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Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer podcast. This is your host, Lee. On today’s show, we’re going to share with you something really, really weird that happened. We were looking through our recording settings, and we found something that can only be described as from another dimension. I’m not going to spoil it. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the weirdness. Two, two, one, two. This is a soundcheck. Hello. Testing. All righty. So the date is the 26th sixth of November 2012, and we’re doing a test. This is an internal test. Carfix managed to hook us up with a special algorithm which we’re going to be testing out. This should allow us to give Lee a call in the future of 2018. To be frank, we’re all pretty stressed out on projects at the moment. Things seem to be going over time. We’re struggling with pricing. And I’m also floating with the idea of launching a podcast. There’s just so much that we want to do. And I think we just need some help where we just can’t get everything together. We can’t seem to get out of the rut. We’re going to try and get Lee on the line and just ask him some of these growing pain problems that I think we’re having.
Lee:
Should be a good exercise, guys. Okay, so let’s give this a try.
Lee:
Hello, Lee speaking.
Lee:
Hi, Lee. Thank you so much for agreeing to talk with us. We really, really need to pick your brain, mate.
Lee:
Sure. Hey, no problem. Really excited to be here, Lee. It is wonderful to shoot the breeze and go down memory lane with you, buddy.
Lee:
Okay, so the first question is, I’ve just got started. I’ve launched this new Agency for Agencies. We’re doing WordPress development for designers, which allows them to do what they do best and they love best, which is design whilst we do what we really love. And that is building WordPress themes from the designs we’ve been given. So really taking that stress out of their lives. And I’m really excited. I’m really passionate. I’ve done this for the agency I was a part of for many years, converting them from a design to a digital agency. So that was an amazing experience. And it’s something that I want to carry on doing. But the big problem I have is charging. I’m not really sure what I should be charging and how I can get enough money in. Full disclosure, mate, I’ve charged £150 now for two different WordPress themes for two different designers because I was desperate to get started and to at least get a couple of websites under my belt. And 150 is just too low. There’s too much work involved in building a website. Now, These two clients obviously love me because that was super cheap and we’ve done an amazing job, but I can’t continue to charge £150.
Lee:
But I’ve also lost a bit of confidence because I’ve gone in so low. I’m not really sure what to do next, how to get more business in, where to go for that business, and even how or what to charge anymore. I think I’ve knocked my confidence by not establishing a proper pricing structure right from the get-go. So what would your advice be?
Lee:
Okay, this is a great question. And first of all, just rest assured that it’s absolutely fine that you did this. This is something I think many other web developers have done as well. When they’re getting started, they don’t know what to charge, and they potentially will take the next job that appears for some experience. There’s really no shame in doing that. And it’s probably something I think many of us have to go through because it really helps teach us the value or the true value of the work that we have to offer. So you can feel better about yourself. Just put those down to learning experiences. It’s absolutely fine. You did that, and now you can move on from that and say, Okay, I now have following price structure. So what I would recommend you do, if you’re especially lacking in confidence, is whatever the price you have been charging, instantly quadruple that and work out what that figure is. Now, what I’d also recommend is that you look at the costs that you have. So even if you were to quadruple, sorry, £150, is that even enough for the amount of money that you will need to survive on?
Lee:
So this is where you’re actually going to pick up the confidence. Now, the process I went through was to look at how much all of my expenses were. So that was my expenses to live. And within that budget, I also included expenses for being able to go out, so being able to put some money in savings towards a holiday, being able to take my family out for meals, et cetera, being able to do some form of travel as well. I created a monthly budget. I also then worked out what my budget was for the business itself as well. So what were my costs, the accountancy, the software, the hosting, the software tools that I’m using, both online, offline, et cetera, and worked out all of those costs as well. Then what I did was started to understand that I can’t actually sell every single hour that I have available. So I had to start to work out how many hours did I reasonably think I could work if I was going to base things on billable hours, and therefore, what would my average hourly rate need to be? I would calculate that, therefore, on on, say, 40 to about 50% of the available hours.
Lee:
And that will give you essentially a rough hourly rate that you can use to start working out how much time and how much you should be charging, at least for these next few projects, as you learn to understand how to get the right information from the client to be able to charge the right price. For example, on your next project, once you’ve worked out this hourly rate, consider then how long is your next project roughly going to take you? Is this going to take you approximately eight hours for the first page plus X amount of hours for the next few pages? You can total that up with your hourly rate and see how much that comes to. That could potentially be your next price. Now, I’d always recommend as well you pop on top of that a bit of extra charge, say 30% as well, because that’s going to cover any scope creep or misunderstandings that you might have as To wrap that up, you obviously need to be increasing your prices. The only way you’re going to start to understand how much you should be charging is knowing your data, knowing what your finances currently are, what you’re currently spending, what you need to be earning to be a profitable business and to have a good life.
