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 the WP Innovator podcast. This is your hosts, Lee and Larissa. Was Larissa, not me, doing an impression of her, of her? Anyway, what we wanted to do today was a bit of an experiment. Essentially, people email in, they’re asking questions about how we got started, want to know more about me as well, which is kind of nice. So I figured what we would do is have Larissa interview me using the standard questions that I normally ask our wonderful guests. So what she’s going to do is she’s going to kick me off the host’s chair, not too hard, I hope, and she’s going to ask me those standard questions.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So bear in mind, I’m sure you’ve heard more recent podcasts. We don’t necessarily stick to those standard questions because people come from many different backgrounds, and we end up coming up with random questions because we want to know more and unpack more about something they said. But these are the normal kind of everyday questions that we’ll fall back to when we just want to instigate deeper conversations, etc. So I’m gonna shut up and I’m gonna hand over to our host, Larissa, who may or may not freeze up totally right now. I don’t know. But the beauty of technology means we can edit it out.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So, Lee from Lee Jackson Dev, let’s start with a question, shall we? Okay, first question. Tell us a bit about yourself and your business.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Okay. My name is Lee Jackson. I run a small company called Lee Jackson Dev, and we started about three years ago. So the idea was born out of all the work I do in design agencies or have done in design agencies over the years, which is code. Code my little hiney off from amazing designs that designers create. So I can do a little bit of design. But designers, they’re freaking brilliant. And I get to do what I love best, which is the code.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
The idea, therefore, was create Lee Jackson Dev so that we can convert the designs that amazing designers do into amazing WordPress themes. Makes them look good, and it allows me to sit here in Wellingborough with you being a geek and with Karthik obviously over in India being geeks together creating WordPress themes. So the idea was we created a business on a niche, which is WordPress themes for designers or design agencies. So that’s how this whole thing started. My background is essentially coding, Since I was 8 years old on the old spectrums, using BASIC and all sorts of other cool things. I even remember computers that had tapes. And my first website was built probably the very same year that one of our employees at Lee Jackson Dev was born. I can’t imagine who that was though, Larissa, but hopefully that gives you some quick insight as to what the vision of the company was all about and who I am as a person, which is basically a closet geek.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
The only thing I don’t do is have long hair because I lost it and I don’t wear an Iron Maiden T shirt all the time or live with my parents. And if I’ve just described someone listening here, that was not on purpose.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That was awesome, Lee. Thanks for that. Okay, let’s get on to the proper questions now, shall we? So, as a WordPress developer, what has been the biggest challenge to your business?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That is such a great question and actually I’m not prepared for it. Normally I ask this of other people and I’ve never really thought about things for myself. The the biggest challenge has been finding the right people for the right jobs. So I will often or have in the past got projects where I’ve needed to put out some really good HTML that’s responsive and then I’ve got too much work on. It was just me originally. How do I find someone to help me? So I was then going and finding different freelancers from around the world. Trying to give them a brief obviously was difficult and also then getting good results back that I could then give to my clients was really, really hard. So I found in the first year, year and a half, I really struggled to be able to cope with the growth of demand in work.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I could do one or two projects really well on my own, but unless I was going to charge a fortune, it was going to be very hard to grow the business without getting other work in. So I thought I needed to find freelancers on the Internet and try and brief them in on what they needed to do. But obviously the quality I was getting was very, very poor. And my briefing was probably partly to do with that. I probably say significantly to do with that because I was always in a rush, I was always busy, I was always trying to just throw everything at them, hoping they would read everything, know what they were meant to do, and then I’d get angry when they didn’t deliver it. So that was definitely in the early days, first year and a half. A big struggle for the business was trying to take on more work and find the right people to Help me deliver and help the company grow. Good question.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I feel like crying now. This is like therapy. I never thought about it until now. This is literally like therapy. I do wonder whether sometimes guests on the podcast, they like come on and then afterwards they just like sit and weep because it’s been like they’ve had a full. Yeah, yeah. It’s like Lee the shrink just unpacked all these questions from them. Like, maybe they’ll go and reunite with a long lost relative or something afterwards.