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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.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And now your host, Lee Jackson. Welcome to episode number 107 of the WP Innovator podcast. This is your host with the most or at least the least hair, mister Lee Jackson. And today’s show is the live stream that me and Jeffrey Patch did all around de stressing your agency. And this is really part of an ongoing conversation that’s gonna carry on throughout 2018. So this episode is merely a very, very tip of the iceberg. We’re gonna be talking about some practical tips and advice for managing the sorts of things that keep us agency owners awake at night. This live stream was recorded in the WP Innovator Facebook group.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So if you are not a member, be sure to go and check that out on WPInnovator.com/group. And until then, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. And please keep your arms and your legs inside of the vehicle at all times. Hey, everybody. So, alright. Well, let’s kick off. First of all, welcome to the live stream. This is Lee Jackson and Jeffrey Patch or The Patch as I will refer to him for the rest of this call, which will probably drive him insane.
Jeffrey Patch:
Actually, I like that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Alright. Let’s call him the patch. Hey. The patch.
Jeffrey Patch:
Now when you do the eyebrows, though
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You you then start to feel conflicted. I understand if it happens to most guys. People
Jeffrey Patch:
are watching this.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
There there are quite a few, but there’s six people watching this as well, by the way. That’s right. So I’m on Facebook. Yeah. They’re all watching or watching you. They’re here for you. So I’m Lee Jackson, the, founder of the WPP Innovator podcast. So you’re totally aware of that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And you will have hopefully met Jeffrey in the group. Maybe you’re even a part of his group as well. And if you’re not, I do recommend you go ahead and type in digital agency profits into Facebook so you can go and find his group as well. And he was recently on the show as a legendary guest talking about his agency and how he shifted from doing all the free maintenance to actually making a business out of it. And that’s a freaking brilliant podcast because you are a freaking brilliant guy. So how about you give us an introduction about yourself, brother?
Jeffrey Patch:
Thank you, sir. So, that was that was a pretty good one. But, if you didn’t hear the podcast and you don’t know a little bit more about me, I have my own creative agency called Jizzy Creative. And like Lee said, we kind of, pivoted a little bit this year or a little over a year ago now to work more on just WordPress maintenance and technical aspects of that. But we still take, a few client projects a year, and, you know, we still have our own struggles. And, I know you probably do too. And we’re gonna we’re gonna what what did I say? Gap. I was gonna say shoot that.
Jeffrey Patch:
You know what? But I’m not I’m gonna keep my language clear for you today.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No. No worries. Well, I mean, you’ve already accused one person of being a terrorist, so it’s, I’m pretty sure Matt dropped out. Oh, I had a really I actually said something. Only a terrorist when waiting for client content. I hear you.
Jeffrey Patch:
That’s good. I think we could accept that one.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We can accept that. So what we’re gonna do, guys, just so you know what the flow of this is gonna be, is we’ve done the introductions, and, we will, essentially, do an introduction. Just set the scene. So we’re gonna set the scene. Then we’re gonna go into some questions that we’ve had. So we’ve been advertising this out amongst our both our groups now for the last, I don’t know, three days, and we’ve collated some questions. Thank you, everybody. We got tons of questions, which is phenomenal, which is great ideas for blog posts as well for me and Jeffrey, as well as future live streams.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So we’re gonna try try and cover off some of them. We’ve picked a handful because we only have an hour, and what we wanna do is hit some of these questions with the best of our ability and then, open up for some other questions as well from anyone who is watching live who may wanna ask. I am gonna caveat everything with the fact that me and Jeffrey well, maybe Jeffrey does, but I certainly don’t know everything. And I believe you agree here, mate, that we are also stressed out agency owners ourselves. Like, we’re not doing this because we’ve got it nailed. We’re doing this because we have some experience, which might be helpful, but also we wanna learn from everybody else as well. We wanna learn from each other, and we wanna learn from people in the comments as well as we talk, which should be awesome.
Jeffrey Patch:
That’s the best part about these groups. I mean, whether they’re our groups or any of the not any of the other ones. There’s some bad ones, but there’s some great Facebook groups out there. And it’s just there’s this community now where we can feed off of each other and, you know, we can learn. And we we can start to realize that, you know, like you and I, we’ve got plenty of things to give back. Other people have got plenty of things to give back. So it’s just a matter of of everyone kinda stopping and looking at what they’re good at and and finding out where they can seek help too. And so hope hopefully, it’s, some good info for people today.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Absolutely. Alright. So let’s kick off then with reviewing some of the questions that we’ve had. So there’s about five or six questions. Again, if you’ve asked a question and we don’t get time to cover it today, then we are sorry, but we will make sure we do either an upcoming livestream or we’ll cover it off in a podcast in the future. Because I wanna do lots of collab with this man because he’s pretty cool. And we’re not talking about music or rapping or any of that sort of stuff. We’re talking agency collaboration.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That sounds cool for the nation. Alright, mate. Over to you.
Jeffrey Patch:
Alright. Our first question. This is from Mark Wuerl. Mark, I hope I’m saying your last name right. It’s actually kind of a two questions. Peter Freeman has a similar one, so I’ll read both of them. Mark said, the balancing act of project work and building the business, what’s the best way to keep relationships strong and most practical and and the most practical business model? And then Peter kind of kind of on that note too was looking at info on just balancing, doing the work, and and building his business further.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And these are these are pretty pretty huge. These are pretty huge questions.
Jeffrey Patch:
Those are deep questions to open up with.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
They really are. And I got to admit, I mean, I I’ll share a story with you. A few a few years ago when I was in my old agency, what we found we were doing a lot of the time was, working our butts off to get lots of business in. And then when we had all the business in, we would take our foot off the marketing pedal as it were and throw ourselves wholeheartedly into getting whatever the projects were done, which then meant before we knew it, we were giving great service to this group of people. But what we’d forgotten to do was to keep pushing that marketing muscle. So suddenly, we were nearing the end of all these projects, and we would see that, you know, there was September, October, November with absolutely nothing in the pipelines. There was no sales in the pipeline. And then we were stressing out again because, you know, it was almost like starting the business over.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You have to go out and try and find new opportunities, build up new relationships. I was, like, networking like a madman, long nights, sending email campaigns, trying to think up clever things just to get the next couple of months covered in the pipeline. And And then we would make the exact same mistake again. We would then just focus on that new lot of business that we that we just won for the pipeline, scrape everyone’s salaries as well, just get in there with the last bit of money. And we used to do things like factoring, which soaked, you know, just to try and get the cash flow going. And then we’d focus again on those projects, and it was really, really bad, really bad model. I mean, we changed, obviously. We we did it a few times, and then we realized how stressful it was.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And if you can see the video, you you can see how much hair I lost, basically all of it. And what we realized we needed to do well, there’s two things that we we realized we needed to do. I heard a podcast many years ago, and someone said something on it that kind of changed my life, and that was sell every day. And that doesn’t mean, like, spend half a day doing sales and cheesy sales calls and all that sort of stuff. It just means doing one specific marketing activity per day, and that could be sharing on social media, creating some content again and sharing that on social media. It could be calling an existing client, who has worked with you in the past and having a friendly conversation and find out what’s going on in their lives. But just planning a ten or twenty minute something, some form of marketing activity every single day. And I’ve got that on my calendar, and I do one thing every day.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Sometimes I do a lot more than one thing. But if at the very minimum, I can do one marketing activity per day, then I know that I am looking after the future because people are gonna remember me. People are gonna see me. They’re gonna see what I’m doing. And, you know, hopefully, the opportunities will come in. And what does happen, because I’m doing these regular touch points of marketing activities, I’m getting emails coming into me. I’m not chasing for the leads. The actual leads are coming into our business.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So these new potential projects are coming in, that way. The other thing that in my own experience as well is I recommend that we treat ourselves just as importantly, if not more importantly than our clients. It’s actually our responsibility to run a good solid business. It needs our responsibility to put ourselves first to the benefit of our clients. Because if we go bust, we’re of no use to our clients. So we are actually the most important customer before our clients are. And that probably tips everything on their head because everyone hears the customer is always right and all of that sort of stuff. But I’ve learned over time that if you don’t look after your own business first before your clients, then, there is no business for you to support your clients with.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I don’t mean ignore your clients, but I mean actually schedule time in for your business. Schedule time to update your website. Schedule time to perform whatever these marketing activities are, etcetera. If your website needs updating and you’re updating everyone else’s websites instead, there’s a problem. You need to put on your calendar a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there. Now on Wednesday, we’re gonna be announcing something pretty huge. So when you watch this back, you will understand that I have had to make sure I put my business on the calendar as a just as important calendar item, non cancelable, non changeable than my clients because we are doing something pretty freaking huge and this taken a lot of time. So it’s really important to treat yourself as important as your client.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Put time on the calendar. So that’s two things from me. There is, there is, I’m sure, more to flow from the brain of the Jeff. How about you share some some ideas or thoughts?
