey, we best check that the rings are okay. We opened them up. Mine was absolutely fine. But Gab’s had started to turn green. We They shot back to the shop and said, Look, these things are taking two or three weeks to come. Look, we’re getting married in 10 days or whatever it is. We can’t get married with a green ring. What are you going to do about it? They basically said, Well, look, we’ve not got any time to order you a new on it. They measured my wife’s finger and they just got out every ring in the shop that was her size. We managed to find one that was similar to mine, but it’s no longer identical.
Pete Everitt:
So yeah, 8 Samuel and their green rings were the end of us having matching wedding rings. It’s now 12 and a bit years later and I’ve still got the original and she still got the replacement.
Lee:
Oh, mate. For me, I was trying to be cool. We will talk about agency life again, guys, but let’s face it, this is interesting. I was trying to be cool and my wife found her wedding ring easy within three seconds. I think hers was I hate Shamuil. I don’t know. I was like, No, I want something with a Keltic pattern on it and all that stuff. I was going to all out. If this was going to be this ring, I was going to wear it. It was going to be the best, most amazing ring ever. We couldn’t find it until in the end, we ended up buying a £3 metal ring as a temporary ring for me to get married with. Then when we were on our honeymoon in Canada, I went all out to go and find this wedding ring. I’m actually not wearing the ring on my wedding day. It’s actually we bought it on the honeymoon. This ring, I kid you not, is just a literal plain gold band. So after all of that, I could have just bought a plain gold band. What did it for me back then, though, was I was really price-conscious.
Lee:
So I got it for something like 50 to $80 or something like that. And it is real gold because I have had it checked since, just in case. It was real gold. That’s cool.
Pete Everitt:
At least there’s a story behind it. You could have just said, Yeah, we went to a Simon 1 bought It rings.
Lee:
Let’s talk about pricing, though. Being price-conscious. Just for giggles. I was thinking about this the other day, and I don’t know who said it, but when you’re having a conversation with a potential client, and if they can’t afford your price, don’t try and meet them, as it were. Just say, Yep, fair enough, no problem, and hand them off to someone else. Help them in the process of finding someone that they can afford. I I did a video on it as well. I think I did a video. Have I done a video on this yet, Larissa? I’m not sure. Maybe I dream this one, but I feel like I might have done. Where I was essentially, or I will do.
Pete Everitt:
If not, by the time this airs, there will be a video.
Lee:
By the time this airs, there will be a video out. We’ll talk about videos in a bit, actually. That’s another good topic. But the idea being is we’ve taken on because I’m really nice. Whenever someone comes to me and they can’t afford the full works, I’ll end up saying, All right, well, we can botch this together and do that together, and that will fit within your budget. Then what I’ve tended to find then is that I’ve therefore converted the wrong type of client for my business, which means I actually end up doing loads of extra work and trying to look after them and everything like that for a lot less money. I end up making no money, et cetera. How do you guys go around qualifying clients with regards to pricing and knowing if they’re the right fit for you?
Pete Everitt:
There’s Yeah. Well, I normally try and have the sticky conversation about money up front, really quite early on in the discussion process. The reason for that being is if you go and develop a full technical brief or a digital marketing strategy or whatever it is, and then quote upon that, you’ve already given a whole load of value, which really is the first the link of the work. Then you just get to the point where you say, Right, so this is going to be £3,000 for this. Then they turn around and say, Yeah, we’ve got a budget of £600 quid. You’ve just burnt a whole lot of time and effort. That’s not that you don’t want to help people, but it’s about understanding your value and the crossover point between what is value that that you’re willing to freely give and that you can give time and time again to help just people on their way. I’m fully an advocate of business is essentially people doing business with people. Just as I want help with my business in aspects I don’t understand, likewise, I want to help people with the skillset I have. But to then put a price value on that, getting that discussion about money out of the way quite quickly in the conversation.
