Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies, exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson.
Lee:
Hi, and welcome to episode number 81 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show, we have my mate, Jerry King, who is from Newcastle, which basically means Newcastle, and he is termed as a Geordie. Well, if you don’t understand anything to do with English accents, that’s fine. You’re just going to have an absolute treat listening to this guy, because he’s got a brilliant accent. Thankfully, though, one of the more understandable Geordies, as opposed to the less understandable Geordies, whose words all merge into one. Although I’d love to see Jerry King in a family situation with lots of other fellow Geordies, I bet he becomes really impossible to understand. Anyway, this is brilliant. He talks about his own journey of starting his agency way back when, even like how he got into it, how he trained himself. So it’s a brilliant story. Absolutely fascinating. Tons of takeaways from his journey as well. If you want to go talk about this, head on over to the WP Innovator Facebook group over on WP Innovator.com forward slash group. Guys, you’re in for a treat. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. But please keep your arms and legs in the vehicle at all times.
Lee:
Well, if you’ve just joined us, you are entering a conversation with Mr. Jerry King and Lee Jackson. Hey, Jerry, how are you doing?
Jerry:
Hi, Lee. I’m good. Thanks. How are you?
Lee:
I am doing great. I’m loving your accent, mate. YI and all that jazz. Whereabouts is it you live now?
Jerry:
I live in Gateshead, which is just over the river from Newcastle.
Lee:
Newcastle, yeah.
Jerry:
Actually, my office is in Newcastle. About 10 or 15 minutes drive over the town. Gateshead’s opposite side of the town to Newcastle.
Lee:
I think the good thing about your accent, though, mate, is that you’ve got that accent that’s actually understandable.
Jerry:
Right. Oh, well, I’m pleased to hear that, yeah.
Lee:
Whereas you get some Geordies, don’t you, where you’re just like, what did he just say?
Jerry:
Yeah, well, you try not to be too slang, you know, because you experience those kind of issues. You can see people have a puzzled look on their face. What the heck is he talking about?
Lee:
I think when Geordies speak to other Geordies, maybe you wouldn’t, that’s when you find it difficult.
Jerry:
Probably. When you’re all together in the pub and we’re just like, what?
Lee:
Yeah, yeah.
Jerry:
What are they saying?
Lee:
So, guys, Jerry is a good pal of mine. We’ve had a few conversations offline and we thought, you know what, it’d be great just to have one of these conversations online and record it. So that’s exactly what we’re doing. This is going to be episode 81, I think, if my math is correct.
And, Jerry, could you introduce yourself? I know you’ve got several business concerns going on. So rather than me trying to murder it and try and describe who you are, et cetera, why don’t we get it from the Geordie man himself?
Jerry:
Yeah, right, Lee. I have a web design business called iNetCo Limited. That’s www.i-netco.co.uk, which I started in 2003. And I ran that business for a few years as a part-time business around my other job. And six or seven years ago now, I went full-time with the business.
So I started life, I got into web design initially. I went and made classes. It was a general IT course that I went on. And then at the end of that course, there were options to specialize in going in a particular direction. And then I chose web design, which we’re going back to probably around about 2000.
Lee:
Wow, so that is early on, isn’t it?
Jerry:
Yeah, yeah, quite early days. So it was an HTML course.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And eight classes. And then I did a Dreamweaver course.
Lee:
Dreamweaver. Oh, my gosh.
Jerry:
Yeah. And actually, before the Dreamweaver course, there was another tool that we did a course on, which I can’t even remember the name of that one now.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And that was quite basic. And then, as I say, we went on the Dreamweaver, and I did a Flash course, which was popular at that time, but I never, ever liked it.
Lee:
And for you young ones, that doesn’t mean exposing yourself. There used to be a technology called Macromedia Flash, wasn’t it, back then, before Adobe took over it?
Jerry:
Yeah, it was horrendous.
Lee:
I think it was probably no later. I think it was more or less invisible, the search engines.
Jerry:
Yes.
Lee:
Anything built in Flash? I mean, I think they eventually changed over time, but with the fact now that everyone’s using CSS to pretty much do everything that Flash used to be able to do.
Jerry:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s no longer needed, I don’t think.
Lee:
I was very, very happy to see the demise of it, I’ll tell you. I didn’t like it at all.
Jerry:
So, yeah, I did the last course, I think I did. I did databases, and I did an ASP.net course. It was a very basic introductory course. And at that point, I decided I wanted to do something with all of this. I mean, that was the whole idea.
In any case, I wasn’t looking for a hobby. I was looking for something that was eventually going to be a business.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
So, I decided at that point, and probably not a bad decision, because ASP.net was the main database-driven coding language at the time. PHP was still in its early days.
But PHP subsequently, I think it just took over completely.
Lee:
Obliterated it.
