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 64 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is your host, Lee, and And today we’re gonna talk about that age-old, well, it’s not really age-old ’cause the internet is not ancient, but that really kind of annoying issue of where you’ve developed an amazing website, you’ve got this fantastic design, it’s all ready to go, but the client has still got nowhere with the content. And depending on the structure of your agreement, you might not even be able to get paid until you’ve got that content. So we’re gonna talk to James Rose. What are his ideas? What are his methods? What are his solutions? Guys, sit back, Relax, enjoy. If there is anything in this episode that you agree with, disagree with, or want to talk about, head on over to the Facebook group over on LeeJacksondev.com/group. Enjoy, guys. Hello and welcome to, well, just another episode. I don’t even know what number we’re at now. We’ve been going for so freaking long. It’s episode something.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So welcome and welcome to James Rose, mate. How you doing?
James Rose
I am doing bloody good. How about you, Lee?
Lee Matthew Jackson
I am bloody doing brilliant too. We got in the first swear already. Is that a swear?
James Rose
That doesn’t count.
Lee Matthew Jackson
My parents used to shout at each other and say bloody, so I think that’s okay.
James Rose
I think the further we go through time, the higher the threshold for what counts as a swear word gets.
Lee Matthew Jackson
More than likely. Well, James is a good buddy of mine. We met through the interweb. I think we met on Facebook, did we? I can’t remember.
James Rose
Twitter, actually.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh, that’s it. Yeah, we’ve started tweeting at each other. That’s right. And then it kind of moved on to Facebook and now the relationship’s blossomed and we’re talking on a podcast with each other. This is amazing. So James, you know, he’s worked— sorry, CEO, founder, I guess, of Actura Technology.
James Rose
Yeah, CEO word.
Lee Matthew Jackson
CEO. I like that. And also is pivoting, is starting something super exciting that obviously I want to talk to him about, which is Content Snare, which we’re going to get into in a bit. So that That was my god-awful introduction to you. I would be terrible on This Is Your Life. So how’s about you give us a bit of an introduction about you, who you are, maybe how old you are, favourite colour, that sort of thing.
James Rose
Well, my favourite colour is orange to the dismay of my girlfriend because she hates orange.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m with that.
James Rose
Yeah, no, I love it. And I’m loving the pink on WP Innovator. It’s a very hot pink.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Thank you.
James Rose
Yeah, so we started as an engineer, control systems back in the day, learned to build websites on the side, and that was actually just to monetize them back in the days. I don’t know if you remember the dodgy AdSense days.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh yes.
James Rose
Yeah, yeah, that old chestnut. So then we ended up building some software for people who were doing what we did. That’s eventually got into building websites for local business and I guess we’ve always had our head in software the whole time, you know, building sort of stuff on the side. And we realised something needed to be done for web designers because, man, like, I feel like we get shafted. There’s so much cool software out there for other stuff and for other industries. And, you know, all this stuff that I wanted to do just didn’t exist. And so I started asking some of the local other designers that I knew, and this is where we ended up with ContentSnare.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Cool. So you’ve essentially started off as building websites, and then you’re seeing all of these problems and you’re thinking, you know what, I want to actually create some solutions for these problems. That’s pretty exciting. I’ve done that. Yeah, I’ve tried doing that before, but never quite so successful yet, so much to my frustration. I just get too busy. And part of the problem is, is because there is not that much good software out there, is there, for a lot of people. So how did—
James Rose
Yeah, and it’s not easy to find an idea, you know.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Like, exactly. How did you—
James Rose
Biggest thing is—
Lee Matthew Jackson
Sorry, sorry, mate. How did you get though? So you said you were in engineering, was it? You were in engineering previous, and then—
James Rose
Yeah, that was, that was when I finished uni in like years ago now.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Cool. So did you go like straight into agency life then from uni?
James Rose
Oh, hell no. Hell no. Um, so, so I was an engineer for maybe I can’t remember now. I’m probably close to 10 years or like 9, but we had a good 3-year overlap in the middle. Yeah, because like between full-time work and starting a business, because for the first 3 years we were just doing software and that was, it was a man, this software we wrote in like article spinning and rewriting back in the day.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah.
James Rose
Uh, which is like dodgy as hell now.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh my gosh, you must have been Google’s friend.
James Rose
Oh yeah, yeah. Oh man, it still sells. It blows my mind, like it— that software is still selling. Um, you know, I would have thought it would have died years ago, but, um, it— I don’t know, it’s just so funny. But, um, yeah, so we— it probably took us a solid 3 years, um, to make a solid income out of that because, uh, you know, I don’t know if you know, but engineers aren’t very good at marketing.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Really? Well, I didn’t know that. Now I do know.
James Rose
Really? Yeah, it was shocking, man. So this is the whole, you know, engineers want features, you know, where we’re all writing sales pages full of features and what it can do.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah.
James Rose
And you’re, why is it not selling?
Lee Matthew Jackson
You know, that’s exactly what I did actually with my first product launch. It was all about what it did rather than the problem it solved.