Pete Everitt:
I’m not talking about, Hi, my name’s Pete. I work for so. So how much can you afford? But I am- That would be pretty upfront, wouldn’t it? It would be, yeah. But understanding a little bit of the scope, but then understanding what their expectations are in terms of budget is important. The next thing I do, it then becomes onto a… Should they pass that gate, if you like, and then you actually do develop the scope of the project and a formal quote goes out. If there’s then any queries over the bill, over the estimate, I do try, and a bit like you, I do try and say, Okay, well, you know what? If you rein back this, if you rein back the other, then we could potentially look at reducing that a little bit. We’re maybe talking 10, 15%. But there is normally a baseline that I’m prepared not to go below, in which case there are some guys that I know some… This is going to sound terribly ironic as I run an agency, but some students that are trying to set themselves up as freelancers and you can say, Look, you know what?
Pete Everitt:
Why don’t you just speak When we speak to these guys over here, they make a conversation happen. If something happens, great. If not, well, then you may need to go and find another supplier. But I normally have a line that I’m not prepared to go below. The other thing always do with our quotes, and this helps us with our scope creep, is our quotes go alongside a technical specification or a digital marketing strategy. The two things we do is essentially design and build projects, but where we like to focus our time is on the ongoing digital marketing strategies and rolling out tactics and working with clients to see their businesses grow. But any The quote that we send out either has a technical spec if it’s an ad hoc build or a digital marketing strategy if it’s an ongoing project. If that is linked to the quote, so should the specification change, we then have to reserve the right to then amend the quote accordingly, which could, of course, go up or down. If you’re then getting into discussions with a client where things are too expensive for them, they have the specification document as well.
Pete Everitt:
The discussion then becomes more about, well, what do you not need? What could you knock out of this? That will still give you a viable product at the end. We don’t want people to pay us for something that isn’t going to work. That actually helps with the discussion because it negates the discussion of, well, I know you’ve quoted £2,500 for this. Could you do it for £1,750? Well, no, actually, because that £2,500 covers everything in the technical specs. If you want to knock down to 1750, then what are you going to knock out of the technical spec that we don’t have to build? If you start knocking things out, we then want to review that to make sure it’s still a product that’s going to work at the other end before we agree for that price. Just the mentality of them having to take things away, I suppose, reinforces the value of what we’re doing and the value of our time and expertise.
Lee:
That’s how we do it. That’s really good. I think you raise a really good point as well. There is a difference between somebody who can’t afford you, as in they do not have 10K, for example, to spend on the project, they only have 1K. Then there is someone else who has a larger budget, but they want to try and make some savings. It would be reasonable, and we do the same. We would reasonably say, yes, we can certainly make some savings. If you want us to knock some money off, we will also reduce what we provide for you. It’s two ways, i. E. We’re not going to just give you 200 or 1,000 pounds off for the hell of it. Yeah, no, absolutely. Because that would be called giving you money, and we’re not a charity. But having that balance of there are some clients who are like, All right, 10K is a great quote. We know we’re going to get everything for 10K, but you know what? How’s about… Can you give us 500 quid off? Because we’re slightly over budget. And I would say, Sure, if you remove this module, is that going to affect what you can or cannot do with this system?
Lee:
And they’ll say, I know we actually really need that. I’ll say, Well, all right, what else can we not do to get you £500 off? And 99. 99, well, basically all the time, people end up then paying the full budget because they realise that although they’re trying to save money, they actually need all the features. Hey, what’s going on here? Is that the pricing? That’s the price police.
Pete Everitt:
The price police have just gone past.
Lee:
Oh, few. Because they heard us and they said, Those guys are right. But I just heard someone else offer a discount. Actually, there was a guy once who said to me, I gave him a quote for a day, and he leaned over to me and said, Lee, Can I just ask you on this price? Can you just sharpen your pencil a little bit? I was like, You It was like, sharpen your pencil on that price a little bit. Because I’m in finance and we always want a bit of a discount. You know what I did? I made the mistake of giving him 20% off and still doing the work. In the end, I just felt annoyed. I felt annoyed by the whole thing. I felt like I’d given this guy 20% off my day rate. My value was worth 20% less to him than any other client. So I don’t recommend it.
Pete Everitt:
I’m going to completely contradict what I’ve just said, but somebody did tell me that the essence of a true deal is when no party is completely satisfied.
Lee:
Say that again. Sorry, that needs to process in my brain.