Jerry:
ASP.net just disappeared. I think it still is out there somewhere. So, it probably would have been a waste of time pursuing ASP.net in hindsight.
But I also decided that I wanted to be more of a business owner rather than a coder. I thought if I go down the coding route, then it’s very niche and very specialized, and it would be more akin to getting a job working for somebody.
My thinking was that people needed a service where they were going to want somebody to either be able to do themselves or to organize the whole gamut of marketing their business online. So, you know, the SEO side, the graphics side. So, I never really ever specialized. So, I don’t class myself as a developer.
I used the early websites. Actually, I’m going right back now. So, when I decided I wanted to do something with this, but I knew that I didn’t have a lot of these in-depth technical skills. So, I didn’t have the confidence just to go out. And I think it was rightly so as well because, you know, to go out and offer a service to someone, you need to know exactly what you’re doing and be not half fearful about it.
So, I thought I wanted to start my own business, but I needed a bit of support. I needed to work with someone else. So, I bought a franchise and that was when I formed the business in 2003.
And the franchise company at the time was a company called Spear Solutions. So, they had about 100 franchisees all over the UK. Really impressive setup. Fantastic offices in Cardiff Bay, in Wales. Training, they had all the, you know, all of the manuals and everything all looked really impressive. I was quite impressed with it. So, I bought into it.
And the selling point or the strap line was that you’re a local web design company with the backing of a big company should anything happen to the smaller company. And then two years down the line, the big company went bust.
Lee:
Oh, no. It’s gutting, isn’t it?
Jerry:
Yeah. So, it was a crossroad. I had to take a business loan out to buy the franchise.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And I was halfway through paying it off.
Lee:
So, was that before you became iNetCo?
Jerry:
No.
So, the business model with Spear Solutions was that you formed your own company.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
You had your own company name and you were a partner to Spear Solutions.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
So, it was Christmas 2003. I can still remember posting the cheque off to buy the franchise. It was just before Christmas.
And it was exactly the same time when they went bust. It was two years further down the line. Just Christmas. It was a great Christmas, that.
It was an absolute nightmare when it happened because they hosted all the websites with Rackspace.
Lee:
I know. So, that would have gone down because they weren’t paying their bill either.
Jerry:
Everything just went down. Yeah. So, luckily, I backed my clients’ websites up. To be honest, I didn’t have a lot of them. But their websites went down and, obviously, their email as well.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
So, it was quite horrendous. And then I had a… So, the crossroads was, do I just get out of this now and call it a day or do I try to keep it going independently?
So, I managed to… Over the space of a couple of weeks, I managed to get the websites back online and the email going again.
And decided… What I decided was that, at the very minimum, I was going to keep this going long enough to pay off the debt that I’d taken on.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And I didn’t really want to saddle my family with that debt. So, that’s what I did. I kept it going on a part-time basis and paid all the payments on the loan.
And it was actually probably the best thing that ever happened because with a franchise, you have no restrictions with franchises and you’re not getting the ship, so to speak.
So, yeah. So, I just developed it to the point where, from 2005 or so, to five, six years ago, about 2009, quit my day job and went full-time with iNetCo.
Lee:
That’s a good story. I like it. Just before Christmas, you registered the business, didn’t you?
Jerry:
That’s right.
Lee:
Just before…
A Christmas present to yourself.
Jerry:
Yeah. Just before Christmas, I registered the business. And just before Christmas, the franchise company went bust.
Lee:
Oh, it’s just depressing, isn’t it?
Jerry:
Oh, yeah.
Lee:
But, like you said, you know, the pickup that I get from that, though, is like you said, the best thing that happened. And, you know, Spear went. And that was a great thing. Probably not at the time. It was probably very stressful.
And the idea that you’ve got this debt that you’ve got to pay off. But you made a wise decision, you know, hanging in there, keeping going, paying off that debt. And you’ve now got a great business with several other offshoots, which we’re going to talk about in a second as well, which is awesome.
And it’s so great as well to be talking to an agency owner that’s had an agency since 2003. That’s rare. A lot of us are all young whippersnappers. I’m joking. I’m messing with you. I’m messing with you, man.
You know, a lot of our businesses are probably only five or six years old, whereas you got yours started in the early days because, you know, still early 2000s. That’s still early days of the internet as far as I’m concerned.
With beveled buttons and Dreamweaver and Macromedia Flash and SEO was where you potentially just purchased a whole load of gateway pages and links and stuff like that. It was like the Wild West, wasn’t it, back in the day?
Jerry:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the way I often look at it. I mean, I take my hat off to you younger guys who would go for it early on. I mean, I think I always wanted to have my own business of some description.
But once you get a family in the way and you get commitments, you put off making those kinds of decisions. So I think people who do it either before that point or during that point, I think they’re really brave and I take my hat off to them.
