93 - How To Change With The Times

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 93 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This episode is sponsored by you. If you are interested in sponsoring the show, head on over to anglecrown.com forward slash contact and get in touch for the rate cards. On today’s show, we have Jackie D’Elia. She is a great friend of mine. She’s from the Rethink Podcast. She also runs her own agency and she’s a fellow panelist on WP Tonic. We shoot the breeze on all things web, on all things agency. It was a great conversation. I had to do it inside a cupboard. Yep, I recorded a podcast inside of a cupboard in Florida because there was a building site outside and they were drilling and it was too noisy. So this episode, I guess, is sponsored by my sweat. There you go. There’s an image for you. Sit back, relax, enjoy the ride, and please keep your arms and legs and your head and everything else in the vehicle at all times. Guys, welcome. And you are joining a conversation here today with me, Lee Jackson, if you hadn’t already guessed, and Jackie D’Elia. Jackie, how are you today?
Jackie:
Hey, Lee, I’m doing wonderful. Thanks for having me on your podcast.
Lee:
That’s cool. Well, we were just chatting before, weren’t we? You said kind of, what are we going to do today? And I’m like, well, it’s just two friends having a chat. And I think that’s how this podcast has kind of evolved over time. And I’m really happy to be chatting with you guys. If you don’t know who Jackie is, she’s a fellow panelist on WP Tonic. You can go and check that out. I’ll put a link in the show notes. But she is also a serial entrepreneur. And that doesn’t mean she specializes in cereal, the breakfast, but she has owned and run multiple businesses. She consults with people. She builds websites and she provides freaking amazing content via the Rethink podcast, which you can find on Rethink FM, which yours truly has been on. So that’s kind of my unscripted introduction for you, Jackie. And I could have said loads of other amazing things, but I figured I’d let you do that. Do you mind just kind of saying hi to everyone and maybe a few facts we don’t know about you, favorite color, something no one knows about you? I don’t know.
Jackie:
All right. Okay. Well, favorite color is like an aqua blue, I have to say, and orange. It’s actually, I have two. Yeah.
Let’s see. I’m a serial entrepreneur. That is so true. I was looking back at most of my adult work life and I’ve usually worked for myself. So it’s been, that’s been an interesting experience and it’s a great learning experience too, getting the opportunity to do some things. I owned a software company in the late eighties and early nineties for about, I guess, eight years. And I sold that in 1995. And then I went into IT consulting for a while and I really enjoyed that. I did that through 2000. And then I started an e-commerce company for 10 years and ran that, which was a total blast. Loved doing that. And since then I’ve been dabbling, but mostly I’ve always had my hand in technology. So right now I am, I guess for the past four years, have been running my own small agency and then also doing some work for some other agencies as well. Typically in the WordPress space.
Lee:
That’s so cool. I mean, at what point did you get into technology? Was technology something you got into during school because you found it fascinating or was it just something, or was it a happy accident?
Jackie:
Yeah, it was a happy accident. My, let’s see, my educational life took a weird turn. When I was normally going to be going to college, I didn’t. I worked for a family company that my family owned. It was a textile engraving company. So I was working in the art department there for years after I got out of high school. I didn’t go to college until I turned something much later. Let’s just leave it at that.
So my exposure to technology didn’t come until my early twenties when I was working for a real estate company. It was a property management company. They were managing properties and they had got some software to keep track of all of the income and leases and all of those things. And they hired this local firm to customize some software for them. And that was my first exposure to it. It was dBase, actually. It was like dBase II it was written in. And I was the only person in the office that was dedicated to working on that. And I worked a lot with the developer. Long story short, in the end, this guy sold me that business and I ran that for eight years and rewrote all the software. And I think we probably had thousands of users at the time I sold it. I sold it to a competitor. So I grew it into a really nice little business. I had about five employees. It was a great time.
This was all pre-internet. So today, in today’s world, you can’t really imagine what it’s like unless you’ve gone through that, where shipping software meant actually physically shipping it, I mean, like on discs to people. And I had clients all over the country. And it was a nightmare if something went wrong and you pushed out a release and there was a bug that was critical. And you had to immediately, like, overnight people discs. And it was a very different time. Technical support was all by phone. And then they came out with something called Carbon Copy, which allowed you to, like, run somebody’s computer remotely. So that made a big change on the support because you could actually push out updates to their computer if the files weren’t too large.
