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Verbatim text
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Welcome to a very special announcement. This is your host Lee Jackson. Now you may already know what this news is or you may have already guessed what is happening because you’ve seen some changes. But I’m not gonna tell you what it is yet. I wanna take you on a journey. I wanna take you on a journey, a historical journey. And to be honest, sometimes a hysterical journey of my life. Now if you are aware of this, then please feel free to skip this.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
This is an announcement to those who are not aware of the news, but it’s gonna be slightly different to the original announcement that we did. I’m probably gonna go into a little bit more detail. If you wanna watch the livestream that we did and the questions that we answered, head on over to the Facebook group. That’s wpinnovative.com/group. You will find in there the live stream where we made this announcement last week. And, you’ll also find a copy of the video on the WP Innovator YouTube channel. Just go to angledcrown.com/youtube. That will redirect you to, our channel on there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Alright. So let’s go back in the time machine, back to the days when I launched AngledCrown. And I launched AngledCrown back then. It was called Lee Jackson Dev, and it was with a mission to help agencies around the world. I had had a background where I was a part of an agency, and I built this digital department. And it was a phenomenal exercise. Absolutely love doing it. We went from a design to print to a full service design agency where we were doing different types of digital products.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That was websites. We were building software as a service software. We were also doing apps. And we had a team of about 15 people as well. So it was an absolute phenomenal time. And being able to take a design agency who was simply doing design to print and using a third party provider who’s doing a little bit of web with them to actually become a full service agency with a team. It was such a learning experience, and it was a very difficult experience, as well. There were so so many trying times as we tried to develop that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And my whole point with launching Anglo Crown or Lee Jackson Dev, however you know or remember it, was to do exactly that, was to help agencies who were in the print space to become digital agencies, be able to start to compete in this modern day and age where people need websites, people need apps, people need some sort of digital solution. And a big part of that or one of the main driving factors was really to take the stress out of all of that area. There are a lot of design agencies over time who have developed an online presence. They’ve developed relationships with freelancers and started to offer some form of web service, but they were just finding it super stressful. So our whole ethos was around allowing them to essentially give us everything, and we then take on the baton, and we get that project signed, sealed, and delivered for them, and a happy client by the end of it. There was a very heavy focus on areas that agencies struggled with, things like poor code, stressful projects, freelancers often disappearing halfway through a project and having to bring another another freelancer who was like, what the hell did the last guy build? Budgets would often be blown out of all proportion, especially when you’re hiring multiple freelancers, etcetera, or where their clients were asking for more and more things, but the agency wasn’t necessarily charging for it, which obviously is, as you would know, called scope creep if you’ve been listening to this podcast long enough. So that was kind of the journey of Angled Crown initially. And, that had that had come from my history where I’d found this real passion for helping agencies move from print to digital.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So that’s designed to digital, not necessarily print, but offering digital services and taking that whole area of stress out of the picture. So to grow my business, I had to create something. And that something was the the podcast. I wanted to create an outlet so that I could help other agencies to manage their businesses more effectively and to understand how digital works, I guess, because there are a lot of agencies who are still very new to that, and I had a very key focus on WordPress. So the WP Innovator podcast was launched. And, of course, I wanted to generate some clients as well out of it, but also wanted to build up my personal brand over however many years the podcast was going to go on for. Because back then, I didn’t know if this was gonna be the three episodes I’d already recorded or whether this was gonna go beyond even even a year. So that’s where the podcast started.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And there was a very heavy focus on WordPress initially, but very quickly, things started to change. And we started to have conversations around project management, lead generation, agency growth. That’s well, pretty much everything to do with agency life. I mean, we’re we’re talking with Troy Dean just a few weeks ago. At one point, we went right off topic and we started talking about the stresses of agency life and anxiety and depression and all those sorts of things. The podcast has become something where we do talk about WordPress as a tool, but we seem to talk about a lot more nowadays than just WordPress. We’re talking about a whole range of key touch points in agency life, in the life of a developer or a freelancer as well who is trying to build up a team of of the contractors around them which you can essentially, I guess, class as an agency as well. And we’re we’re touching on all of those.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