In much the same way as I admire people who, I mean, this is just me in my business. I’ve got a lot of really great partners that I work with. I work with marketing companies, graphic designers, developers, which is fantastic.
But I think people who take on the responsibility of employing staff, I think it’s an excellent thing. And I think people should, there should be more credit given to those people because they’re providing people with a livelihood.
Lee:
If you would like to just give Theresa May a call in on my behalf, that would be lovely. I’d really appreciate that. Now, I want to just, you know, for the younger businesses out there, I would just love to just have like a snapshot of how you would build a site in the early days.
So just, could you just run us through like what your, what the tool set would be of you or the developer that was working with you? What kind of CMS would you be using if any? Just give us a snapshot of 2003 to 2005, 2006-ish. What was those sorts of websites like and how hard were they to build?
Jerry:
So the learning stage with me, which came about before 2005, 2006, I mean, the very basic place where it started was an HTML site built in Notepad.
Lee:
Yes.
Jerry:
With the body, the head target at the bottom and the head target at the bottom and the body tags and all hand coded in Notepad.
And then there was the tool that I mentioned earlier that we used, which I can’t quite remember the name of, which was a bit more sophisticated than that.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
Then there was Dreamweaver. So I was building some sites in Dreamweaver for people. And then, and then that was, at that point was when I went over to Spear Solutions.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And they had their own tool, their own CMS, which we used to build websites with. And these websites at that point were mostly just HTML sites. And so the big, I think the big change for me came after Spear Solutions, when I thought, well, I don’t have their technology or their support staff anymore. I’ve got a lot more confidence than I have when I started.
So you’re right in that respect, Spear Solutions, I had no, I never had any regrets. Well, I may have done for a couple of weeks, but I didn’t have any regrets about what happened. I didn’t have any regrets about making the decision to buy the franchise in the first place, because it was all, if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be where I am to be. It was all part of that journey.
So the tool that I first used for my own customers was Joomla. So I started using Joomla. So I would build a site with Joomla using the Joomla themes. I think they’ve got a different name, if I remember rightly. WordPress templates are called themes, but I used obviously Joomla.
Lee:
We’ll call it themes. That’s a WordPress-esque state. We like that. We get it.
Jerry:
Yes. And that was brilliant for me. And that was driven by the needs of the customer because it allowed the customer to be able to manage their own websites and manage their own content.
So that was the, thinking about it was the ease of building a website or that you could design a better website, should I put it that way, using Joomla than you could using Dreamweaver.
And I used Joomla for a couple of years until I got sick of it. And I thought, and I, and WordPress was, I was hearing more and more about WordPress. And I used, one of the reasons I used Joomla was to make it easier for customers to update that content. But actually they weren’t finding it that easy. It was a possibility for them. It was better than having to use Dreamweaver for them or to use, or to do the HTML, their own website. Obviously that wasn’t an option.
But WordPress came on the horizon. So I ditched Joomla around about 2007, 2008. And then it’s been WordPress all the way ever since.
Lee:
So mate, I’m glad you saw the light. How long have you been using WordPress? How many years?
Jerry:
I would like to say 10 or 11 years. As old as WordPress is, I remember it was, I was looking at this CMS called B2 something or other.
Lee:
Right. And right about that time it forked, I think it was either a fork or something like that and became WordPress 0.9 or something like that.
Jerry:
Oh, really?
Lee:
So I remember playing, I used to use Dixit. I don’t know if anyone knows of that. It’s like a French one run by a French guy, D-I-X-I-T.
Jerry:
Right.
Lee:
So that was the original CMS I used to use, which was so super simple. Then I thought I can make my own.
So I started making my own. I called it Sexy CMS. What a stupid name. But then I was a teenager. So I made that in PHP and MySQL. And that was just a nightmare as well. And then, whoa, there was WordPress.
So I was actually very lucky as in kind of I launched with WordPress as soon as it came out and just used it ever since.
Jerry:
Right.
Lee:
So I did try Joomla and all hats off to you, mate, for doing that. Because I always found Joomla one of those beasts that were a little hard to understand.
Both for me as a developer designer, but also for the clients who even get their head around how to update.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
So cool, man.
All right. So, well, this has been fascinating. So far, we have had a full insight history into you essentially training yourself or doing some courses. And that’s an encouragement for people who are in the early days and looking at getting some training.
You can actually go from doing some training in something like HTML, et cetera, and then running a business since 2003. So do be encouraged. This online training does work.
I guess what the lesson would be is actually complete the training and then go for it as well. So that’s cool. And that’s just great as well, getting that insight into how you used to build websites in the old days.
I said the old days. It’s like I remember it as well, mate. I’m not young by any stretch of the imagination. I used to build sites in the exact same way. But I know there’s a few 18 to 20 year olds listening in now.
So, hey, guys, it was hard for us, wasn’t it, Jerry?