James Rose
Indeed.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Indeed. So, so that’s a mistake. So you’re, so you, you wrote that software, you transitioned then into agency life, building sites and that. Um, from what I’ve read upon though, you, you are still developing software. You don’t— you tend to develop software more than websites nowadays?
James Rose
Yeah, so I’ve moved into, I guess, the bigger complex stuff. So whether that’s like, um, web platforms, so I guess sort of custom websites not built on WordPress. Um, you know, Ruby on Rails is our weapon of choice at the moment, and Angular. Um, Yeah, SaaS products or internal tools that people use within their business, not public-facing.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah. And how did you get into that? You know, you’ve built a whole load of websites. Sorry, I’m pummeling you here, aren’t I?
James Rose
No, no, no, it’s fine.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So you’re building websites. Obviously you’ve got a software background. Was there like one project that just appeared where you got to do this, loved it, and then decided to focus just on that? Or was this a purposeful shift?
James Rose
A little bit of both, actually. So we had a few developers on board for our products, for our existing software. And yeah, we’ve always loved software. Like, I mean, I’d code all day if it wasn’t a terrible business decision, losing the whole day to fix a tiny little bug sort of thing. But so what happened is we got a pretty cool client. Well, it was only actually a really small client. And then because of websites, right, people come to you and go, oh, you know, can you do this other stuff as well? And we just happened to be able to say yes because we had that team, our own internal team. And then I also got asked to write some code for a pretty massive company here in Australia. Actually, I think I know it might be international, Lendlease. And that kind of transitioned into another job as well where they contracted us directly rather than me. And just those two together, that was sort of the, you know, the launch of the web app business. But then I’ve recently been talking to a business coach and he was like, you know, you clearly love this stuff more, why are you doing websites?
James Rose
I was like, “That’s a good question.” That is good.
Lee Matthew Jackson
People not doing what you love, I think what we’ve done as well, I think our path is kind of similar as in we’ve been doing much more of the larger WordPress builds. So rather than just— we started off just doing designs to WordPress themes, like a 5-page layout or something like that, but nowadays we’re actually doing things which have a whole load of custom software inside of WordPress that solve a whole load of business internal issues as well, which we love doing because they’re the bigger projects as well financially, but also they are a hell of a lot more fun, a hell of a lot more interesting. And like you, if I could, I would code all day. Um, the thing is though is I’m a bit of a slow coder because I’m so freaking like, I want like OCD, do you know what I mean? I want it to look perfect even before I’ve like finished the— like I’m not— yeah, I don’t even do the basics. I’m like they’re making it look perfect. So I end up having to, you know, get the rest of my team on things now so I can concentrate on the M-word, marketing.
James Rose
Ah, yep. Yeah, I mean, it’s, I don’t know, it’s not so bad to be a perfectionist. Like, I don’t know, I think not enough people have that trait in the web space, you know. There’s a— that’s why, uh, you know, we have— some people have not the best, uh, opinion of web developers. And I think that’s why so many people are happy to just do a half job and leave it there.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s quite interesting you should say that because I’ve seen a lot of companies that do do that kind of a half job and people seem— there seems to be like that kind of “it’ll do” attitude. And I’ve got a couple of people in India that work for me and they won’t mind me saying that I had to train the “that’ll do” kind of attitude out of them. It took at least 2 years. Karthik especially would admit that. If it looked kind of close, then he was happy. Whereas now he’s correcting me, which is good. So we’ve managed to train that one out of him. But a lot of people do think, well, it looks close enough. And I guess a lot of that as well is just kind of the low entry point, isn’t it, that people are trying to go in at.
James Rose
Yeah, massive problem is how commoditized it’s got and how cheap people are trying to do things.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Exactly. So guys, if you’re listening, you probably should be charging more, but also Maybe have a look at what you’re doing and let’s learn from James here. What do you absolutely love doing that could be super profitable? So have a think about that as we continue to talk to James. So, um, so, um, tell us about this. You decided you want to reach, you know, you wanted to reach out. You mentioned that earlier. I can’t remember if it was before the show or during the show that, uh, you know, you, you reached out to designers because you wanted to find out what problems they had. There’s You were sharing with me that there’s not tonnes of software available for us guys. There’s loads for other industries, but there seems to be limited services, you know, for us guys as online developers, etc. Tell us the story. Yeah, how you reached out with the designers and, and what Content Snare is all about.
James Rose
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, like, there’s lots of software we can use, it’s just more industry-specific stuff. But, um, but I started with ‘Cause I don’t know, a long time ago I sort of started doing a programme that talks about getting ideas for software out of people by like calling around and interviewing people and asking stuff, you know, just picking an industry and sort of running with it. So, I had a bit of knowledge there already on how that sort of process works. And before you go and just create something, like that was the first, I guess, mindset thing for us. Because I mean, I spoke to a bloke last night I did a little networking thing and they’re halfway through building an app and I’m like, do you have any emails or clients? And he said no. And I was like, man, like, that’s not a good place to start. But yeah, so I originally I had an idea for, for an app that sort of sped up the briefing process because that was the biggest pain in the ass for us. And so I had maybe 10 local designers that I knew.
