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Lee: Before we start today’s show, let me share with you something super exciting that we are launching. That’s an event here in the UK all around helping you transform your agency. So if you look back over the last year, maybe two years, and feel frustrated that maybe you’ve not moved forward, then this is the event for you. Check it out over on agencytransformation.live. That’s agency transformation Dot live. We have got speakers from all around the world here to help you plan your next 90 days, your next three months, your next year, whatever that needs to be to help you get the level of transformation that you need in your business. That’s agencytransformation.live. We’ll see you there. Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show we are talking with Paul Landa. We are covering a wide range of subjects, including, but not limited to, the importance of networking and how we as agencies can network in our local areas to generate leads for our business. So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Welcome to a conversation today with me, Mr. Lee Jackson. Y’all know me and today it’s Mr. Paul Landa from Zeckro LLP and My Web pal and, uh, prolific networker and guy from the Black Country, Paul Landa. How are you?
Paul: I’m good. Thanks.
Lee: Your life history in an introduction?
Paul: Absolutely. All in literally four seconds. We’re done. It’s the end of the podcast. We all know.
Lee: You now, mate. Everything about you.
Paul: Yeah, mate.
Lee: It’s really great to. To have you on and for. So people know what a nice guy. Paul is. I had to cancel on him a couple of times for this recording, because we had a couple of family crises with the hospital included. And Paul was really, really cool and was like, yep, that’s totally fine. So he’s come back on and been a legend. So I appreciate you, mate.
Paul: That’s my pleasure of you. It’s my pleasure indeed. Definitely.
Lee: Thank you buddy. Well, I’m really excited to talk to you about two massive things in agency life. And we’re going to get into those in a bit, but let’s just tantalize people with them. One of them is going to be networking. I think that’s a big thing that people miss out on, especially web agencies. And then the other thing as well is going to be talking about your new way of offering websites to small, local businesses. So there’s a teaser if you want, but we’re not going to tell you any more. First, I want to find out a little bit about you, Paul. So do you mind just sharing with us a little bit about you, where you’re from, what your favorite drink is, maybe your favorite color or something that people maybe don’t know about you, and then we’ll dive in.
Paul: Yeah. Of course. So I’m Paul Landa, I’m from Wolverhampton, the heart of the Black Country. And my favourite drink is it’s got to be cup of tea. It’s got to be mate. And that’s exactly what I’m having. Lovely. It’s lovely are I. I eat if it’s a choice of a nice cup of tea. That’s a choice every time. All right.
Lee: Important question. What brand of tea?
Paul: There’s only one, isn’t there? There’s only one. It’s the one with the.
Lee: Well, I would say Yorkshire tea, but I don’t know. What would you.
Paul: Say? It’s got to be PG tips. The square bag. Always the square bag.
Lee: The Americans now think we’re all tea snobs. And it’s true.
Paul: Absolutely you can’t. I’ll tell you. I’ve been loads of places on holiday and everywhere and nowhere really does a nice cup of tea until you get back home. The first thing you do is what do you do? You put the kettle on, you have a kettle on.
Lee: Absolutely. Or if there’s a problem, someone’s crying. You’re like, I’ll make a cup of tea. I don’t actually know how to handle you crying, but if I make you a cup of tea.
Paul: It’s the go to, isn’t it? It’s. Everything’s going sort like pear shaped. What do you do? You have a nice cup of tea. You take them recently and you move on.
Lee: Did you tell us your favorite color? I got way into tea then.
Paul: In a big way. Favorite color? You know, I haven’t really. I like kind of blue, red, black. I do wear a lot of kind of black because it’s. It’s very slimming. Black isn’t it?
Lee: Oh well it is, yes I do, I do like a nice black t shirt I get that. That’s a problem for, for us men when we get into our early 30s like you and me. Um, I absolutely have no idea how old you are. I’m hoping that was a compliment.
Paul: No, it was. It was definitely a compliment. I turned, I turned, I turned 41, and on December 31st, it’s about to feel like 25.
Lee: I’d be so embarrassed.
Paul: However, someone say it’s great when you go out and someone goes, oh, you’re about my age, aren’t you? So how old are you? I’m about 32 and. Yeah. Yeah. Roughly about.
Lee: Yeah, roughly. Give a bit of tax.
Paul: I don’t look as old as, uh, Paul Lacey, though.
Lee: Are we gotta use the, uh. Gonna have to use the jingle, aren’t we? Yeah.
Paul: There it is, folks. Another policy reference. This podcast is no official. Ha ha ha.
Lee: Ha. You’re just gonna say his name all the way through for no reason, aren’t you?
Paul: Absolutely.
Lee: I first started my agency before I’d heard of Paul Lacey. Yeah.
Paul: Do you know what? It just a bit more about me. Obviously, I’ve. I went to uni with with Paul, and we were on this. We were on the same course and it was, it was a bit of an eye opener of the course. We had a we had a good laugh. Uh, but university. University was great. University. Absolutely brilliant. And this was we graduated in 2000 at Nottingham from Nottingham Trent. And Nottingham was a really cool place, really great place to to live. I had a great time. I had a great I think I would have got a better degree if I had less of a great time, but I like going out. So I knew Paul from back in the day when back in the yeah, when the dotcom bubble burst and kind of all the jobs out there were kind of really went really low, paid, massively low, paid.
Lee: A scary times and also gives Paul’s age away a.
Paul: Bit. It does. Yeah. So he’s I think we’ve.
Lee: Had an exclusive.
Paul: Yeah I think he turned 40 um, not so long ago.
Lee: No way. For anyone who’s new to the podcast, Paul Lacy seems to get mentioned by practically every other guest and any agency related podcast. Paul gets mentioned on it for some reason, and he’s yet to start his own. It’s annoying. He needs to start his own podcast. But anyway, right, let’s let’s dive in. I want to get into that time machine because you’ve already given us a bit of history. You and Paul did Nottingham Trent together, but I’m really intrigued to how you got into web development. Web design, I presume it was in around the bubble time. Tell us about that.