Lee:
Oh, well, so that must have been internet by that time, surely.
Jackie:
It was. It was dial-up. It was dial-up.
Lee:
Oh, whoa. So like a peer-to-peer sort of thing.
Jackie:
Yeah. When I sold my business in ’95, this was just before the internet started, you know, rolling in. And when I was working for the IT consulting firm that I worked for for about four years, that’s when everything changed is during that space there. So I was like really involved in helping doing all the Y2K remediation and managing and staffing projects with people to go. And basically, I mean, all of these large companies, and I was in Houston, Texas. So it was a very big oil energy business there. And most of these systems were not prepared for Y2K or hadn’t even just verified that they were. So they needed tons of consultants to come in for a couple of months, go through all of their systems, make sure everything was compliant. And they needed, you know, they had to outsource all of that.
So that was a, it was a great time for me because it was a really great job. I loved doing that. I got to work with, you know, large, large Fortune 500 companies. So for me, that was a big difference from working in my small little software company. So it was a big change for me working in a completely different enterprise environment and dealing with lots of different facets of how that all worked. So I really enjoyed that.
After that, I ended up taking some time off. And I started an e-commerce business. And I really enjoyed doing that. It was all like eco garden, garden and home friendly gifts. And it started in my garage. All the best businesses do. Remember, Apple actually had a 5,000 square foot building and warehouse and employees. And we were shipping stuff all over the country. It was a great experience on designing a website, building it on a hosted platform. So I was using Yahoo Store platform for that. And back then, I think that was probably the best option I had. There were lots of different facets. So there was a whole part of finding inventory and marketing it and selling it and learn how to manage all the logistics of shipping and boxes and packing and just, it was a great thing. And I basically learned just from experience little by little as I grew. I mean, I remember the first year that I was running that business. I think I had like 24 boxes going out one day and I was all excited because that was like a really big day for me to do that. And then later on, UPS had to send a special truck to our warehouse to pick everything up for holiday shipping. And then we had our own truck that came to pick up our stuff. So it was super interesting.
I didn’t fare very well in the recession with that when we had the ’08 recession. And that ended up catching me. And I wrote an article about that on HeroPress. There’s an article on there about just what I learned through that experience of managing debt and some other things that you don’t realize at the time. You kind of think everything is going to continue growing and moving in the same direction. And you make decisions based on that. And I had signed a big lease and upgraded everything right when things crashed, like right before. So it was a difficult process to manage. I ended up selling what was left of the business in 2011 or ’12. And since then I’ve been back doing the technology side, which I really enjoy doing. And that’s kind of every, when I look back on my careers that I’ve had, there’s been a technology thread that has gone through all of those. And as you know, we have already talked many times about this, I’m a huge proponent of continuing education. So I am always learning new things and exploring new ways to improve my processes, which is why I started rethink.fm was so that I could talk with other developers, other designers who are rethinking how they’re doing things and how you’re continuing to improve your process as you go so that you’re not just status quo doing the same things that you’ve always done.
Lee:
That’s such a cool story. I’ve grabbed a link as well, guys. If you want to read that story, then head on over to the show notes on wpinnovator.com and you’ll see a link to the full article on HeroPress where Jackie lays it all out. And it’s quite brave, I think, to kind of talk about that. Because I remember in 2008 as well, we ran an agency. The agency still survives to this day. But we were like on the edge at one point because we were in an industry where it used to be everybody did a new rebrand every single year for their event. And then suddenly everyone was like, oh, no, we got to cut costs now. So let’s just change the date. So instead of a nice new logo every year, it was like, yeah, we’ll have the last year’s logo and the date change. How much would that be? We’re like, oh, an hour’s work. So it was a bad time. And it took me a long time to be able to talk about that. In fact, I still don’t really talk about it much.