James Rose
That agreed to talk to me. Reached out through some online like forums, like paid forums and membership area type things that I’m a member of and got that number up to about 15. And then I just jumped on Skype and spoke to all these people for maybe 20, 30 minutes each and went through their process and found out what their biggest pain points were. And without fail, they all centred on content, getting content out of clients. So that sort of pivoted us before we even started, right? Like, I wanted to build something about website briefing and suddenly everything was about content. And I thought, you know what, you know, that’s a pretty big problem for us too, and investigated a bit more. And, you know, obviously the feedback we’re getting now is so awesome that I think I’ve made the right call.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, that’s good news. It is something that’s talked about a lot and we talk about it in the WP Innovator group as well. A few people have talked about it quite a few times. Let’s just quickly do a plug. That’s leejacksondev.com/group and it will send you to the Facebook group where you’ll find people talking about content, but also cheque out contentsnare.com as well because you’re going to find out much more information over there. Sorry, buddy. I kind of interjected there, but I thought I would. But so how— So you, you’ve, you’ve established now that’s the biggest pain point. You’re now going to create something. So tell us, what, what is it you think you need to create or you are creating to answer this need?
James Rose
Yeah, so, so in a very basic form, it’s essentially just templates of the, you know, the info you want out of clients. Uh, so whether that’s, you know, contact details, social links, um, buttons, images, you know, and all those little tiny bits of content, actually structuring that out, essentially just like a form builder on steroids with where you can sort of add instructions or images along with that field as instructions. You know, like if you, if you had a bit of a design ready to go and you had a field, you know, I need content for this field, you could actually include a little screenshot and say that, you know, that’s where this applies. Um, So the first part is essentially that, and part 2 is automated follow-ups. So whether you’ve got a due date or whether you just want to set a start date and set a series of automatic follow-ups so that you don’t have to do it. Like, I find myself constantly when we’re doing websites, I use follow-up then to set these reminders like 5 days from now or a week from now, 2 weeks from now, and just constantly following these people up.
James Rose
So that was the biggest thing I thought. I’m like, I don’t want to do this anymore. So that’s the point is you set up the template and get it to automatically follow them up. And then when it comes time for it to, you know, that it’s all ready, then the idea was you can just copy information straight out into the website because I don’t know about you, but whenever I get content back, it’s in like a Google document and it’s got some red italics for some instructions. And then some bold over here, and then maybe an actual Google Doc comment, and then like it’s just got shit all over the place. And like, I’m just like, I don’t understand how people are so bad at documents. Uh, so that was a big part too, is that I wanted to be able to sort of lock it down so they can’t do that kind of stuff.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So when they’re pasting, it’s like stripping out formatting and all that as well?
James Rose
Well, yeah, I mean, you probably wouldn’t even allow the formatting in, in there, you know, like you might have some WYSIWYG elements in there, but for other stuff you just have the inline instructions and have it very clear for them that that’s where they put the instructions, not in red italics in bold saying please link this word to this about page.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, that’s a massive frustration for us. Yeah, yeah. Oh, we’re receiving these Like sometimes we’ll get a Word document and, um, when we paste it, obviously it pastes across tonnes of, um, Word tags and coding. Like if you have a look at the, so to get around that, you then paste it as text, but sometimes it puts a line break at the end of, of like halfway through a paragraph. So then we’re kind of like pressing delete at the row after that so that it’ll bring it up and then putting a space. So that’s a big one for us.
James Rose
Yeah, and you know, and I think that’s— I’m excited about, because this is just MVP I’ve talked about there, which is, um, minimum viable product for those that don’t know. Um, and you know, I’m kind of excited about where we can go from there, you know, whether that’s copying and pasting from Word docs and automatically removing that kind of stuff, or somehow gamifying it to encourage clients to give you the content, or, you know, other kind of some reward systems. You know, I feel like there’s going to be a lot of experimentation we can do to actually reduce the the time taken for content clients to get you their content.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s a really exciting idea. I like the idea of the gamification, but a few people had mentioned in the past that what they do to get content from clients is that they will offer like a discount. So if you get us the content early, then we’ll actually give you, I don’t know, 5% discount on your final invoice or something along those lines, which clients obviously like to save a little bit of money. Perhaps an idea for the future would be something along those lines as well. You know, you’ve got 3 more days to achieve your 5% discount. Counting them down. Yeah, it’s sad.
James Rose
It’s sad.
Lee Matthew Jackson
You can have that one for free, mate. We can have that one.
James Rose
Thank you.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It is sad when it comes to that. You’re totally right. Um, it’s shocking actually. Now, something you mentioned, um, earlier, which, which kind of tweaked my interest because content for me is not necessarily the biggest issue because the way I work personally is obviously directly with the agencies. They kind of tend to have that problem rather than me because I’m just building the core site ready for them to input the content with so that, you know, the minute the core site’s built, it’s kind of done and dusted and it’s over to the agencies. So obviously I’m going to recommend they talk to you about getting content out of people quicker. But you mentioned like one of your issues was briefing, and that’s actually one of my biggest issues that I find most agencies I work with— and I hope they’re not listening— but, you know, really struggle with briefing. So I get some god-awful briefs. What was, what was your idea, or did you have any ideas on how to improve that process, or did you ever find personally a better way of getting a brief out of people?