Pete Everitt:
The essence of a true deal is when neither party is truly satisfied. Now, this is where I only ever adopt this stance. If there’s a project that I really see potential in as being a good flagship project for us. I don’t know. We get a new university, a chance to pitch to a new university, and the only stumbling block is price. We really want that university on our portfolio because we can then build it into our business development, and it could lead to three or four more universities that we could have contact with. In that case, if they came along and said, Right, here’s a 10K project, we can only afford eight and a half. I’m not happy with eight and a half, but they would obviously be very happy with eight and a half. That’s where the discussion comes along as, Well, we can’t do eight and a half, but I could maybe do 9,250, which I’m still not happy with, But then they’re not happy with it either. On the same hand, I’m not getting everything I want, but they’re not getting everything they want. That’s a very simplistic example, but that, I suppose, would be the essence of a true deal.
Pete Everitt:
Neither of us. Because otherwise, on the one hand, I’m getting everything I want, and they wouldn’t be getting anything that they want. The other way around, they’re getting everything that they want, but I’m going to be really hacked off because of the amount they’ve squeezed me. If we meet somewhere in the middle, then it becomes a case of I’m not happy, they’re not happy. Yeah, that’s probably fair. Interesting.
Lee:
That’s a good point because most of the time I’m really happy and I’ve never really considered whether they might actually feel a little bit stretched by the whole thing.
Pete Everitt:
Now, I am. Word of warning. I only employ that if I really want that client. It’s It’s not something that I go and do for every deal, for every person that walks through the door, Tom, Dick, or Harry, it is literally just, Yeah, okay, this is one I really don’t want to lose. That’s not saying I like I’m not expecting any client, but as I said before, I normally tend to find a line that I’m not prepared to cross. We all have big people or big clients that we want to work with. By big, I mean people that we see as big. Not obese. Yes, not obese. They may actually not be massively huge, like blue chips or anything in the grand scheme of things. But if you’re wanting to niche down into, I don’t know, the motorcycle industry, for example, then there may be some clients in there that you would want to work for over and above others because it builds a nice portfolio. In those cases, they’re the ones where I’d start to think, Right, how far am I prepared to go to keep the client because I want the platform that it’s going to give me afterwards?
Pete Everitt:
Where is it slightly more important than the cash that is simply transferring hands. That’s something that I keep on my sleeve, but it’s not something I advocate. It’s not a workable business model for growing business, in my opinion, anyway, if you use that every time.
Lee:
For me to unpack this, what you’re saying, therefore, is in most circumstances, I know I’m really happy in most projects, and I feel like the client is really happy in most projects as well. That’s fine. That’s actually the best deal. However, what you’re saying is there are times when moving slightly either direction or when both parties move slightly, it means you’ve pushed the client a little bit, you’ve reduced a little bit, so you’re both meeting in the middle, but that will allow you in rare circumstances where you feel that client would be good for your portfolio or the software you’re developing for them will be something that you could apply to other businesses or resell, etc. There’s value beyond just the monetary value and also that relationship, then this is your secret weapon in your back pocket that you might therefore utilise.
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, absolutely. I like it. You’re right. It’s something you keep in your back pocket, you can pull out when you want to. But I’m very wary of somebody saying, Right, I’ve posted 10K for this, they want eight and a half. Me just saying, Yeah, all right. No, hang on. If you want movement one way, I want a bit of movement the other. That’s what makes business fair. Let me just flip that on you then a little bit. If you’re saying that you assume clients are happy with what you’re charging, how have you tested out that you’re not too cheap?
Lee:
Great question. We don’t test out whether we’re not too cheap. We just tend to ensure that we are being profitable in every job that we quote on. So I don’t actually compare what we do to other people. It’s actually quite a difficult one as well because a lot of the competition that we have, quote unquote, competition is actually coding houses out in, say, China or the Philippines or in India, et cetera, who are ridiculously cheap compared to us. So we are actually in theory, super premium. I don’t know of any other WordPress-focused agencies that just do designers that I necessarily compete with. I feel like there’s not that many of us at this pricing level, which means it’s very quiet in the competition stakes. I’ve got no one really who is a threat or feels threatened by me necessarily. Again, in the Facebook group, we’ve got people who do, either the freelancers or their small agencies who do a lot of work with other agencies as well. And there doesn’t seem to be any competition. It seems like a massive market. So I’ve never really considered how to evaluate my prices against other people’s. One way I evaluate it is what is the charging because we’ve got the difference here of we’re working with an agency who already has some budget in mind from their client.