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I don’t know. That would be amazing, wouldn’t it? So if you’ve, if you’re a past guest and you’ve ever reunited with a long lost relative as a result of the WP Innovator podcast, I can’t even speak now. So emotional. Then please do get in touch. We would love to share your story. Okay, I’m gonna pass you back on.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Why, thank you. Well, let’s get on to the next question before you go off subject. So what one thing, idea or product has been a complete game changer for your business?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So it’s only now in hindsight that I realize that this is a difficult question to answer because there are a whole heap of things, kind of many shifting points over the last few years that have, have resulted in big changes to the business. I guess the biggest change though, although the kind of eureka moment that I was very early on on pricing and the realization that my time is not the value that the client should be charged and I’ll. I think I need to reword that. The idea is, is if something takes me two hours, that is not what the client gets charged because the client is paying me to do something that they cannot do, which will Potentially take them 20, 30, 40, 50 hours a year, I don’t know, to be able to learn how to do. And they need whatever that thing that might take two hours to be done quickly, efficiently, with the benefit of all of my years of expertise and experience, that therefore has a value that is worth way more than X pounds or dollars per hour. And that was something that I really found hard to get my head around and kept finding myself slipping into charging for the amount of time I spent on things rather than charging for actually, you want something that is worth a lot, it’s gonna take, it’s gonna cost you a lot anywhere else to try and build this yourself. So here is a reasonable price. And I’m not talking about robbing people blind, but what I am saying is, you know, if you’re going to do something that uses the benefit of your years of experience, bearing in mind you cannot physically sell every single hour in the day to be able to keep a business going, then you do have to charge more than the two hours it takes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So here’s an example. We’ve got something that takes two hours in an eight hour day. If I’ve got no other projects for the rest of that day, you’ve got those six hours you need to then try and sell to somebody else. And it just becomes a business model where you are almost pimping yourself out for any and every single piece of tiny, scrappy work you can get. Obviously, two hours is probably a bad example, but I’m just trying to point out that even if you can do something in two hours, the value of whatever it is you’ve just done is more, way more than two hours. You’ve got all of those years of experience, you know how to do it quickly and to do it well. And you know that the client is going get humongous benefit out of whatever that activity was. So it’s the same with a web build project.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
If a web build project is going to take you a week, don’t charge a week’s worth of work. There is so much more that goes into that. There’s gonna be reviews, there’s gonna be QA, where the client’s gonna want to change things anyway, so you’re gonna need to budget for that. But also, frankly, there is the fact that you know what you’re doing, you are the expert and they are paying for your expertise. So that was like the biggest idea, the biggest concept that I really struggled for the first year and a half to get my head around. And sometimes I still even find myself apologizing for our rates because I’m thinking, oh, wow, this seems expensive, maybe I should reduce. But then I recognized that, no, again, I can’t sell every hour in every single day. I’ve got staff to pay, I’ve got rent to pay.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You know, we need to charge based on value. So that kind of feels like a big lecture now. But hey, that, that’s the biggest thing for us. There’s loads of other things. I mean, getting around trying to hire the right people, that was huge. That was really hard trying to find out. Kissed a few frogs in freelancers before I found people that we could really work with. So that was obviously another huge thing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
There was also things like trying to learn how to run a business as well. Just being a guy who is a coder and then, crap, I suddenly I’m in charge of sales, process, marketing. I’m in charge of administration and accounts. It’s like all these departments in one. You know, all of those are massive challenges. But I think if you can nail the idea of pricing and getting the right price point and pricing based on value, then you free up time to be able to do all the other stuff or even better, outsource all the other stuff, especially your accounting, because that is one of the most boring things I know of, having just spent two hours over the last two days filling in a big spreadsheet for a bookkeeper because my own previous organization was abysmal. And I apologize to him right now. So there you go.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