James Rose
Uh, no, we didn’t. Um, I still want to do that one day. Uh, I don’t want to work on more than one thing at a time though, but I’ve got— I think that needs a lot of research and a you know, really talking to people and digging into processes to find out how that’s going to work. Because like Content Snare, it’s not only the web designers that you have to appeal to, it’s the clients as well. So if they don’t want to use it, then it’s not going to work. I feel there’s a lot of research involved there. We were almost, uh, going to get a grad student or a uni student. I don’t know what you guys call them there. Out to do a research project because, uh, you know, and sort of find some stuff out. Like, I think originally we were thinking just like a big workflow tool, really, you know, like a massive decision tree of, you know, if they pick this, then do this. But, you know, I don’t know if that’s going to work. That’s the thing, it’s all a big unknown at this point.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ve got to admit, well, do that if you say a decision tree to me my brain just folds in on itself.
James Rose
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So I imagine a client might do the exact same thing as well. They’ll be like, oh my gosh, I love it.
James Rose
Well, they wouldn’t see that. They wouldn’t see that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh, okay. That’s okay.
James Rose
So they’d just be playing around on the front end and saying, oh yeah, I like this. I want something like this. I want something like this. Um, and it would be falling through that tree in the background.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Uh, I get you. Fair enough.
James Rose
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah. No, that makes sense. And I do like—
James Rose
You can have that one for free.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh, well, mate, I, I, I will try to build it before you. No, I won’t. I’m not interested in building it. Don’t worry. But if you ever do Let me know. And I’m pretty sure everyone else listening will want to know that as well, because that is a huge issue for us as well, getting briefs and yes, getting the content so you can get things over the line. I mean, for me, I, like I said, I changed the billing structure quite early on because I was reliant on agencies getting the content from their clients to get the content into the website, which was then screwing up my billing process. So then, you know, I changed my contract to say, you know, once we’ve delivered the code, we have done what we agreed to do. So regardless of when your client gets their content in, we still need to be paid because we’ve, you know, we’ve delivered, etc. And we’ve been able to replicate all of the designs with some fake content in there so you can see it, you can see it works, etc. So it’s kind of okay for us. Yeah, sorry, sorry, carry on, say again.
James Rose
As I say, it’s actually a really good thing for agencies to have in their contract too, that, you know, if they don’t get content within, you know, 4 weeks or whatever it is, then we will fill it with placeholder content and send you the final invoice. Or, um, uh, it was, uh, never mind, I’ve forgotten the other option.
Lee Matthew Jackson
No, that sounds like a pretty good option, to be honest.
James Rose
Or was putting it archiving the project? That’s the other thing I’ve seen pretty regularly. Uh, we do, we say both. We say, you know, it might, we’ll either fill it with placeholder content or, um, you know, put your project on hold and then we can’t promise when we can start it again. That gets people moving.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s a good one. I had to do that a couple of times where I threatened to archive a project. ’cause it’s on our servers, it’s sat waiting on our development servers, et cetera. If you’re listening, that is a very good idea. If you’ve got a client who has consistently taken an extremely long time to get content, or they’re just stalling on something, then you’re perfectly reasonable to be able to say, “Right, I’m going to archive this project right now,” and also point out to them as well, which I’ve done in the past, is that there are actually costs to you, which you might want to start billing them at some point for keeping the project alive. There’s admin time, but there’s also the cost of the server, the fact that you’re probably going to have to start updating if you’re working with WordPress or whatever solution you’ve got, you’re probably going to start updating that at some point. If the project’s gone on for a year, you’re going to need to update that and make any relevant compatibility changes as well. You know, if people are taking so long. So good point from James.
James Rose
You know, obviously that was a good point too. The billing them. Can I put, can I steal that and put it in my post?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Seriously, man, have it. That’s where we’re just giving a lot to each other. This is great. I’m loving this, all this advice. So I’m looking forward to that blog post. Carry on.
James Rose
Well, I’ve actually got a couple of blog posts on that, I was just going to say, already on how to get content, also how to improve the process of getting content even without Content Snare and what you should have in your contract. So that’s where I was going to pinch it. If they go to Content Snare blog, they can find all that stuff there.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Cool. Please do put it in there then. That’s cool. That’s one thing I used recently and I think it was about 3 months ago. I don’t know, maybe 20 or 30 episodes ago and someone dropped that in as just an offhand comment and didn’t really say anything else about that. I was like, “Oh crap, I’m going to try that,” and it absolutely worked. They were like, “Oh my gosh, we don’t want to be paying X amount for extra time,” and suddenly I had all the answers I needed and the project was wrapped up with a nice ribbon on it, which was perfect.
James Rose
Nice.
Lee Matthew Jackson
You mentioned that you’ve been blogging about how to get good content, etc., or how to get content quickly rather than good content because we can’t guarantee necessarily the client’s going to give good content. Which maybe that’s another question in its own right. Um, could you, could you drop us a few tips other than what we’ve talked about, about, uh, the content gathering process, be it how to get it or what sort of questions to ask?