Jerry:
Yeah, yeah.
Lee:
It was difficult for us, guys.
Jerry:
We had to hard graft. We didn’t have amazing tools like, wait for it, Beaver Builder.
Lee:
I can remember the illustration sitting in my little spare room until the early hours of the morning trying to get HTML. They haven’t worked properly.
Jerry:
Well, the only good thing, though, mate, remember, we didn’t have that many browsers to contend with.
Lee:
That’s very true, yeah.
Jerry:
I suppose we were all right, weren’t we?
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
We had Netscape and we had Internet Explorer.
Lee:
Yeah, yeah.
Jerry:
In fact, it was Internet Explorer 6 for years as well, wasn’t it?
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
I don’t even think they changed it.
It was like just IE6 for years and years and years.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And Netscape.
And I used Netscape because it had an editor in it originally. So, like, back in 2000, I think I was using the Netscape editor to build websites at first.
And then Dreamweaver came out on the front of a magazine.
Lee:
That’s right.
Jerry:
Like Dreamweaver 1 or something like that. And I was like, I’ll have that.
So, back in the days when you used to be able to get magazines with software on the front on a CD.
Lee:
That’s great.
Jerry:
Yeah, on a CD.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
Remember it well.
Lee:
Probably going to just call this Two Old Men Reminiscing podcast.
Jerry:
Yeah, yeah. I’ll go on. Go on.
Lee:
Well, let’s look forward, though. Let’s look forward and also at the present because what you’re doing now is really exciting. You’re using tools, modern tools for WordPress, and you’ve shifted. You’ve got niches on the go. You’ve got all sorts of exciting things on the go. So, talk to me. Tell me, first of all, you’ve got the WP Quick Launch. Tell me all about that. How did you get that started? What was your inspiration for that? And what does that do exactly?
Jerry:
Yeah, WP Quick Launch is something that you and I are both very familiar with Beaver Builder, which is what we use to build our websites with these days as a WordPress drag-and-drop front-end page builder. And I also use the Beaver Builder theme.
It opened up new possibilities, and one of the pain points, I think, with what we do is actually getting content from clients, which can sometimes lead to projects dragging on for months and months and months. And, you know, you’ve got to become better and astute at getting that content and have systems and processes to make sure that that doesn’t become a big problem, which, you know, I am better at that now than I was. But, you know, every client is different, so it can sometimes be a challenge.
So there’s that factor. And there was also the fact that since I’ve been using WordPress, I’ve learned a lot of lessons, sometimes the hard way, about how WordPress should be set up, how it should be hosted and that kind of thing. The fact that it should be set up with a child theme, the security aspect of WordPress, the fact that WordPress needs to be maintained. You need to apply updates to WordPress itself and the plugins that you use.
And I’ve had so many people come to me over the years who have got websites that haven’t been set up properly. And they’ve got a problem with the website. Well, could you have a look at it for me? And it’s invariably, it’s about the way that it’s been set up initially. And sometimes they’ve got very, sometimes they’re at a point where actually you just need to start again. That website is horrendous and it’s going to be a lot of time, a lot of money to fix it.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And you’d be far better off starting again.
So the WPU quick launch service, it’s aimed at those issues, really. The fact that people, everybody and his uncle is offering WordPress services these days. Either people are doing it themselves or they’ve got a friend of their cousin who knows WordPress and will set a website up for them. Or sometimes marketing or graphic design companies, you know, it’s a bit of a, it’s low hanging fruit for them. The customers ask them, can you build us a website? And they’ll dive in and build a set up a WordPress website. And I don’t blame them for that. But sometimes, you know, quite often people don’t realize that they’re setting the customer up for big problems further down the line.
Lee:
You’re essentially setting yourself up to fail sometimes, aren’t you?
Jerry:
Yeah. You’re using kind of an unknown entity. There’s a lot of risk involved. It can be a potential headache.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And people sometimes don’t take that seriously enough. The fact that this is somebody else’s business that you’re playing with, you know.
And you need to have a good understanding of what you’re doing before you take money off somebody for offering a service. You need to be confident in what you’re doing.
So the setup, so WP Quick Launch is a setup service. So I advise people on the best hosting. You know, I’ve had experience with various sourcing companies over the years. How the website should be set up itself with the child theme, with the best theme and page builder on the market, which I know has fantastic support.
Lee:
I wonder who that is again.
Jerry:
Yeah, yeah, the people that we know very well.
I don’t know how you first came across Beaver Builder, but I read an article by Chris Lema.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
Do you know Chris Lema?
Lee:
I know Chris Lema.
Jerry:
Yeah. So he, right back in the early days, he did a review on it and gave it a great write-up and talked about how well-coded it was.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And the fact with, I’d been using Elegant Themes in the early days, which are great and a lot of people love them. But Chris Lema was making the comparison about the fact that if you have a website built with an elegant theme or a lot of other themes and you change that over to a different theme, you start to lose all of your content. Whereas that wasn’t the case with Beaver Builder.