Paul: Do you know what it was? The way I got into it was really the route was so far round you won’t believe. So the dotcom bubble burst and there were no jobs. The the market was flooded with it. People everywhere. So jobs that were maybe 20 to 40 grand a year had disappeared. So we were then starting on jobs between 10 and 14 grand, and I went to work for Carillion Construction company based here. They had the head office in Wolverhampton and I don’t know if everyone remembers. Carillion went down the pan last year. They ceased trading big construction company, so I went to work for Carillion and with the great title as information controller and just think of a glorified data importer. Well, not really glorified to be honest.
Lee: Just a data input. It’s a great title.
Paul: Yeah, yeah, it was great. It was great. And they quickly saw that it was a job I could do with my eyes closed.
Lee: So they got very reliable for data. Is it not close?
Paul: Yeah it was. So I implemented a system that Carillion were using at the time. What we didn’t know then, but we know as now is cloud computing. So I had a cloud system where the biggest problem on construction sites were everyone having the latest revisions of the the architecture drawings, the plans, whether it was through the electrical guys, whoever it was, everyone needed the latest revision. And there were problems for years with people blaming that they didn’t have the latest revisions of drawings for doing something that wasn’t on the plan. So I create a system where we could upload the digital copy and it would just ping out to everyone, and it would then be their responsibility to get it printed out. That went down like an absolute heat with Carillion, but like a stone with the subcontractors, because then they had no excuse not to have the latest revision of the drawing. So I worked there for a bit and then we built on that and we brought another system in and created this huge system, huge cloud based system to keep drawings up. And I got promoted to Senior Document Information controller, and it just meant I looked after kind of 7 or 8 sites for Carillion, making sure people were inputting the data.
Lee: Right. So when you say sites, because Carillion is a building company, do you mean websites now?
Paul: No, these were physical construction sites. So if they were doing buildings in Birmingham, Milton Keynes, in Scotland, wherever it was, it was to make sure that this system work correctly and there was an information controller on each site working the system.
Lee: Which is actually a great in to this sort of thing because we’re managing data all the time, aren’t we, as web designers, web developers.
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. It kind of it gave them the idea is that cloud computing again, it was it wasn’t called cloud computing then. It was it was a system based based on the internet, based on the Carillion like.
Lee: They all used to call it an intranet, didn’t they, when it was all like connected but over VPN and stuff like that. And it was terribly slow but worked.
Paul: Yeah. So that’s what it was. And it was. The job then became quite boring because there wasn’t anything for me to do. I actually probably think I, I did myself out of a job because so long as there was one person inputting the data, um, it didn’t really need anything else. So I got really, really bored and there was no real place for me to progress because I’d created this role within Carillion and there was nothing above it unless you were kind of a quantity surveyor, project manager or something like that. So I got bored and and I could see there was only one way this was going, and I thought, I need to do something else. And then a friend of mine said, why don’t you come and become a stockbroker and IFA with me? And I thought, I didn’t see this coming. No, what? I said, what the hell do I know about, um, stockbroking and financial services? Oh, no, you don’t need to do anything. It’s. It’s all about selling. So I joined him. Um, it was a company called Edward Jones. And it was. I could tell if I look back now, I knew I was young and kind of, like, wet behind the ears and quite naive because I thought, ah, this is great. And we were sold the American Dream. It was an American American company that had come over and they said, right, we’ll train to be a stockbroker, a financial advisor. And bear in mind as well, there were simply no there very few IT jobs that were paying any decent amount of money. So so I went with him and joined this company, and they took you down to London and they put you up in a nice hotel. And they did you stop broking exams, you did the financial services exams, but then you came back home to your area and it was up to you to knock on doors, go door to door, building a prospect list and a potential client list for financial services for sales. And that in itself, I’ve got to say, if if anyone’s never done it before, I think everyone should have a stint of door to door sales. Everyone. Because if it does one thing and it does one thing well, it gives you a really thick skin, massively thick skin.
Lee: And I left because I’m thinking of the times that the amount of abuse I’ve had on people’s doorsteps. Yeah.
Paul: It’s I remember I borrowed my mom’s car. I’m in this, uh, mini, this old mini, and I’ve got the radio on. Uh, not the radio. I’ve got a, um, a cassette in. This is how old this mini is. It’s a cassette. And and I’m sat there and it’s raining, and I’m in a place called Tattnall in Wolverhampton. Technology’s kind of like affluent area. They told you to go to an affluent area where people are going to be in. So I’m sitting there, I’ve picked my street and I’m sitting in the car, and I’m trying to muster up the courage to get out of the car. And I’ve got eye of the Tiger playing brilliant. And I’m sat there listening to this and I’ve been in the car this I’ve been in car. This is like 40 minutes now. I’ve been sat in the car trying to muster up the the courage to get out and start knocking. So I’ve finished listening to the Tiger and pumped up. I’m going, right, okay, I’ve got my suit on and very ill fitted to on and I get out the car, start working, walking to the first house and I could feel the dread the. And if I think about it now, the feelings come back and it’s and it’s, you know, when you legs turn into kind of jelly and, and you’re walking and you can’t start, can’t feel your legs. It was like that. I get to the first house and I’m knocking on the door and I’m knocking on the door and I think, please don’t be in, please don’t be in, please don’t be in. And no one answers and I’m going, oh thank God it’s the first one.
Lee: Actually makes it worse, by the way.
