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:
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.
Lee:
Hi, and welcome to episode number 105 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is your host, Mr. Lee Jackson. On today’s show, we are talking to a young and devilishly handsome Mr. Jeffrey Patch. And he’s from America land, where people talk like this all the time. Well, actually, they’re known. And that was terribly stereotypical. And I would like to apologize on behalf of my company for stereotyping all Americans with that terrible accent. So let’s move on. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about moving your agency from a place of doing too much for free, and then actually monetizing what you’re doing. And Jeffrey’s going to share with us how he was doing an awful lot of maintenance and other services for free and then realized that he was offering amazing value needed to be charging for that and has since evolved his business phenomenally, especially around the area of maintenance as WordPress maintenance, website maintenance, etc. So it’s a really fascinating episode. And Jeffrey happens to be one of the nicest guys on the planet. So that really helps. So don’t forget, we have a Facebook group head on over to WPinnovator.com/group where lots of us hang around and say nice things to each other and share gifts and cat pictures are kind of history. Now it’s gifts. Gifts is cool. So come and share some gifts in the WP Innovator group. And until then sit back, relax, enjoy the ride. And please, please, please keep your arms, your legs, your head and any other appendage. Don’t be rude. In the vehicles or vehicle at all times. That was probably the weirdest intro I’ve done yet. Enjoy the show.
Lee:
So I just want to talk to you. So I just want to talk to you about the cause light that I am aware you’re drinking. And what is it with Americans and their watery beer?
Jeffrey:
No, hold on. Before I answer that. Did you know that I was drinking because you heard me gulp and try to like not burp under my breath? Or did you just say that because you knew I had it from the video a second ago?
Lee:
If you hadn’t said that, I would have never known. But now we know for time and eternity, it is officially recorded in digital that you are totally going to burp. But don’t worry about it. Before we carry on.
Jeffrey:
I totally was.
Lee:
Guys, you’re joining a conversation with me and Jeffrey Patch, but I’ve got to finish this point. You know, I lead worship sometimes at church, mate.
Lee:
There are times when halfway through the song, especially when it’s like either at a bit where you have to take a deep breath and like it’s going to be a powerful moment. You know, there’s going to be power in this song and everyone’s like gearing up and you take a deep breath.
Lee:
But then it kind of gets a bubble in your throat and you think, you know what? I’ve got a microphone in front of my face. I’m about to sing a very moving part of this worship song right now.
Lee:
Everyone’s going to be in the zone. And I really want to let out a humongous burp. It’s the worst feeling ever. It’s just like, oh, how do I cope with it? I’ve never I’ve managed to never burp other than, you know, pretend I’ve like taken the microphone away from myself and like pretend to look up and then kind of do one of those, you know, those kind of looking off to the distance, blowing a little bit under your breath.
Lee:
And you feel so much relief right afterwards.
Jeffrey:
Oh, yeah, because then I can get back in the zone again. But I’ve also done it in the quiet songs as well. It’s like it’s a lovely quiet song. You know, I’m like, oh, no, oh, no, I can feel it. It’s horrible. It’s part of the nerves.
Jeffrey:
Back in high school, I had the total crush on this girl that we all used to hang out with. And I used to always, you know, have to burp and I’d be embarrassed. So I would kind of not do it, you know, and get that bubble in your throat. And then my voice would change, you know, and I was already like, barely going to get it.
Jeffrey:
Going through puberty. So it’s like, yeah, you know, you get this one. Hello, everybody. You know, and she would literally call me out and be like, Jeff, just burp. Just burp the damn bubble out of your throat. Okay. Yeah, I’m never getting a date with you, am I?
Lee:
Oh, that’s hilarious. Guys, I can just imagine that. I loved your voice. You sounded a bit like Barney for a second then.
Jeffrey:
I’m afraid to hear the recording. There’s some childhood nightmares. Who thought of that concept? I don’t know. Dinosaur. Anyway, guys.
Jeffrey:
He was so creepy.
Lee:
Yeah, he was, wasn’t he? Creepy guy. Great voice, though. You know, creeps. But guys, anyway, you are clearly joining a conversation. If you can call that a conversation, all about burping. Total boy things there, wasn’t it? That’s stereotypical. I’m sorry. Might have to edit that out.
Lee:
Anyway, you are joining a conversation with me, Lee Jackson. You should know that. And Jeffrey Patch. He is from Doozy Creative. He’s also from Maintain Press because he can multitask and do two things at once. That’s pretty damn cool.
Lee:
He’s also devilishly handsome with a good beard. And in the picture I’m looking at, a bit of a bald head. So I’m quite liking this look, mate. How are you doing?
Jeffrey:
Oh, man, I’m great. You really did. You just buttered me up. Are you going to send me your address, like, make sure to give you a good Christmas card?
Lee:
I was going to just do an e-card and then put at the bottom that I donated on behalf of charity to you. You know, to a charity of my choice on your behalf kind of thing. Yeah.
Jeffrey:
You’re so new school.
Lee:
No, no, no. I’m actually called lazy.
Jeffrey:
Oh, man, it’s really good to be on here. I’m not just buttering you up back, but I’ve listened to your podcast for a while now. And I kind of made a note to myself a few months ago. And I said, I want to get on a podcast this year. And this is the first one that I’m doing.
Jeffrey:
And this is the first one that I wrote down as a goal. So thank you for having me. I don’t know what stupid mistake you made to do this. You must be desperate. But I appreciate it.
Lee:
No, not desperate at all. In fact, I recorded today episode 100. And during episode 100, I explained one of the lessons that I’d learned and one of the lessons I’ve learned.
Lee:
And you’ll need to go back. This is probably episode 106, folks, that you’re listening to. So you need to go back to episode 100 for this one.
Lee:
But one of the lessons I learned was that it’s actually better to get normal people like you and me on the show because we are both normal people.
Lee:
And I’ve had some big names on the show, like Chris Ducker and that, and I’ve been super excited about it. But the podcasts that get the most engagement actually turns out to be podcasts where we’re actually dealing with people from the real world because none of us are really in the Chris Ducker world, are we?
Jeffrey:
Not unless you’re a super successful multimillionaire, which I’m definitely not.
Lee:
And are you keeping any secrets?