James Rose
Uh, well, yeah, I mean, again, you’re still at the mercy of your client here, but, um, it’s really just having a process, right? Like, uh, it’s the one of the things I talked about earlier is just using Follow Up Then to make sure I’m on top of— you can even set a Follow Up Then to do automatic reminders for you. Um, but you know, then you can kind of get stuck in the position where they might have sent you something and it keeps sending them reminders. Um, but it could get awkward. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I mean, there’s two different pieces here. One, one is the contract, how you deal with it in your contract, and the other one is making it easier for them to give you content. So one thing we were experimenting with is even just Google Documents with sections where they put those bits of content. So it’s almost like trying to lay it out like you would in Content Snare, but just having boxes where they put their info. You could have instructions at the front to say use comments rather than red bold italics inline text. Anything you can do to make it easier on both them to give you the content and you to follow them up regularly.
James Rose
Regularly so they don’t forget about it, which is a pretty big problem as well. Sometimes they’ll just move on to other stuff in their business and totally forget. And then the other side is the contract, which I guess we’ve already spoken about. You know, you’ve got a few options there, whether you say the project shuts down or you charge them more or give them a discount. So there’s lots of different stuff you can do.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Now there’s a really cool blog that I read a few days ago by you, which kind of blew my mind, and I would— we’re going to definitely direct people to that. That, guys. You can cheque it out at contentsnare.com/get-web-design-clients with a little hyphen in between that. That’s get-web-design-clients. But I would love if you could give us like the, you know, the, the very high-level wet our appetite version of, of that blog post. So sorry to put you on the spot. I haven’t actually warned James of any of these questions because, you know, I send him a flow with the questions that I say I’m going to ask and then I ask none of them. Sorry, buddy, but, uh, you know, could you drop us some advice? You know, we’ve got, we’ve got quite a few smaller agencies listening and freelancers. How can you go and get some web design clients without knocking on doors or cold calling? That’s the question to you, HighLevel. Here’s—
James Rose
well played, the exact blog post title.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Exactly.
James Rose
Um, to be dead honest with you, there’s no rocket science in that post. You know, it’s, it’s just a way of building, uh, you know, your business over time with standard proven stuff that I guess sometimes people just forget and they need those prompts to go out there and do it, you know. So I’ve talked about networking, you know, how to get referrals, actually asking, for example, because most people, you know, we’re a referral-driven business, or most web designers are, and they just kind of assume referrals are going to come in, and I’ve fallen victim to that as well. But just by asking for referrals can make such a massive difference. Uh, so I talk a little bit how, you know, how to ask and, and to get yourself in a position for referrals and that kind of stuff. Um, a big one, a big one for me, uh, that I see all the time is specialisation. Uh, no one does it. So when we first launched Content Snare, I had a little survey. Well, sorry, it’s not launched. When we first built the website, I had like a little survey there asking people, do they have a niche or something that they— or niche if you’re American, uh, what you specialise in.
James Rose
Uh, and pretty— 75%, I think, said either no or small business, which, I mean, small business isn’t really—
Lee Matthew Jackson
that’s like, yeah, that’s bigger than— yeah, okay, carry on.
James Rose
Yeah, yeah. So, um, That’s pretty indicative of, you know, a big problem in the space is because when you specialise, you can— there’s so many benefits out of that. So I talk a lot about, about those benefits, you know, like being able to increase your prices, do better jobs, you know, like you can have— you might have a bunch of code snippets and design blocks and stuff you can just drop in because you’ve used them with other similar clients. So that’s a big thing. Like, I’ve, I’ve watched people specialise in various industries, you know, like I’ve got a friend doing Facebook ads at the moment as a service. And just based on his specialisation, he can go in, you know, with better knowledge of the industry, with the right words to use in those meetings and land clients so easily compared with someone who’s, you know, across everything. I’d say that’s one of the biggest things for increasing prices and making more money in this space, in any space really.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah.
James Rose
Yeah. And the last two sections are partnerships, which to me is so crucial in this space. I mean, your business is built on partnerships, right?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Absolutely. It’s how we— well, it’s our bread and butter.
James Rose
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like when you can get a partnership with a company that’s going to feed you, say, even if it’s only like 10 jobs a year, uh, that’s still better than having a client who feeds you one job ever.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Exactly.
James Rose
Uh, so they’re obviously harder to get, but partnerships are amazing. I’ve found some of the best ones for IT companies, uh, you know, and that’s who we partner with, both web developers and, um, sorry, web designers and, um, IT businesses for our big web app development stuff because that’s the people that the end client goes to when they need tech help, right? So they think about us, and it’s the same thing if they go to an IT business and they’re like, ah, you know, who need— I need a website, do you guys do it? And they go, no, talk to Lee.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, talk to me.