Paul: Yeah it did. I go to the second one. I go to the second one. The same thing. Knock on the door. No one’s there. Go to the third and the fourth one and I’m by the fourth one I’m thinking, oh, Enough. For the love of God, please, someone just answer the door. I then go to the fifth one and knock on the door, and this gentleman comes to the door and explain who I am, what I’m doing. I’m opening up this business in the area. Lovely guy. Absolutely lovely guy. And I thought, oh my God, this is awesome. This is absolutely great. If everyone’s like this guy, it’s I’m I can hear the money being earned already. So the guy says we still look when you’ve set up. Yeah. Come back to me, I look great. I go to the next door, knock on the door, and I could hear these kind of, like, bustling. And someone comes down the stairs, opens the doors, the woman in a towel, and she goes, what do you want? I went, hi, my name’s Paul. I’ve just opened a business in the area and I’m just introducing myself. Oh, what? You’ve disturbed me for this. You can go and do this to yourself. Literally, literally. All the profanities that you could think of come hurtling out of her mouth, and. And it just left me shell shocked. I thought, oh my God. But the worst that I got was that and most people were pleasant or said no. And I was knocking on doors for the best part of three months continuously in different areas. So yeah. So if anyone has never done it, the one thing it did do really well for me give me a really thick skin. And it kind of made me think I actually whatever it is, whatever needs to be done, I can do it. If I can knock on doors, then everything else is easy. So I stayed there. Then we went back to London. We passed all our exams. So I’m I’m actually a qualified stockbroker and financial advisor. So we’ve gone down to London. We’ve we had to pass our final exam and a guy there goes through they’ve sold this American dream. Say now you’ll end up with a car, an assistant, an office, and you’ll be earning £100,000. If in the first 18 months, we then see a few guys who’ve been doing this thing for three years. And we say to them, oh, how’s your office going? How’s the car? How’s your assistant? They turn to us and go, huh? And they said, and we said, right, what’s what’s the score? Have you how’s it going? Well, we’re still knocking on doors when we went, oh my God, three years later and they went, yeah. Oh no. Still knocking doors. So and they told us, right. If you leave at this point before you sell your first financial product, you don’t have to pay the training fees back. But right, if you leave after that day, they will try and sting you for 48 grand’s worth of training fees.
Lee: Holy moly. So you’re trapped in with them?
Paul: Absolutely. Said there were 15 of us. Our jaws dropped, and the following week, before we were about to go back and sell our first product, 14 of us left here. So. So then I obviously came back.
Lee: Lucky escape. Yeah.
Paul: Yeah, totally. And I got a job in the into Bank of shore into, um. And my first job in the banks was HSBC. So I started as a financial planning manager for HSBC, stayed with them um, three years, then moved to Barclays, stayed with Barclays for about 15 months before they started announcing that they were getting rid of everyone. Yeah, yeah. And then I moved to an independent firm in Birmingham and stayed with them for probably about another 18 months before they were, it was rumoured that they were going to make people redundant. And of course at that time I wouldn’t have got anything. So I think 18 months. Yeah, this is it. So then I left and set up on my own self-employed financial advisor and that was scary. That was really scary. And I did that for until that I did that between 2000, I think it was six, 2005 or 6, 2 or 7, I can’t remember, I think 2006 two, 2010. So I set up on my own and was, uh, had my own financial advisor firm.
Lee: So I’m now intrigued. Having gone on this massive financial journey. How did you then get into web? Because you’ve got Zach Crowe LLP. How did that happen? Is that as a result of working with clients in finance?
Paul: Do you know what it was? It got to a point in financial services at the time, getting closer to 2011. A lot of the landscape had changed with financial services. A lot of the banks had got rid of the financial advisors and they knew they wanted the financial services, wanted everyone to be better educated, higher educated than want everyone to have a diploma. So that kind of streamlined the market got a lot rid of a lot of people, and they wanted people to be more qualified, which was great. I went through all that, got through the end of it, but then it came to a point where I had a conversation with my wife and we she said to me, she says, you’re not enjoying this. And I went, no, not really. And I was getting fed up with compliance and compliance of the people who make sure everything’s going smoothly and everything’s going right, and they didn’t understand that a lot of the stuff that I was doing. So I was doing a lot of investment business, which was offshore and venture capitalist trust and enterprise investment schemes, and they were quite niche products. So I might have said, right, I’ve had enough of you moaning. You either. You either. Well, I’ll tell you the exact words. You either shit or get off the pot.
Lee: I’ve heard that one. I’ve heard that one. Yeah, we’ve actually had that phrase on this podcast. I now have to officially mark this episode as I do.
Paul: You know what I’m saying? You can take that bit out if you want. So. So she said to me, look, you’re not enjoying this. You’re moaning all the time about compliance and and not being able to do what you want. Are you do you actually enjoy financial services? And it got to a point. I said, do you know what I don’t enjoy anymore? I do enjoy interacting with the clients. The sales part I just don’t have. I’ve lost the love for it. Well, there wasn’t really a love for it. It was kind of. I fell into the industry. And if you have to speak to most people who are in financial services, no one really grows up going. Do you know what I want to grow up to be a financial advisor.
Lee: It’s kind of the same in it, actually. It’s exactly this. I’ve got the exact same sort of story as you where I spent years in it, just simply because I knew how to build computers and just fell into that role, you know, from security. And then they were asking me to fix the computers. I have actually got offered as a job as it and all that sort of stuff. And they did it for years and utterly like you hated things like we had Sarbanes-Oxley, compliance, all sorts of stuff that we had to follow because it was big. US companies are just hated it. It was so stressful, so boring. And I used to moan all the time about it, but it was just, let’s face it, whatever it is, financial, it, whatever you’re falling into, it pays the bills and you begin to think you know nothing else, don’t you? So you just end up doing it. And some people do that all their lives.
Paul: Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s it’s one of those things where you can’t. Well, I felt at the time I couldn’t do something that I didn’t love. And because it just feels harder, more difficult. The days seem longer and you just don’t enjoy yourself. You become quite miserable and and tetchy and and the person that people don’t want to be around. And I didn’t want to be that person, so I, I got out of it. I sold to a client bank, um, paid off some debts, and I started the company with about £20 in my back pocket. And as I was, I’d always had this name that I want to start, wanted to start the company with and the name zero. Now, the reason why I chose it, because when I was about 3 or 4 years old, I was sitting, I remember I was singing the living room and my mum was there. She’d done the ironing and she’d gone to put the ironing away and, and came back into the living room and I separated. I had a Lego in front of me, and I’d separated all the blue Lego from all the other colors, and I’d built this thing and I says to me, says Paul, what’s that? And I turned around. I said, it’s a zero. And it was a bird. And when I was younger I used, I don’t know if you know, there’s a Japanese cartoon called battle of the planets.
Lee: No, you are now aging yourself even more.