Lee:
Are you a multimillionaire?
Jeffrey:
No.
Lee:
Well, there you go then. So these sorts of shows are better.
Lee:
They get more engagement. They get more downloads. People are more interested in them because we can relate, can’t we?
Lee:
So you’re not the booby prize, mate. I was super happy.
Lee:
We’ve been friends for a while on Facebook and we’ve giggled and gift each other all the time and everything. So why the hell not be on the show?
Lee:
You are totally the right person for the show.
Jeffrey:
Well, that’s what makes your podcast so… Amen, brother.
Jeffrey:
That’s what makes your podcast so great is that it is so relatable.
Jeffrey:
You can tune in and you may not know who the person is on the other line, but you become familiar with them.
Jeffrey:
And I mean, I’ve made friends just by guests on your podcast too. So it’s a great community that you’ve built.
Lee:
That’s awesome. And you’ve just shown your age by saying on the other line. It’s like the studio now. This isn’t like a radio call-in.
Lee:
Oh my gosh. We say things like that and kids are like, what do you mean put them on hold? Jeffrey online too. What’s your question?
Lee:
Oh, the old radio days. He used to call into them. They’d be like, caller one, caller two, caller 106.
Lee:
Oh my goodness. How many callers are you going to take?
Lee:
And then you get someone like swearing on the phone and they’re like, I’m so sorry about that. It is drive time here. If your kids heard that, I humbly apologize.
Lee:
And then they kind of moved on. There you go.
Lee:
But let’s talk about you for a little bit because we’ve been doing this for a while now.
Lee:
I just ended up hitting record because we were having a funny conversation. We talked about beer and all sorts of stuff.
Lee:
And I was like, what the hell? Let’s just hit record. This is funny.
Lee:
And I’d love to just learn a little bit about your two businesses. You’ve got Doozy Creative. You’ve got Maintain Press. Can you just kind of give us the tweet version of what both are and then we’ll unpack it a little bit further?
Jeffrey:
Sure. Cut me off for like 40 minutes if I go too long, okay?
Lee:
No worries. I’ll sit back.
Jeffrey:
Doozy Creative is my, you know, kind of the extension of my longtime freelance WordPress career. We’ve evolved to an agency a little over a year ago. And, you know, we don’t do a whole lot online as far as being very vocal and putting out a lot of content. We just kind of, you know, handle the website projects that we have and that we get. We work mostly off referrals there.
Jeffrey:
But Maintain Press evolved from both of those, you know, my freelance years and then the agency as well. And we offer WordPress maintenance services, support services, the like, you know, a lot of developers. It is a hot rage right now is all the care plan talk and stuff.
Jeffrey:
But we do that for our own clients as well as for other agencies as well. So, you know, the biggest problem that a lot of freelancers and agencies have had that I’m sure you’ve been there. I’m sure half the listeners have been there. And that’s you start doing websites for, actually the cost doesn’t matter, but a lot of times they’re, you know, cheap $500, $1,000 websites.
Jeffrey:
And then they’re maintaining them for years and years and not making any money off of it.
Jeffrey:
So, how about two years ago, I looked at my taxes and went, oh, yeah, I made how much money last year? And that was not a lot because I was busy maintaining everything and not charging anybody for it.
Jeffrey:
So I put a real big hard stop on that and said, you know, we got to sit back and readdress. And we did.
Jeffrey:
And a couple years later now, you know, we’re able to offer these white label for people and then starting to grow. And we’re just trying to help agencies and freelancers and graphic designers and developers grow their business by making sure their clients are maintained, whether that’s helping them do it themselves or offering white label stuff.
Jeffrey:
So we’re really trying to, you know, to kind of grow our Facebook and online presence and whatnot with our content. And we’re really hoping for some big evolution here in the end of 2017.
Lee:
That’s awesome. I love the fact you found a massive pain point. And this is a pain point that I have that I’ve been actively looking at partners for as well, because we are not set up really to do the ongoing support.
Lee:
We’re kind of set up more for doing the bigger kind of longer term projects and being set up for consultancy as well, because they’re the most valuable products. And we do sell the support packages, but they’re not very profitable because they’re very time intensive for us as an agency.
Lee:
So, yeah, certainly something that is a pain point for me. And it’s certainly something I was never charging for either. Initially, it was it was a nightmare. The amount of hours you’re spending keeping people up to date and the expectation that you are going to keep them up to date for free for life is ridiculous.
Lee:
I even remember 10 years ago, probably now, when I built a website and the person actually managed to get a full refund out of me after a year because I sent them an invoice for another year’s worth of hosting. And they argued that I should be hosting it for free for life and all sorts.
Lee:
I don’t know where that came from, but you just you’ve just unleashed a whole world of painful memories.
Jeffrey:
It’s scary.
Jeffrey:
It’s unbelievable.
Jeffrey:
It’s unbelievable what people just assume, you know, you will do. And, you know, you spend enough time doing it. You realize, well, it’s kind of an honest mistake because I didn’t tell them otherwise.
Jeffrey:
So how could I expect them, you know, to think differently?
Jeffrey:
And so until you communicate that with your clients and I’m sure, you know, you’re a lot better at it now and I’m definitely a lot better at it now. But, you know, I would get so kind of internally angry at a client.
Jeffrey:
Oh, why are they thinking that? Why are they assuming we’re going to do that? I mean, don’t they realize that I’ve got a roof over my head, you know?
Jeffrey:
But then you realize, well, I didn’t tell them otherwise. So it’s not fair to, you know, to expect them to just throw money at me.
Jeffrey:
But, you know, I think that may just be people being too nice and I definitely fall into that category sometimes. So 15-minute fix, sure, I got it. I won’t bill you for it. Two hours later, you know.
Lee:
Oh, man, I do that a lot. Now, I mean, on that, though, I mean, you are totally right. You have to feed your family. And I agree and I disagree with you because, yes, you didn’t tell them necessarily that, you know, this support shouldn’t come free because you have to feed your family.
Lee:
But at the same time, surely people kind of realize that somebody’s got to physically do something and they can’t work for free forever. So I think a little bit of your frustration is kind of, I think you’re allowed to have a bit. Clearly, I’m having issues here. I think we’re on track. This is like therapy. Are you a shrink or something?