Jackie:
It’s stressful times. For me, it was a very dark time. It was a great learning lesson for me that I had taken on some debt to expand my growth. And I thought I had a plan and a business plan that showed that if I continued on my curve, everything was going to work out the way that I thought. I just hadn’t really planned for banks pulling your credit lines and things in the middle of the crisis. So that made it almost impossible for me to manage my ongoing concerns. So I ended up having to start to liquidate things. And then that is a downhill spiral that you really want to try to avoid. And basically, the only way to really avoid those things is to just keep your debt to an absolute minimum, stay out of debt. And if you’re in a business where inventory is a big part of what you do, I mean, in a service business, it’s pretty easy to adjust because, you know, you have, you can make staff changes and things like that to kind of retrofit your budget to work with, you know, what your current revenue stream is. But in a business where it’s physical products, and that’s why you see a lot of retailers even today still struggling as they adapt and change. And it can be a challenge with the debt. And if you’re not careful, and you don’t manage that, and you get too overly optimistic, and don’t realize that nothing stays the same, and that you need to be prepared and safe for rainy days. That was my lesson in that. And it was a hard one to learn. And I wanted to share that article just so that people can hear that even if you were successful at some point on something, that these things do happen, and to learn from those.
Lee:
That’s good. And again, guys, that will be in the show notes. So I hear, like throughout your entire journey here, there just seems to be technology. You started in the family firm, a software company came along, you were obviously attracted to that. And then from then, you’ve essentially been teaching yourself technology ever since and still have an appetite for it. Even to this day, you’re running the Rethink podcast where you’re talking about WordPress. You interviewed me only the other day. And I actually learned more from that interview because you were telling me about your development stack and everything that you had going on, etc. So you are clearly passionate about technology and passionate about learning throughout your life, which I think is awesome because it just keeps things interesting. Can you remember when you got into WordPress? Was it during the e-commerce side? You kind of mentioned you used Yahoo Store, which I remember that was brilliant at the time. But when did you actually start to pique your interest around WordPress itself?
Jackie:
It was right during the e-commerce, probably about ’07, ’08 timeframe right in there. I was looking to create a blog for the store. And they didn’t, you know, the Yahoo Store platform did not offer anything like that for a content management system or even a blog at that point. So I got, I was basically looking at a couple of different options. And I picked WordPress. I’m not really sure why, I just picked it. And I was glad I did because it turned out to be a great opportunity for me. I started using it just to do a blog, and then started customizing it. And I had already been doing a lot of work with HTML and style sheets, CSS, for the store. I was modeling my store after some of the stores I really liked and admired. And at the time, probably like Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma, there were some nice layouts and things were, I thought that they looked very visually appealing. And this was before even pre-mobile sites or mobile responsive. That wasn’t even really an option at the time. And the iPhone was, I think, just coming out right around that time too. So it was, no one was really using their phones for any kind of e-commerce at that time.
So I got into WordPress there. And then I started building some sites after I was recovering, licking all my wounds from my e-commerce demise. And I started building some websites for some local businesses where I lived in Houston, Texas. And that kind of got me back on the education journey. So I really started digging in and started learning more about modern web tools and what I needed to know. So that was my next step with that. And that just kept right on going. I got a, was talking to a friend probably back in 2012 and she had mentioned lynda.com and I had not heard of it at that time, but I immediately became just a junkie for it. It was like I could not stop watching it. And anybody who’s listened to Rethink or has read any of my articles I’ve written on JackieDalia.com knows that I mention it a lot and I have a subscription for Treehouse and lynda.com, which is now LinkedIn Learning as well.
And I realized one thing about myself is I’m a really good visual learner. And I think everybody who wants to embrace continuing education needs to figure out how they best learn because everyone’s different. There’s folks that I talk to that watching a video is not helpful for them to learn. For me, it is extremely helpful. It is the way that I absorb information and can process it. But some people like listening better. Some people actually need to sit down and physically do the exercises in order for it to sink in for them and become part of their workflow. So everybody needs to understand how you best learn. Some people like to read. I have more difficulty reading than I do watching videos. So for me, lynda.com, Treehouse, and those sources were very helpful in me. And there was a video that I had watched on Treehouse about going from CSS to SASS. And it just fascinated me. And Gil Hernandez was the instructor on there. He’s a fantastic instructor. So if you have an opportunity to watch his videos, in fact, every time when I start a video, if it starts with his name, and it says it there, I immediately sit up and go, oh, great, this is Gil. This is going to be a great episode or great lesson.