Lee:
They’re working with the big blue chip. The big blue chip has £50,000 to invest in a new website. 20,000 has already gone on design. We know that there’s going to be other costs to that agency. There’s about 15K sloshing around in the development tin. Do we feel that that’s going to be enough money for what they’re asking for? That’s where the negotiations come into play, et cetera.
Pete Everitt:
Okay. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s Actually, when you’re working with design agencies, we’re dealing more directly with clients. What made me ask that was, this was a tiny little ad-type job. It was for an existing client. They rang us up just before the summer and they wanted these, I don’t know, three or four ads sorting out for them. We put a fee together and sent it off. We knew that they were at the skinny end of their budget. It was for a higher education institution, so it was in June, July, which, of course, is right at the end of their year in the UK because it runs from September through to August. We knew that they were at the far end. All of the emails had said, Look, we’ve not got any budget. Are you able to help us out? With us having an ongoing relationship with these guys, we basically covered our costs just because we wanted to help them out. We wanted to work with them for the following year, et cetera, et cetera. They bit our hand off. Literally, the price was agreed within 15 seconds of us sending it off, to which we looked at each other on Skype and said, Yeah, we should have probably gone in about double that.
Lee:
When was that? Is that recently?
Pete Everitt:
Sorry, or was that last year? No, it was three, four months ago. Okay.
Lee:
So you’ve yet to find out next year whether or not you’ll be able to then go at the double rate next year?
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, well, absolutely. We Yeah. When we do our pricing, when we do look at our pricing, we try and increase it. We normally do it in little boundaries. We normally look at increasing by maybe up to 5 %, and then testing the water with a few clients, seeing if we get any kickback from that. If there isn’t a lot of kickback, then we may go another 5% on top of that a month or two later. Then we go through this constant. Well, when I say constant, we go through this review process whereby we then try and establish where our worth is or where our value is in terms of a monetary price point. That does differ a little bit because we do do some work based on an hourly rate and some work based on project cost. It depends on the job, if you like. But we do try and review our pricing certainly once or twice a year and just test the water. But it’s more nobody’s going to tell you, or very few people will tell you if they think you’re too cheap, they’ll simply sign on the dotted line, where people will very quickly tell you if they think you’re too expensive.
Pete Everitt:
We’ve used that as the benchmark by which we can review our pricing model.
Lee:
I’ve sometimes found that people won’t tell me I’m too expensive. They’re too scared. They’ll just not answer the email.
Pete Everitt:
Big bad That ogrely.
Lee:
They’ll just not answer the email, the proposal. We’ll never hear anything again. Then maybe we’ll hear something from a couple of months’ time saying, Oh, yeah, we decided to go elsewhere, or we decided not to go forward with that project for now, et cetera, and you’re like, Oh, okay.
Pete Everitt:
Don’t you try and manage that process or mitigate that process in any way?
Lee:
Or do you just send a proposal? I learned many years ago from WP Elevation, and this is why I signed back up to go ahead and do all these courses again and to really review our own internal processes. But I learned that once you’ve done the proposal, et cetera, you have this no follow-up policy of you’ve gone through everything, you’ve given everything they need, and then valuable next steps, the next steps they need to engage and you’ve set the scene. Then really, you don’t want to start being desperate and chasing people all the time, all that thing. I just leave people to it and feel that if we’ve done all our due diligence, we’ve given them everything we could possibly tell them what they’re going to get, et cetera, and made sure everything’s covered. Then really, it’s just down to them whilst we focus on other things. To be honest, I think we’re converting probably about 70 to 80% of all of our proposals still. We’ve got a really good conversion rate, to be honest. It’s rare that that happens. But when that does happen, it just always surprises me because I’m the first person to go, How much?
Lee:
Only this weekend, I bought two pieces of cake and she said, £7. 15, I said, How much? For two pieces? Can you tell me the prices of the cake? Anyway, it turned out she’d actually charged me for three cakes instead of two. So it wasn’t that expensive.
Pete Everitt:
You look after the pennies.
Lee:
So I had the cake, and he ate it.
Pete Everitt:
You’re sorry? You look after the pennies and the pounds that carry themselves. That’s what my grandma always used to say.