Paul: If you have a look at battle of the planets and you have a look at the zero logo, you will see, well, the news.com.au logo has been evolved, but the old the first zero logo, you’ll see the the inspiration was taken from what I made in Lego that day. The colors and from battle of the planet and you’ll know exactly what I mean. If you go and search for it, you’ll see. Ah, and it was this cartoon where they all, um, had these costumes that were birds, kind of like bird things, and they had a phoenix that came out, and you’ll see all that. And so I set the company up and I called it. Initially it was called Zero Designs and I set up, as most people do, in a spare room back bedroom with with an idea that what you want to do. So zero it was set up with zero designs and I thought oh yeah web design company combine the zero and the designs and there we go. And not really putting too much thought into the designs part because it made me sound. I didn’t realize at the time, but it made me sound more like a graphic designer, which I’m not. I’m more web and technical. So I started off going out speaking to people. I’d been introduced through financial services to networking. I’d been networking a lot, local groups I’d done for networking, I’d done B and I, I’d done, um, Chamber of Commerce events, you name it. If there was a networking event out there, I’d been to it, gone to it, and, and was building up my contact base rapidly. So, So that’s how I kind of built Zero Designs through networking. I got the first project, then I got the second project. And like many people, when you start out, you busy, you take anything and everything. It’s if someone’s paying money, you do it. And I did everything from Drupal sites, OS commerce, gentoo CMS one CMS made simple HTML, php, typo three, typo three. Yeah.
Lee: No way you did that as well, did you? Yeah, man.
Paul: You name it, whatever was out there, I did it. Now, of course I didn’t have any experience in the majority of these CMS. I, I, my background at uni was I know how to program in Basic, Visual Basic, C-sharp, COBOL. So a lot of these languages weren’t being used to create sites. So then I’d learn a bit of PHP, a bit of CSS, but I mainly used I mainly outsourced all the work. I found that my skill was really good at sales. I could easily talk to people, get across in plain English what they wanted and translate the tech which. So then I’d thought, right, if I’m going to build something and using the languages I know it’s going to take a while. It’s going to cost a hell of a lot more. So what I needed to do was put stuff together, which I did. So I got graphic designers, web designers, web developers and brought them all in. And they worked under my brand, which was which was great, worked really well, and I thought, early doors, I’m not going to continuously try and upskill in something that I don’t need to. I’ll eventually get there, which I did eventually did get there, but I’ll dabble now when something goes wrong, I won’t kind of. I’ll have the people in the right places. I know where my strengths lie, so I lean on the strengths and push my business that way. So Xero Designs was born, and I worked as a sole trader for four years for about three, three, four years. And then it came to a point where I thought, Zero Designs doesn’t say what I want it to do. So then I changed it to, um, Zero Web Solutions. And at the time, that’s when I created Xero LLP. So Xero LLP was formed with me and my wife. So we are now a family run business and we’ve evolved. So Zero Web Solutions is me, my wife, my sister, my brother in law, my cousin, and we’ve got two developers and two designers, which we’re starting to build upon that, which is great. So everyone kind of pitches in and with zero web solutions, we do a lot of more of web development, which I absolutely love. I absolutely love doing development. And the majority of development will do will be WordPress and magenta.
Lee: Yeah, I’ve got a couple of kind of a couple of takeaways as well. I think I just want to draw out from your story here because you’ve done something. Maybe not realizing that I think is very important for a lot of businesses that are starting up, a lot of web businesses, especially, instead of you trying to do everything and not allowing you to scale the thing you did right from the get go is got other people involved to use their skills to do what they do, whilst you concentrate on the skill that you have. So therefore you are able to scale and become this LLP because you are focused on what you learn from all that doorknocking etc. and what you’ve learnt from networking and running your own financial business. By building up that portfolio of contacts, you do that best and then get all of the other people involved. And like you said, obviously you actually do get to develop now as well because you’ve built a business that you can both sell for as well as be involved in and roll up your sleeves and have some fun. Very similar to what I get to do. I do the networking like you, I do the online sales, and I also get to roll my sleeves up and do some code because we’ve got a team around us now, which is brilliant. Now, I’d love to just kind of deep dive a little bit. On the networking side of things, networking is something I discovered about six years ago, 6 or 7 years ago, and it completely changed my agency life, both in my old agency and in this agency. I’ve had some massive opportunities in my local area of Wellingborough. I mean, people, you’d be like, what? Are you kidding me? That you’re able to get massive contracts by knowing a a guy in Wellingborough or a girl in Wellingborough because, you know, how did that knitting lady give you such a massive opportunity? And I’ve got loads of ridiculously cool stories like that, so I’d love to know. Can you just tell us, you know, what have your experiences been of networking? And I’ll throw in a question in there as well. What do you think web developers or web designers might be doing wrong? Because there are a lot out and, you know, trying to network. And I do see them not doing themselves justice.
Paul: Yeah. If we start, if I give you just a background into a lot how I started with networking. So I got as with everyone, I went online and I searched on Google saying, how can I grow my business? And a few of the this networking thing came up, but from back in with my tech hat on, I thought, networking. I know what networking is. Networking is a series of cables attaching computers together that you do that way. And and I thought so a lot of the time I ignored until I came to this one post and it said grow your business with networking. I thought, what’s what’s that? What’s that all about? So I took a look at it. It was businesspeople meeting together. So I went to my first networking event. And I won’t lie, I was absolutely bricking it. Totally. I got there and I had my suit on and a tie and very professional. And yes, I, I went in and walked through the door. And this event, it was an independent one and I walked in and nobody talked to me, literally nobody. And I walked in. I know it was it was so awkward. It’s not if anyone’s listening to this. It’s not a typical of networking event. Honest. So I walked in, I went to a grab my a cup of tea, and I stood there and this woman came over to me, and I always remember it. And she said, oh, hello there, I’m Janice. Are you new here? Yes. She’s so tell me what you do. And I thought, oh my God. So literally verbal diarrhea came out and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I do this and I went into sales mode. Oh, so I’m going to jump to the question and I’ll come back about networking a bit more, but I’m going to jump to the question about I see, why.