How can we make life easier? How can we educate people? How can we help people make more money? How can we help people avoid all of the mistakes that we have made over time? And that’s what this podcast has become about. And throughout this, it’s made me realize a little kind of there was a little part of me many years ago where I wanted to be able to help agencies operate better and more effectively. And Ankle Crown launched with that absolute kind of niche right down to let’s just take the development side of things and let’s make that less stressful. But with the birth of the podcast and kind of the the evolution that it’s gone, it’s kind of given me full circle. And I realized I I there are ways that I can help to take the stress out of agency life in general in in in in an agency’s business in how it operates. So we’ve built up this podcast. It’s been a phenomenal journey. And we are now over two years in to the WP Innovator podcast where a hundred and something episodes are actually now lose count.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And whenever I record an intro, I have to go and remind myself or ask Larissa what what number are we on now which is which is phenomenal. And we’ve grown this humongous network of people. There’s there’s the WP Innovator group. There’s nearly 1,400 members in that group. That’s designers, design agency owners, freelancers, contractors, you name it. There are a whole load of people in there apart from my mom. I don’t do not invite my mom. You know, that’s one place that she’s not there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s pretty cool. But we’ve got this huge community. We’ve got this podcast where we’re talking about all sorts of touch points of running an online business or of running a design business, of being successful in business, of avoiding pitfalls, and all of that good stuff. And it’s it’s kind of led me to a point. I went to a summit, and I’ve been thinking long and hard about the podcast. What do I do with the podcast? What is the next chapter of the WP innovator? And I had many ideas of what I thought it was, and I think I tried to unpack a few of those in episode 100 where I think I probably made a mess of trying to explain what was going on in my head. There’s so many things going on in my head. But I knew even at that point at episode 100, although, I wanna carry on the podcast.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So don’t worry. All of this talking is not me saying the podcast is about to end. No way. But I just wasn’t sure how to take the podcast in the direction that I felt I needed it to go in. Now I went to the Youpreneur Summit. You’ll remember Chris Ducker. We interviewed him in episode 70 something, I believe. And he was talking about the Youpreneur Summit, and we went along to that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And it was a phenomenal conference. Really helped me really cement some of the things that I was thinking. I was seeing people who were doing actively the ideas that I had and were being successful in those ideas and being able to help people, etcetera. But also I heard a lot of validation and a lot of kick up the backside statements that I needed. And the one biggest one was this. It was in order to build influence, you must be seen to sell. And I tell you what, that kicked me straight in the balls. I was like, woah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
In order to build influence, you must be seen to sell. So let me give you some background. As long as I operate the WP Innovator podcast as it is, then I’m limiting the amount of people that I can reach out to, that I can support. And I’m doing this whilst balancing the day to day operations of a business. The business is a full time business. I’m helping agencies all around the world in the realm of development and consultancy on their projects, winning business, and also keeping existing projects going, etcetera. I’m also trying to put some of my time not only to the podcast but to the the YouTube channel. And I’m realizing in order to build influence, in order to be able to finance helping more and more and more people around the world, I do need to do something very different.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Don’t panic before we carry on. This podcast is still going to be free. Okay? And if you’re a member of the WP Innovator Facebook group, that too is still going to be free. It’s still there. There is no change to us putting out regular free content and building up a free community of amazing WordPress people. But I do want to tell you about our plan. Our plan for 2018. It’s been a plan that’s been a long time in the making.