Lee:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Jerry:
So the WP Quick Launch service is, I work with a lot of small businesses, a lot of startup businesses, all kinds of businesses. And it’s to help them to avoid that pain further down the line.
And the service offers, I’ve got a library of videos. So they can either have personal training from me, one-to-one training, or they can access the videos to be able to go in. And I do them in introductory videos. So here’s your new website. This is how it’s set up. This is how you can go straight in and start editing the content.
Lee:
I’ve got a question for you, though, and it’s burning, mate. Sorry, I’ve got to burn in now. Because I get what you’re doing here. But how do you manage expectations? Because I can see a price on here, $3.95.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
So for $3.95, I imagine you’re not having to do loads and loads and loads and loads of work because that would be a lot of work and hard to manage doing lots of those if there was a lot of work involved. My question is, how do you manage the expectations? Because $3.95 might actually be a lot of money to this startup.
And when I’ve had a $3.95 client, a smaller amount of client, I found that because that’s been a lot of money for them, they’ve just harassed and harangued me and wanted my blood and particularly my skeleton. Because they just need as much help as possible. So how on earth do you kind of create that element of here we are, here’s the expectation, here’s what you’re going to get, there’s the theme, we’re not designing your stuff. How do you manage all that?
Jerry:
Well, there’s two things. That’s a great question, Lee. And there’s two answers that really are two points about that. The first point is that I try to make it as absolutely clear as I possibly can at the outset that this is not a bespoke web design service. It’s a setup service. I advise people as much as I can. And yes, so I mean, there has been and there is sometimes a possibility of scope creep where you end up giving people more than you really should be for that cost. You know, you get to work with people and you like them and you want to help them. So there is that danger, you’re right.
So the way to avoid that. And sometimes there are sometimes people I’ve had one just recently asked actually who when the setup service is done for them, they start asking for other stuff within that. And when that happens, I take a look at myself and I think actually, you know, these people know what they’re doing here. They know what was involved in the setup. And actually, this is the one I’ve had the last couple of weeks is the only one experience that I’ve had like this. This is a person, a character who’s for me just trying it on.
So I take a 50% deposit and then, well, in this case, I did usually the client pays me a lot of funds.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
This client gave me a deposit and I did the setup and then started asking for other things. So actually, on that one occasion, I mean, it would end up being a loss for me. But I had to say, look, if this, rather than start being allowed to be dragged down that road doing more than really should be done, I say, look, if you’re not happy with this, I’ll roll back the changes.
Because what you actually had a WordPress website set up with virtually no content in and none of the important plugins installed or any of the security or everything that goes with WP Quick Launch. I said, if you want, I’ll refund your money and roll it back to the start. And I think that was a case of calling someone’s bluff.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
Because really, he does know.
So on the other end of the scale, I’ve got a client who I’ve recently done WP Quick Launch for and she was thrilled with it. And she said, yeah, that’s fantastic. But I want to fast track it. Can I book in three hours of your time to start to fast track things a little bit?
Lee:
And that’s fine.
Jerry:
So actually to help with the build process.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
That’s good, though. Because she understands, though, I’m paying $3.95 for a setup. And if I want to be handheld, I also pay for your time.
Lee:
Yeah. So that makes more sense.
Jerry:
Yeah, that’s good. I like that concept. And that really, I mean, I promoted the opportunity for one-to-one training quite a bit in the beginning. But then I decided to move away from that because what I want is something more scalable. So if people do ask for it and they’re local and they want to come to my office for three hours training, then yes, I will still do it. But I’m not promoting it so much. If they want it, I certainly will do it.
But the other point that I mentioned earlier on about there were two points to this. And the really pleasing and encouraging thing I found about this is that I was a bit concerned that there was going to be a lot of support needed. People were going to be coming back again and again looking for support. That was going to be my next question.
Lee:
Yeah. Carry on.
Jerry:
But actually, it’s been fantastic. People, they just get it and they get on with it. You know, there are a couple of questions in the first year too, which, you know, that’s factored in because of the vehicle I set up, I think, Lee, and because things are set up in such a way that it’s very user-friendly.
So what tends to happen is rather than people coming back and trying to pester me for more than the way that the client that I just mentioned recently has done, they actually do the opposite. They go out there because quite often they are almost always people in my network who come by referrals. They usually, they’re going out there into the network and saying, this is a fantastic service. It’s great. And that’s how it’s working.
So really, this is a we’ll get you started, you do the rest service. So it’s quite unique in that manner.