Jeffrey Patch:
I did yeah. I actually kinda had a a slightly different take, and everything you said was spot on.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
What? Are we gonna have
Jeffrey Patch:
a disagreement? %. No. I think we’re saying the same things different ways. But, you know, you were kind of focusing on putting time back into into marketing, and I I suppose this could be, you know, marketing or product development. But one of the things that evolved out of those lows for us and I and I fully admit that our agency has never been the biggest. I mean, we’re very small. We’re a very small time agency, but but I like it that way, and I feel like no desire to get hit too much bigger. But during those downtimes because we’ve been there a hundred times well, you know, not a hundred times, but, I mean, we’ve been there.
Jeffrey Patch:
You know what I mean? Those projects end and you oh my goodness. I wasn’t doing anything to keep that pipeline going. And that’s kinda how, like, for us, at least, it was maintained press. You know, we started kind of evolving and product sizing our services. So maybe when there’s extra time in there, you know, look at those look at those services that you’re doing all the time. And can you turn those into a product? Can you sell those to people that aren’t just your, you know, your ongoing clients that you’re dealing with all the time? You know, not everything has to be a big web build or, you know, an app development or whatever your agency does. There are there’s lower hanging fruit out there that you could probably be be seeking, especially when when times are slow. I mean, that’s when you should start jumping on things like that.
Jeffrey Patch:
Start developing that, test it with somebody, see how your next, you know, your next workflow goes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s good. Just being able to generate leads from your existing clients, especially on those difficult times, For example, in your own experience, there is maintenance. There are potentially clients you don’t have maintenance support contracts with, or there are clients that are not interested in that particularly, but you could at least sell a one off, hey, your website is super out of date, and there have been a whole load of security updates. So how about x dollars, and I’ll update your website and get you to the latest version or something like that. So there’s a whole load of That’s exactly
Jeffrey Patch:
how it goes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, exactly. There’s there’s lots of potential things. Or I’ve noticed I mean, if you imagine, we’ve built websites now, maybe two or three years old, and they’re all still live. And there’s been a hell of a lot of changes in browsers as well. So, there is the browser update program that you could be reaching out to all of your clients and saying, hey, guys. When we built your website, you know, we were rocking Firefox one. Now then, lots of things have changed. And how about we, enter into some sort of exercise where we we update your code and make sure everything is rocking and rolling to the latest and greatest changes? Because that’s not a negative on your code.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s just the fact that every single browser, especially Safari at the moment, that’s driving me mad. It’s the new Internet Explorer. They translate things differently, and they create bugs of their own, and things evolve. And HTML is evolving as well. So that is something that we only started doing recently when we realized we had some of these old sites, and I was testing them. And I was like, man, that’s broken. We need to solve that. And that’s a potential service as well.
Jeffrey Patch:
How many times have you looked back and went, oh, we should have done that differently? Or or do you are you able to look at it and say, oh, that’s just time. That’s just change. That’s technology evolving.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Every single time. Because we’re creatives and we’re never happy. Do you do you agree with that? Oh, yeah. No. Just the
Jeffrey Patch:
other day, I went, why did I do it
Lee Matthew Jackson:
like this? Oh, that,
Jeffrey Patch:
you know, and then I’m like, I’ll just I’ll take care of it because I don’t want them to. But, you know, four years ago when when the site was built, it was a smart idea. Now things are a little bit different. But, you know, if we were maybe maintaining that full time, it’d be a different story. But but no. I mean, we we get there. Things change, you know. And and you grow, you learn more, and you you’re either I mean, we’re now we’re talking about technology, but, you know, your tools evolve, your your stack changes and all that.
Jeffrey Patch:
But but that that happens. And and sometimes you do go back and you go, maybe I’m gonna retweak that process this next time.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I like it. Well it down. And, Peter, I hope that helps. So we’ve talked about, you know, if you have got to a position where you don’t have, a good pipeline coming up, then there’s some low hanging fruit they can go for. There’s also the selling every day, technique, which includes reaching out to your existing customers. That will cover yours, Mark, well, with regards to keeping those relationships strong, etcetera, and also treating your own business as importantly, if that’s a word, as the client’s businesses as well, because we all have a responsibility to be running a good strong agency that we can continue on into the future to support the people that we that we love and we support. And maybe we hate a few of our clients, but that might be a bad thing. But anyway, one last thing I would throw in there as well, which is a really good segue.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I would actually like to buy a segue. Anyway, which is a really good segue to our next question, is also, you know, to have a coach of some sort or a mentor, to help you, there’s two types of mentors. There’s mentors that people who are just people who inspire you. But there is also kind of a mentor slash coach, someone who can actually have an understanding of your business and an understanding of you and give you an outside in advice and help and support, to grow your business. So having someone else who has been in business or is in business and run something successful, being able to help you along the way, super important. So let’s go on to that next question. And the question to you this is from Paul Lacey. Oh.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Paul Lacey, fellow gorgeous, handsome, bold guy, along with Todd, who is also a fellow gorgeous, handsome, bold guy. There’s quite a few bold guys in the WP and Avada group. We love them. That’s how stressed that is actually how stressed the agency owners are. I would I we need a gallery, don’t we? We need a pre hair loss gallery.
Jeffrey Patch:
Can you write a commercial right now for, like, a pharmaceutical drug where the, you know, the, but the the pharmaceutical drug is running a web agency and the side effects are losing your hair and buying microphones, setting up great rates in your office.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’d be amazing. There’s Paul on the screen. Paul has just arrived as well, just in time for his question. Let me read the question out then. And it is this, it’s not that one. It’s this one. Alright. So Paul says, who are your mentors? How have they influenced your road map for 2018? With love, Paul Lacey.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. I added that bit. Jeff, the patch.
Jeffrey Patch:
This this sounds so cheesy, but my dad. My my dad is, like, my number one hero and mentor and for a lot of ways or for a lot of reasons. But probably number one is because even though he he’s not an entrepreneur, he’s he’s been a sales guy his whole life. He’s never you know, we have no connection in this world necessarily. But he asked me the hard questions. You know, we we meet up for breakfast all the time, and and he’ll go, you know, how’s business? How’s it going? I go, you know, I just signed this many clients. Then he’ll he’ll ask me something real tough, like, so how much money is that in the bank every month? And I’m like, oh, man, dad, you just called me out. Jeez.
Jeffrey Patch:
Yeah. So then I go back and I, you know, I rewind and I look at everything. And then the next time we have breakfast, I’m able to answer. I go, well, actually, you you know? And I give them that answer that I was able to actually figure out. But, yeah, he does that all the time. He calls me out, but I like that kinda challenging. And then this is a little different. Not necessarily a mentor.
Jeffrey Patch:
Maybe it is, but you you talked about a coach. And, I mean, who we’ve talked about it a thousand times, but, WP Elevation, Troy Dean, everybody in that group, all the coaches, all the mentors, and literally all of the all the people. All the all the, what am I trying to say? Members. Everybody in there. It’s, it’s a great place. And, I’ve gotten more mentorship just out of people in that group than, you know, I’ve ever been able to in my in my career. And I’ve been doing this, like, almost twenty years or something like that. So, yeah, that’s those are that’s my two answers.