Lee:
Exactly. But I don’t know, maybe it’s the Britishness in me, but I do find it surprising when other people just… I mean, it’s not happened for… Again, it’s not even happened. I don’t think it’s happened in the last year, to be honest with that. But people tend to, but I remember last year, I can think of at least three different times where people just disappeared, and I had to find out vicariously through people connected to them that they’d gone for cheap or they’d gone elsewhere, et cetera, which always surprised me again.
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, I got that. We don’t try and come across as desperate or anything, but we do try and manage the process a little bit more.
Lee:
Tell me more. I feel I need to learn this because we literally leave them with it and then that’s it.
Pete Everitt:
Well, we basically take it… The stance we took, where the premise of this process came from was that we wanted to learn from every client even if we didn’t win the work. Every proposal that goes out, that proposal is only valid for a set amount of time. It’s normally 30 days, but when we’re dealing with… Because we do a lot of work with higher education, further education institutions, their processes can be a lot slower. Sometimes they go up to about 90 days. But anyway, there’s definitely a cut off date where that proposal is no longer valid. What that allows us to do is we can use it as a little bit of leverage on the client if we really want to, although we don’t do that very often. But what it does allow us to do is when that date is reached, we can then get If we were to go back in touch with the client and say, three months ago, we quoted you for this piece of work. That quote or that proposal has now lapsed. Firstly, would you like us to revisit it? Is it still something that you need doing that you just haven’t processed yet, in which case we can maybe extend it or if we want to revisit the proposal, then we’ll resubmit it.
Pete Everitt:
But secondly, if the job has been awarded to somebody else, could we please get some feedback as to why we weren’t successful. It just gives us that formal platform whereby I suppose we can look professional and go back to them and say, Well, we don’t mind that you’ve awarded this to somebody else. We wish you hadn’t, but that’s your prerogative. But we would like to understand from you what your perception of us was and how we could improve that. It gives you a chance to open up another discussion. Now, maybe only half the people that we contact actually interact with that process, or a good number of them, Yeah, okay, we don’t have time to talk to a supplier. We haven’t commissioned delete. That’s the end of it. But some of the feedback we get from those people that do interact with that process is probably some of the most valuable feedback we get, to be honest, because it does help look at ourselves and how we can improve our processes, the way we portray ourselves to clients. It’s the little things. Because it’s not reliant then upon the technical delivery of work, nobody’s going to get hacked off because you’re two weeks late with a deadline.
Pete Everitt:
It gives you a good insight into the impressions people have of you. If they’re not right, then we can look at ourselves and say, Right, well, how do we change that for next time?
Lee:
I I love chatting with you because you’re always full of good advice. I was just thinking as well when you were saying that in our other company, we got a vent engine in the other business, and we actually did get some client feedback where a client was really open as to why they weren’t going to go with us. They said that to them, we appeared to be the Rolls-Royce solution with Rolls-Royce Prices, which was a complementary, but it also meant that it alienated what we thought was some of our target clients. It wasn’t necessarily the price. It was actually more the way we were coming across with regards to things like our branding and our demonstrations, et cetera, which actually made them feel more alienated than the price. In theory, we could do the math that meant we wouldn’t need to change our price, and yet we could prove to them that we would actually cost the exact same. It’s just that our pricing structure was different. We were XK upfront, whereas any other model that they could potentially go for would be based on the sales of tickets and all sorts of other stuff that was going on, et cetera.
Lee:
We would actually calculate to be pretty much exactly the same price, just you would be paying us in a different way. However, based on the way we price as a lump and the amount of features that we were demonstrating within our platform, we’d already given this perception as this is what you purchase in the future, when you got all this money and you want to be the Rolls-Royce event company. We were really surprised by that because we didn’t see that ourselves in that way. We’re working on at the moment. I’ve got a meeting this Wednesday coming up. Me and Tim, my business partner, we’re spending a day here going through. We really need to change our message because we don’t want to alienate our target audience by being perceived as the Rolls-Royce the too expensive company that you would pay when you don’t want to get fired. I don’t know. Cisco. Do you remember that one? Because that alienates people who have the budget to spend with us. We accidentally created something and talked about its features and created some brand vision that alienates our target audience. That was quite a surprise. It’s a completely different type.