Lee:
Make that your hourly rate. It doesn’t have to be something you publish to clients, but it’s something that you can then use internally to make sure that you are at least covering the hours that you are working and some. So that would be your first stage to help you build up the confidence. Where to go for that? I would recommend you do take a look at places like People Per Hour because you are going after agencies. There are quite a few agencies on there. So go and have a look at people per hour and bid on some of those projects with the new rate in mind because you’ll more than likely win some relationships there. But also look at networking. Go out to local networking. You’ve got a very clear message to what you do, which is great. You’ve got your niche. So go out networking and explain to people that you would love introductions to designers or design agencies because that’s where you’re going to start to build up relationships as well.
Lee:
That’s a great answer. Thanks so much. Now, I did do one project where I did what you’re saying. I don’t think it was quite exact. I think I guessed my hourly rate and added a few things up. And I was able to charge £1,000 for a project That felt like a fluke. And I got to admit, I feel like I’ve really screwed myself over on this project because I thought it was only going to be a couple of weeks of work. I thought I was very clear that I was installing the plugins. I wasn’t doing any extra to them. And then I was building a design around it. But the project’s now dragged on for two months. The client keeps coming back saying, why doesn’t this happen? Why doesn’t this happen? We expected this feature, etc. And I’ve only been able to build £500. I I don’t know if I’m ever going to get the rest because I feel like I’m just working and working and working for that money. And I don’t know, this has definitely been something else that’s really knocking my confidence. Yes, I think I get the process you’re talking about with regards to making sure that I’m covering my time and that.
Lee:
But this is an example of where I’m not covering my time. I thought I was, and this has just got completely out of hand.
Lee:
Okay, so it’s really, really good that you did go through that process calculating, but I would encourage you to really try to nail down that hourly rate and make it more reasonable, especially working out how many hours do you reasonably think that you can sell per week, as opposed to trying to just sell every hour of every day because that’s going to be impossible. Now, with regards to what’s happened, this is a really common issue that people will experience in the first couple of… Well, first few months to maybe a couple of years, and it’s not being able to nail down the brief and set people’s expectations well enough. I remember doing this. I got very excited about the fact that I could charge more money than I’d normally charged, and I would think that I understood what the client wanted, and I’d think that I’d explained it correctly and the client understood, et cetera. But things would very rapidly fall apart, and it was very clear that their expectation was like a multimillion pound system versus my expectation. So what you need to be really, really clear about is the briefing process Process. There’s two layers to briefing.
Lee:
The first layer is just understanding what the client’s problems are and then being able to verbalise that in a clean and simple way. We would call that a reverse brief. We’ll say to the client, Thank you for your brief. We think you need a WU commerce add on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah the WordPress plugins, etc. But also bear in mind that if that agency is of a design background with very minimal WordPress experience, then you can’t make the assumptions that they understand what plugins do. So make sure when you’re reverse briefing things, that you’re very clear that you’re saying that we are using the existing functionality of XYZ plugin that will allow you to solve XYZ problem. And you can even put a link to the particular page or a demonstration video of that plugin in action so that you’re being very, very clear. That would be your reverse brief. Get your reverse brief signed off. If there is budget for it, what I would highly recommend is that you go through some form of discovery process with the client where you review everything together on the telephone or physically, and then write down some more detailed notes explaining what it is that you’re going to be providing before you get into the code, because that’s going to allow you to put a halt to any expectations where they may say, Well, where’s the video upload feature?
Lee:
You can then say, Well, in the reverse brief, we’ve not discussed that. The plugin in particular doesn’t support video uploading. So can we unpack this new problem that you’ve explained to me before we’ve even started developing, which is great. Let’s then work out, can we accommodate that? Can you accommodate that with your budget as well? Because it’s obviously you’re going to be doing extra work. They’re going to have to pay extra. If they can’t, at least you’ve been able to draw the line at that point, as opposed to being held ransom for expectations they had that they didn’t necessarily communicate, that they thought they’d communicated or that they thought that you had understood. Just the most important thing is getting things down on paper, not just relying on a quote, not just relying that the client will understand what you mean either through a verbal conversation or through some basic notes, but get that reverse brief down, be as clear as you can, speak in the language that they’re used to, and make sure that you can both invest some time to get together to make sure you’ve got that defined list of exactly what this is going to do, what you’re going to use to do it, so that if anything comes up after that document has been created together, halfway through the development, they ask for a specific feature, you can refer back to that document and say, Sorry, guys, that is not on this document.