Jeffrey Patch:
And I I I know that you’ve got a better one. I know that you have, like, got a good one, so drop it on us.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Do I? Oh, no. That’s a lot of pressure. I I would agree before we go into mine as well that we certainly, if you are not part of WP Elevation, we’re a part of WP Elevation, so is mister Patch. But, it’s it is a great place. Troy Dean is a freaking legend. Love the guy. He’s always got time for good conversation. He’s in the group helping, etcetera.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But also everybody within that group is a whole load of WordPress consultants who are all helping each other out. So if you are very focused on WordPress, WordPress consultancy, you probably wanna be a part of, that. I think they’re gonna do another opening in March time. So keep your eye out. We’ll make sure we let you know when that happens. Alright. My mentors, one of them is dead. Is Walt Disney.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh? Yeah. Walt Disney. Like, I would so love to have met the guy, but, the reason it’s Walt Disney is I I love the the hard graft that he put in. So he put in lots of hard graft all of his life, and and I find that inspiring. He always dreamt big, and he was an action taker, and he would always ignore the people who would say that it’s it’s not gonna work. And that’s how I like to live my life. Not being I need to make my own mistakes, and he made all of his own mistakes and learn from them and build a really successful business and change lives. And, yeah, I find the guy inspiring.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So I regularly watch, documentaries on him. I’ll regularly read books about him. I will regularly remind myself of quotes of mister Disney as well. So, yeah, he is one of my, mentors. With regards to a coach, I’ve been, working well, connecting with a young Chris Ducker, who is a fellow bald guy, and we are working together all of 2018, which is gonna be super exciting. And he’s I can’t say much yet, but he’s part of why I’m making an announcement in a few days’ time. So I’m gonna be very vague about that. But you will find out on Wednesday, the thirteenth, at 4PM GMT, which is 8AM PST.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
There is gonna be an announcement, which we’ll be making. But, yeah, he’s he’s been very much a part of that. He’s inspired whatever that is that I’m gonna tell you. And he’s also gonna be, heavily involved in my business, well, both my businesses over the next year because I have paid to be part of a program of his where he’s gonna be working with me. So that’s super exciting. And I followed his content. Like him or hate him, the guy says some really good stuff. And I’ve I’ve always been kind of I’ve always you know, when you you find someone you like you’re not sure whether they annoy you, and and I think what it is sometimes is I’m projecting my own personal the the things I don’t like about myself onto him, which is not fair because he’s actually quite I
Jeffrey Patch:
think that it’s bald.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. He’s a really nice guy, and he says such great things. And I think because he’s saying things that make sense and I realize that I’m not doing, there’s this inner part of me that’s like, oh, why are you pointing out the obvious to me that I should have dealt with that I’m still not dealing with? So yeah. So he’s at this present part of my life, he’s been influencing me over the last year as I’ve been consuming his content, and then I’ve gone ahead and actually invested now, with him as well, for 2018 to have his help and support over twenty eighteen. With regards to kind of other influences as well, then there have been a key few people in this, the BP innovator group, people who’ve been on the podcast as well, who’ve become a very close knit circle of friends. So there has been you, Jeffrey, where, you know, we’ve made really good friends. There’s kind of a bromance going on here right now. There’s Sarah Moore as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
There’s Todd who’s currently on their live streams. There’s Paul Lacey as well. Yeah. Paul Paul’s been, a amazing support, and we’ve had a few private conversations, which has been awesome. Kim Doyle as well, massive influencer in my life. I know a lot of people here love Kim Doyle. She is a complete legend, and she’s given me so much time over the last couple well, last three years that I’ve known her, just giving me Skype calls, sharing a screen, telling me everything that she’s up to, like, no secrets. She just tells tells me it as it as it is, what she’s up to, and and, gives us lots of help and support.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
In fact, I was on the Blower Weather the other day. And we’re gonna do a live stream in a few weeks for Christmas. Few weeks, few days. We’re gonna announce that soon. Maybe I shouldn’t have announced it early. Sorry, Kim. But, yeah, we’re gonna do something together soon
Jeffrey Patch:
It’s which
Lee Matthew Jackson:
is pretty freaking awesome. But it’s important, I guess I guess, to wrap up the section because we could talk about so many people, you know, like the Oscar speech, couldn’t we? I wanna thank my mom and my dad. But it is really important to have people that influence you in your life, people that you look up to, people that you can emulate, but also people that can talk you can talk to and, that can coach you as well. I think that puts a really nice bow on that. And Kim Doyle has just mentioned that she is blushing. You should because you’re a lovely lady. And I know everyone’s now going to comment in this livestream saying, yes, Kim. You are freaking awesome.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Mhmm.
Jeffrey Patch:
If you don’t know, you will. I I haven’t done a Kim and I got on a call, like, once, like, two months ago. I gotta tell you. I got so much value out of that, and I don’t even remember what the point of the call. I think I was I think I was thinking about maybe sponsoring or something. And I walked away with that. And I I swear, like, I went back and, you know, refreshed my business from, you know, thirty minutes on Skype with with Kim or something, and that wasn’t the plan at all. So Thank you.
Jeffrey Patch:
I I never got your invoice for your coaching.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Kim, opportunity. Opportunity not.
Jeffrey Patch:
If I give it an email, oh, boy. I didn’t know how much she was gonna charge me for that. I have a question for you, sir. Can you question. Oh, at least because I’m curious. This is totally selfish. I need a good Walt Disney book or documentary. You mentioned there were some good ones.
Jeffrey Patch:
Can you recommend one for us? And I’ll tell you why in a second.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Alright. Well, there is a great podcast, which is currently on a hiatus over Christmas, and that’s called the Walt Business Show. The host is called Lee Jackson. So you should probably listen to that. Season two is out in, in the new year in January. So so that was a blatant plug for me, and that wasn’t planned. That was not planned. There is now oh, my gosh.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Alright. There’s a book. There is literally a book about Walt Disney, and I think it’s by Bob someone. I’m gonna have to, like, go and research. My books are all at home, man.
Jeffrey Patch:
Well, that’s okay. I don’t like reading anyway, so a documentary Hang
Lee Matthew Jackson:
on hang on hang on. There’s a there is another book that is a little I’m just opening up my audible because I was listening to it the other day. I’m halfway through. Oh, yeah. How to be like Walt. That’s a very good book. I’m halfway through. How to be like Walt.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. How to be like Walt. The other book though, it’s by Bob Samoan, and I need to go find it. It’s I haven’t read it for like a couple of years now, but it’s a brilliant book. But all about Walt Disney’s life, but it kind of gives you a lot of behind the scenes as well. And a few kind of sad moments as well with regards to what he was dealing with. So it’s a very kind of personal biography, but it’s really, really helpful. A really good read.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So why did you ask the question, or did you have to tell me later? Is this like private?
Jeffrey Patch:
No. No. No. I’ll tell you right now, because because I it’s, it’s kind of confusing and convoluted, but I I don’t know if I told you this. I worked at Disney as a consultant for ten years to the day. No way. So I’ve I’ve been kind of behind the scenes there. But that said, I don’t know I mean, I know about Walt Disney.
Jeffrey Patch:
You know, I know the basics like everybody but I don’t you know, beyond beyond the general things, I’ve never really, you know, looked at him as a inspiration or anything. So I’m just curious, and I’m thinking, gosh. I spent so much time there. Why why don’t I? I mean, I’ve heard stories. Everybody knows how influential and how how, you know, how motivating Walt Disney was. But but no. So I’ve had kind of an interesting look behind the scenes there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, you can come on the podcast in season two. I might get sued, but we’ll
Jeffrey Patch:
we’ll we’ll talk about that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We’ll we’ll we’ll call you Joffrey Pitch.
Jeffrey Patch:
There you go.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And you can talk in a you know, with a slight accent or something like that. Just don’t be racist or anything because, like, you’ve already offended one person already.
Jeffrey Patch:
Sorry, Matt.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I don’t think you offended him. Alright. So You guys knew me
Jeffrey Patch:
in in in real life, you’d know I put my foot in my mouth all the time. Like, I’m pretty sure I’m a pretty nice guy, but I have offended so many people.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I have
Jeffrey Patch:
so many people that hate me.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I think we should have a podcast of all the stories that when you’ve when you’ve done that.
Jeffrey Patch:
Put a voice recorder on me. I’ll give you, like, an hour podcast a day. Just
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, man. I see. I’m so much trouble as a kid for not thinking, just speaking first.
Jeffrey Patch:
Right.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But nowadays, I count five in my head before I say things. That’s why there’s quite a lot of long pauses because it’s the only way I can do it. Alright. Next question is from Ed Ellingham. Ellingham. Yes. And it’s, again, quite a broad question. We are doing the broad questions here, but how do you handle clients and projects efficiently? So we can’t give you, like, a definitive answer, but I think me and Jeff will now share from our experiences, of how we manage our communications, etcetera, with our clients.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Go for it, Jeff, for a read.