This is so therapeutic. You know, we should maybe do this quite regularly, like come up with some other deep questions. Maybe we could get some Questions on the WP Innovator Facebook group on Lee JacksonDev.com group, which will redirect you there as a private group and get people to ask questions that we could then do in the future. So they could ask either me or you questions like what’s it like to work with Lee? Or something like that, which you would answer. And obviously I would write the script about how awesome it is to work with me. And if we get them, then maybe we could do some of these in the future. That would be freaking awesome. All right, I’m going to shut up now because Larissa has fallen asleep.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m going to wake her up and then she’s going to ask the next question.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And we’re back. Just kidding. Okay, let’s hit you up with another question, shall we? I’m not gonna hit ya. Right. So what WordPress plugin would you recommend? Recommend? Recommend to the community.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
What WordPress plugin would I recommend? Oh my. Gideon. Well, there’s gonna be two because nobody can think of just one. Frankly, there are probably 20 or 30 our top 10 you can find on Leejacksondev.com secret list. So there’s a plug, but I’m going to share two of them from that secret list so that you don’t have to go there. And these are my, my two most favorite. The first favorite is Beaver Builder. Obviously you can find that on leejacksondev.com forward/beaver builder and with Beaver Builder.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
For those who listen, you know what it is. For those who’ve never heard of it, it’s amazing. Visual builder for WordPress allows you to lay out gorgeous looking pages. The reason we love it though in our agency, or I love it especially, is because we can create our own modules for it. And that is absolutely phenomenal. It’s so easy. Me, Larissa and Karthik are regularly, almost on a daily basis, making new modules for our clients so that they can drag those into their page. And the reason for that is we want to keep our clients on brand.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We get given designs from design agencies. We want those design elements, those blocks, to be fully editable, to be able to be dragged into a page but still look like how the designer did it, how they envisaged it, and to keep it on brand. So that is why we love Beaver Builder. And then the other one I don’t talk about enough really is Formidable Forms. And we’ve got a Formidable Forms Pro license unlimited forever, I think. Don’t know how we bagged that, but hey, I’m pretty happy about that. And Formidable Forms is. It’s just phenomenal.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s. If you imagine Gravity Forms, it’s very similar to Gravity Forms. It’s much more cost effective for the developer license versus Gravity Forms, I think, because that’s quite expensive. The idea though is you can create visual forms, but you can do so much more as well. There’s integration with Zapier, so already you can then integrate with things like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics or whatever, Zapier support. So that’s freaking awesome. But also the actual conditionality that’s available in there, there’s calculations available in there. So for example, we just created a quote today, in fact, where we have a whole lot of checkboxes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You can select a quantity and then we just do a really simple almost Excel style formula at the end of the form, which then adds everything up. And it makes the math really easy, it makes creating complicated forms really easy, just like doing simple Excel functions, etc. And it’s also got incredible control over the layout as well. So you can rearrange it into columns, you can have multiple page forms. And the add ons are phenomenal as well because you can also do things like form to post, so you can push a form’s details into a post type, which is amazing. But also you can do things like create your own registration forms or your own user login forms. I mean, basically if you imagine it, you can do it with Formidable Forms. Absolutely love it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And just as an afterthought, obviously advanced custom fields is up there as well. Less so nowadays with Beaver Builder, but still ACF is great for things like options or creating custom fields on post types, so it’s still necessary in our toolkit, but certainly its importance has waned a little bit. Since Beaver Builder came on the scene, I can’t remember what episode number Beaver Builder is, but if you just go on to leejacksondev.com and and type in Beaver Builder in the search bar, you will find where I interviewed the guys from Beaver Builder. Absolutely freaking awesome podcast that was. If I say so myself, I’m going to shut up now. People think I’m arrogant. I’m not. I’m just.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m just showing off. Sorry. Yes, indeed. Right. I just pass you over.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So, Lee, what blogs or online resources would you recommend to the WP innovator listeners?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