Lee: Are you going here?
Paul: Keep going. Yeah. Where the where what people do and what what web developers do wrong. But generally this is what people do new to networking. They’ll see it as if someone’s asked me what I do. That is my cue to sell. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to try and sell them absolutely everything I can. So I’m going to say, right, we do web design, we do web development, social media, we do SEO, we do internet marketing. We do this, we do that. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So a list of 50 things that I can sell to you, and then I’m going to get really annoyed when you instantly don’t say, you want to use me in my services and pay me now. So and I say all the time networking. So I was at this one and this is no shadow of a lie. This woman gets a clipboard out, she gets a clipboard out, and she’s got this bit of paper and she’s writing. She’s got one line. He says prospects. The other line says sales. And she comes up to me and she says, oh, hello, I’d just like to talk to you about my health and wellness business. And I said, this is your first networking event, isn’t it? She went, yes. How did you know? I went, you’ve got a clipboard and you try and you try to sell me stuff without knowing who I am, without engaging with me or trying to build any kind of meaningful relationship. She went, oh, I said, can I give you a bit of advice if you want to do this really well? She says, yeah, I said, put the clipboard away and just talk to people. I said, just talk to people. Make friends, get to know them, find out who they are, who’s around you, and build a circle of good connections. She went, oh, okay. So then she went off. About two hours later, the event had finished and she comes up to me and she says, oh my God, thank you so much. She said, I talked to someone else and told them what I did to start off with and what you told me, and she said it was a good job. I’d intervened right at the start. And now I still see this woman and she’s she’s a lovely person. She said she still comments about, Thank God I spoke to you first. But the one thing, if I took a.
Lee: Load of business cards on my first one, might as well thinking that’s what I had to do. And I was handing business cards out. And then I said, at the end of that, well, networking doesn’t work because I got no opportunities whatsoever. Realizing. The funny thing is, though, that my my business partners at the time, I said, well, you need to just keep going and see how it goes. And I kind of worked out by the second one that I’m not to hand out business cards. I’m just to get to know these people. And that’s obviously where it all change, because there’s just tons of banter. We’ve all known each other now for 6 or 7 years. We go around to each other’s house for dinner, etc. we just have a laugh. I don’t have to go networking sometimes for several months if I’ve got some things going on and we’re all still in touch, but that’s, you know, it’s that whole no like interesting isn’t it?
Paul: Absolutely, absolutely. And you can see the sharks in networking, you can see who they are, and you can tell the ones that won’t make the cut. That won’t last because we can. As human beings, we can feel it. We can feel it in our bones. The people who we like and we don’t like. And the one thing that a lot of I see a lot of, well, I used to see a lot of web designers out there in networking, and they’ve started to literally disappear. If I think of the networking groups that I go to and I go to a lot, so I’ll do B and I if no one’s heard of benefits business Networking International, a huge worldwide networking group, and I like being I because it’s got accountability attached to it. And I’m a I’m a sucker for procedures and rules. I love them, and I don’t think a networking group can work well without some kind of agenda or procedure involved. So you see, when I used to see web designers, they used to come along and use demand. Oh yeah, it’s not right for me that no one’s got any money here. No one’s got any money. It’s not right for me. I’m too expensive. They’re not serious about their business. So I’m not coming back. And they used to go. And then I’d get someone speaking to saying. Oh, Paul, can I talk to you about a web project? Can I talk to you about a web design? And there will be some of those that won’t be able to afford your fees, but there will be those that will. And one of my best, best ever referrals came from a BNI group about four years ago. And he it was the graphic designer of the group. He said, Paul, I’ve got this. It’s kind of like third party referral. It’s a client’s friend’s friend who needs a website done. Can you have a chat with him? He says, I’m sorry if it turns out to be an absolute load of rubbish. I went, no problem, that’s fine. So I spoke to him, spoke to the guy, and then it turned out to be a 25 grand job. Nice. Yeah, absolutely. And that was 25 grand a year for three years. So the best referral ever, ever had. And although they are few and far between, they do come up. And it’s not about who’s in the room, it’s about who they know, who their relationships are with and, and that they’ve got the confidence to recommend you to people that they.
Lee: Know, I think, as well. One thing I forgot or didn’t do, at least for the first year, I did do the whole friendship thing, but I didn’t help the people in the room understand who I was looking for. You know what I did, what the problems were those people had, and who those people were, etc. so at least for the first year or two, I got to know people and had a few vague leads, but it was actually be a nice fault for teaching me, and I would definitely recommend people head on into a bash if there is one locally to you. It was actually being I in all of their training that really helped me understand that whole referral side of things where you obviously get people to know, like and trust you. But equally you need to educate people, you need to learn about everyone else and understand who they are targeting, the problems they’re solving, so you can make those, you know, those recommendations. But equally, it’s it’s about educating the room as well and educating the people. You’re getting to know as to who it is you’re looking for. You know, who you want to be able to help. And that was something that I’ve definitely got being I to thank for. And it’s definitely, if you’re new to networking, going to something like BNI that’s got more structure as opposed to maybe a more relaxed, informal group. It certainly helps people learn networking. Do you.
Paul: Know what? You absolutely hit the nail on the head there it is telling people the problem that you can solve. So I hear a lot of people saying, oh, I want to be introduced to Joe Bloggs company and I want a referral to them instead of you should say, right, I want to be introduced to Joe Bloggs Company because we can help their website look absolutely fantastic. I know they’re struggling with SEO and they’re ranking, so we we’ve got the tools to be able to get them higher and help them with that. And when people understand the problem that you can solve and why you want to see a specific person or company, then it opens a lot of opportunities up for them. Instead of going, you know what, I’d like to be introduced to anyone that needs a website. It’s kind of there. Might as well just stay home if you can said that. Yeah. I’m. Yeah, I’ve been there as well. We’ve all anyone who’s new to networking has been and gone. Oh my God oh my god oh my God. What am I going to say. What I’m going to say.
Lee: I.
Paul: Want a website. So anyone. Yeah, I’d like to speak to anyone who needs a website. So.