Jeffrey Patch:
Well, I was just gonna say I don’t. So can we move on to the next one?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, okay. So next quick no. I’m just kidding.
Jeffrey Patch:
I I you know, though, I bet you if you ask everybody watching right now and everybody that’s going to see this and everybody that has seen it and everybody that saw it, clicked on it and then closed off real quick, I bet you all of their answers are the same. It’s that they could always improve that. They could always improve. That’s how we deal with our clients. One of the biggest ones this year is a simple thing. I don’t mean to, you know, talk tech too much or anything, but getting a an inbox management. We we are working with Teamwork Desk now. Mhmm.
Jeffrey Patch:
And being able to funnel all those requests in, that helps so you know, just in one inbox that multiple people can handle. We can keep track of everything. You know, I mean, you know, this sounds silly, but even the little stars, you know, where they rate your, rate your service at the bottom of the email, those little things help. And and that’s one, you know, kinda big thing big change that we did this last year, for at least a small task, you know, little things. And and that was what really I don’t know about you, but the little things are what add up. You know? And I’ll go, oh, sure. Just do this one little thing. And, you know, six hours later, you forgot about that meeting, and you forgot about that project that’s due at the end of the night because you were just handling one little little aspect.
Jeffrey Patch:
So being able to funnel those in there was was a big help for us. And then, getting everybody onto a project management system, including not everyone likes this. You may not wanna do it, but including the client or a representative for them. Yeah. And and one partnership I have actually, we have somebody at that company is is I mean, that that could be someone’s job as a project manager. But, like, he truly in injects himself into the business and then is that, you know, interface between the two of us. And so those type of things really help because they start to allow you to communicate better. And I think at the end of the day, it’s communication is the number one thing that breaks down and causes your your projects and your client services to start struggling.
Jeffrey Patch:
And at least that’s, you know, how it’s been for me over and over and over again. It’s that communication breakdown, and you gotta fix it. So we’ve kinda been proactive this year, and it’s it’s paid dividends. Absolutely paid dividends.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s good. On the project management side, I mean, without a project management system, my communication falls apart anyway. I need to have lists. So we’ve, we’ve used base camps for years. We did move over to Zoho, which is freaking phenomenal. But we’ve had to start going back into base camp because over the last month, unfortunately, Zoho keeps, like, hanging on us and having connectivity issues and not allowing us access, which has been really frustrating. So I guess a lesson learned there is if, you know, no matter how amazing a tool might look, you you absolutely need to find over a tool a tool that is reliable. And Basecamp, as frustrating as it can be over time, is still the most reliable product we’ve ever used.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Obviously, for you guys, it’s Teamwork. Maybe I should look at Teamwork because you are now, like, the eighth person who’s mentioned it in the last two weeks alone. So maybe I should take a look at that. With regards with regards to what we do, though, is it doesn’t for us, it doesn’t necessarily matter which, base sorry, which tool we use with regards to, like, Basecamp and that for for the tracking of all those questions. We could, in theory, just use a forum. What actually helps me holds the whole project together so that we know what sections we’re working at is actually creating a Gantt chart. So and I believe you act can actually do that inside of Teamwork that you were talking about. And that allows you to and I’m now throwing my hands around on video.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So if you’re listening to this on that podcast afterwards, you’re just gonna have to imagine me waving my arms around. But this allows you to place on your calendar almost like a a downward staircase along the way where you can say, okay. This is two weeks worth of discovery. And on that two weeks of discovery, the owners are going to be the representative that Jeffrey mentioned from that business and also x and y from our agency. And and you can then put within that kind of snippet of time. You can put your, you can put your meeting time. You can then put the time you’re gonna spend actually creating a document based on that meeting, etcetera. And you can put the individual owners, and you can start to check that off as you go along.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So there’s gonna be, like, a line that moves along as the dates move along. And I can see every single day, I’ve got one mega document that I can look at that shows me all the projects that are happening at the same time, and I can see where we’re coming to the end of a a particular you could call it a sprint. You could call it a whatever you wanna call it. So I can see I’m coming to the end of a discovery phase, and I need to be checking in with all the members of my team. How are we doing? Have we had all the information we needed from the client to get that finished, etcetera, etcetera? The when I mentioned have we got all that information, the other cool thing about the Gantt chart is that if a client has not provided something that we need, they are they own that on the Gantt chart. If they don’t provide it by the particular date, that means we have to move the date that they deliver whatever that thing is, and we could have everything else hinging off of that. So if they don’t provide, for example, the content at the particular point you need the content and they provide it a week later, that will actually not only affect the entire project by an entire week potentially, it could actually affect the project by an entire month depending on if they’ve done that and there is an upcoming holiday season and you’ve got tons of your resource on holiday because you can actually put in the project management system. You can put when people’s holidays are.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So that’s the resources that are available, the specialists, etcetera. So looking at your Gantt chart every day, you can call the client up and say, hey, mister client. You’ve not provided us your content yet. There’s two days left for you to do that. If you are a day late, your project could be delayed by three weeks. Seriously, that puts a fire up people’s ass, and they give you the content. So having some sort of top down Gantt chart look at the whole overall project, that one mega, it’s a pain in the ass, from my French to update, but it just allows you not to drop the ball on things. And I still drop the ball on things because it is a big Gantt chart, and I’m not perfect.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And I do upset clients. And if they’re watching, I apologize, because I have upset even last week, I upset a client because, yes, I dropped the ball. No one’s perfect. But it is I would drop so many more balls if it was not for, you know, this constant line that’s moving across this mega Gantt chart that I’ve got, and I can see what’s going on. And I can prompt people and remind them that if they don’t do this and this it applies to my own team as well. If you don’t get this finished, this is gonna affect our whole project. This is gonna affect when we can invoice because that’s another thing that’s so important, isn’t it? It’s the cash flow during a project. Because you if you hit a particular milestone, that’s when you’re gonna be able to to invoice.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And if you’re looking at your cash flow forecast as well, you definitely wanna, you know, invoice that one particular thing because you want that money in the bank by, I don’t know, Christmas because you need to pay out all the salaries. So that’s oh, man. There’s someone outside revving their engine. Yes.
Jeffrey Patch:
So really loud. Cool, man. Let’s race.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Let’s race. I hope not. But so that’s that’s the the one thing that kind of helps me hold everything together, that visual across the top. That is me done preaching about Gantt charts.
Jeffrey Patch:
Well, you know, and if you’re not implementing those systems, whatever they are, it doesn’t matter which tool. It doesn’t matter if you’re using a Gantt chart or whatever. But if you’re not managing these projects in in some way like that, you’re not gonna have those opportunities to approach your client proactively like you’ve mentioned. You know? Like you said, hey. This two day delay here might cause three days down the line. And and that was good because I never thought about putting in staff members, you know, holiday vacations and, you know, I mean, things like that. If you’re not on top of it, you’re just gonna have to walk up to your client one day with your, you know, hat in hand and say, sorry. I screwed up.
Jeffrey Patch:
And nobody likes that. So and it’s gonna happen. You know? Like you said, you did it, and I I I have a story I won’t share from about two weeks ago, you know, but it does it happens. No. Not another bad. I just you know, I don’t wanna bad about anybody or anything. But, but no. You know? When the ball gets dropped, it it happens to the best of us.
Jeffrey Patch:
But if you’re not on there. And I have to interject also and say, don’t get caught up in worrying about the project management software. That’s, like, the biggest impression in every group. But what’s better? Teamwork. And I’ve been there, and I’m guilty of it because we even have a, like, a project management comparison blog post on our site, which is it all needs to be updated. I mean, the the software changes so fast. I think we, you know, we were, like, all aboard Trello at the time. So we’re like, yeah.
Jeffrey Patch:
Trello, and it’s free. And now I’m like, dude, Teamwork can have as much money as they want. I don’t I don’t care. But, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. It it, you know, depends on what works for you, and it just you need to have something. So done is better than perfect in this case. Get on there. Get get managing and just jump into something and and, you know, like, we’re I wouldn’t jump on what your base camp still?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Well Yeah. I’m straddling several for different projects, trying different ones. But like I said, that one thing that keeps the whole thing together is I’m using iTask three on the Mac for the Gantt chart, which is separate from any other project management systems we use. So that just gives me my kind of, top down view.