What a fantastic question. Okay. I actually spend most of my time listening to stuff, so I tend not to read too many websites. I spend most of my time listening to really good podcasts on a whole wide range of subjects. So I think for this it’s gonna be good if I just open up my phone and let’s have a look through my list of podcasts. First of all, just on reading side, head on over to Post Status. I think it’s.com is it? We’ll put it in the show notes but Show Notes but it’s called post status yet.com that is full of brilliant cutting edge WordPress information. So is WP Tavern.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
All of those sorts of good websites full of WordPress knowledge. Also our guest on episode I think it was 28 or 29 was Brian Jackson. He’s got a great website which I check out often, which was work up as well. That’s two O’s and we’ll get that in the show notes as well because he’s. He’s regularly doing reviews and also giving really good how to advices. Bob WP as well. That’s BobWP.com he is a legend. He’s the guy who did the WooCommerce podcast just recently with us again, he does amazing reviews of new upcoming products and offers loads of great advice.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So that’s the reading stuff that I. That I tend to do not so often because I’m more of an audio guy. I like to listen to stuff. I like to go for runs and listen to stuff. So on the podcast side of things, I’m a huge fan of Kim Doyle. She runs the WP Chick podcast. She’s brilliant. She interviews marketers and WordPress developers and designers from all around the world.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So if you’re not aware of her podcast, highly recommend you head on over there. Also in the WordPress realms, we’ve got the MAT report. That’s a good one. Used to listen to WP Breakdown with Bob, but he’s now changed that over to do the Woo podcast and that’s all about WooCommerce, so that’s something I do really enjoy. Then on my list, kind of non WordPress related but more entrepreneurial would be Entrepreneur on Fire with John Lee Dumas of course, and also the Smart Passive Income podcast as well with Pat Flynn. So we’re all agency owners or web designers, freelancers, whoever we are, we are all entreprene, so it’s good to listen to that sort of stuff. There’s also for kind of more intense marketing, making it easy obviously is Amy Porterfield, so I’ll listen to her quite regularly as well. So none of these are a surprise.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
If you want to just be a total geek though, like I am, then I love science. Although I’m actually a Christian. I love skeptic thinking as well, so I’ll tend to listen to good podcasts as well, like Skeptoid, that’s a really good podcast. There’s also the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Love listening to stuff like that. So that’s promoting clear skeptical thinking and not taking everything for granted that you hear on the news, etc. Love that sort of stuff. And also I love science generally.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So there’s this stuff you should know podcast, there’s Sci fi, there’s the big picture science. Absolutely love that. So that is literally about 2% of the podcasts I listen to. This phone obviously gets very full and I’ve got a very big data plan because I consume podcasts like the Going out of Fashion. So yeah, I reckon so, you know, obviously there’s some good written content out there that’s great to consume, but for someone like me who likes to go for long walks or commutes a lot, driving to customers or whatever, I like to be able to listen to stuff. I’ll even listen to it when I’m working, although never. I would never recommend that. If you want to actually learn something and work at the same time, I only recommend your you’re doing that for the podcast, where it’s just more of a general story or general information, not something you want to consume and learn from.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Because if you’re trying to listen to, say, the Entrepreneur on Fire podcast and you’re coding at the same time, you’re probably going to miss some of the good stuff. And if you’re working right now listening to the podcast, then I judge you. I judge you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s a big list of podcasts early. So next question, what one Action could people apply today from what you have learned that you believe will make a difference?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, I’m gonna give you two.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yay.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
The first one would be, you probably need to put your prices up. I think you’ve guessed that from my big preach earlier about pricing. Look at your pricing and see can you put the pricing up? It’s scary. We’ve done it quite a few times actually. Now. I think the first, the first move we made was triple the pricing and then we kind of moved on from there. And that’s, you know, that’s things like your rates or just what your entry price is for standard types of projects. Because obviously I get that certain projects have very unique pricing, but, you know, looking at that, are we charging too little? Could we make some more money on these sorts of projects in the future so that we can give our best to these projects rather than trying to fit as many in as possible to break even? So there’s that, that’s, that’s obviously a very big piece of advice, something I learned right from the, you know, the early days there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And then the other thing would be sell every day. I heard that on a John Lee Dumas podcast about a year and a half ago. Sell every day. And that just really impacted me that you can just do one marketing activity a day, be it send out an introductory email, be it have a call, be it attend a networking meeting, be it do some social media, you know, tweeting, following someone having some sort of interaction online, be it sending out an email, campaign, whatever it is, try and make space every day for one small piece of sales slash, marketing activity. Because we all get busy delivering the product. We are coding, we’re building websites, we’re in our project management system. And we forget that there is a pipeline ahead of us. So sell every day.