Lee:
Then do you sell anything else like updates and everything? Because obviously, in the grand scheme of things, they might invest in 395 in a website, but they’re not doing themselves any favor if they’re not updating that website, you know, over the next year, for example. So in a year’s time, very out of date plugins and et cetera. Do you just train them to do their own updates or do you offer them a contract on top?
Jerry:
Well, I agree. And that’s a good question. And that, so for my standard customers over the years before WordPress, before Beaver Builder was a thing, I built a website for someone and I offered them either hosting and support or support on their own hosting. So I’ve got packages where people pay me a monthly fee to do that.
So I’ve got to, so every Friday afternoon, all of my customers on that service, their websites all get updated. All of the plugins, all of WordPress gets updated and that gets done for them.
So the WP Quick Launch, it’s a bit of a challenge for me now is how to, because like a lot of web designers, that recurring revenue is part of the business model.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And in some respects, I’ve taken that away with this new service. And I do offer people, I say, if you’d like me to do the updates, because quite often I get them to have their own hosting with the WP Quick Launch. That’s part of the recommendation, if you like.
So I say to them, I recommend SiteGround and I say to them, go away to SiteGround, sign up for the hosting account and send me the login details. And then I’ll take over from there.
So from my business point of view, I know there is a need for support. So I need to probably, I need to get that side of the business model sharpened probably.
Lee:
That’s awesome. The next thing you’ve then niched down and something we talk about a lot is niching into a particular industry.
Yeah. And what I like, the conversation we were having was you’ve created, carved out a great niche for funeral director websites.
Jerry:
That’s right, yeah.
Lee:
And that just goes to show, guys, that you can create a business in any niche. So people are thinking, I need to be all things to all men. And then they’re like, no, I get it. Maybe I need to be in IT. But that’s still very general. So you’ve gone right in the opposite direction and you are specializing at funeraldirectorwebsites.co.uk.
If you want to go check out what he’s doing over there, you’re actually specializing in building those. How did that happen? Was that an accident or were you purposefully thinking, I want to create a niche for myself in bereavement? In the kind of bereavement sector?
Jerry:
Yeah. Well, that was, it’s quite an interesting one because, you know, I had this franchise that I told you about earlier on with Spear Solutions. And there were a lot of good lessons came from that. One of them was to be very careful about what franchise you buy at any point in the future. But there was a lot of sales training and their business model wasn’t quite right.
But one of the things that was good about their sales training and their business model was what they called vertical marketing. So they went out and they targeted specific trades or industries. And one of the big ones that they went for was the hairdressing sector. Obviously, it’s huge. There’s hairdressers, multiple hairdressers in every high street in the country. You know, they may not have big budgets for websites. But certainly for a small local web design business, which I was at the time, it was a good market to go for.
So what Spear Solutions did, they joined the hairdressers national association, became a partner.
So after Spear Solutions, one of my first customers was a local funeral director. And I don’t know why I decided to target him. I just was looking through the local newspaper and I thought, yeah, that’s…
So I did a bit of telesales, which I hate. But sometimes it works. Sometimes it does still work.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And so actually, I probably passed out this guy for about six months. And it was… The business was a guy and his business partner who was a lady, funeral director. She was quite keen on the idea, but he was a bit older. And he, no, no, we don’t need websites in our business. It’s a personal service. Websites will never work in our business. For all, I was probably pestering the life out of him. I got on quite well with him. He’s a good guy. And, you know, I think he must have taken to me because he didn’t mind the phone calls or the conversations. And eventually he signed up and I built a website for him. And about… It didn’t take very long at all. Probably six or 12 months at the most, he became an absolute convert.
And he was delighted with what the work I did for him or getting new business from. He looked at it and he was singing my praises to everybody he could.
Lee:
Well, like literally singing.
Jerry:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The hills are alive with the sound of Jerry. Get your websites here today. This interview was Jewish song. Carry on.
But I said, I definitely will leave this singing to you.
Lee:
Okay, thank you.
Jerry:
So, yeah. So, I decided, right, that’s it. I’m going to niche. I had a look around. I’m going to niche in there. I have a vertical market with funeral directors.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
I found that they had a trade association for independent funeral directors.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
And I signed up with them. I became an associate member. And it’s worked. It hasn’t been a huge… I found, you know, I mentioned telesales there. I found that you can’t actually push these guys into getting a website or a new website when they don’t want to want.
But I’ve also found that if you’re doing a good job for them, they’re a tight-knit community. They refer you to other people.
And so I’ve now got funeral directors as far north as Bookie on the northeast coast of Scotland, right down to Crawley and Sussex and everywhere in between. And it just, I find it works really well.
Lee:
And does that help you with like… Sorry, mate. Does that help you with things like just knowing what your message is and knowing your target market and making it easier when you’re like, right, I need to generate some leads today. And you’re like, funeral directors. I know what I’m doing. I know what I need to say. I know where I need to go. Are some of those the benefits of this?