Lee:
That’s not something that we agreed. You are in a better position, therefore, to get a change request control where they would give you some extra money for the extra development required, or that they would just have to agree to complete this project first and then investigate new features later. So highly, highly recommended. Get things down on paper in a more detailed way as opposed to maybe just a few notes and a few links.
Lee:
Okay, that’s great. It makes me think of a project that we’ve had recently where, thankfully, the client was very technical, understood everything. So we already knew what we were building. They understood what we were doing. We did it. They were very happy. But they’ve since asked for lots of extra changes, they’re happy to pay for those, which is great. But there’s two issues with that. First of all, it takes quite a bit of time to work on these small changes here or there, but also the code base is growing and the product is no longer doing what it was originally meant to do. It’s almost turning into a completely new project. And we’re getting a bit stressed with it. We don’t really understand what direction the client is going in. We feel like we’ve just lost control and we’re just going to continue to do little bits and pieces here or there on this project forever. I’m not really sure what to do with this one.
Lee:
Okay, so when you’re in a situation like this, I’d probably recommend that you just bring development to a halt and actually get a meeting with your client to discuss the project as a whole. What you can do is you can do a review of the overall project to date, celebrating all the positives and all the great things that have happened with the project, but also then just ask if we can really revisit what is meant to be happening, what is the desired outcome? What should people be doing? Have we achieved all of that? And then reviewing all of the extra add-ons the client has asked for. Are these relevant to what the client is trying to achieve? Why has the client started to ask for these things, et cetera? You can also then review any further requests that they’ve given you because what tends to happen is both you and the client forget what the original project was all about. People can get really into features. Somebody might give them a bit of feedback, Hey, it would be great if it did this. Rather than thinking, Will that benefit everyone? Will that benefit our users, et cetera, they just get excited by the shiny new object and they start to ask you for it and they’re happy to pay for it.
Lee:
That’s all great. But you can create a beast If you’re not careful, the code can get out of control. This can just become a monster of features and extra support that you just don’t need. Draw a halt, have a conversation with the client and ask them, Well, is the system already achieving what it needs to achieve? Can we go through some process from this point onwards for every single change request to make sure that that is on mission, that that change request is something that that people need, that people will use, and it’s not just a nice to have? Also, if the code has got a little bit messy or out of control because it can turn into spaghetti code when you’re overwriting things that did exist, you probably want to request some time to do a thorough code review to go through everything that you have done, make sure you update comments, etc, whilst everything’s still fresh so that you’re not coming back to this in maybe a year’s time trying to work out what you did. Again, that should be a paid exercise with the client, but this is certainly something you’re going to need nip in the bud and make sure that the client is on track, on message, and that only changes are coming in will be ones that they have evidenced and believe will help them continue to achieve whatever it is they need to achieve.
Lee:
Okay, that makes perfect sense. I was on the verge of booking a meeting with them anyway for a sanity check, so we’ll definitely do that. Okay, we’re coming up to Christmas. It’s not long away, and we’ve had some work that we’ve been doing, of which the client is now saying they need it finished by Christmas. And I got to admit, I am freaking out. This project started back in February, and it should, like I said earlier, should have just been a few weeks. We’ve been waiting and waiting on information from the client, et cetera, and they’ve only just given us everything else they need and all the assets for the final designs. And we’ve got other projects on right now. I’m really worried, how are we going to get all of this work done and not let the client down by Christmas? I don’t want to be working on Christmas Eve. This is not going to go down well with my family. I don’t want to let the client down either. And I’m really worried. I feel like I need to have a conversation with the client, but I don’t know how to approach that conversation or what to do.
Lee:
What would you advise I do with this client? And also what would you advise I do to avoid this issue in the future? Because that’s a common problem for me is getting the assets that we need, the design files, the briefs, all those sorts of things from the client. And that can really delay projects and things will then all mesh together and it can be quite frustrating.
Lee:
Okay, this is another situation you’re going to need to have a conversation with the client to set their expectations. So what I would recommend you do is, first of all, make a timeline of what’s happened so far. You said this project started earlier on in the year. So go ahead and look at your emails, look at what you requested, et cetera, and then put down the dates of when you received things because that’s going to be It’s very helpful for your discussion. What you can then do is get on the phone with the client. It’s always best on phone or in person, and just have a conversation explaining to them that to achieve their date of Christmas is going to be extremely difficult for you, especially given that you actually needed those assets back whenever it was you requested them. If you’ve got that email chain of when you requested them and what their response was and how long it took them to get back to you, et cetera, you can use that as part of your reasoning for the delay. I’m really sorry, you’ve only just given us this a month and a half before Christmas.