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Because we need to make sure we look after the future sales pipeline. So, for example, this week alone, we’ve replied, I think, think it is to three proposals. We’ve had three sales calls or physical meetings, and we have put it. Well, we put two forward already and we’re finishing off the third proposal tomorrow. That’s this week. We may or may not win any of them. But the idea is, is even though we’re fully booked up right now, it’s so important that we’re still engaged with existing and potential customers, getting those opportunities in putting proposals down, etc. So that we can look after the future pipeline, ensure that we’re, you know, we’ve got a business to continue to.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Because you don’t Want to just wake up one morning and go, oh crap, there’s a lot of month at the end of the money and I have not got enough work to fill that. So there’s your two pieces of advice. Look at your pricing if you’re happy with it. Nice one. You did a better job than I did when I first started. And number two, I said poo. Number two obviously is sell every day. Alrighty, I’m hand back to you now after my preach.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Number two. Oh, I said poo again.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
As you can tell, I work with a 12 year old. So sadly it’s time to wrap up this podcast. So we’ve got to find out how we can connect with Lee Jackson.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
If you’re listening to this podcast, you probably know how to connect. But let’s go through the ways to connect first and favorite way would be head on over to the Facebook group. Leejacksondev.com group Come on, join us. We are all in there. There’s about 117, I don’t know, something like that, nearly 120. That’s a good number of web designers, design agencies, geeks all chatting together about WordPress, asking questions and sharing their expertise. So it’s great, safe place to chat to the growing group and obviously to reach out to me. Add me as a Facebook friend, that’d be awesome.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m on Facebook all the time and Larissa can vouch for that. So get on Facebook, add me as a friend, probably post too much so you can always unfollow me if it gets like too bad. Email me if you want to. Lee Jackson dev.com I love chatting on email as well and I’m totally open to even having an impromptu Skype call like we did with Chris Jay Powell only the other day. There was no charge, it was just a nice catch up conversation where we talked about some of his ideas and he bounced some ideas off me. I shared a few plugins that I’d used in the past and showed a few example projects that I’d done in the past as well. It was a freaking awesome time and hopefully he went away empowered and encouraged. Maybe if you’re listening Chris, you could let me know how that went.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Maybe share it on the Facebook group. How awesome or not so it was. But be nice in fact, if you didn’t like it, Chris, just let’s keep that a secret. If you loved it, let’s tell the. Let’s tell the world. So yeah, so there are a few ways get on Twitter as well. We live on Twitter. E.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Jackson Dev, and that’s pretty much it. So I think all that’s left is for me to wrap up and say what an excellent job you did emceeing there, Larissa. We’re trying to encourage Larissa to step up to talk and have a laugh. And you can tell she does have this really funny personality and sense of humor all locked up in there. She’s basically extremely good laugh to work with. So I like that. And getting her on the podcast more often is fun because hopefully you’ll start to hear the dynamic that we have here in the office with all three of us. Me, Larissa, Karthik.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
One of the things that we do get in trouble, though, I think me and Karthik especially other height jokes. So I apologize live on air for the height chokes. Larissa. Guys, thanks so much for listening. You asked us right back months ago to make sure that we keep doing different things. I hope this was different. I hope you enjoyed it. Have a freaking awesome week.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We’ll see you in the Facebook group.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Adios, Sammy Gods. I’m not gonna do it again. Stop sticking it in my face. I don’t want the microphone.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
If there is a lawyer listening, we’re talking about the microphone. All right, we’re going now. Bye.