Jerry:
I think it’s more that you come to understand what their message is to their customers. You know, as I say, I’m not a good salesman. I don’t like telesales and I haven’t actually sold to funeral directors in a big way. It’s been a steady part of my business over the years. I would never have been able to rely on it in the years, in former years. I mean, it’s actually getting to the point now where actually the last year or two, it’s really becoming quite interesting. I’m getting, you know, I get more and more inquiries from it.
But I think if they value that, if you know what message should be going out to their customers and how they should sell their business, then the business tends to come to me rather than me having to go out. The sales side of it comes about from when I’m, as I’m a member of this trade association, I get to attend their events. And that’s, it’s…
Lee:
Your old-fashioned networking.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
And I mean, if you were a salesman, it’s an actual gift. You know, you just, you go to a dinner and you’re surrounded by your potential customers and having a drink and a bite to eat with them.
Or in a couple of weeks…
Well, I’m going to challenge you now, mate.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
Because you don’t think you’re a salesman.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
Or else you’ve said that. Yeah. And you are a salesman because you are selling websites.
Yeah. And you are networking and you’re creating relationships. And sales is about relationships and about listening to your target audience and putting forward solutions to the problems that they have.
And you have literally said all of that.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
And your websites do. Reading your websites, you are creating solutions for particular demographics. And it’s working. And I love it, mate.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
I think you’re right. I think you’re right. I think it’s… And I’m quite relieved that that’s the case. Because I used to think that this business was going to rely on me doing a hard sell. Then it wasn’t going to work. I mean, and you mentioned earlier on, actually, that telesales does sometimes work. And I know that there are web design companies, people who are all kinds of companies, marketing companies, who…
My daughter recently worked for a marketing company. And, you know, we all talk these days about content marketing, about inbound sales, about the customer will find you and they’ll discover you. But I know there are companies who want to grow quickly. And the marketing company that my daughter worked for, a case in point, they do telesales. You know, part of what they do is websites and they target the customers in their, you know, in their sort of price bracket that they can afford their services. And they’ll have a look at their websites. And if they’re rubbish, they’ll phone them up and sell them services.
So, it still goes on.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
It still goes on. It still can work. It’s not something I ever wanted to do.
Jerry:
No, me neither.
Lee:
I actually got a job, I think. I remember getting a job in telesales for five minutes.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
As in I walked out. I couldn’t do it.
In terms of growth, what are your thoughts on that? I mean, if you wanted to accelerate your growth, how do you accelerate growth in your business?
Jerry:
Well, accelerating growth or even creating any sort of growth was simply for us. Networking was going out locally, networking.
Lee:
Yeah.
Jerry:
But also going out there with a very specific message. And that’s what, you know, that’s what you’re doing. You’re networking, obviously, with your target audience. But also, you’ve got a very specific message. And it’s the same with us. So, our message was we work with design agencies. So, if you know a designer or a design agency, we’d love an introduction.
So, then my mission was make friends with everyone on the local networking scene. Be a buddy. Have beer. Do all of that sort of stuff with literally, you know, no other intentions. Other than having a general good time and building up some great relationships. And also, where I could recommend their services into other people and try and generate leads for them. And over time, that’s just worked out to be thanked by those guys. Because now we get design agencies being introduced to us very regularly from people that you would never have thought would know a design agency.
So, a guy who writes wills will actually introduce you to a design agency, which will end up being a 10K client. So, networking is something I really and truly believe in.
Lee:
Right.
Jerry:
And I do think people really misunderstand what networking is. Networking is literally a knees up. It is.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
But the purpose of that is so that you make good friends, create great relationships, and they’re eventually going to want to help you out. Because we’re all human. We all want to help each other out. And that’s exactly what ends up happening in networking.
So, it’s not a place to go hand out business cards.
Jerry:
Yeah.
Lee:
It’s a place to go make friends.
Jerry:
Yeah. That’s excellent. That’s a great outlook.
Lee:
Yeah. And it’s so true as well. I mean, I’ve just had these conversations with some people in my network group that I go to. I’ve got a network group that I don’t do a huge amount of networking now, but I’ve got one networking group that I go to. And we had that conversation. Some people just don’t get it. They do that. They go to a networking event thinking, I’ve just got to go and hand business cards out. And people are going to give me some business. And I’m not going to give anything back. And that, it just doesn’t work.
For me, I think the big thing with networking is you’re not necessarily looking for the people in the room to give you business and ask you for a website to be built, which thankfully they do at times, but it’s the people that they know. You want them to recommend you to people.
Jerry:
Yeah. Yeah.
Lee:
So, it’s about building your reputation, I think, isn’t it? And making it easy for people to refer you.