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And finally, when I heard that phrase, in order to build influence, you need to be seen to sell, I realized that it was now time for 2018 to launch the idea that we’ve had for so long that we’ve just held on to. So let’s start first of all with the first part of this plan, and that is the name of this podcast. WP Innovator is absolutely a cool name, but by in its very nature, it doesn’t really represent what we’re about anymore. It represents just a portion of what we do. It represents one of the tools, one of the many, many tools in an agency or in a web developer’s life, but it doesn’t actually represent the bigger picture. So we are going through a massive rebrand. We are rebranding the podcast, and we are renaming it to, drum roll, please, the Agency Trailblazer podcast. I feel like I should pause for effect there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s it. The agency trailblazer podcast. And if you think about this, it’s not really that much of a of the leap. The dictionary would define a trailblazer as and there’s two two definitions here. A person who makes a new track through a wild country. Running an agency is like a wild country, believe you me. And there is a point where we look at what we’re doing and we’re thinking, what am I doing? It’s time to chart a new track. So there you go, trailblazer.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But, also, another definition is a person who is the first to do something, an innovator. See what I did there? So we’ve been able to move and take the logical next step. We’re still keeping our innovator heart. We are all innovators. We’re also recognizing what the podcast has been about all along, really, without realizing it, which is it’s been about making change in our business, charting a new track through the wild country of our business. Therefore, we are becoming the Agency Trailblazer podcast, and our listeners are Agency Trailblazers. That’s pretty cool. Now then, don’t worry.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
The name WP Innovator is still going to continue. The the brand will be there, and that will continue to represent our community. That is the WordPress branch of the agency Trailbrazer Blazer, can’t say that, brand. Trailblazer represents the one that innovates. Therefore, WP Innovator is a really good strong name to represent that amazing community. So like I said, there’s 1,400 people in there and that is continuously growing. It’s a really good community of people all focused around WordPress and agency life as well and web development life. So if you’re not a member of that group, you’re wondering what I’m talking about, again, head on over to wpinnovator.com/group.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And if you are a long time member, don’t panic. The name is here to stay. WP Innovator will be a sub brand of the agency Trailblazer brand. But there is more. If I haven’t said it before, I will say it again that we are on a mission to help agencies. We wanna remove the stress in their lives or at least reduce it as much as possible because probably removing stress is practically impossible. A lot of stress is actually caused by how you feel rather than the actual situation at the time. So maybe that’s a mindset shift as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But we’re also on a major on a mission to help agencies fall in love with their business again. Now I recorded a podcast with Paul Lacey, and we were talking about how we had agencies that we hated, that we didn’t like, and that we went right back to basics. And then, essentially, are relaunching. Paul’s actually going through a journey of relaunching his. I relaunched mine, and I was explaining to him that I look forward to Monday mornings and the weeks go too quickly for me. And although I do appreciate and love having time with my family, absolutely. I also miss the business when I’m when I’m away at weekends. I actually miss the business because I love doing what I do.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And we’re on a mission to help agencies fall in love. And to do this, this is our second announcement to to enable us to help more agencies around the world. We are launching a brand new paid community. And this is going to contain, number one, a very important thing called the agency reset track. This is a roadmap to resetting your agency and setting it up for success. We’re gonna be going right back to the very basics and evaluating why you run your agency. What is your vision? What is your mission? And giving you the tools to create an agency that you can absolutely fall in love in. We’re also gonna be filling this community over 2018 with lots of twenty to thirty minute no BS workshops covering essential subjects for agency growth from myself and also from key influencers around the world.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And we’re not just going to cover your strategy, etcetera. We’re also going to cover practical things like how to create a Facebook ad campaign. You know, it feels like rocket science. You know, all of those sorts of things, twenty to thirty minute actual actionable, no BS workshops that you can watch, you consume, and you have some action points at the end that you can go and take action from. We’re also launching within that community a forum that’s gonna be for accountability for growth reporting, masterminding, and more. Further on from masterminding, I will be hosting a mastermind call every single month that’ll be near the end of every month. And that’ll be a mastermind call with myself where you can submit your questions, and I’ll be sharing help, advice, and tips. And we’ll also have other key influencers from around the world joining us on some of those calls throughout the year.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