Jeffrey:
No, but, you know, I definitely studied psychology, so I think I am.
Lee:
I’ve got stress. I’ve got these feelings of stress coming out of me right now thinking, you know, because I can remember these clients that have done this to me and I’m like, why did they expect that? And then late nights and the bugs that it would create.
Lee:
Oh, man. Do you or did you ever read the Clients from Hell blog or Tumblr or whatever it was?
Jeffrey:
I don’t go on there anymore. I had to stop reading it because it felt like somebody was stalking me.
Lee:
Right. And it was too negative. I don’t want to be negative today. It’s just like suddenly for no reason. It just all spewed out of me randomly when you said all that, especially when you said the word taxes. I think that’s what it was. I just kind of, you know, I’ve got negative memories about taxes. But, yeah, I’ve really tried to surround myself with more positive messages in the Clients from Hell blog, which is utterly hilarious and hashtag relatable.
Jeffrey:
Yeah, I kind of had to kind of weed that out about a year ago. That’s probably why I don’t use it very much because, yeah, I think it started to bring me down. But it’s hilarious.
Lee:
Yep. So if you want to go and have a laugh at other people’s expenses, go ahead and check that out. The Client from Hell. I can’t remember the URL, but we’ll find it and we’ll put it in the show notes. And if you’re free, he might even be Googling it right now.
Jeffrey:
No, I think it’s clientsfromhell.com. But there you go. I don’t know. You guys can Google it.
Lee:
So you’ve got the agency. And I’m going to kind of put you on the spot here. You’ve got an agency. You’re offering the white label services. Are they profitable? Are you looking at like the…
Lee:
Because they’re not very high price. So is it the idea of you want to kind of get them in on volume? So if you’ve got lots and lots of support packages, then that’s good for you guys because you’ve got a volume of support packages in? Because I never even understood how WP Curve made it work at $99.
Jeffrey:
Yeah, well, I mean, that’s definitely a good point. And that’s probably one of the biggest reasons why it’s not always in…
Jeffrey:
Excuse me. I’m going to start over. You got a good point. And that’s probably one reason why it’s not always in, you know, developer or freelancer’s best interest to just offer these if they’re not willing to spend that time. Because it does add up.
Jeffrey:
But I think one of the biggest things that I’ve learned in this last year or two of doing this is that the more automated you can do… And I don’t mean automating your, you know, updates and stuff like that. That’s kind of dangerous. But the more systems you can put in place, the more automations you can do, and just the better you can grow the business from an operational standpoint, the better leg you’re starting on.
Jeffrey:
So that was one of our biggest keys. But volume is definitely the biggest one. And I’m going to kind of let you in on this because we definitely advertise to the public.
Jeffrey:
Yeah.
Jeffrey:
But it’s not really our biggest target. You know, we want the agencies. And we want, you know, a freelancer that comes in with, say, at least 10, 15 accounts, hopefully, that we can kind of help them, whether they’re ready to go with maintenance or they’re ready to evolve that so they can start profiting on it.
Jeffrey:
But that’s kind of our sweet spot.
Lee:
I like that. I like the concept of agencies because, yeah, because if you’ve got one person off of the street, you know, the amount they’re spending won’t necessarily cover the amount of time you’re spending on them.
Lee:
But if you’ve got a larger account, you’ve got the scope for consultancy and all of the other opportunities that that relationship will potentially generate as well.
Lee:
It’s exactly the same as us. We produce WordPress themes for agencies. They will design it, and we will then do the build of the code and produce the theme, etc. That’s kind of our core brain butter.
Lee:
But what’s happened as a result of that is loads of other opportunities have come off of that. It maybe started as a theme. It actually became then a custom development of an application like a CRM system, or it became, you know, a consultative relationship where we’ve helped them shift from a core print business to a core digital business instead as well.
Lee:
So I think that’s a really, really good niche, a really powerful niche to be in. So, hey, agencies. Check out my boy Jeffrey Patch. I don’t know what else to say after that. I’ll let you play it.
Lee:
I can’t really freestyle. That’s one thing. I kept joking and challenging John Perez to, I don’t know if you know John Perez, to like a freestyle battle. And thankfully, he’s never taken me up on it because I literally can’t. I can’t rap at all.
Lee:
Yeah.
Lee:
No offense. And I don’t know him personally. I just, you know, know him through the online world. With that, he’s got that thick New York accent, right? I think he would just blow you out of the water, man. I don’t think you could even stand a chance.
Lee:
I wouldn’t. I’d probably start saying, like, there was an old man called Lee who lived in a house, you see. And then that was not even rap, is it? That’s just a poem.
Lee:
Every now and then I can freestyle, like in front of the kids and they just think it’s hilarious. And then I try to do it, you know, in front of people that actually can pay attention to the words I’m saying. And I realized I’m just speaking gibberish here and I sound like a total idiot.
Jeffrey:
Right.
Jeffrey:
Oh, sorry, Cameron.
Jeffrey:
Well, actually, I wanted to go back, you know, one thing you said about, you know, helping in this niche. The biggest thing really is that we can help an agency partner in a different way than we can, say, one website owner. Not that we wouldn’t want to help one website owner, but, you know, we can help another agency put those systems in place so they can, you know, be handling 20, 30, 40 of their clients.
Jeffrey:
And I just feel like that’s kind of how it spreads and that’s really how you make a bigger difference in the industry.
Lee:
That’s true. Having a process for things is something that years ago, I mean, as an agency, we always knew we needed to put processes in place, but it always seems like a facing to have to sit down and work it out what it is you do and to unpack those things and weed out what are time wasters and then documentize and systemize it.
Lee:
It really sounds unsexy. It sounds unsexy to you. You’ve got to admit it, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey:
Oh, it’s terrible.
Lee:
What I just said, I said processize, size, and systemize. You were just like, ugh.
Lee:
But, like, internally, but the actual payment for that is phenomenal. It’s like the podcast being, we’ve got a really slick process for this podcast. We can produce content all the time and it’s not even an effort, but that’s because we put a lot of effort into the process.
Lee:
So, yeah, having processes. And I assume you’re not going to give too much of your processes away because that’s what people need to go and find out.