I went through that where it says CSS to SASS. And it basically showed you, and for me, what really worked is it showed you an existing CSS style sheet. And then it showed you how to port it into SASS bit by bit and how to get it all to work. And I was like, this could be so much better for me for my workflow, because I can modularize all of my style sheet components and organize them in a way that makes sense. So I immediately adopted that and started moving along with that. And then I watched a bunch of their gulp courses and lots of other things. And I think that is pretty much how I’ve managed to improve my workflow over the past few years. And that’s helped me move away from styling existing themes into building my own custom sites with a starter theme that I use.
Lee:
Yeah, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with regards to learning. And I think the way you’re probably, your history is, is that you have learned by doing all the time. So you, the software company originally, that you eventually then took over, the e-commerce, you have explored building your own website, you’ve done everything yourself. And with video, it’s kind of like that. That facilitates, I think, you learning by doing because you’re seeing somebody doing it on video, and you’re also doing it at the same time. And also trying a few extra little ideas as you go along. I wonder what happens if I just change this one thing that they didn’t mention? Oh, that happens. That’s cool. So I think a lot of people learn really well in there. So I was rubbish at school because someone was talking at me. Whereas if you left me with some, I don’t know, books or some kit or a computer, I would sit there and I teach myself and would follow videos and try and build things myself by trial and error to get there. And that’s how I learned. And I think you and me have a very similar way of learning, the kind of that learn by doing and learn by watching scenario rather than kind of being bookworms.
Jackie:
That’s a really good point, actually. I hadn’t even considered that portion of it. It’s watching someone and especially on these videos, they typically show you somebody actually typing in code and showing you the results and showing you the thing versus just watching somebody talk to you about the process. And you’re right, it’s almost as if you’re doing it yourself when you’re watching that. And for me, my brain just grabs on to that and adapts it. So I can remember, sometimes I will be working on something and I’ll be able to recall what it looked like on the screen, what I was watching, and can go, oh, yeah, that’s how you do that. Or I need to go here and find this. So for me, that’s been very helpful.
It’s also a great way to just future proof yourself so that you are staying frosty and current and you know what’s going on versus, we probably, I don’t know if we talked about this when you were on my podcast, but some of the concerns, and I had Morton Rand-Hendrickson on Rethink this season too, and we were talking about just what web developers need to be doing to stay on top of things. And for the most part, in relation to WordPress, Morton was referring to, you need to learn web tools and not just learn things within the WordPress ecosystem, but really understand how all of these things work. So for me, HTML, CSS was, I had that pretty covered, but I’ve been doing a lot with JavaScript and learning a lot like using some SVG animations and some other things that don’t necessarily fall in the WordPress box, but really help you sharpen your web development skills. Because like, as we all know, no one’s using tools or software or platforms that we were using 10 years ago. So my store is a perfect example. If I was going to start a store today, it wouldn’t be on a Yahoo Store platform. So if all you know is how to do a Yahoo Store platform and you’ve never kind of pushed out of that and learned some new things, you’re obsolete at that. At some point, you know, you have to, you’re going to have to jump back in and relearn everything again.
Lee:
Well, you’ve got a good point. Because if you think even about WordPress, I mean, we would consider that WordPress is going to go nowhere because currently 25 or 30% of the internet is covered by WordPress. So you think, yeah, we’re in a safe position. But then if you think about the tools that are available for WordPress, which is bringing the cost of entry crashing down for building websites, because people who don’t know anything about technology can implement a website, which means you’re competing against people who are using themes, etc., who are kind of getting people on a fast track. So if you can therefore learn what’s going on under the hood, do some JavaScript, learn some PHP so you can create more complicated themes, etc., then that kind of puts you on a whole different plane, doesn’t it as well. So as the cost of entry plummets for a WordPress website, you can start to niche down and offer kind of a higher value product or service with lots more benefits to whoever’s purchasing that website off you.