Jeffrey Patch:
Yeah. I don’t wanna change because I don’t wanna spend another two weeks
Lee Matthew Jackson:
reading because you’re an old man and change is difficult for old men. Old so old the whole year older than me.
Jeffrey Patch:
You’ll be here too one day. Okay. Getting your AARP magazines. Oh, wait. You probably don’t get those. I mean, Glenn, do you? Do you get that? Do you know what AARP is?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No. I’m just laughing because you said old man stuff.
Jeffrey Patch:
It’s, I don’t even know what it stands for, but it’s like the magazine you get when you retire in The States. Oh, okay. Perfect. You get this. So everybody’s getting them to, like
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We got the Saga magazine here in The UK. I get you. Let’s get it.
Jeffrey Patch:
There you go. Pop culture. They’re not pop culture, but our, our reference is dropped. Anyway. Yeah. Whatever. What are we doing? Interruptions.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
What? Hey. Interruptions. I was trying to interrupt
Jeffrey Patch:
you, but I think I was
Lee Matthew Jackson:
trying to interrupt you. What?
Jeffrey Patch:
Paul. Our man, Paul. He wanted to know how you deal with interruptions.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Rub it.
Jeffrey Patch:
How do you Rub it. I it’s
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You don’t deal well then, do you? I don’t.
Jeffrey Patch:
I I, like, honestly can’t even get this this sentence out right now. I just I tell the guys too. I’m like, I don’t know if you guys better. Well, I don’t even remember what it was now. No. I’m just kidding. But I think we were doing that on purpose, but it worked out perfectly. It just didn’t.
Jeffrey Patch:
No. No. But I get interrupted all the time, and it’s you know, people people interrupt you. And my train of thought is, like, it takes me, like, six minutes to get back on.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Jeffrey Patch:
So I I gotta shut the door. I gotta put my headphones on. What what do you do? How do you how do you stop from being interrupted all day long?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
This was this was from Paul Lacey. This was a good question, wasn’t it? From from our man, mister Paul Lacey. Who’s the
Jeffrey Patch:
police are
Lee Matthew Jackson:
watching? The man, Paul Lacey. How do I enter right. Interruptions are one of the biggest drain of any agency and have absolutely been one of the biggest drains of my own agency. I have not yet managed to avoid interruptions full stop, because I’m very kindhearted when I see someone basically Yeah.
Jeffrey Patch:
I like your eye back in the back there. What’s what’s the difference?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Interruptions. However, what I have chosen to do is put some specific tools in place. Now, for example, the current interruption from Jeffrey, I actually have the power to mute his microphone. So that is one way I could avoid interruptions. Alright. But in business, getting serious because we’re just two old men trying to be funny. Alright. Interruptions, like I said, just really screw up your time.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Trying to get back into something is nearly on as you get older as well, it’s nigh on impossible. You know, it’s it’s it does take six to twenty it takes me twenty minutes to get back into something. So the first thing we do is we don’t have our emails open. So even right now, my emails are not open. I am completely focused on this call. When emails come in, there is something that happens, I think, in the agency owner’s brain that when you see a number appear in the tab of Gmail, that’s which means you have email or you’ve got an app at the bottom and you can see the mail app and it says a number, your OCD kicks in and you want that number to be zero and you wanna be going and checking those emails. And then when you start reading those emails, they take you off track. They take you away from what you’re doing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You start stressing out about what’s what’s been said in the email. You start replying to emails. You start thinking, you know what? That’s a real quick thing. I’m gonna quickly do that. It’s gonna get it to me five minutes. And then that’s that email done and dusted. And before long, you’ve actually spent two hours in your email, and more email more email keeps coming in as well. So you’ve spent, two hours dealing with all that, and you’ve wasted a whole load of your day.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And then lo and behold, you have a meeting that’s booked, and then you don’t get anything done, and you end up working in the evening. So we have our emails closed. The next thing we do is we have a list every day of things that we’re gonna do, and we actually have them in our calendar. So, again, we’re working on something. We’re gonna announce it on Wednesday, but there are particular slots on the calendar where I will be working on that project. But equally, there are slots on the calendar where I will be working, on a client project as well. So Lee will be doing some development, or Lee will be creating a reverse brief, or he’ll be doing something. So these are slots on the calendar.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And there is an app. I will put this in the link afterwards. There was one for Mac. I’m sure there’s one in, for Windows as well. But what it does, it’s it’s called focus, and it allows you to disable everything else other than what you are doing. So you can even dis disable the Internet, disable social media. And I will then have a timer, and I will set whatever that timer is for. It’s twenty five minutes, half an hour, an hour.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m losing my voice now. And, I will focus on that one task. So my phone will be off or on silent. The teleph the main telephone system of our agency will either be answered by somebody else, or I’ll switch it over to the call center. And I will just focus on that one task, and I will get it done. And there’s a whole other conversation as well around tasks that I’ll probably unpack in the upcoming episode of the podcast, where we can actually understand what are the important tasks. But we we grade our tasks, and I’ll work on those super important tasks. I’ve also explained to all of my clients with regards to email that I only check email at 12:00 now.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I used to check it in the morning, but now I don’t. It’s 12:00 and 04:00. They know they are the only two times I answer my emails, and they also understand that I might read an email at 12:00. And if it’s not deemed as urgent, I may not even respond to that email until 04:00 or the following day. People understand that there, you know, there is no need for urgency for a lot of those questions. And they have a little bit of a code that they can put into the subject if they need to, which might say action required or urgent action required in the subject, if it’s something that is definitely something I need to take a look at. And sometimes they they abuse that. But, you know, I just reply saying, no.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’ll reply to this tomorrow. But it it is very much about communicating to your clients, you know, who, you know, when you’re going to be working on their stuff, when you’re going to be replying to them, and having them understand that email is not like chat. Email should be still tracked like you are sending a letter in the post, and it still has to get to the person and be opened and read, and they’ve then got to sit down and reply. I like to kind of give them that analogy. So there there are just a few small things we do. My team obviously will also check our support center, where a lot of the more urgent things come in. They deal with those things so I don’t have to, and they will only come to me in an absolute dire emergency like last week when 50 websites went down. That was not cool, but we dealt with it, and that was fine.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So there there’s a few things that we do to manage those interruptions. Basically, creating space so that it’s impossible to have interruptions, having a a a cheap £20 a month call center taking our calls, or having someone in the team fielding calls, or, you know, having set times. I check emails, etcetera, keeping my phone on silent and upside down on the table. Those simple sorts of things. How about you, buddy?
Jeffrey Patch:
Well, you know, I think my struggles come a little more internally than than externally because I have that type of attention span that when I get interrupted, it’s just it’s I’m gone. I’m completely taken off of what it was, and it it takes me so long. I think I said, like, five or six minutes ago a second ago. But in reality, I mean, it could be, you know, an hour for me to get back on track. And what tends to happen over and sorry. See, I think it’s interrupted by a plane truck flying by. I don’t know if you heard that or
Lee Matthew Jackson:
not, but
Jeffrey Patch:
I’m cool. We just lost my train of thought. I don’t know. But I have one tip. I have one tip. It was a single most valuable thing for me this year for my focus on productivity, and that was turning off Facebook notifications on my phone and definitely not having them on, you know, your your web browser or something on your computer because, I’ve been I get notified from stuff on there, but I don’t see it unless I go on the Facebook. So I’ll, you know, I’ll I’ll pop on for a few minutes and check my notifications, but I do not let my phone flash those for me because like you said at the beginning, you know, you see those and you wanna check them. Them.
Jeffrey Patch:
And I’ve got myself I was on Facebook all day long. I was sitting at my desk all day, but, you know, you kept checking and refreshing and seeing all that. So I turned those off, like, six months ago, and I don’t miss it at all. And I’m still on Facebook, you know, a lot, and I still I still keep up on pretty much everything and probably better Because when I actually go on, I’ve got the time to deal with it. Whereas before, sometimes you might just check something refresh, and then you never saw that tag or you you said you were gonna reply to a message and, you know, now the notification’s gone and it’s over. But if you just kind of eliminate that, I think it helps keep on track. That’s that’s just me. I’ve got that ADHD brain, allegedly.