Lee:
Over at maintain.press/agencies. Is that right?
Jeffrey:
Yes, I believe that’s the URL. I should double check that since we just put it out there.
Jeffrey:
Yes, sir. I did just Google you. So, you know.
Lee:
Well, I was like, was it slash agencies or slash partners or what is it? Double check.
Jeffrey:
But it’s agencies.
Lee:
Well, I want to pick you up on something you said earlier, mate. You mentioned that you had kind of shifted from freelance to agency. Can you just kind of tell us how that shift happened? When did you decide you needed to become an agency? What were the signs? Because there are freelancers right now listening to this show wondering where to go next.
Jeffrey:
Oh, man. Well, I wish we would have recorded this a month or two ago and I would have said, go to WP Elevation.
Jeffrey:
Which has been a huge, huge thing.
Lee:
Well, I know you’re in there now, right?
Jeffrey:
Well, I was in there like two years ago and I had a chat with Troy. I was like, will you let me back in? Because I kind of miss it. And he’s like, yeah, yeah, come in.
Jeffrey:
He’s a good guy. I just totally got sidetracked. Can you remind me what your question was exactly?
Lee:
I said, how do you maintain such a good head of hair? And then after that, I said, for people listening, freelancers especially who are listening, how did you realize you needed to pivot into agency life? And how did you go about doing that? What were the signs? What did you start to do to go from being freelance? Hey, Jeff’s a good web guy to this is doozy creative. We are an agency.
Jeffrey:
You know, I think I hit a point where I just said I need to be taken more seriously. And for me to be comfortable, I needed more people around me. And I wasn’t just, you know, hiring people and saying, oh, now I have a team. I have an agency because I’m, you know, shelling out all my profits amongst my team.
Jeffrey:
It wasn’t that at all. But I knew that there were issues, not issues, but, you know, parts of the business that I wasn’t great at, that I was good. I could definitely, you know, I’m an okay designer. I’m not a great designer.
Jeffrey:
So once I said, okay, I’m going to stop being this cheap freelancer pumping out $1,500 websites. I need to have the confidence to, you know, to sell higher. I also need the expertise in other areas.
Jeffrey:
And so we just started growing and, you know, learning more, like I said, WPL innovation was a huge, huge benefit for me.
Jeffrey:
You know, and I’m still constantly growing and struggling in different aspects, but that’s just kind of the way business is. But I guess if you’re at a point where you realize that you cannot financially make it work, you know, if your business is not profitable for you, then you have to either, you know, change it, fix it, or get the heck out, you know.
Jeffrey:
And I think I had one of those moments. I mentioned earlier with taxes. I looked down at my taxes one year and I just went, wait, I made like, that was like $3,000 like that year before for the entire year.
Jeffrey:
And I had a big contract that I kind of relied on, so, you know, I will go into that. But for my freelance business, I had, I made like $3,000 and I was like, this is insane. Like I was working full time on this business. Like, why would I, why would I keep doing this? I’m doing something wrong.
Jeffrey:
And that’s when, you know, took a step back and went, oh, well, it’s because I spent, well, 120 hours this month doing maintenance and 90 hours the next month doing maintenance.
Jeffrey:
And, you know, I didn’t bill for much of it. And so had to cut a few clients, a couple of agency partners that I’d been working with for years that just weren’t profitable anymore.
Jeffrey:
And you just realized that it’s, it’s time to kind of, you know, shit or get off the pot, excuse me, but it was one of those things.
Jeffrey:
And so if you’re a freelancer or you’re, you know, small agency developer, whatever it is you call yourself and you’re starting to hit that point. And I think you really need to step back and it’s not, not saying quit, but you need to look at your options and look at maybe, you know, where are those pain points?
Jeffrey:
How can you solve them? Or how can you bring in people to solve them? Maybe the answer is growing. Maybe it’s, you know, maybe it’s getting a little smaller too. I imagine everything could be completely reversed for certain cases, but, you know, that was definitely my experience.
Lee:
I think as well, just to go on from that, if you are a freelancer and you are kind of hitting burnout as well, maybe you’re earning good money, enough money to cover the bills, etc., but you are physically drained, mentally drained and family life or time, you know, all of that sort of thing is struggling. That’s another sign as well. What was your phrase to shit or get off the pot?
Lee:
Shoot or get off the pot. I like it. Is that an American saying? I literally never heard of it. I love it. It’s like, that’s going into my armory. I am going to fit that into my next meeting somehow.
Lee:
But yeah, I mean, if you are experiencing that burnout, like you are just working all of the hours, that’s something that led me to shift from Lee Jackson, Dev, the developer guy, to realizing that I needed to massively increase my prices and start to think like an agency and get other people involved.
Lee:
So when you, like, how did you deal with the fear? Because you said that you dropped some clients that were unprofitable. Was there any fear in that? Was that just a complete logical step for you? And you just said, ta-ra, and then started looking elsewhere. How did you go about doing that? Because that’s freaking scary.
Jeffrey:
It’s, you know, it’s really, it is, it’s really scary. And I’ll admit right here publicly, I’m terrible at it. I hate confrontation. I’m just one of those people that doesn’t like it. You know, I mean, I just started sweating thinking about it right now.
Jeffrey:
But you just kind of have to have a real talk sometimes. And then, you know, look at the issues too. And occasionally it might be one of those situations where you go, you know, this is bothering me for, you know, this.
Jeffrey:
Usually it’s annoyance for me. It’s like, I’m just so annoyed something this client does. You know, they won’t follow the rules or they won’t follow my process or something. Or they refuse to pay on time. Whatever it is, you know, you can sit back and look at that and go, well, is that something that maybe if I have a real honest conversation with them, can we fix this? Can we maybe improve on this?
Jeffrey:
And so that’s, when I talk to some, you know, other freelancers and people like that, I go, well, before you just, you know, cut your ties, is it at least worth having a conversation? You know, hop on Skype, have one of those awkward talks and, you know, let them know, hey, look, this isn’t really working for whatever reason. You know, you tell them your reasons, obviously.
Jeffrey:
But, you know, I just need to talk to you. Now I can either help you find the person, you know, if you’re willing to spend the money on it, this is, you know, it’s going to cost you this possibly. But I need to either send you over here or you can look at our plans. I mean, whatever the situation is, I’m getting way too general here.