Jackie:
Absolutely. And the services component is really crucial there too. It’s, in my experience. So, you know, I ran an e-commerce business for 10 years. So I have a ton of SEO experience, just native from learning and doing. I very rarely ever paid for ads. I focused all of my energies on learning how to achieve things through natural search. So that’s a real valuable piece of service that I can provide to clients in helping them. Because you got to remember, everybody has a website for a reason. And if you’re talking about how building websites is becoming a commodity, the reason people have websites is not. So there’s a, they need something. There’s a reason for the website. So if they want to grow their business, they need to have more leads, they need to have sales on their website, whatever the reason is, if you can adapt yourself and learn skills that will help you help your client achieve the goals of the website, then that is something that is really not going to be a commoditized service.
Lee:
That’s so true. That’s something I’m not struggling with, but it’s something that we’ve only brought this out more recently in the last year, year and a half, where we’re actually offering other services around web development, because I’ve always had this super focused, I just want to build websites because I love it, love doing it so much. But then on the same time, I realized that we’re actually doing our clients a disservice if we can’t offer other skills. So if we’ve got other skills that we’re kind of keeping back, but we can offer these skills either through third parties or through ourselves, then we’re actually doing our clients a disservice, just building a website and then leaving them be on their own. SEO is super important. Creating content, you know, strategy, all of that stuff around building a website is so important as well as creating it.
Jackie:
Absolutely. And then the final component of that is many folks that I’ve talked to, they’re building websites, but they’re having a lot of difficulties in using third party APIs and bringing in different parts of information into the WordPress site. So if you can learn how to work with third party services and bring in content from other sources and how to share content and start to learn how to do all of that integration work, that’s another area where I see clients asking for things, but a lot of times the consultants are struggling to figure out, well, I really don’t know how to do that, or I’m not sure you can do that in WordPress. And for the most part, you probably can. It’s just, there’s going to be a learning curve in sorting out how to do those things because you’ll get clients. So they’ll want to have things work with like Infusionsoft or Salesforce and start integrating things into their website. And that becomes much more complex. So that is not a commoditized service at all. So that’s something if you can, if you work in that space or you have clients that do, and you can get a grasp on how all of that works and how to work with third party services and understand how to integrate them, that’s a real value for a client.
Lee:
Exactly. Guys, we are unpacking so much right now. This is like, I feel like we could just talk for hours just around the services that we can offer and the value. And oh my gosh, that’s why I do this podcast. And that’s kind of the next question, I guess. You launched Rethink FM. Why do a podcast? And also why target a podcast at, I guess, at peers? Because me and you are peers. We’re just having a conversation, probably not going to do business with you. I don’t think I’m your target client necessarily and vice versa maybe. So why would you launch a podcast? And people ask me this question too. So feel free to ask me afterwards.
Jackie:
Actually, for me, it’s just to promote the whole continuing education component and to help our community. And it’s not just the WordPress community, but just a developer community in general and design. I like talking about things where design and development overlap and exploring those, how people work and how to improve your workflow. So I’m always trying to do that. And I just think sharing those things encourages others to think about it and to do the same. So for me, it’s not, it’s definitely not something there to attract business for myself. It’s more my way of just giving back to the community and sharing information. I would say that’s my goal.
Lee:
I love it. So really what you’re saying in my, because I’m very, I have to simplify everything, is you learn, I think you’re almost learning as well by teaching. So I know you’re giving back because you’re saying, hey guys, this is this ongoing continuation of education, etc. But would I be right in saying that you’re also learning at the same time from teaching, even relearning or even expanding on what you already know through this medium?
Jackie:
Absolutely. I mean, I’ve had some amazing conversations with people that’s got me rethinking things that I was doing. So, and that’s the whole point of it. Yeah. That’s the whole point of it is, you know, what are you rethinking? Are you looking at your workflow? Are you looking at your business? Are you looking at how you work with clients? I think one of the other challenges that I see, and I get to work with some agencies now and in my own client work is most problems on project all result from a poor scoping process. It’s almost, it’s 99% of the ones I see are, you didn’t ask the right questions. You don’t have the right information. You eventually find out you don’t, but it is usually towards the back end of the project when things are not as pleasant, right? So your client’s tired by this point and people are edgy. And then you’ve realized that you didn’t quite understand what they wanted and you’re going to have to go back and rebuild something. And I think that is something that I know I can improve on. And I’m constantly trying to do that is learning how to ask better questions because you can’t expect your client to know what to tell you so that you could build them what they need. You need to be able to ask questions like, you’re talking about not just what a design looks like, but how it is supposed to function. So you need to start asking questions like, how do you envision this working? And let’s run through some user scenarios. The person visits your page and they click on this. What do you expect to happen? And start walking through those things and you’ll uncover functionality requirements that you need to know before you go and build something.