Jeffrey Patch:
I don’t know if I have ADHD or ADHD, but I’m I’m assuming that I do because
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Let’s there they go. Let’s just now reference that movie, called Up where the dog goes, what was it? I just met you, and I love you. Yep.
Jeffrey Patch:
That’s me.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. That’s
Jeffrey Patch:
me. Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Kim Doyle has just shared something as well. I’m gonna put it on the screen saying no is a complete sentence. When you get an interruption, be it a phone call on that, don’t be scared to say no because your time is absolutely valuable. And no has been such an empowering, sentence that I have uttered, over the last couple of years. And I’m pretty sure that was actually inspired by you, Kim, anyway, when I listened to one of your Kim rants. I don’t think you call them rants, but I do. I love them. Love it when you go on.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I think
Jeffrey Patch:
she Do you give me a quick start? I think
Lee Matthew Jackson:
she does. I don’t know. I love it when she goes off on one, because I always learned something. So yeah. And, so that was a couple of years ago. But, yes, no is definitely a sentence. It is a perfectly adequate response to when somebody calls you up and says, quick question. You can stop them even at the point where they ask where they’re saying quick question because the answer is not gonna be quick.
Jeffrey Patch:
If it starts with quick question, it’s not gonna be a quick question. No. Exactly. Well, I’ve got
Lee Matthew Jackson:
a quick question for you, and I know the answer is gonna be massive. And this is a question that came in from Jeff Walters. And he’s he pre pre prefaces the question with pricing. So instantly, we’re like, oh, no. Pricing, knowing what to charge for anything to actually be profitable. So that’s charge based on value versus hourly, etcetera. That’s in from Jeff Walters. I believe he’s a fellow elevationist.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So Yep. How about you take that one?
Jeffrey Patch:
Just yeah. Just cool. We we’re buddies. Oh, I have yeah. That’s a quick question. Pricing is really, really easy to talk about, but it’s not. Pricing sucks. And especially if you’re and, Jeff, I don’t I I don’t mean to assume, but I I think you’re more of a freelancer than, like, an agency owner at this point at least, and then I hope that’s not insulting anyway.
Jeffrey Patch:
But, you know, I’m I’m still kind of on that side too. My agency is so small that I’m still taking on freelance work myself. I don’t funnel every lead through the agency, but that’s something I still continue to struggle with, and my hourly rate has gotten to a point to where I say, you know, hey. This is my hourly rate. I’m not gonna say what it is on here. But if a client wants to pay it, great. I’m happy. I’m I’m happy that they’ll pay that hourly rate.
Jeffrey Patch:
Lee’s whispering something. I don’t know.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
$11,000,000.
Jeffrey Patch:
1 million dollars. But but, no, it’s having confidence in that. That one, you can provide value at that rate, and two, you’re happy being paid that rate because there’s you know, I’ll get jobs to come my way, and I go, that sounds great. And it may only be a couple hours, but, you know, if I’m gonna make $40, it’s not profitable for me to do it, so I don’t. So looking at value, value based pricing, if you can, for a project is so much, so much so much smarter to go around for for both people too because and I find this funny when I talk to an agency because we do a lot of white label work, and they’ll say, well, what’s your hourly rate? You know? And they’re trying to judge a project. And I go, well, how many hours do you think the project’s gonna take? And we have no idea. So then why do you wanna know what I charge for an hour? You know? Because, I mean, I could tell you whatever it is and then, you know, I could say I charge you $5 an hour for them and then bill six hundred hours for the project. Doesn’t make any sense.
Jeffrey Patch:
But if you can figure out the value and, you know, knowing what it’s worth to the customer and what it’s worth for your time, you can set the scope a lot better. And they know ahead of time. It’s it’s in their best interest too. You know, if they know that this project is gonna cost $500 flat, let’s just say. They know they’re paying $500. They don’t think they’re paying a freelancer fifty dollars an hour for an estimated ten hours that could be fifteen, could twenty, you know, you don’t know. And then as a freelancer, you might finish it in five hours. And if you can finish faster, great.
Jeffrey Patch:
More power to you. But, but I you you have to be confident in your in your value. You know? Know what you can bring to the table. Yeah. And I know we’re like, because we’re both in WP Elevation, and I know he’s heard this before. But they’re hiring you or they’re talking to you because you can do something that they either can’t or they don’t have time for. So respect that. Respect that you provide value to them and, you know, be be confident in it.
Jeffrey Patch:
And and you’ll you’ll figure it out. You’ll figure out what your hourly rate needs to be. You’ll figure out what value pricing is for people, and it might take eating your hat a couple times. I am actually glad that I’ve made mistakes like that. I’ve done projects where, you know, they went months over budget over time and, you know, hundreds, thousands not the hundreds of thousands, hundreds or thousands of dollars of budget, you know, over budget. I would hate to have a project that went hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget. We’re not in that ballpark. But, but but you’ll figure it out.
Jeffrey Patch:
You really you really will, and and you’ll you’ll start to know that this type of job is worth this much to this type of client. And and, know, you need to know the type of clients you wanna talk to and, you know, the type of work you wanna do, and and it’ll get there. So I I know Jeff. He’s a smart guy, and I think he’s gonna be, he’s gonna make us a big, some big growth this next few months. I’ve seen everything he’s doing during Elevation, so it’s good.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. That’s so it’s it’s it is so true, isn’t it? One of the thing things I I’ve said it so many times that people probably roll their eyes when I say it, but, it’s it it is the the the price is maybe the hour that it takes plus the twenty years of experience that you have in doing whatever that thing is. Your client is paying you because they can’t do it. And for them to learn it or for them to try and work it out themselves might take them hours, and they might not even do it very well. So the value is it might be taking you one hour, but the value is $500 for that one thing that you are doing. And there’s the story, isn’t there, as well of the guy who the short version is he fixed the ship by just tapping on a nail and sent them an invoice. So it took him five minutes to tap on a nail and, to fix the entire ship that was losing millions because it couldn’t sail. And he sent them an invoice for £10,000, and they said, well, why? Well, it’s so expensive.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You’re only on-site for five minutes. And he says, break could you break that down for us, please? And he said, yeah. Sure. So he, he broke it down and, it said, time on-site, five minutes, five dollars. And then $9,995 for knowing where to tap just to fix just to fix the ship. And I know it’s very easy and kind of high high level to say these sorts of things, but, you do I think Jeff is totally right. You have to maybe get the price wrong a few times and welcome those opportunities to learn. I’ll admit my first I charged a hundred and £50 to convert a five page PSD design into a WordPress theme, and it took me over a week to do it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I was a hundred and £50, and I thought that was a great idea at the time. But I it’s absolutely ridiculous that I thought that because if I did the math, I would actually be I would have to clone myself multiple times to actually be able to earn a living. So that’s what I did wrong. And then that I realized I needed to quadruple my prices. That was how much I dared, you know, do. I I quadrupled at first, and then I ended up quadrupling again. And now my prices are astronomical compared to that original £150. But you do need to go on a bit of a journey, I think, at the beginning because everyone’s clients are different, and your own journey is different, as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Someone else once said to me, whatever price you come up with, double it. And I I tend to do that quite a lot. It’s it’s always easier to start high and come down than it is to try and add later on, to any project.
Jeffrey Patch:
Well, on that note, if you charged a hundred and £50, it took you a week, if you, you know, however long you said that was, how long would it take you to do it now?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
How long would it take me to do that? It well, that was still a that would still take me a week to do. It was a very complicated design WordPress theme from PSDs. That’s HTML, CSS, JavaScript, making a WordPress theme. It was very daft of me to have have charged a hundred and £50. So, but I thought I was I was onto a thing, but then I was competing and, like, against people in countries where they a hundred and £50 was a lot of money. So I I was totally in the wrong area for that.
Jeffrey Patch:
Well, the thing is, though, you know, you because you’ve grown that. I know you said it probably still take a week. I don’t think it would. You know, you’ve grown as a as a developer, as a business person, as a consultant. You you’re better. So I think just because you’ve gotten better and you might be able to do it in less time doesn’t mean you need to profit any less. And that’s why the value pricing makes the best sense, I think, for most people. You know, just because I’ve got so good that, you know, I could do a ten hour job in an hour, and I’m not really being that conceited.