Jeffrey:
But sometimes you just need to communicate. And that’s the most difficult thing for the vast majority of people.
Lee:
There’s a real truth in that. And I won’t go into details because it’s kind of quite fresh for us as well. But we’ve had a couple of scenarios, even now in agency life, where we’ve had relationships that have been quite difficult.
Lee:
And I, too, don’t like confrontation. I don’t like arguing over stuff. Although it was a difficult situation. We decided that we needed to have a conversation with a client and explain to them that we would either have to part ways and help them find another developer or things had to change.
Lee:
And the things that had to change were really, like, severe. Surprisingly enough, though, in this case, the client actually said, you know what, if it doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for us. And let’s find a way of making it work for everyone.
Lee:
And that really surprised me because I thought we were going to have to hand them off to somebody else. So actually having that conversation needn’t be as scary as we make in our minds, and sometimes relationships can be saved if it’s just a case of having that communication, isn’t it?
Lee:
On the flip side, if the client is a complete arse, just fire them anyway, I guess.
Jeffrey:
Oh, yeah. There’s definitely some of those.
Lee:
So I just want to pick you up on something that you said earlier, mate. And you mentioned that you’re an OK designer, which is a little bit negative. It’s like a negative self-image of yourself. And I think that is what a lot of designers have of themselves. They look at their own work and they’re never really happy with it.
Lee:
And that’s probably one of the main reasons that I am actually an advertised web developer who works with agencies with their designs because I never am happy with my own output. So how did you rewind to pre-bearded Jeffrey? How did you get into design in general? And was it websites and then design followed? Or was it design then websites?
Jeffrey:
Well, I’m going to go back so far to say that when I started doing websites, it was websites to answer your question. But when I started doing it, it was more coding than it was design. I mean, there just wasn’t browsers. There wasn’t fancy design. There was no real CSS. It was just raw HTML and some images.
Jeffrey:
So I had one of those GeoCities sites or whatever with animated GIF flames. I mean, it was the coolest thing ever. But I’ve graduated a little bit since then as far as my design skills. But all my design stuff has been completely just kind of self-taught. I mean, I never went to school for it. I did a little bit of programming in college and dropped out because it just was a little outdated at the time.
Jeffrey:
But for me, it’s just been a natural evolution of following the industry, following what’s going on out there and just self-taught.
Jeffrey:
Yeah, I mean, I know what you mean. We probably are a lot harder on ourselves than we need to be. But I still, you know, I work with a designer and I go, okay, they’re a designer. You know, they see it right away. Whereas I have to look at it and think about it, sit on it, take a nap, get a beer, take another nap. And then I’m starting to think, okay, now it’s unfolding, you know.
Jeffrey:
So, it’s kind of like what we were talking about earlier. It’s just finding what you’re good at and what you’re not good at and surrounding yourself with the right people or the right tools or, you know, whatever it is that you can fix. But, no, it’s been a long journey of trying to become a good designer or a good developer. And, you know, I’m okay. I’m getting there.
Lee:
You’re making me feel a little bit better about myself. I think you’re a pretty good designer. I quite enjoy looking around your sites right now. And I was taking a look at Colorblind as well, which kind of blew me away. I really love what you’ve done there. Especially with the photography. I don’t know if you were involved with the photography as well, but it looks phenomenal.
Jeffrey:
And I’ll admit that, you know, a lot of that design was, you know, brought by them because they are an agency as well. So they kind of brought that design to me and, you know, I turned it into a real website. I mean, you know, it’s kind of what we do. A lot of times you work with agencies that have already ventured off and gotten their designs done. And I love that because it takes that part out and I can do my magic, which is turning it into a functional design, you know, because most of them, have you learned that? You know, you get designs from a client from your agency work. I’m really curious now. I’m going to turn the interview around on you for a second.
Lee:
Oh, this is funny. You know, you get, I just get this all the time. I get a design from a designer, you know, through an agency or whatever it is. And they don’t look at their responsiveness. You know, they don’t actually look at how it functions. It’s just, it’s a pretty design, which is great, you know. But, you know, if you’re not an expert at making it actually work in the real world, then you end up with all these issues. And, you know, I’ve been there and I’ve fixed that. But I still get this from designers all the time. They don’t think about the other things. And I’m not trying to badmouth designers. I’m just curious about your experience.
Lee:
My experience is exactly that. The, I think a lot of the issues is responsive is very new. It’s, I don’t know. Is it, is it even five years old? Like the, the idea of responsive websites? Because we had websites appearing on the 2007 iPhone. And if you watch the launch video, he was zooming in, pinch zooming into a full version of, I think it was like the New York Times website, which looked like the desktop version.
Lee:
And then it kind of took years. I feel like it took years for it to really catch on for websites to go responsive. And I still remember clients asking and even saying, oh, no, I don’t want it to be a mobile website. And this was like five years ago. I remember them saying this. No, no, no. This is a desktop website. Don’t, I don’t want it to be responsive. I want it to look the same, etc.
Lee:
So it feels a relatively new thing. And a lot of designers come from a print background. So most design agencies, maybe 10 years ago, were in print and then pivoted into designing websites and therefore approach designing websites in the exact same manner you would approach designing a brochure. You have your set canvas size.
Lee:
So you’ve got an A4, A5 piece of paper, letter size, poster, whatever it is you’re using. And then you fill that space. You create the design to fill that space, to fill that shape. And you do all your information design and it looks great. But you don’t think about the different device sizes.
Lee:
So we’ll often get designs and it will look beautiful at 1,400 pixels wide. It will be a perfect website. But the minute you start to resize anything, you know, you’re going to get multiple length headings all kind of dropping onto a new line at different times. And it starts to look an absolute mess.
Lee:
So, yes, we get this a lot. The way we get around it is we do two things. We either ask for all the designs for mobile, for tablet, and for desktop, which is super time intensive for them. And in fact, super time intensive for us as well, because that’s an awful lot of PSDs or whatever sketch files that we’ve got to go ahead and check out and compare our designs to.
Lee:
Or we make an agreement with them where they give us the desktop version and they give us, say, the homepage and a standard page treatment of the mobile environment of what they would expect the mobile to do. And then we have an agreement that we will make the decisions of the journey of those elements as they collapse down.