James Rose
So partnerships is massive, right? That’s absolutely critical. I think they’re harder to get, but you know, you should be doing that sort of all along, you know, while you’re networking with people, whether that’s online or in person. I’ve got a section on networking as well, you know, because a lot of people make mistakes with networking, whether that’s just throwing cards out there. And there’s some bad networking events out there, but there’s some really good ones as well. But yeah, I mean, you should be looking for referrals and partnerships all the time at those events. And then, you know, if it really comes down to it, outreach is the last section I touch on because some people, you know, the whole point of the post was no cold calling, no knocking on doors and all that sort of stuff. But sometimes in a pinch, that’s required. You know, if you need money quickly, then you don’t have a lot of choice. I think you’re probably going to have to go and talk to people.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, that’s content-snare.com/get-web-design-clients, with hyphens in between all of those words. The link is totally going to be in the show notes. I read this, I think, 3 or 4 times when you shared it a few days ago on Facebook, and we’re going to be putting it as well as a conversation thread inside the Facebook group, leejacksondev.com/group, so we can go and discuss that, put in ideas, and hopefully James— are you in the WP Innovate group, buddy?
James Rose
I most definitely am.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yes, you are. Yes, you are. So, uh, James, I’m sure will keep his eye on that thread as well. If you’ve also got questions on that, but it’s, it’s what I would call an epic post. It’s not just a simple blog post, which gives you a few fluffy ideas. This is actually an in detail with a freaking index. Damn it. You’ve got a whole content list. It’s amazing.
James Rose
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
This is actually a book.
James Rose
4,500 words. It was, I think.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It is an epic post, but really, really good, especially for people I mean, it’s good as well for established agencies, just as a refresher. And it was something that was great for me because, uh, buddy, I appreciated reading it because one of the things I’ve let slide is actually my networking. You know, I’ve got lots of opportunities coming in at the moment. They’re coming in, you know, through existing channels, etc. But I realised that I was kind of heavily relying on that, which is fine at the moment. That’s not gonna— this doesn’t— this shows no sign of falling away at the moment. But what I’ve kind of failed to do is keep going back out there networking, meeting new companies, meet, you know, making new friends, etc. And I’ve let my networking side of things go stale because I was failing to see the importance of it because things are fine now. But the problem is, is there is pipeline in the future. There are opportunities to create in the future. I do have clients now, but you know, who knows when someone’s going to go bust and you need to find other clients. I still need to oil those wheels, as it were.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So it was actually your, your blog post, mate, that made me book on to the local networking scene. To get back out there.
James Rose
Great to hear, man. And sometimes that’s all that’s required though. Like, that’s what I was saying before, is it’s not rocket science, any of the stuff in there. Sometimes you just need to read something to get that little memory jog and go, you know what, I need to do that. Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And as an encouragement as well, if you’re listening and you do or don’t go networking, you know, some of my best clients have actually been through networking.
James Rose
I was—
Lee Matthew Jackson
last night I was on a video call whilst I was cooking with a local designer who is a brilliant client of mine. I get, you know, all of his code, etc. And that was through just doing some networking. And I didn’t even sell to him. It was just the fact we, you know, we became good friends and eventually it formed a partnership. So networking is a great stepping stone to forming cool partnerships as well as getting good customers. So again, content snow.com/get-web-design-clients. You will not regret reading that one. That’s a massive plug, mate. But that was actually— it’s just that it was like I said, it was an epic post that was just a huge inspiration for me. And obviously one of the reasons why I actually approached— was it? I’m pretty sure I approached you on this one to say, get your ass on the podcast. We want to talk.
James Rose
Yeah, I really appreciate that feedback, man. Thanks so much.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, no worries. Well, keep creating your good content because this is good and everyone listening on WP Innovator is a perfect consumer of this sort of content. We’re all web designers, developers, etc. So this is the sort of content that we’re hungry for. To consume and learn from.
James Rose
Sweet. I’ll keep going then.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Cool, man. Cool. And if you ever start a podcast, you know where I am.
James Rose
Indeed. Now I’ll just go on other people’s like this.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh, that’s true.
James Rose
So I don’t have enough interesting stuff to talk about. Sorry.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, hopefully you do, because I’m about to ask you a WordPress-based question. So I know you as a company, your other half of the company kind of is focused on Ruby on Rails and creating amazing apps, etc., and I’m not judging you for that. That’s freaking awesome. But I am pretty sure you still will use WordPress because obviously I viewed the source of contentsnare.com and I know it’s WordPress. So, you know, any WordPress plugins that you could recommend to people in our industry that you particularly like?
James Rose
Oh yeah. I’m going to say whatever I’ve said has already been said. But Thrive Leads is one of the ones I’m using more, like, probably the most at the moment, which is— I don’t know if there’s Bloom from Elegant Themes, which works as well. But as far as, like, capturing leads go and punching them into ActiveCampaign, which is, you know, the best CRM ever.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Great.
James Rose
Yeah, it’s, it’s awesome. And I use it like if they read that post and basically every single opt-in on that post and every post and the homepage is, is all Thrive Leads. And they all took me about 3 seconds to set up each.
Lee Matthew Jackson
No way.
James Rose
So Thrive Leads.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So believe it or not, that’s only the second mention, I think, in 50-something, 60-something episodes, however many we’re going on now. Yes, second mention.