If I didn’t mention as well, those influencers will also be producing quite a lot of those workshops that you’ll have access to. To drop a few names in there, there will be Kim Doyle who’s involved. We’ve got Paul Lacey who is the up and coming podcast episode. We also have Walt Spence. We have Sarah Moore. And we have a lot of past guests who have said, yes. They would love to be involved within the community and where where we’re going to create this pool of agency specific workshops that you can enjoy. Following on from the mastermind calls that we’ll have once a month, we also have the opportunity for you to record a coaching call with me direct.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So if you are interested in getting a coaching call with me direct through the community and you are happy for that to form a podcast which will get you some lovely exposure, then please feel free as a part of that community to connect with me, and we will get you on one of those free coaching calls as part of your membership, which, like I said, will form a part of a podcast. We’re also going to be doing some live events next year, which is pretty darn cool. And you will get special discounts as part of that community. And, of course, there is gonna be so much more as soon as we’ve thought of it because this is an ever changing community. Now the aim is to enable us to help as many people as possible whilst adding even more value to the free content that we do. So right now, most of our time is consumed on major projects as an agency working with other agencies. And this is a one to one relationship. So this is where we can only help a very small group of agencies.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
The strategy, the idea behind this is really to help, build a platform that will finance us to help as many people as possible. So we’re gonna give people extra special attention inside of the paid community. And the finance that that will generate will enable us to create even more freely available content of a even higher quality which will continue to spread our message, essentially of hope for the stressed out agency owner. The group’s gonna be called the agency trailblazer community. And I wanted to tell everybody on the podcast and in the Facebook group and on the YouTube channels first because you’ve all been a part of the growth of this movement. You’ve all been a part of the evolution. You’ve all been a part of my own mindset changes. Now the doors of this community are gonna open on the January 1.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And we’re gonna launch that with an introductory price for the first two hundred members only, and then we’re gonna close the door for a few months. That’s so we can give those few members some extra special TLC and help build up a community and especially in the forums, build up a dynamic inside of the forums where we’re being accountable, where we’re doing growth reports, where we’re helping each other out, and just creating real value there for any new members that may wanna come in. So to do that, we’re gonna offer this at a low price for the initial trailblazers that want to join. The monthly price for the community is going to be $49. That’s $49 a month or $299 per year, which I think represents probably more than a 50% reduction if you were to go the year. And then once we hit the 200 mark, the doors will close. And I promise you, we are never going to offer those prices again. These are our founder prices to get people in to access the content that we’ve already created, but also to build up that community and start to get to know each other and start to create the dynamic that we we so want to create so that we can welcome other people into the community in the future.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So we will never go that low again. It will never be $49 again. It will never be $299 per year again. If you do join as on the January 1 with these first two hundred people, that price will never go up. That will be your price for life. $49 a month or $2.09 9 per year for life for as long as you wanna be a part of the community. Nothing grinds my gears more than seeing Internet marketers tell me that the price is gonna expire. And then the next week, I see the exact same price being offered.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We’re not gonna do that. I hate that tactic. I I I don’t believe in that sort of thing. So there you go. Anyway, I think I’ve labeled that point enough. Right. We’re thinking then after those first two hundred after about three to four months of giving TLC to everyone, we’re probably then gonna launch around the $99 per month or $9.09 9 per year. And we will still do special offers at some point maybe, on the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etcetera, where we’ll maybe go around the 60 something dollars or something, as a kind of a one year.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So it sets monthly for a year price or some sorts of special offers, but we’ll never be doing kind of a lock in, a fixed price again either. So today, as you’re listening to this, I’m not selling anything to you direct. I’m not asking you to go and buy into something right now. But what I would like you to do is go ahead and check out agencytrailblazer.com. That’s agencytrailblazer.com. The link will be in the show notes. And go and have a read about what you’re going to find inside of the community. And if you are interested in being a part of the agency trailblazer community, if you’re interested in becoming an agency trailblazer, then there is a button right at the bottom where you can get on the list.