Lee: And and if you’re listening and you think we’re judging you, we’re really not because this is exactly what we’ve both done multiple times. And it’s only by making these mistakes that you actually learn anyway. So it’s all cool. It’s all good in the hood and everyone’s friends. So let’s just hope it that’s it.
Paul: Yeah it is. It’s totally personal experience. I remember one networking event going with a had 250 business cards on me. By the end of it I had zero, but it was I had gone in it. I was like a flash gone.
Lee: Do do do do. Tutu. Tutu. There you go.
Paul: Business card. I went home and thought, oh, there we go. Right. I’ll wait for the phone to ring. Look at all these, these new clients that are gonna come in and it was you. Don’t tell you what? You don’t want to be the person for a little while. I was this person for a little. It was a little while. It’s that person that you see at networking events and you go.
Lee: Oh.
Paul: God, oh my God, please, please don’t come and talk to me. Please, please, please please please please. Ah, hello. How are you? And because you’re thinking, oh my God, what the hell are they going to sell me? Try and sell me this time. And straight away, someone thinks that you’re just going to go out and out selling at them at their face. They’re going to turn off you, like, in an instant, absolute instant. Instead of looking at the sales process as being right. Okay, let’s take this as social selling and do the softly, softly. If you do the softly, softly touch with contacts refer with people that you know. Networking. It will work a hell of a lot better. But instead of focusing on them, as it said, it’s who they know. It’s. You want their contacts, you want to be them, to have faith in you, to introduce you to their contacts. That’s the goal. They will use you eventually, but in their own time.
Lee: That’s really good. Now, I’d love to talk to you. Therefore, you’ve obviously built up your business zero through networking, etc. and we’ve both dropped some cool advice from my experiences at the local networking at BNI. And you’ve shared, you know, the fantastic leads you’ve had as well, like a 25 grand a year contract for three years is phenomenal. So, you know, if you’ve if you’ve thought anyone listening and you’ve never ventured out networking, we’re not promising these sorts of results. But we are saying that, you know, really cool stuff can happen if you get outside of your comfort zone, just like Paul was sharing about when he went out and knocked on doors. That taught him something really cool about stepping outside of his comfort zone and actually being able to sell for his business. Networking is a great space to go. It’s it’s less scary than knocking on people’s doors, but at least it gets you out. You meet other people. Agency life can be lonely anyway, but you do get to meet other people and you can build your business up that way. And it’s something that we still do to this day. Now I’m really interested in my web pal, because obviously you’ve got your Xero LLP. That’s the kind of the corporate brand, business to business, etc. but you’ve recently launched and I watch your live stream a few weeks ago where you’ve launched a new brand called My Web Pal, and it looks like a monthly website options. Could you tell us a I guess what they’re about? Any that been out, could you tell us or leave it in? Because then everyone knows that I do make mistakes sometimes. Could you tell us like.
Paul: Ah la la la la la.
Lee: Could you tell us about my web pal or where the idea came from and and why you’re doing it and how you’re doing it? Yeah. There you go. I got the question out of actually, Callum, leave all that in. That’s fine. That was actually quite funny.
Paul: Go for it. Yeah, absolutely. It actually segues in nicely from networking because when I was in networking, I had to have a little bit of a mindset change because I went in and I was thinking, you know what? Because my base pricing was £1,000. And I thought to myself, well, do you know what? If someone doesn’t want to pay at least £1,000 for their website, then obviously they are not serious about their business and I don’t want to waste my time with them. Now that was the wrong thing to think. Massively wrong thing to think. Because it’s not that small businesses aren’t serious about their website and internet presence. Its cash flow is absolutely king. They want this, they want to do it. But some of the prices are way out of their realm because they are also building a business. If you think about if someone comes to us and says, yeah, I’ve got a car to sell you, you can have it for 20 grand. A lot of small pieces are going to go, you know what? Now I’ll look at something a little bit cheaper. It’s not that we’re not serious. It’s not that you’re not serious. It’s just if you haven’t got the money, you haven’t got the money. So I stood back and I thought, right, I need to be able to offer something to small businesses that’s going to get them through the door, but I want to combine it with the long term, the long game. I don’t want the one off hits. I’m not looking for that. That’s very shortsighted. And it leads down the road to not growing your business. I want something long term. I want long term income, long term clients that are going to stay with me not for just five, ten years, but 15 plus. So my thought was to do I didn’t know what it was called at the time, but it was to do these kind of like monthly websites. And as someone approached me and it was the, the, the, the Masons, that’s it. That guy from the Masons approached me. He says, look, Paul, we need about 15 sites for our local chapters. Is there something you could do? I thought, oh, this is perfect. I thought I could do this and charge this, and it kind of raced away with me. I didn’t have anything in place. I wasn’t ready for anything. All I was just thinking about was the money. I thought, oh, we can earn a regular income, blah, blah. And I thought, ten sites. I said to him, right, we can do them all exactly the same. I said, we can charge you £40 a month for each site and we can set everything up and it’ll be £100 setup fee for each one and we can do that. And he says, well, we don’t really want to pay that. We want to pay £20 a month at most, and we’ll pay you £50 per site and yeah, yeah, we can do that. And all fell to beat. It all went.
Lee: I just want to punch him already just because he wanted to. Half your price. Yeah. So, uh, I still have issues about that. When someone starts asking me to reduce my prices, I literally I don’t turn violent. But inside I do.
Paul: Do you do? And it’s kind of. I’ll, I’ll talk to you about changing prices in a second. But yeah, he he wanted me and I thought, yeah, I’ll do it, I’ll do it. And I thought I was just chasing the money. I wasn’t chasing success, I was chasing the money. And it went horribly wrong and then quickly realised I couldn’t do it. And then I thought, no, we can’t do it. Sorry. That then went south and he didn’t happen. And that was about four years ago and I didn’t table the idea. I just kind of had it as a back burner. And then a couple of years after, I thought, right, I’m going to bring this back, but I need to do it the right way. I need to offer small businesses something under £1,000, but how am I going to do it? And then I came up with the kind of, well, effectively think of leasing a car, but change the word car for website. It’s it’s exactly the same model as leasing a car. So they have the option of paying a set of fee or not. So if they don’t pay a set of fee, then the monthly cost is slightly increased. If they do pay a set of fee, they’ve got the set of fee and a slightly reduced monthly cost. Now, I wanted to build a lot into this package, so we give them 11 pages and a blog and it includes hosting includes email, SSL certificate, art service, security. We got dice protection, the service are green. And there’s there’s loads and loads of stuff in the back end as well. Plus we’ve got our kind of our own version of, you know, Canva. It’s it’s a little bit like Canva, but it’s our own version, not as slick and as polished, but we give it to clients as an added benefit that they can use. It’s got all these templates, so that.