James Rose
Very good.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I do like Thrive Leads, especially— do you use the A/B testing as well? Like kind of seeing which version of a call to action converts the best and then select a winner, or have you not bothered with that yet?
James Rose
You need a fair bit of traffic to make A/B testing even worth your time, uh, and we’re not really at that level yet. Um, I mean, we probably— it’s, it’s basically 100 conversions within, I think, 3 weeks is what you need to be able to do for an email signup. That’s probably not actually out of reach of Content Snare. So, but there’s just like, there’s more than one opt-in on a page, so that makes it difficult as well. But I, I am yet to try the A/B testing, um, but mainly because you need a high volume of traffic to make that actually statistically significant.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, I’m quite lucky. I can attest to it being pretty, pretty cool, um, just because with the podcast, obviously everyone’s coming to each episode, so I’m getting quite a high traffic volume now. Um, but yeah, Thrive Leads has been brilliant. I actually, I actually switched to Bloom eventually, uh, believe it or not. Yeah, because I actually found Bloom nicer because I had to make even less decisions. Thrive Leads has got the visual editor and being a complete perfectionist, wanting everything to be moved around and everything. And it was just too much creative kind of freedom for me. I just needed to do something that was like fill in the blanks, press save, and then go and carry on with the, you know, go and carry on with the day job. Uh, so yeah, yeah. So Bloom kind of allows me to fill in the blanks, select a layout, not get too crazy, and, and then forget about it. Integrates perfectly with, with ActiveCampaign, but You know, back in the day, uh, I was just so impressed with Thrive Leads, but like I said, the visual builder was just like shiny new toy for me and far too, far too, uh, distracting.
James Rose
Uh, well, they’re both awesome solutions and, and the, uh, the visual builder, you know, like I’d kind of prefer to not have that, to be honest, especially if you’re using something like Beaver as well. And then you’ve got this other content builder that’s sort of there loading its own JavaScript and whatever.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, no, exactly right. Well, um, WordPress, WordPress plugins have been dealt with. Uh, with regards to, um, your blog, you’ve actually done a blog post on some necessary plugins that people should have for kind of engagements and leads as well. So we’re going to put that in the show notes. That’s content snow.com/must-blog-plugins. Oh, you mate, you’ve got to change some of these.
James Rose
Oh no, that would have been the default one. I literally go to that last week.
Lee Matthew Jackson
ContentSnare.com/really-long-title-at-the-end.
James Rose
No, I’m joking.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Just go to the blog, guys. It’s January 13th. You know, you could be listening in the future, the future, future. But there is a good post on there as well. So, you know, we’re hitting your website hard. You’re going to see a whole lot of extra traffic, buddy. And no doubt you’re going to be able to do some A/B testing as well.
James Rose
Brilliant.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So over the last couple of years, launching projects, products, etc. Um, can you hit us with like one of your biggest lessons?
James Rose
Oh, um, nice big question.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, no, people on the spot.
James Rose
Yeah, no, it’s good. I think, um, it’s not actually that hard a question. I think it’s process. It’s getting your processes right is the absolute most important thing you can do in any business. So, you know, whether that’s finding the right tool that works with your process or creating a process in whatever tool that you are using so that things don’t get missed. Like we were talking about half-assing web jobs before. If you’ve got a process that makes sure all those little things are done and you don’t kick that project out the door until they’re all done, then that’s not a problem anymore. And then you can get other people in to help you with those things, like VAs, whether that’s offshore or onshore. So getting process in order, absolute number 1.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s, that’s really good. Now, echo that, process is so important because, you know, a couple of years ago, the amount of times we made sites live and forgot to uncheck the discourage search engines from looking at this website— there you go. It’s now a process for us. We actually have a whole handover process with checkboxes where we have to fill things in, and the person who does it actually says, yes, I have done this, and closes it off in Basecamp so that we’re not forgetting to do these sort of things. So that’s a massive confession, but Even in the small things, process, process, process. It sounds boring, but your client’s going to fucking love you for it.
James Rose
Mm-hmm.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Amen.
James Rose
You’re so far above all the other designers and devs they’ve worked with.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Absolutely no horror storeys because you’ve got processes and people will love you, guaranteed. It’s the Lee Jackson promise. That’s how CD done it. So, buddy, how can people connect with you?
James Rose
Facebook at facebook.com/jimmyrose and Twitter twitter.com_jimmyrose. Some other frick has got mine.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, so you’re gonna have to— can’t you get yourself one of those, um, badges now or something? Say, pretend that people are trying to, you know, it’s that authenticated badge, isn’t it, or something like that? This is authentic.
James Rose
I’ve not seen that. Is this on Twitter?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, on Twitter. You know those blue badges that the film stars get? Well, you could get it. I’m not gonna lie, I’m not there that often, so All right, don’t go to Twitter, guys. Don’t bother with that. Go to facebook.com.