Lee:
We have other projects and commitments on as well. It’s going to be very difficult to achieve this by Christmas, so please can we agree a specific date in January Worst case, what can we agree will be live for Christmas if you at least need something online? Obviously, you don’t want to be accusatory, I can never say that word, to your client, but at least lay it out how it is. Explain how the project should have flowed, explain how some of their actions have caused the delay, and then hopefully between you both, you can work out a compromise that will work for both. But I would definitely protect your Christmas because your family are not going to thank you if you’re not available. Neither are your team. If you’re working with anyone, you definitely need to take Christmas off. Nothing’s worth taking some time off with the family. You can’t let that slide. Don’t work Christmas. Definitely don’t work Christmas. Anyway, what can you do to avoid that? Well, it’s the same process, but you can set all this up in advance. What we do nowadays is we’ve got a project, we’ll use Asana and we’ll use Instagant so that we can create a Gantt chart.
Lee:
And that will allow us to put in specific tasks that are timed. They have a particular date and an owner. If we need all of the signed off designs by a particular date, then we will tell the client, You’re responsible for providing us the designs on this date. We will then spend two, three, four, however many weeks doing the development. As you can see, that will start on this date and we’ll end on this date. But that’s reliant on you providing those designs. When you’re then chasing the client for the designs before their due date, you can explain to them visually that if they were to provide you those designs late and with other project commitments and with holidays that your staff may have, you might not even be able to deliver their project and until two months later than the agreed go-live date. So it’s really, really important client that you provide us with those designs on the date that we’ve all agreed. So it’s something that really, really helps keep clients on time. And if they then don’t deliver and they are late, they at least understand that they are the reason why their live date may have to be pushed by several weeks, and you’ve been clearly communicating the whole time.
Lee:
I would recommend from now on, create a timeline, visit that timeline visit that timeline regularly. Make sure you keep on top of people who owe particular work or particular assets that you need to be able to proceed with the project. If there are any changes, make sure that you update that timeline and you communicate that with the client. Sorry, that you communicate that timeline with the client as well at all times so that everybody is on the same page.
Lee:
Okay, that’s really good advice. I will definitely take a look at the history and I’ll have that conversation with the client. And you’re totally right. Working at Christmas will not go down well with the family or with myself. Now, from all of this, from all of this extra pressure, it’s made me realise that I am struggling a little bit with my existing team and also trying to find new people to get involved. I’ve hired a couple of freelancers and thrown some work at them because I need them to do it, and they just let me down all the time. I’m either the work is subpar and awful and I pretty much have to start again, or they just disappear and it’s really frustrating. Also, one of my existing developers, he does a good job. He’s a great guy, love him to pieces, but he doesn’t check his work, which means I’m checking the work. That just adds loads and loads of extra time. I guess my question is, how do I help improve my existing team? Because I don’t just want to kick people out of the door. And equally, how do I find good people to join my team on contract basis so that I can scale when I get busier?
Lee:
Absolutely. It’s really important that you do work with people that you love and get on with that can be friends as well as colleagues. So the guy sounds like someone you want to keep hold of. It sounds like somebody that you can just start to train. I would say invest time, set some goals, and say, Okay, within three months, we’re going to have achieved these goals. Within six months, we’re going to have achieved with these goals. You can even align that maybe with an increase in the hourly rate or the monthly salary, et cetera. You might also want to establish a testing process and get that developer or all of your developers involved in establishing what that testing process is. So they feel like they’ve been invested in that. We’ve also got coding standards that we developed with all of the developers in our team, and we agreed how we lay out our code, et cetera. We got everybody involved so that there was that feeling of ownership of those guidelines. Everybody felt like they contributed, and everybody, therefore, works with extra pride because their coding and testing in the way that we’ve all agreed is going to be the best practise.