Jeffrey Patch:
But there’s some things that, you know, when I was first starting out, you know, maybe it would take ten hours. Now I might
Lee Matthew Jackson:
be able to done it and be might be
Jeffrey Patch:
able to do it in thirty or forty five minutes now just between you improving and technology. I mean, you know, it would be
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, b for builders didn’t exist back then. I mean, b for builder has definitely sped up our workflow. So, yeah, I guess Yeah. We charge more and we’d spend less time on it now. So that is a good that is a very good point. Alright. Well, I think that covers it, all of our questions for at least this section of the show. And like I said, I think it would be great if we could just spend the last ten minutes of this livestream answering any questions that you have.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We have an audience, which is great, and, it would be great to hear from you. Sorry. What was that?
Jeffrey Patch:
I just, like, I just almost threw up on your livestream because my coffee was ice cold.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yes. Well, whilst, you are you are getting over that, just drink that water down, mate. Yeah. Any questions that you may have or any opinions you have, share with me and Jeff whilst we try and fill a little bit of time now, waiting for any questions or opinion opinions to come in. So ask your question, we will show it on the screen, and we’ll unpack it. Or if you’ve got a view, we will share that view. And I’m gonna scroll through as well, whilst we’re waiting. Paul said this earlier, and he was saying he was looking at, Time Liner for Gantt charts, but hasn’t actually tried it yet.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So he is encouraged to try it. That’s pretty cool. Nice one, Paul. And I would love to know. Mate, if you could actually post your experience of that in the group, over the next few weeks and just let us know, how that goes. Just to also reshow this, Kyle says that Kim rocks. This is an actual fact. The Internet already knows it, which is awesome.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
What else have we got in here? Alright. Here we go. Kim Doyle. Question, just in. Tips on finding the right mentor, question mark. Now we’re both gonna go silent.
Jeffrey Patch:
I know. Well, I would say the first thing is somebody that challenges you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Amen.
Jeffrey Patch:
Feel challenged. If you if you get on a call and, you know, or whatever it is, an intro call or face to face meeting or even email, they need to be challenging. I mean, I need to. I don’t I don’t do well with cuddling. I need somebody to tell me what I’m doing wrong.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yes. So, yeah, finding someone who is not afraid to tell you, what is wrong. You don’t wanna find a yes person. I I guess for me as well, the the the natural mentors for me become the people that of whom I can’t I can’t never say that right. Whose content, that I consume a lot. So many years ago, I would have considered my unofficial mentor as someone like John Lee Dumas as I was very early in kind of entrepreneurship, and I was consuming his sort of content. But then eventually, that evolved over time to being people like the amazing Kim Doyle, who has definitely, inspired me. But, someone who challenges you, someone whose content, that you, have consumed maybe as well, that challenges you, that speaks to you, and that resonates to you, and maybe someone as well who actually has some experience either in your agents, in your area of expertise, or in what you’re doing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
She Kim’s Dials just says she can’t afford Gary Vee. So for me, reaching out to Chris Tucker is he is doing something that I want to do. So he doesn’t have experience in my industry. He doesn’t work with agents agencies necessarily, but he has actioned things in his business journey over the last few years that I have wanted to do for a long time. I’ve had on my goals. I know he’s done it. He’s done very successfully what he’s doing. Therefore, I want to his help now over the next year to help me do the things that he’s done.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Again, being very vague, we will announce that on, Wednesday. We have a question in from young Pete Everett, who I’m gonna be hanging out with, I think, tomorrow, Pete. Hopefully, you’re coming is it tomorrow? Can’t remember. On Wednesday, to come and hang up here above the coffee shop in Wellingborough. Massive. Right. And his question is do you wanna read this one, Jeffrey?
Jeffrey Patch:
How do you keep your team accountable to production protocols? So I mean, keeping on track with the design and development stage and everything like that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Mhmm. I actually had an interesting call today because, we, we had a we realized we had a problem as an agency. And one of the problems was is that I had not, documented very well, how we resolve a problem. And I realized that two of my, staff members had spent two hours. So that’s two of them spending two hours. That’s four man hours of wasted time trying to resolve a problem on a WordPress website. And and I had to go and jump in, which is more time. That’s my time as well, which is the most expensive time, and show them within five minutes, what the process for finding out a problem was.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I actually fixed the problem within five minutes, and they’d spent the equivalent of four hours messing around trying different things and not not trying my very smooth process that I’d explained in the past but never documented. So one of the things that we do is we will document, and everybody does track their time. We track our time against projects. We gotta we just use a spreadsheet nowadays. I know that sounds so old fashioned, but we actually have a spreadsheet so that we can understand how much time we’re spending on things. So we know how many hours we’re spending on support tickets. We know how many hours we’re spending on each particular build because that actually helps us understand how much to charge again in the future for a similar project. If we quote for something and we do something and it takes us a whole week, then we need to make sure we factor that in.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So, we also have GitHub, like you’ve mentioned down there, mate, and, we have a rule where we we will, be committing our changes, every hour minimum, so that we can kind of roll back and all of that good stuff. And, I am the worst for this. So I own the freaking company, and I’m the guy who forgets to commit and goes home. So my team hold me accountable, and they have permission to have a go at me when I get that wrong.
Jeffrey Patch:
But you put yourself out there,
Lee Matthew Jackson:
because I do screw up, and I screw up a lot. Because, actually, I’ve got all this good advice because I know it all, and I need to freaking apply it a lot of the time. And I don’t you know, sometimes I forget all this stuff. I might look like mister successful agent, you know, who runs the WP Innovator podcast, but I am struggling just as much as anyone else. And I am dropping the ball all the time, and my own team are having to slap me across the face sometimes because, I I make mistakes, and it’s fine because you’re human.
Jeffrey Patch:
Can can we all just, like, stop for a second and realize that that happens to almost all of us and we just can’t accept it? Like, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay to be stressed. It’s okay to screw up. It’s okay. Yeah. And I’m saying this to myself because I beat myself up, like, the worst. But
Lee Matthew Jackson:
who cares? It’s okay. On the stress thing. On the stress thing, that’s that’s a good thing. We we were talking about this just before, weren’t we? Where you’d shared a story, about someone who, had done something, and I was like, what? Oh, you need to email those and tell them this, that, and the other. And, anyway, a couple of hours later, you were like, oh, well, actually, I’ve I’ve discovered a little bit more about it, and, actually, it’s all cool. So that was a very vague description of what happened. But there’s a a rule that I’ve applied for the last six years, and I learned this off my business partner, Tim, in a different business. But it’s to always wait twenty four hours before responding to something that is potentially upset you or is contentious.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So if a client has sent a rude email or an abrasive email or they’ve upset you in any way and you’re gonna hit reply, you need to wait twenty four hours to get all that crap out of your head. The moaning, go moan to your wife, moan to your colleagues, write a fake email to them where you call them every name in the sun, and please do not do that in your email application because I want sent one by accident. I have to do it in a Word document. But just get all the anger out. And then twenty four hours later, the email you sent to them, you know, could save our relationship. It could be the best burn ever because we all don’t we all have that moment, don’t we, in life when we’re like, I wish I’d said this because you reacted there on the spot. Whereas, actually, twenty four hours later, you could either send an email that saves a relationship, or if you wanna fire their ass, then the best burn ever, and you can enjoy every minute of it and savor it and frame the email that you sent. But just waiting twenty four hours because you found something out that meant that if you’d have sent us not the email, that could have created a really weird dynamic for the future, couldn’t it? But, you know Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You didn’t respond straight away, and great. It it worked out. So that was just a little bit of, friendly advice. And, actually, on that, here’s one from Kyle. How do you firmly fire a client or a prospect? Have you ever had to fire a client, mate?
Jeffrey Patch:
Yeah. I’ve been doing it a lot lately. I know. It you know? And it it sucks, but it’s sometimes you have to make those hard decisions. You know? And I’m assuming Kyle, I’m I’m assuming you’re dealing with, you know, someone that’s they’re not profitable or they don’t treat you right or you know? There’s there’s countless reasons. And I you just have to pull the Band Aid off and talk to them. If it’s something that could be repaired, talk to them, communicate. You know? If it’s not, if it can’t be repaired, then you just need to be clear and say you just this project or this agreement or whatever it is, you know, it doesn’t really fit our business model now.