James Rose
Yeah, well, either one.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, yeah, if you get notifications, that’s cool. Do go to Twitter as well. Obviously there’s contentsnare.com as well for people to go cheque out. I believe when you launch, people who get on a specific list will get discounts off the product. So that’s always worth filling in, giving your email address for potential discounts off a product that will get you people’s content. And you’ve also got an ebook, I believe, as well on there as well for optimising a business website with tools, processes, and automation. I’m reading that from the website because that did just pop up and I thought I’d just mention that as well for anyone who’s interested in grabbing a free guide just for their email address. Well, apparently you wrote it, mate. So it’s on content snow.com. So you’re gonna have to write it real quick. Well, sorry, you’ve got about 2 weeks to write it before this episode goes live.
James Rose
It’s mostly just, uh, blog posts on there at the moment. I think there’s a couple of, uh, freebies on there, but that was one of the freebies I was talking about, so don’t worry.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, yeah, if it’s like—
James Rose
I wouldn’t call it an ebook, that implies that it’s a big long thing.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I don’t know. Okay, it’s a, uh, a, uh, what would you call it? Kind of a checklist then, something like that.
James Rose
Yeah, sure, let’s go with that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Let’s go with that, mate. You’ve been brilliant. Uh, I appreciate you coming on, sharing your pills of wisdom, talking about content, talking about, uh, you know, building sites, getting clients. It’s all good stuff, and I’ve learned tonnes already. Uh, we’re gonna get everything in the show notes, all the links, etc. So we super appreciate you being on. Dying to see what happens with Content Share, so please do come back on when you do launch and tell us all about it. That would be fantastic. And until then, mate, have a freaking awesome day. And, uh, I don’t know, do you need to go back to bed? Isn’t it like 6 AM over there?
James Rose
4:47. Uh, probably, although I just had an enormous coffee, so probably not just laying in bed staring at the ceiling.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Actually, you’re in Australia, right? Yeah, obviously. Yeah. We can tell by your accent, buddy. Um, but like I’ve got plenty of friends in Australia, like, uh, Sarah Moore, et cetera. And she showed a picture, she showed a video the other day of this massive spider. I’ve never seen anything so big. Where you are, do you get those massive spiders as well?
James Rose
You know what? It’s been a while since I saw one, but yeah, no, there are a lot of massive spiders around. It depends what massive means for you too.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Okay, well, massive would be like the size of a plate.
James Rose
Oh, God, no. I haven’t seen one that big in maybe once in my life.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Okay. Well, she had one that was the size of like a smaller serving plate. Which was like pretty huge to us. Now in the UK, the spiders we get are like the size of a large coin. So you can get a tissue and you can just kind of like quickly with your hand grab it and kind of either squish it or get a cup, you know, and let it outside if you’re being humane to a spider. Um, so how the hell do you catch one of these big spiders?
James Rose
Uh, I don’t know. I think I would be rolling up a newspaper and going to town on that thing, man. I go to town on even the small spiders.
Lee Matthew Jackson
While screaming.
James Rose
Spiders.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That would be so funny. I’d want to video that. Okay, well, I’m glad the guy living in like the scariest country in the world for wildlife has not yet figured out a full strategy for getting rid of spiders.
James Rose
I still think Canada’s worse, man. They got bears. America.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Hey, that’s true. That’s true. Bears.
James Rose
Bears are way more scary than spiders.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ve got a friend who lives in Canada. He’s got a 100-acre estate in the middle of the woods, and in his garden— so that’s pretty much his garden— uh, so he has bears in his garden. That just blows my mind. Yeah, they look cuddly and cute, but seriously, no, don’t try it.
James Rose
Negative.
Lee Matthew Jackson
All right, well, I will let you go in a minute, but come on.
James Rose
Thanks so much.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I just would need to ask, have you ever seen any snakes near you?
James Rose
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sea snakes. Well, I wouldn’t say really regularly, but, you know, several times a year we see snakes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah. And are they like poisonous ones or are they just like snakes?
James Rose
Just like, uh, most of the ones you see are not poisonous, but every so often you do see one. Like, uh, we were camping last year and we saw an eastern brown, which is one of the more poisonous snakes in the world. Oh, that’s pretty
Lee Matthew Jackson
I would literally have a panic attack and probably faint or something. I’m so scared of snakes, it’s unreal.
James Rose
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Sorry, buddy. Just felt I needed to ask, you know, being in the safest country in the world where there is zero poisonous anything. I think we’re good.
James Rose
Wow. Nice.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Nice. All right, buddy. You’re freaking awesome. Thanks for being on.
James Rose
Thanks so much, Lee.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And enjoy your bed again.
James Rose
Cheers.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Cheers.
James Rose
Later, man.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, that wraps up episode number 64. This is the umpteenth take of this outro, but anyway, poor old Larissa I think is going insane, and I shall continue. Next week we have Matt Medeiros from themattreport.com, an amazing podcast, and also the guy behind a whole plethora— that’s a big word— a whole plethora of WordPress themes games and plugins, so you’re going to enjoy hearing his storey of how he got started and also all of the pearls of wisdom that he’s got to drop because I think he’s older than me, so that makes him older and wiser. Alright guys, I look forward to seeing you next week. Don’t forget the Facebook group, LeeJacksonDev.com/group. And also for the people in there that have been super supportive whilst I’ve had a few things going on at home. Thank you, you guys are so awesome. See you later!