Lee:
It’s not an agency business, so obviously, I didn’t even think of mentioning it. But when you were talking, I was thinking, oh, yeah, we have had feedback, not in Angle Crown, but certainly in Event Engine. We’ve had a different type of feedback, and that’s really surprising. Feedback is so freaking important.
Pete Everitt:
It is. As an entrepreneur that’s trying to run multiple businesses, any opportunity becomes an opportunity to further yourself in some way, shape, or form. It’s about having, I suppose, the confidence, but also the mindset to go after those things and say, You know what? Even if this doesn’t turn out into a business deal, what can I learn from this? What can we learn from this? Is there something that we can do better next time? By going through that process, refine, review, repeat, you You end up with a far better service, a far better picture of yourself. The last agency I worked in before I set up SO, it was an e-commerce agency based in the Midlands. It was a very high-pressured, very high-paced environment. We did do a lot of good work. However, there was also a disconnect between what we did in the office and how we were perceived in the outside world. It was something that really challenged us as a management team to think, right, well, how do we go about changing that? Well, the first part of changing it is to understand actually what is the current scenario, what’s the current playing field, and we can then look at how we improve different areas in order to change the picture over time.
Pete Everitt:
It’s a long old journey to go on. But that was something that I certainly learned from that employment that I’ve been keen to bring into so and into my own life. At the moment, I’m a business owner. I have one business. But over time, I am wanting to, a little bit like you have, you want to spread your wings a little bit further and have maybe more than one business initiative going and to become that entrepreneur. A piece of advice that I was given, which I really like, is that as an entrepreneur, never trust anything that is one. So never trust one business income, never trust one stream of income, never trust one supplier, because you’re putting your eggs all in that basket. Over time, I’m wanting to start to build a portfolio whereby I am exploring different avenues and there’s different streams happening. There will be a financial implication to that, but there’ll also be just a variety of life to that as well. Hopefully, this is the start of a good journey that’s going to see me over the next 20, 30 years.
Lee:
That’s really good. I really respect what you’re doing there, mate. I’m now getting serious. I’ve been joking around, but I’m going to confess right now that feedback scares the crap out of me because I already know what they’re going to say because I’ve been conscious that I’ve dropped a ball here, left, right or centre. I’ve done something wrong and I’m really conscious of it. At the same time, also, I’m scared I’m going to fear things that I don’t like, and I often let that fear, therefore, dictate… Not dictate, but I let that fear stop me from asking for feedback. It is something that we’ve been talking about internally, that we really need to feel the fear, but just do it anyway, because we will become a much better agency as a result. And I’m standing up giving advice on YouTube, I’m giving advice on a podcast, etc, on running an agency. And yet myself, I still brick it when I’m dealing with our own clients and wanting to know what their thoughts and their feedback is. We got lots of great feedback that’s voluntary, that people just send us emails in saying, We’ve just had such a great experience, and I love all that.
Lee:
But But I know I need to go and push out to some of those customers where the relationship hasn’t necessarily been. It’s not terrible, but still we’ve had some problems, and actually I need to learn from that. I think I’m going to go this week, hold me accountable, mate. Ask me at the end of this week. There’s three people I need to email for some feedback because I need to hear it real. I might be making it a bigger thing in my head as well. They might actually be saying, Hey, that was no issue. No, we’ve loved it. I don’t know, but I need find out, don’t I? Because it’s going to bother me otherwise and I’m not going to learn from it either if I can’t push out and get some feedback. So end of this week, hold me accountable. There you go. If you’re listening, folks, wpinnovator. Com/ group, feel free to hold me accountable. There’s at least 1,200 people in that group that can hold me accountable for this. I need to have sent out, by the time this episode goes live, I need to have sent out some form of customer feedback survey or just at least asked some feedback on three recent projects that I think I need to learn from.
Lee:
All right. Yeah.
Pete Everitt:
I took a reminder in my diary.
Lee:
Thanks, buddy. I’m going to do the same. Although if I do it now, it’ll probably pick up me typing and it’ll sound like I’m being really rude as you talk. So there you go. Mate, this has been really good. I want to do more of these because these are like… We talked about everything. We had no agenda. We started off talking about the dentist, which was great. But we’ve We’ve accidentally gone down this fascinating avenue of pricing and of valuing ourselves and different types of relationships that we can have. Also added at the end of that, this beautiful sandwich that we’ve created of advice and conversation. We’ve talked about customer feedback as well, and there’s several actionable things that can come from this, which includes reviewing our own prices, reviewing the relationships that we have with people, et cetera. Also even reviewing things like our proposal processes. For me, I feel like I must have finished the WP Elevation course and maybe not finished the last module. So maybe in the last module it says, and then after three weeks, follow up. And everyone who’s doing WP Elevation is like, Lee, what are you doing?