Lee: Just means they can do their own kind of back end artwork and.
Paul: Stuff. Absolutely. They can do their own flyers, posters, business cards, social media, graphics and so on.
Lee: You may have people connecting to you about that as well. Then who are listening? Cool.
Paul: If they want to, you can ask me anything and I wanted to throw in more. So we’ve also got this GDPR system in place that if you go onto the My Web site, you’ll see it. It’s a little pop up. So it gives them like a privacy center with terms and conditions, a data request, data erasure. Someone accepts the, um, the pop up time stamps, the IP address, and the time as well. They can log in to a dashboard where it tells them all the all the stuff. And so we give them that as well included. And I want it to throw everything in his kitchen sink. So we started off, I started doing I needed some social proof, I need some social proof. So we originally started it and people are going to think I’m absolutely crazy, but if I build anything or come up with anything new, it’s the same process I use. I do them really cheap to start and then I crank the price up. So we had the price started off for a no setup fee was zero setup fee in £35 a month and we would design and build a site. Then the setup fee one would £199 set fee and £25 a month and a fair few people like this. We got some people on board with the feedback we got was great and we tested it and tested the system. We had the process in place, we had the payment system in place. We had the monthly direct debit system in place. We use go Cardless, which absolutely fantastic. It’s cheap as chips and it just works. So we’ve got all these systems in place, plus the support system, our CRM system, people can log in, submit supports, tickets, everything tick the boxes and I decided to launch it in November. So we did a launch. I was absolutely knackered. I didn’t realise for a launch the little things would take so bloody long. It just little tweaks here and there and little bits that we’d not really thought about, that we’d thought we’d covered everything, but we launched it and we in the first week we got ten people signed up, which was great. So we’ve got now it’s the way we’ve done it is it’s great. We’re using Beaver Builder in the back end of the systems because purely for clients, it’s a super easy for them to edit super, super easy. Which means that the hours when we plug into a lot of a number of different things like, oh my God, I forgot the system. It’s the God. What was it? It’s that all the videos for Beaver Builder Eats and I forgot who does them. Elevation. Yeah, the guys who do that, they also do.
Lee: The Troy Dean.
Paul: Troy God, yeah. So we get all the videos from Troy Dean and it’s a plugin that goes into the back end of the site, so we don’t have to video user manuals. Absolutely. Yeah. That’s the one video user manuals. So we use video user manuals. Absolutely fantastic. So we plug that in and it means we don’t have to do any face to face training. So the price that we do and our price is now. So we’ve set it up as now no setup fee in £99 a month, or a 5.99 setup fee and £49 a month. We’ve also got a one page website, which is A199 setup fee and £19 a month. And then we’ve got the e-commerce side, which starts at £999. So we’ve offered the spectrum there. And it’s a it’s the goal that this year is the change for my business. And my website will be the Millionaire Maker. I can absolutely see I’ve got absolutely every confidence that it will be. And one of the things that we implemented was a affiliate system. Now our affiliate system we’ve got in place is that we’re giving away anyone who’s an affiliate with us and who recommends in my web site, and when it gets built, they’re going to get a 25% recurring income each and every single month. Nice. Yeah. So we I wanted to set it to such a way because in networking, when you’re going networking, you will see a lot of multi-level marketers or MLM as if you’ve never been networking before. If anyone mentions MLM, it’s multi-level marketing. It’s if if you’ve never come across MLM before, think of Clean Easy or Avon. That’s that’s one of the most well-known MLMs. You will come across others like Forever Living, Utility Warehouse, Revital you, and so on. The list will go on. So we looked at the MLMs, and we wanted to provide a system that would hands down beat any kind of income generation that they would give. So we gave 25% away. So if someone sells, if we round it up to £100. So if someone sells on my web site, which is a no set of feet, they’ll get £25 each and every month for the lifetime. The yeah, the license length, which is 24 months. So if someone someone signs up, they’ll sign up for 24 months. And this person who is the affiliate will get £25 each and every single month for 24 months, they don’t have to do any kind of sales. They get an affiliate link. They can send that out to people and they’ll get tracked. They don’t have to do any support of any kind. We wanted to we wanted to make it the easiest way for someone to generate an income. And we’ve got we’re testing it at the moment with ten people, and they’re going really well with just updating the system that we’re using for affiliates. But we’ve got a lot of buying for people, and we’re kind of really pushing it from it’s kind of the affiliate part with the people who’ve come on board. It’s going to go kind of big from next Monday, which is which I’m looking forward to. I’m hoping that will bring a steady stream. And once we’ve got the social proof from these ten people, when they’re earning between, say, two and £400 a month, then we’re going to go live and open it out to everyone.