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That will get you on our announcement list where up until January, we’ll be releasing some information about, launch day and about how you can get involved. And of course, on launch day, you’ll get an email notifying you that the doors are open if you want to get in. So if you don’t wanna miss out, if you wanna be one of the first two hundred people to be a part of the agency trailblazer community, if you wanna build an agency that you can love again, if you wanna take the stress out of agency life, if you want to be a part of a community that’s gonna help keep you accountable and also help support you, then please head on over to agencytrailblazer.com and get on that list. Now let me caveat all of this with if you don’t want to join, if this is not for you, that is absolutely fine. You are already a very valuable member of the WP Innovative community whether that is within the group or whether is that is just you listening to this show and supporting this show in that way. You are a part of this community already. If you’re not in the WP Innovator group, we are gonna continue to do that for free and put lots of, time and effort and energy into keeping that group a great and vibrant place. So go ahead and be a part of that for free forever.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That is fine by us. If, however, you are a stressed out agency owner and you do feel there would be value, then also feel free to join the agency trailblazer community. It’s a part of our business model that helps fund what we do. It’s gonna allow us therefore to help those who wanna shift an agency life and change what they’re doing, but it’s also gonna allow us to support people who are not interested in joining the agency trailblazer community as well because our mission is to help as many people as possible. So through the funding that that community will bring into our business, like I said earlier, we’re gonna be able to create and focus on creating more and more content. So join the WP Innovator group that’s free and feedback to me. Let us know what subjects you wanna cover, for the future for the for 2018. What should we be focused on for you that’s gonna help you in your freelance business or in your agency business or just in life in general.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Alright. So one more thing to mention, the agency reset track which is going to be a course over several months. The first month is the back to basics which is all scheduled in for January. That actual entire series, which is over about five months, I think, is actually the basis as well of a book that I’ve been writing. And that’s working title at the moment is the agency reset track, but we’re totally gonna change that for something way sexier at some point. That book will therefore be available at the near the end of twenty eighteen. Everything willing editing and all of that sort of good stuff as well. So do keep your eye out for that book.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Again, if you’re not interested in being a part of the community, there is always the book at the very end of the year if you’re interested in reading that. Alright. So there you go, Innovators. That is everything I have to tell you about our plans for upcoming 2018. Like I said, the podcast is gonna be around. I’m gonna have to get used to calling it the agency Trailblazer Podcast. You’re probably gonna have to get used to going to a instead of w in your podcast list, but that’s the only major change there. There is tons of great exciting content due over the next few months, where we’ve got some great guests lined up and we’ve got some amazing subjects lined up as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And the community contributors inside of agency Trailblazer will also be contributing to the free information and the free content that we’ll also be pushing out to you, our lovely listeners on, what should we call this? Is this now the still the WP Pitt Innovator podcast because you didn’t know the name change before we changed the name. I don’t know. Anyway, hey, agency Trailblazers. Thank you for listening. We’re gonna head out. But before we do, I just, want you to note that you’re gonna see the branding changing. So you’re gonna start to see you probably already see the new art, for the cover that may or may not have downloaded to your iPhone or whatever device you have already. You’ll probably have noticed name changes are starting to happen in different places.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
For all of the old episodes, we’re still gonna keep the WP Innovator intros. We are recording a a new intro for the new podcast. So that should be, that should be fun and we’re gonna try and play with that and maybe try and get something right over the next few weeks and months. So we’ll probably experiment with a few different ideas. But just just be aware that there are gonna be a few changes and probably the website is going to change as well. We are considering moving the podcast episodes out of Angled Crown and actually onto the main trailblazer website as well. So that might happen there. And if we do anything like that, don’t worry.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We’ll make sure we get all our three o ones done so that if you got all links bookmark, you can still get back to that. But that’s what’s gonna be happening. That’s the practical stuff that’s gonna be happening over the next few weeks and months. So have an awesome evening, an awesome morning, or or whatever time of day it is. And, let me just leave you with this thought. It is now time to fall in love again.