Lee:
So we’ll probably use a framework foundation bootstrap or something. So there’ll be some rules in place, you know, with regards to the order of the way things stack. But the agreement is, therefore, that we will produce a standard stack, which is logical. There will be a couple of amend cycles to that stack. So the agency can take a look at what we’ve done, give us a bit more feedback. We make a few more changes and then give us another round of amends. And then they pay for anything else on top of that.
Lee:
So that means that they don’t have to do every single PSD for every single snap point you can possibly imagine and that we don’t have to code everything and compare everything and do our nut in opening multiple documents. So that’s usually the happy medium that we all get to, which means they get flexibility. We get flexibility as well.
Lee:
So we get to be a bit creative on how we do the structures, etc. And obviously everybody kind of saves money. And in most cases, we save a hell of a lot of time as well because I like to think the responsive decisions that we make and yourself make are logical ones and the client usually ends up happy anyway.
Jeffrey:
You said something that I had to write down because I’m going to use it and I hope that other freelancers or agencies or whomever can use this too. But you said logical choices or logical design. So I wrote down logical responsive design. And that’s something that I don’t use those words. But when I am talking to a client, I go, well, how’s it going to look on mobile? And if I’m designing it, to be honest, I don’t design a mobile page because I know the logical flow of responsive design now.
Jeffrey:
And so I just, you know, I tell them, hey, you let us worry about that. And when we get to that stage, we can, you know, readdress if there’s any issues. But we understand how this stuff should flow. We understand how it needs to be programmed and how it needs to be set up.
Jeffrey:
So we’ll go ahead and do the logical design of that. And then we can sit down and have a meeting afterwards and discuss if that’s really working well for you or if there’s any issues that we need to look at. So you gave us some good insight there.
Lee:
That’s good. I mean, the only downsides to that is just that whatever you translate into a mobile environment might be sacrilege to the designer who’s designed it. Because, again, I’m not sure what designers you deal with. But we tend to deal with a lot of designers who are very, very kind of brand aware. They’ve spent thousands, has been invested in creating a brand guideline and making sure that everything is perfect.
Lee:
So they feel like they need to have the exact same sort of input at the kind of the mobile level as well to ensure that the treatment of the logo is the same. So that’s why we always try and get at least the mobile version done. So tell us what the mobile header should look like, you know, and we’ll always send them examples as well of what they can do.
Lee:
But being able to treat the menu, especially if it’s going to be like a slide out menu, having the right font sizes, et cetera, for the menu and the header, et cetera, it just saves us an awful lot of extra time arguing at the end. But we still end up having a few arguments, again, about header sizes or they feel that certain images, you know, when you’ve got like a grid of images and you’ve got like an image and then some text and then in one block and then another image block and there’s some more text than that.
Lee:
They then start saying, well, actually, it should be this order. And you’re like, well, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would you do that? So, but thankfully, we’ve got two revision rounds kind of in included in that. So they’re allowed to say all that. And then by the third, we’re allowed to start invoicing, which is a nice arrangement.
Jeffrey:
That’s my favorite stage. The change control stage.
Lee:
No, the invoicing stage.
Jeffrey:
Oh, the invoicing stage. Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s true.
Lee:
Well, let’s talk about that. Why the hell not? You’re an agency like me. The invoicing stage. How do you work? 50% up front? 25, 25, 25, 25? Or what do you do?
Jeffrey:
I always did 50% up front, 50% when it went live. And I’ve changed that. But I still kind of change it depending on the project sometimes, which isn’t necessarily wise. But I just, I do a lot of hand-holding with clients sometimes, you know, and it just depends.
Lee:
That must get a little bit awkward.
Jeffrey:
It does because it gets romantic, you know, and then, yeah, their wives are texting me late at night. Why are you calling my husband? I saw you holding my husband. I’m not going to say what I warned you before we got on.
Lee:
Oh, no, okay.
Jeffrey:
No, that was funny. DM me if you want a screenshot. Anyway, carry on.
Lee:
Is that going on the, is that going online?
Lee:
I’m never going to have a political career now.
Jeffrey:
Don’t worry. I’m not going to share it.
Lee:
What stays on the WP Innovator podcast, or even what he said, stays on it. And the thousands of listeners worldwide. Finish your sentence.
Lee:
I’ll send you your affiliate commission so you don’t hold it hostage.
Jeffrey:
Oh, that sounds good. What was I saying?
Jeffrey:
Oh, the invoicing. Yeah, so now I’m starting to work with bigger budgets. And I realize that it’s really awkward to ask for like $10,000 up front. I’m just not comfortable with it. And that may say more about me than the project itself or the client.
Jeffrey:
But so now I might do 40% up front and then 30% and 30% at various stages. But I kind of look at the project as a whole and make a decision. But it’s in between 25% to 50% up front. I have to get that up front. And I’m not comfortable if we don’t have that money in the bank before I start bringing on contractors or buying software or anything like that.
Jeffrey:
I’m just not because I’ve been burned. We all have. And, you know, so I definitely always start with something. But I just have to look at it and just see how this is going to go. Is it a, you know, six-month project? Is it something that we’re trying to get done in four to six weeks and, you know, make the adjustments there?
Jeffrey:
But the 50 to start and the 50 to go live, I learned the hard way. You might be waiting like two years sometimes. And, you know, it may be your fault. It may not. Usually it’s not. But you’re waiting for a website to go live for forever. And it’s like, is it ever going to?
Jeffrey:
And I’ve had some that they just disappeared. You know, it never even went live. You did your work. You let it sit on the development server for, you know, six months. And you finally get a call back from them. Oh, we decided to nix this entire business. We’re not going to pay your final invoice. Bye.
Jeffrey:
So that’s not fun.
Lee:
To which, at that point, you call that guy that everyone knows. Everyone’s got a friend called Dave.
Lee:
Dave, the lawyer? No, no, no. Who owns a baseball bat. And you’re like, mate, right?
Lee:
Actually, I don’t have a friend called Dave. I wish I had a friend called Dave.
Lee:
On that then, here’s some advice. You may have already started doing this, to be honest, because I think it’s pretty much part of WP Elevation. I learned this like three years ago when I did WP Elevation back in the day.