So, guys, now you know it’s possible to be a web agency for many, many years. And it’s possible as well to weather the storms of different technologies. It’s possible to come through the other side of Joomla. It is possible to create a business model using BuddyPress because it’s awesome and we all know it. It’s possible as well to even reach out to the lower budget market and actually create a solution for those guys, which is still profitable and doesn’t make you lose all your hair. But then if you look at a picture of Jerry, you’ll see he looks exactly like me and you’ll think I’m lying.
Jerry:
Well, you just took the words out of me, hopefully. I was just going to say you should be honest with people, let them know you’re not going to lose your hair. It’s okay. We can buy wigs, mate.
Lee:
And also, just at the very end of the random conversation that we kind of just kind of launched into, that networking is one of the most effective ways, at least in mine and Jerry’s opinion, in our humble opinion, of generating business, of generating leads for your agency. So, Jerry, thank you so much for taking us on that journey.
All of the links to the websites that we’ve talked about today are going to be in the show notes, so you can go ahead and check those out. And Jerry, I’m sure you’re going to be open for people to reach out to you and ask you questions if they are interested in trying to do something similar, say the WP Quick Launch, or even maybe they want to actually have your help. How can they connect with you?
Jerry:
Connect with me on Twitter, Lee, at WordPressJerry.
Lee:
WordPressJerry. There he is. Tweet, tweet. Any other ways?
Jerry:
You can contact me through either my WP Quick Launch website, which is wpquicklaunch.com, or through my iNetCo website, which is i-netco.co.uk, or on Facebook. If you look for Jerry King on Facebook, hopefully you’ll find me. I’m based up here in Newcastle, and that’s really about it, Lee.
Lee:
And are you a member of the Facebook group, the WP Innovator Facebook?
Jerry:
I am a member of WP Innovator, which hence how I ended up on this podcast today, which was a big surprise to me, Lee, because it’s not something I’ve done before. But I’ve listened to your podcast probably for at least 12 months now, and I really am honored to be here. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity.
Lee:
It’s dedication, that is. You’ve listened to my voice.
Jerry:
Well, actually, in theory, it’s not that much my voice. It’s mainly the guests. And then I just throw my oar in now and again.
Lee:
Well, the first time I came across you, which is the way it quite often happens, that you were a guest on somebody else’s podcast. And I think, oh, I like the sound of this guy, so I’ll go and find out what Tee’s up to.
And I love what you’re up to. You’re a great part of the Beaver Builder community. And the WP Innovator community is fantastic. And it’s fantastic for me to be involved with that. So thank you for that.
Guys, if you want to be a part of the WP Innovator Facebook group, it costs one million pounds. But for today, I’m going to waive that, and it’s completely free. Head on over to wpinnovator.com forward slash group, and you can come and join our cool community.
And it is great, because Jerry is a great contributor in the WP Innovator group. He’ll answer other people’s questions. It’s just a place for all of us as agency owners, as designers, marketers, social media, gurus, or just people generally interested in WordPress, to go and hang out and ask questions about running their businesses or even WordPress-related questions. That is the odd cat picture in there as well, which I do quite enjoy a good cat picture, because I believe that is actually why Tim Berners-Lee, or whatever his name was, invented the internet for, specifically, yes, to distribute cat pictures around the CERN offices. So let’s keep that going.
All right, mate, you are a legend. Thanks so much for your time, and have a wonderful afternoon.
Jerry:
All right, buddy. Fantastic. Bye.
Lee:
Cheers. Thank you very much to you. All the best.
And that’s our wrap. Jerry, mate, that was fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and sharing your journey with us.
Now, guys, on next week’s show, we have Robbie. No, he’s not Scottish. Robbie from Beaver Builder. Yes, the Beaver Builder, Robbie. The one himself. The very own. Okay, I’ll stop building it. But anyway, he’s on next week, and he’s going to be talking about their new plugin, Beaver Thema. So we are having a conversation. I’m going to ask him some tough questions as well, especially around why Beaver Thema is not included in Beaver Builder itself. And it’s really fascinating to hear his thought process and their thought process, but also the journey of them conceiving. Ooh, sounds weird. You know what I mean. But, like, getting on with building the Beaver Thema plugin. So really cool story. He is such a great guy, and I had a wonderful time chatting with him. So that’s next week, episode number 82.
In the meantime, to get more WP Innovator goodness, then you can find old episodes over on WPInnovator.com forward slash podcast. You can come and talk about the episodes over on WPInnovator.com forward slash group. That will take you into the Facebook group. You can even talk to me as well on social media at LeeJacksonDev. Let’s have a conversation on there via Twitter. I should have stipulated that, shouldn’t I? Twitter is LeeJacksonDev, or you’ll find me in that Facebook Innovator group. And, by all means, add me as a friend as well. It’s great to have lots and lots of friends.
All right, I am now going to shut up. Have a wonderful week, and we will see you next Friday. Bye-bye!