Lee:
We also revisit that regularly. So get him involved in that testing cycle. Give him some things that he can achieve and work towards. Now, with regards to trying new freelancers, the worst thing you can possibly do is try a new freelancer when you are absolutely stressed to the max working on too much, because what you’re going to do is you’re just going to give them a half-hearted brief, throw something at them, and hope and pray that they’re going to give you some good work back. And that’s the worst thing you can possibly do because you’ve probably given them a terrible brief. You’ve probably set your expectations on them way too high, asking them to do something urgently that probably should done over several days as opposed to 24 hours. I think you’re actually setting up people to fail as opposed to building a relationship with new developers, new freelancers, slowly. So what I would recommend you do from this point onwards is find some small tasks that you need some help with with a developer, something that’s easily achievable, something that’s not time sensitive that you can clearly brief, and start to develop that relationship with the freelancer on those sorts of things, and then work your way up onto the bigger projects and see how that goes.
Lee:
It’s much lower risk to do it on things that aren’t urgent, that if don’t work out, you can always do them, etc. And then slowly onboard them over a few months, and then you can give them more and more responsibility.
Lee:
That’s fantastic. You’ve given me some really practical advice that I can use with my growing agency. It appears to me that I need to make sure that I get better with my administration, with my note taking and make sure that I’m setting people’s expectations and that I’m planning my own time better. So thank you very much. We’re definitely going to be implementing that. And I’d like to now just pick your brain briefly before we wrap up with regards to developing a wider brand. So setting myself out there as an authority or as a thought leader. And I got to be honest with you, mate, I don’t feel like an authority. I feel like I’m failing a lot. And I’m Having to ask you all these things, these are things I’m quite embarrassed about, admitting that I’ve struggled with these things in the past. I know that growing a personal brand by, say, having a podcast or a YouTube channel is really good to market your business, but I frankly feel like a fraud. And equally, I don’t even know if I’ve got enough time to start to do stuff like this. I’m thinking of the podcast, but I’m just not 100 % sure.
Lee:
What would your advice be?
Lee:
Oh, absolutely. Growing a personal brand has been completely life-changing for the business. We’re looking back from 2018. It’s been a phenomenal journey. We are over 180 episodes. We’ve got a Facebook group with well over 2,100 people in there, which is phenomenal. We’re getting thousands of downloads every single month. We’ve made loads of amazing friends. It’s the best thing I ever did. I highly recommend that you do step up and launch a podcast. Now, just to help you with that process, first of all, understand that by putting yourself out there, you’re not necessarily saying, Hey, I know everything. Look at me. What you are doing, though, is stepping up and empowering people with the information that you do already know because there are going to be people out there who are already making the mistakes you’ve made and learned from, so they can learn from you. You already know something that’s of value to them. But equally, you can start to bring people to the table that are not only going to help your listeners, but also help you. I would recommend you go for some interview format podcast, get people in who are experts in their fields, and ask them the questions that you have, but equally, grow a community around the podcast as well.
Lee:
Set up a Facebook group, for example, and get people in there so that you can learn from what the struggles of your community are as well, and you can then ask those questions as well of the experts. I really, really highly recommend it. If we fast forward here in 2018, that’s how we get our leads. I do public speaking now as well, which is awesome. I’ve been on many other people’s podcasts, and I’m friends with some fantastic influencers from around the world, All because I stepped up and I launched this podcast. You’ve got the niche for it. You’ve got the audience. I would highly recommend you go for it. With regards to getting started, I’d probably recommend you launch with at least three to six podcasts already recorded, and then that way you can schedule them all to automatically come out every single week. That’s now going to give you six weeks to get the next six recorded, edited, and also then scheduled. So you’re always ahead of your content. What I do is I’ll record podcast episodes on particular days, and that allows me to batch those up, and I’m always ahead of the game with regards to content.
Lee:
I had to take some time off recently, and it was great because we already had all of those episodes in the can that could automatically be published at the same day every single week. I’d also recommend, if you’re going to do this podcast, that you show up when you say you’re going to show up every single week. Be consistent. So batching is the best way to keep consistent because if you’re trying to do last minute episodes in a panic, you’re not going to be able to put out the best quality that you would normally put out. So batch those episodes and also perhaps be accountable to get launched So put out there on social media in the groups that you’re already a part of that you are going to launch a podcast, do a countdown, create a landing page, and tell people when it’s going to be live so that that will hold you accountable in a visible way to your friends, to your family, to the people in the communities that you’re already a part of. So they’re expecting you to be showing up on that particular date. Mate, I would highly recommend you go for it.
Lee:
Lee, this has been fantastic. It’s actually been really weird talking to myself. Unfortunately, we’ve run out of time. We didn’t put enough coins in the telephone metre, so we’re going to get disconnected in a minute. So thank you. Have a wonderful rest of the 2018. And Lee, I will see you in six years.
Lee:
Lee, not a problem. If I could recommend you don’t wait another two years to launch the podcast, that would be great. Take care.