Lee:
But one of the things to build into your contract is when you’re doing the invoicing cycle, as it were, and the agreement of how much is paid at each stage, etc. What we do is when we’ve got the website built with fake lorem ipsum, that is the point that our final invoice goes to them and they pay it. They can freely spend two years if they want to entering content into that website and even paying hosting for the development site for two years if it’s going to take them that long.
Lee:
It’s totally fine. But as long as I’ve delivered everything that I said I’m going to do in the briefing document, the final invoice goes, the lawyer letter follows if they don’t pay it within 30 days.
Lee:
Well, it’s actually 15 days, to be honest, but 30 days to give them a little bit of grace. If they’ve not paid it by then, that’s when it gets serious. Because we’ve done the work and we need to get paid. And it’s not our fault if they’re going to spend months getting their act together to put in the thing.
Lee:
So I don’t know if you started doing that, but that’s definitely covered in WP Elevation. And we’re going to have to let everyone know on the Facebook group the next time WP Elevation is open because it’s a fantastic course. And Troy Dean and his team only open the doors every few months for like a week to have another intake of students, etc.
Lee:
So if you want to join the Facebook group, WPinnovator.com/group, head in there. We will let you know as soon as the next opening is on offer.
Jeffrey:
Deep.
Jeffrey:
Highly, highly recommend it. Highly, highly recommend it. I signed up and like, this is almost a year ago, a couple weeks in, I think I got like an email from Troy or something. He’s like, hey, you’re in California.
Jeffrey:
And I don’t know who Troy is, you know, I mean, I know who he is, but I don’t know him personally. I’m like, why is he asking him to California? He’s like, oh, I’m going to be in Hollywood for something. We’re going to get a couple people for drinks.
Jeffrey:
You’re like, wait, what kind of program can the owner just hit you up and say, hey, I’m taking you up for drinks. And oh, by the way, I live, you know, two continents over, but I’m going to be in your town and we’re going to go have some beers. Ready?
Jeffrey:
It’s like, what kind of service is that? That’s pretty cool.
Jeffrey:
That’s pretty amazing.
Jeffrey:
And he had me at hello with his accent. Hawaii.
Jeffrey:
Actually, that was awful. That was terrible. Sorry.
Lee:
Yeah, he’s good. He’s going to kick you up for that.
Jeffrey:
Sorry.
Lee:
Well, he can try unless he’s going to fly over to London or something. And then.
Jeffrey:
No, and kick out. That’d be elevation. I’m not saying he’s a violent man. Jeez.
Lee:
Oh, OK. Well, I’d have been.
Lee:
Hooligans in the UK. Is all you do? You just fight or something? Is that a.
Jeffrey:
Well, yeah. I’ve seen Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I know what you guys are all about.
Lee:
Well, no. I mean, if you think back to the old duels as well that we used to have, you know, 10 paces, turn, shoot, you know, the one not dead is the winner. We invented that sort of thing.
Jeffrey:
Well, you can’t say we. You’re a Canadian, right?
Lee:
That’s actually kind of true. Yeah. I am kind of true as well. Well, yeah. Are you Canadian as well?
Jeffrey:
My mom was born there and then I moved there. She moved when she was a kid. But oddly enough, when my parents divorced when I was a kid, my dad moved to Canada. So I’ve been back and forth. But I’m a California boy. Born and bred.
Lee:
Born and bred. What, just off topic, what do you love the most about California?
Jeffrey:
The weather.
Jeffrey:
I can’t. I travel a lot for one of my projects and just for fun. And I mean, there’s great places all over this world. I’ve been all over. California is where it’s at. It’s expensive.
Jeffrey:
It’s depressing trying to make a living here. But man, when it’s, you know, 75, 85 degrees and you got an ocean breeze, it’s the best.
Lee:
You’re not, you’re kind of selling it and not selling it at the same time.
Jeffrey:
Well, I’m being honest, you know, trust me. But I guess you have to experience it to know it.
Jeffrey:
Yeah, that’s the thing. Well, honestly, I just, I try to give people my honest opinion. And my honest opinion is I’m conflicted about living here, I guess, is what we just unpacked.
Lee:
Now who’s on the therapy couch?
Lee:
I just choked on my drink.
Lee:
All right. So to wrap this up, there are some final questions or a final question. I have.
Lee:
So we’ve unpacked your journey. We know how you got into development, which is amazing. Development, then design. It’s an interesting journey. Exactly the same journey as me. Learned how to build on tripod and geocities and then kind of morphed into design and so on.
Lee:
We’ve learned about your businesses, about creating processes so that you can streamline things and be more efficient. You’re offering your white label services that allow you then, you know, with these processes to be efficient, to make it profitable, but also to allow you to create relationships as well.
Lee:
We’ve also talked about things like invoicing and, you know, how to structure those better. We’ve also big WP elevation. Why the hell not? My last question, therefore, is before we say adieu, is you are an online agency. Are your clients predominantly local or are they global? And then the next question to tag on to the end of that is how do you generate leads and get new clients?
Jeffrey:
That’s a good question. It’s a mix of both. But for our full website projects now, most of them are local or somewhat local. And most of them come just from word of mouth, just from my own personal network. And like I’m getting referrals from people I went to high school with. And I like I haven’t just moved back to my high school town. But, you know, people I haven’t seen for 20 years and that’s just part of Facebook and just networking and being vocal about what you do and who you help. And then they just kind of come.
Jeffrey:
And, you know, I could do more if I put more lead generation stuff out there. But I’m pretty happy with the way they flow in. And I like having that kind of personal connection, too. That creates a different relationship. For whatever reason, a lot of our clients are a little more on the low tech side. So it’s kind of nice when they are local or semi-local and you can pop into the office and sit down and have a training session and things like that.
Jeffrey:
But then on the flip side, our agency, you know, or I should say the agencies we work with, they’re from all over, you know, all over the U.S., all over the world. And that’s cool because it just creates that, you know, huge network from the entire planet that you didn’t even know you had, you know. It creates new friends, creates new relationships and new opportunities every day.