Lee: That’s good. The idea as well of the affiliate payments are incentivizing other people as well to help resell. These are great in last week’s episode. So as we record this, we actually had an episode live with John Smith, who’s also done something with regards to the monthly payment option for websites. It sounds like similar to you as well to 24 month contract, etc.. Yeah, the thing I like about this is, like you said, people can’t necessarily come in and give you £2,000 right up front, but they can pay a small monthly fee and also get the benefit of not being with something like Wix, because they are actually going to get a website that’s been built by you. Yes, it’s been built on a framework, but it’s still going to provide them the value that they need for their business, and they’re going to be able to pay for it over the course of two years, which also means therefore, and this is something that John has also experienced, that people’s expectations are not. If you were going to say take on a two day contract straight upfront, get paid for that, then the client is going to get every single ounce of flesh they can from you to make sure you produce something that absolutely is worth what they feel is that £2,000 that they’ve just put into your bank account, as opposed to somebody who’s paying that monthly fee? It’s a low monthly fee. The website’s live. I know I can ask you to do something in two months time and that’s all included. It, you know, really just takes the pressure off and allows people to evolve their sites as well. All of that good stuff. So this sounds really cool. I, I said to John last week, I have absolutely no idea how I could offer this because obviously I work with agencies themselves and it’s always a project to project build. But for agencies listening, this definitely sounds like something I think more and more people need to explore as a potential some sort of potential option. I think, because I do think people, small businesses going with the likes of Squarespace and Wix and those kind of going in those directions because the cost of custom work seems so expensive. I think it’s actually detrimental to local business, because if you’re going to run a business and you’d know nothing about building websites, then you’ve not really got any business building your own website on some sort of thing. It’d be like me trying to do my own accounts, or me trying to design my own house to be built by a builder. It is. It’s not a good idea. So yeah, I’m all for whatever way we can help change the way things work, give access to smaller businesses, to services that maybe they couldn’t normally afford or enjoy, and it gives them that competitive edge, hopefully as well against some of the bigger players who can’t afford big websites, etc. so I’m really excited to see where you go, mate.
Paul: Thank you, thank you. Absolutely. If I give you an example, we had one of our clients who they can’t, they can afford they could afford to to kind of put five grand, ten grand down on a site. And they said, right, we want one of these mobile web sites. And I said, you know what? To be honest, why? Well, we’ve got nothing to lose, really. This is a if it doesn’t if it doesn’t look great, then it cost us £599 and fortnight quote a month, which, to be honest, it’s a bit of throwaway money. And I went okay then. So I did them on site and I get a message saying, Paul, we need to talk. And I thought, oh God, here we go. It’s kind of like, I think any agency owner dreads a straightaway. You always put a negative connotation to you. Always. They always think, oh God.
Lee: When someone says, we need to talk, of course. Yeah.
Paul: And in your head, that’s how you’re hearing it, isn’t it? We need to talk. Yeah, we need to talk.
Lee: Yeah.
Paul: And you only want to do is like, put the duvet over your head and disappear into a black hole. So? So I pick up the phone. I think you’re already.
Lee: Ready to give a refund.
Paul: Yeah, yeah, John, you’re right. It says. Yeah, Paul, this is the site that you’ve done for us. Yeah. You said I love it. I went, oh I meant John seriously. I said, couldn’t you have started with that? Couldn’t you.
Lee: Sent an.
Paul: Email to that in the year? I said no, I needed to tell you. He said, you know, in the past we’ve spent because they didn’t come to us, that they had other web people do sites for them. They said, you know, we’ve had other websites done before. Then we’ve spent thousands and thousands and thousands on sites. He said. This, this looks more expensive than other stuff we’ve had and it’s easy to use. So he said, I want to say thank you. And at the time, if you want to pay more, absolutely. You could pay me. Ha ha ha. I was thinking, no, I’m not joking. You can. You can pay more if you want.
Lee: Yeah.
Paul: So that’s awesome.
Lee: Do you get I because I originally thought, oh, this is going to be for startups and Micro-businesses, but it hasn’t turned that way. It’s you. You’re getting everyone who’s with all the things that we’ve gone through in the country with Brexit and with the financial crisis and everything everyone’s on everyone’s mind is longevity and cash flow. So we’re seeing a big turn of people making really shrewd decisions. Now, don’t get me wrong, we still are doing some decent sized jobs through Xero, but it’s value. They’ve got to see your value and what you’re going to bring to the table. And when I speak to a lot of clients, I said, look, you’re coming into the company, but you’re getting me, you’re getting me, you’re paying for me to to look after this job, to provide this to you. So you know, you’re going to get something absolutely amazing. And they trust when I say that to them. They know that I put blood, sweat and tears into this and they know they’re going to get something really, really fantastic.
Paul: And I seem to remember you actually wrote that on my web page. They’re going to say now on your website. Yeah. My goodness. Honest to goodness hard work or something like that. I think you’ve written, uh, blood, Sweat and Tears, which is really gross, by the way, that you build websites with blood, but, you know, that’s cool each other on. Right? This has been absolutely awesome. We’ve hit our time limit. We actually burst through that about 20 minutes ago. But it’s been a brilliant, brilliant story. I’ve loved every second of it. So I guess all that’s left to say is thank you very, very much for sharing a your your history, b your experiences of networking and the lessons that you’ve learned. I could see a lot of parallels to what’s going on in my world. And also being so open about this new venture where you’ve created this brand separate from Zekrom, that allows you to test this and see whether or not you can also build a business on the recurring revenue model as well. So thank you for your transparency. I know that there are people listening who will find this super helpful. Folks. Remember you can connect with Paul on Zeckro Web solutions.com. You can check out his new venture on mywebpal.Co.Uk and I’m sure he won’t mind if you hit him up over in the free Facebook group that’s WP Innovator Facebook group. Go on to uh agency trailblazer.com/group. And that will redirect you over there as well. So Paul all that is left to say is, um, I can’t say thanks mate in a Brummie accent.
Lee: Thank you.
Paul: Thank you. There you go, I did it.
Lee: Cheers, mate. Cheers.
Paul: Cheers.
Lee: Cheers, mate.
Paul: The pleasure’s all mine. Absolutely.
Lee: Thanks, buddy. Take care. Be good. That wraps up today’s show. Now then. If you enjoyed that episode, then let us know by going to the podcast directory of your choice and giving us a glorious five star review. Don’t forget if you are in the UK or you fancy visiting, then a very good time to visit would be on the 25th and 26th of April, where we have the likes of Troy Dean, Mike Killen, Dave Toomey and other legends of the industry all together in one place where we have the Agency Transformation Live event. So that is on agency Transformation Dot live. That’s agency transformation dot live. I hope to see you there. Don’t forget as well our Facebook group agency trailblazer.com/group. If we don’t see you in there, if we don’t see you at the event, we will definitely see you in the next episode.