Lee:
Not following people up, you idiot. But I’m back on that course anyway, so I’ll have to let you know how that goes. How can people connect with you, mate? And then we shall go and get coffee or whatever we’re going to do.
Pete Everitt:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m in the group. People can connect with me on there. I’m on LinkedIn. If you search for Pete Everett, that’s E-V-E-R-I-T. I’m not related to Kenny, unfortunately.
Lee:
He’s the good-looking one with glasses.
Pete Everitt:
Cheers, mate. And otherwise, well, if you want Lee, stick a link to our website, your show notes and all my contact details on there.
Lee:
Indeed. Check the show notes, guys. It’ll be in your podcast listing application or over on wpinnovator. Com, and you’ll be able to click on the podcast link. And there you go. You can find all the information about Pete, my mate, Pete. Peter, PT.
Pete Everitt:
I’m not from What are the nicknames you have? Don’t call me P. T. Don’t call me P. T.
Lee:
I so want to call you again. Oh, my gosh.
Pete Everitt:
Deep breaths. I don’t really have nicknames.
Lee:
At least I didn’t say… No, I’m not going to say that I bet you got called it at school, though.
Pete Everitt:
The one I used to get called at school was Evero.
Lee:
That’s really not quite like that one. I used to get called Jackson or Jacko. It was a form of bullying. They go Joggo from the back of the room, and it would just filled me with dread because I knew they were going to come and try and push me around. Oh, dear. I got a bit bullied at school. There you go. Just trying to get people to feel sorry for me. Wouldn’t happen I’m taller than all of them. And I know origami.
Pete Everitt:
And you know origami? Wow. Now I’m really scared.
Lee:
I better go.
Pete Everitt:
All right. Yeah, you go fold some paper.
Lee:
All right. And you enjoy getting moved in and putting some pictures up.
Pete Everitt:
All right. Cheers, mate.
Lee:
Take care.
Pete Everitt:
Speak to soon.
Lee:
And that wraps up episode number 99. That’s 99. Nine episodes. And if I think back, man, I made it so complicated when I first started this podcast. Go ahead and check out some of the early episodes. I had prepared questions. I did the same thing all the time. It got a bit samey and boring. I realised that I think 10 episodes in, I started to change it up. But this episode is just one of those times that reminds me that as long as you know your subjects, as long as you know you’ve got a good guest, you’ve got a good vibe, etc, then you don’t need to spend hours planning stuff. It’s actually more fun to explore subject matters together. You find that you learn way more from each other. You find as well that you come out with… I said some good stuff. I surprised myself. But equally, Pete said some incredible things. That didn’t surprise me. He always says good stuff. Pete’s a legend. If you’re thinking of ever starting a podcast for your particular niche, then may this encourage you that you do not need to put in hours of planning. I’m not saying just wing everything.
Lee:
There is some planning needed, there is some preparation needed. You need to find the right, et cetera. But if you’re going to start a podcast, you don’t need to script everything, you don’t need loads of technology, et cetera. So I am building a course. This is what this has been leading up to. I’m building a course which is going to be completely free. I’m not charging anyone for it, but it’s basically giving everyone the benefit of the wisdom that I have gained over the last 99 episodes. So exactly how I record, how I get my guests, how I plan everything in a course, it’s going to be out in in a few weeks time, and then you guys can go ahead and check that out. If you want to be notified as to when that happens, go ahead and join the Facebook group. That’s over on WpInnovator.com/group. I will be announcing that there. Next week is episode 100. We’re going to do something special. In the vein of planning, I have not planned episode 100 yet, so I have no idea what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be special. I hope it’s going to be special.
Lee:
I have no idea. It’s probably going to be the best. It’s going to be the best episode. We’re going to make the WP Innovator podcast great again next week in episode 100. Thanks for listening.
Lee:
Adieu.