Lee:
I think as well the beauty of the Internet is we found so many new suppliers as well, which has been amazing. Not just clients, but just the ability to have people working on projects with us or give us amazing advice. And we paid for consultancy from even people who joined the Facebook group.
Lee:
Shall we plug it again? Just a hell of it. I think I’ve plugged it like eight times.
Lee:
If somebody listens to this podcast and you’re not in the WP Innovator group, what the heck is wrong with you? Just unsubscribe this podcast. You don’t belong.
Lee:
I’m just kidding. No, that’s terrible. Don’t say stuff like that. You’re shy. You got to get harsh to get some of those final people to subscribe or else they’re not going to do it.
Jeffrey:
Isn’t that like guilt bait or something like, you know, you have the click bait, haven’t you? And then there’s like guilt bait, isn’t there? Or something like that as well to making people join something or click something or buy something because I don’t know. Let’s talk more about my childhood, don’t we?
Lee:
You’re sorry?
Lee:
Let’s talk more about my childhood, shall we?
Jeffrey:
Let’s not because I don’t know if I can handle it.
Lee:
Mate, you’re a legend. You’ve got to come on again because I’ve really enjoyed just chatting. Like, I love this style of podcast. This is my jam. I love it. This is great.
Lee:
So come back on again soon.
Lee:
So before we let you go, please can you let us know how we can get in touch with you?
Jeffrey:
The best place is probably Facebook. You can find me, Jeffrey Patch, J-E-F-F-E-R-Y. You can follow Maintain Press and Doozie Creative. And I also, is it okay to plug my group?
Lee:
Yes, because I plugged mine eight times.
Jeffrey:
Well, yeah, Ben, I want to step on your toes. I’m also running the Digital Agency Profits Facebook group. So you can go to maintain.press/group and it will take you there.
Lee:
Cool. Am I not a member of that group?
Jeffrey:
I don’t think you are.
Lee:
That’s shocking.
Lee:
Well, I’ve just asked anyway.
Jeffrey:
Well, mate, thanks for that. Guys, head on over Facebook, tap in Digital Agency Profits. You will find Jeffrey’s group. That looks like an amazing place to be. Couldn’t believe that I wasn’t in it, but I’m now a part.
Jeffrey:
I’m sorry, mate. Well, I hope you’re going to approve, yeah?
Lee:
And then obviously check out maintain.press and Doozie Creative. All of the links are going to be in the show notes. Jeffrey is a legend. Jeffrey, you are a legend. You’re a good mate as well. I really appreciate time. We would definitely have you once. Let’s sort something out. We’ll set some sort of topic. We’ll drink coffee or whatever. And then we’ll shoot the breeze on that soon.
Lee:
Have an amazing evening, mate. Or day. Or day. I don’t know what time.
Jeffrey:
Yeah, thank you. It’s about one o’clock. Thank you. This is great. And then, yeah, I’d love to do this again. I’d love to maybe flip the tables on you one day and have you on as something. As a guest, some new content we’re working on. And we’ll be chatting about WPLivation stuff. Because are you going through all the lessons again? You can do it all?
Lee:
I’m doing it all again. Actually, that’s a great idea. So, again, in episode 100, I said we’re going to do a few things different for the next 100 episodes. So, why don’t we have it where you host the show for an episode and interview me?
Jeffrey:
Dude, let’s do it. Let’s do it.
Lee:
All right. You know the link. You’ve already got it. Set up another calendar appointment and we will do this.
Lee:
And this I am leaving recording so people know that in a few episodes time, Jeffrey is probably going to be hosting the WP Innovator podcast and having a chat with me. I’m looking forward to it.
Jeffrey:
All right. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m a bit scared now. But let’s do it anyway. What the hell? Have an epic afternoon, mate. See ya.
Lee:
See ya.
Jeffrey:
What was that? See ya.
Lee:
I thought it sounded cool. Gee, thanks a lot.
Jeffrey:
Oh, sorry. I mean, yeah. No, I’m kidding. That was well cool.
Lee:
I’m still recording. I’m totally leaving that one in the show.
Jeffrey:
Oh, good. We should have done something like, love you. Love you. Kisses. You hang up first. Okay, bye.
Lee:
And that wraps up episode number 105 in next week’s show. That’s 106 for those who haven’t quite worked it out. I had to count on my fingers, to be honest, to get to that next stage. But we’re going to be talking with Frank Candy. He’s back again. The legend that is Frank Candy. We’re going to be talking about public speaking. And he drops some amazing advice, particularly around how to plan and build out an amazing public speaking gig. We even talk about Rolodexes, which is kind of retro and really, really cool. So tune in next week. That’s episode 106 of the WP Innovator podcast. Don’t forget, we have a group. WPInnovator.com/group. That lives in Facebook. It’s freaking awesome. And also, I’ve been keeping a secret. I’m not going to tell you the secret yet, but you need to be keeping your eye in that group. Because I’m going to be doing a live stream in a few days to let everybody know what is going on. What I’ve been giggling about all this time. So head on over to that Facebook group, WPInnovator.com/group. Say that really fast. I’m getting good at that. That’s 106 episodes in. You’d think you’d be able to say that fast, wouldn’t you, Larissa?
Lee:
Yeah, cool. Larissa’s here as well. Hey, hi, Larissa. No, that was me pretending to be Larissa. Sorry about that, Larissa. She looks really offended now because I made fun of her. Anyway, this is now the end of this episode. And you’ll probably hear me in the next episode. But if you do want to talk to me before then, head on over to the WP Innovator group on WPInnovator.com/group. This is probably the weirdest kind of clothes we’ve done to a podcast as well. No, actually, I wrote a song. Didn’t I write a song last time? Like a few episodes ago, I actually wrote a song. That was freaking amazing. And nobody is actually, I think this is evidence that nobody actually listens to the full episode because no one actually mixed it up for us and sent us back in. Can’t remember which episode that was. Hey, if you’re actually this far and you’re a musician, write us a song. That would be amazing. Write a song about, I don’t know, the WP Innovator podcast. That’d be great. Why the hell not? I think I should probably stop now. It’s entirely up to Larissa how much of this actually gets in the outro because I’m going to hand it over to her now for editing. So if you get this far, that means she just left it all in like a badass. Oh, yeah. All right. Anyway, see you next week. Episode 106. Toodles.