Jeffrey Patch:
You know, we’re moving this way or you know, I mean, you come up with any excuse, but it should be honest. You know? It shouldn’t be an excuse. Be honest. You know, I try not to hold back for better or worse sometimes, but be polite, be honest, and let them know your issues if that’s the case, and and they might totally respect that. Yeah. And then the last thing, though, you gotta have, like, a backup option for them. If you I mean, maybe you don’t have to, but it would be nice. You know? If you wanna keep that relationship positive, at least, you know, try to find somebody else you could refer them to or, you know, sometimes it’s maybe you wanna build your website on Squarespace.
Jeffrey Patch:
You know? It could be some it could be something like that. You know? You just can’t afford it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’ve said that. I’ve I have actually said that. I totally agree, mate. There are a certain people a group of people are just mean to you, and you you just have to get rid of them from your life because they’re draining. And you can say it politely and firmly, and you don’t have to give them a backup plan because you probably don’t wish them on anyone else. They’re the only people I would say don’t have a backup plan, but I I really wanna echo what Jeffrey said. If you do need to move someone on because they’re a drainer to you with regards to the they’re they’re too needy, they can’t afford you, and all of that stuff, then, I’ve sent a very polite email. I’ve usually had a phone conversation.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I find phone conversations are better than an email because email or text can always be misrepresented or misread, misunderstood. So I’ll usually have a call, unless that’s not possible. I’ll send a very polite email, very carefully worded, but it will be, along the lines of my business model has either changed or, I don’t feel that the two of us work well together with regards to the budget that they have. However, there is this great guy I know on the Internet who specializes in this, and would you like me to make an introduction? And until then, I’m still gonna support you as well. You know, I can do this x, y, and z for you to at least keep you going. You know, I’m not just gonna say get lost. You’re done. Here’s someone else.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So, you know, I’ll help support that transition, and I’ll support the person who’s gonna become the new guy, because then that always means that they’ve had a a friendly, nice, supportive exit from my business, and the guy I’ve recommended appreciates the time I’m gonna spend with him or her, to support them as well onboarding their new client who is actually probably better suited to them, which is cool. Preach it. Preach. Preach. Well, I think thank you very much that, I think that’s a really good question to end with. So it’s it’s French for fin. Isn’t it? I’m gonna put that on the screen. Hang on.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Fin. Yeah. Yeah. On the screen.
Jeffrey Patch:
You’re gonna be fluent by tomorrow.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
This
Jeffrey Patch:
is great. You know? French today.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I know. It’s insane. So, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. This has been wonderful. Jeff is comment.
Jeffrey Patch:
Jeff is a legend.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Mate, you’ve I love how eloquent your answers are. I always find I waffle. I mean well. If you listen to me, you’ll eventually find the nuggets of wisdom in there. But for you, you are really succinct, and your answers have been great. So thank you so much for the time. I can’t wait to do another, screen share with you. Sorry.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Another livestream with you. I would recommend everyone who is watching this live or who is watching the replay or who who is listening to the podcast version of this to go and join Jeff’s group because Jeff is consistently good with advice. Go check out Digital Agency Profits. Just tap that into Facebook right now, and go ahead and join his group. I will put a link in the show notes of the podcast. I’ll put a link as well in the comments after, of this, of this livestream. But it’s digital agency profits. And, also, if you go ahead and check the WP Innovator Facebook group, if you are listening before Wednesday, the thirteenth, go and add a reminder because we are doing a live stream at 4PM GMT.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s 8AM, PST, and I don’t know what central time is or anything. I probably should go do the calculations, but we are making a rather massive announcement. Jeffrey, anything you’d like to see? Jeffrey knows Jeffrey knows what it is, but you’re not allowed to say, and no one’s allowed to, like, pay you off or anything. Shouldn’t have said that.
Jeffrey Patch:
I was gonna start taking, bids from the audio, but I know you’ll just mute me or something.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Exactly.
Jeffrey Patch:
Anyway, this is a lot of fun. We, you know, we had a podcast recently, and I I think we’re I think we’re building something good here. We’ve got a fun little bromance going. But, more than that, I just love connecting with all these other agency owners, freelancers, designers, developers. It doesn’t matter. We’re all in the same group here. We’re all
Lee Matthew Jackson:
in this together.
Jeffrey Patch:
Doesn’t matter if it’s this big or that big. We’re we’re having a great time. So this thank you for having me. Thank you for setting this up, man. You’re the man.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Alright. Well, guys, I’m off to go and make dinner. What you up to now, Jeff?
Jeffrey Patch:
I’m gonna go have breakfast.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh.
Jeffrey Patch:
Yeah. I’m gonna I’m gonna heat up this coffee. I’m gonna go get some breakfast and maybe take a nap because we were out really late last night.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. And you were up early, weren’t you? So this this kinda blows my mind.
Jeffrey Patch:
Really early.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m in the future and you’re in the past.
Jeffrey Patch:
That’s weird. You know, one time I sorry. Real quick. Sorry. Before we go, I I was I went over the Meridian line, is that what they call it? I was flying from Southeast Asia, and it was so weird. I was like, I literally just time traveled. I literally time traveled.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Not physically,
Jeffrey Patch:
but literally time traveled.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Literally. Literally. Alright, guys. I’m gonna hit the end broadcast button in a few seconds. So thank you so much to everyone for participating. Thank you for all the questions. Thank you especially to Jeffrey again for those really good, succinct, clear answers. I’ve got a lot to learn from you, and we will see you hopefully in a couple of weeks for our next live broadcast.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Me and Jeffrey wanna tackle some more questions. I didn’t tell him that, but he can’t say no now because I’ve said
Jeffrey Patch:
it live. I’m in. K. Well, let’s just say, though, if we have any suggestions, let’s please post them, guys.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Tell us. Post.
Jeffrey Patch:
Right?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Suggestion. What do
Jeffrey Patch:
you what do you guys wanna know? What do you wanna talk about? What’s entertaining? I don’t know. Absolutely.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And Jeff may even sing. Alright. Take care. Bye bye. And that wraps up episode number 107. Stay tuned. Over the next few days, we will be releasing an announcement. An announcement that if you are listening to this post Wednesday the thirteenth and you are a member of the Facebook group, you will already know all about it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Spoiler alert, you can go ahead to the WP Innovator Facebook group on wpinnovator.com/group to find out more. But in a few days, if you’re not part of that group, which is totally cool, you know, we’re not gonna judge you, you are still freaking awesome and we love you very much. Just hang in there for a couple more days and we will be announcing something pretty darn cool on the airwaves of this ear podcast. So the next episode you’re gonna be listening to is not necessarily an episode but more of an exciting announcement. If you can’t wait till then, wpinnovator.com/group. Go ahead and find the spoiler. Go find the special announcement where we did a really cool live stream. Alright guys, we will see you for the announcement and on the next episode.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Keep it real. Be cool. Stay in school. Don’t do drugs. We really need that some sort of cool sign off don’t we? Off the end of a podcast. Like you know Tim Tracker, on he’s he’s this guy who does, yeah Disney videos, and he says it’s at the end, he’s like, no. It’s time to pay the price. I really like that, but if I stole it, he probably wouldn’t be very happy.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But it’d be cool to have some sort of really wicked sign off that everyone’s like, oh, Lee’s so cool because he says that thing at the end of every podcast, at the end of every video. I don’t wanna wanna be him. I wanna be like him. And oh, it sounds so stupid. Dear. Hey. If anyone can think of anything that I could say at the end of a podcast or the end of a video that sounds really cool, let me know. I don’t think of anything.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I literally can’t think of everything anything anything. Stay in school kids, that that could be one. But I don’t even believe in that actually because I I tried to stay in school and then dropped out. So there you go, there’s a confession from me. I am a school dropout. There you go. If you’re a school dropout you can still run a freaking business, you can still be successful. Life is what you make it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, that’s a good one. Life is what you make it. Oh. Anyway, get in touch angledcrown.com/contact or, add me on Facebook. I wonder how long we can make these spoken outros like. I I feel like the spoken outros are getting longer and longer and longer. And if people are wondering who the heck I’m talking to, I’m actually just looking over at poor old Marissa who’s trying to work and just nodding approvingly as I continue to waffle. Anyway, take care.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Take care of yourselves and each other. Oh, no. Wait. That’s Jerry Springer. Damn it. Is that even on? Is Jerry Springer still on the telly? If not, I’m allowed to use that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So I’m gonna use it for now. Take care of yourselves and each other. See you next week.