So I tweeted out something the other day and it was to the fact that, you know, a well-coded widget is great, but if it’s not the widget that they needed, you know, it’s just, you fail on this. So it’s almost like you didn’t ask the right questions at the beginning and you went and built something and it’s great. It’s coded beautifully. It’s all wonderful, but it isn’t the one that they needed. And then you realize that later and it’s typically a much more difficult process. So I would say spend time asking questions. And that was the whole part of rethink was I like to ask questions and to learn from that. So do the same with your clients. Don’t be afraid to ask them questions. I had one the other day, we were talking about just as an example, a custom post type and there was some filtering options. And then we were just going through, well, do you need to be able to filter on more than one of these at the same time? And then what happens if you do a search there? And these things can lead to a much more detailed scope. And it might actually make you go in a completely different direction from where you were originally thinking about how to build something. So that would be my advice on that is that portion of the project scoping should really, you should really dive in deep on that.
Lee:
Yeah, ask the questions. And I can’t remember, I think it was a video I did recently, but I remembered a story back when I was in IT because I’m like you, I was in IT, a lot of consultancy, etc. And one of the guys in our team told me a story once and he said it’s so important to ask questions and to really find out what the client wants. He said, because I don’t know if it’s true, whether he was just giving this as an example, but he was, let’s pretend it’s true. And he said he was asked for an email server and he was like, okay, so I got a good quote on an email server and I need to work out, you know, what model we need to get, what sort of traffic is going to go through there. We need to get it on the domain, you know, because there’s a Windows network, there’s all sorts of stuff that he was going to have to do. But he took a quick step back thinking, well, why do they need an email server? And he asked a couple of questions. Long and the short of it is all they needed was an email address and they already had an email server. They didn’t need an email server. They already had the technology. All he needed to do was go into Active Directory, create a new user account and you had a new email address. So it’s probably a bit of a dumb example, but just the fact that, you know, if you don’t ask even a few questions, you probably, you might be creating something that you don’t need to create. Because we’ve created some monsters maybe four or five years ago. I remember creating some monster websites and then realizing the client wasn’t using half of it because I totally misunderstood the brief or I didn’t ask the questions and I just jumped the gun and went straight for what I thought either I wanted to create or what I thought they were saying.
Jackie:
Exactly. That’s exactly the point is it’s not, these are not technical questions you’re asking. These are user questions. So from a user experience perspective, from a UI perspective, this is scenarios that you’re walking through of how you expect something to work. Because typically what happens is the client comes back later and goes, well, that’s not how I thought it was going to work. I thought it was going to be able to do this. And you realize I didn’t ask you that question. And, you know, that’s where I would fail in my process. I just like go back and examine that and go, okay, I didn’t ask that question. And the client really doesn’t know that I need to ask that question, right? They just assumed that it would have this functionality in there. So I think not talking technical is probably better in those scenarios, but talking through how something works. So because somebody who needs a website feature, when they’re talking to you about it, they’re not thinking about, well, yeah, that needs to be a custom post type. And you’re going to need to, you know, you’ve got to have the taxonomy set up this way. They’re not thinking about any of that. They’re just thinking about, we need to be able to organize this data in such a way. And I need to be able to provide a way for somebody to do this and this. And that’s not technical, but you need to translate that into how you’re going to build it. So getting those requirements together. When I started doing some work for agencies, I was getting, you know, you’d get a PSD file, right? And then the first question I would ask is, okay, well, where are the functional requirements that go with this? And sometimes they would say, what do you mean? And this is just a web page. Okay, yeah, but you’ve got some forms on here. You’ve got some things there. How is this supposed to work? Where are these, where’s this information going? And that’s part of scoping out the project in the beginning. So I think that’s an important thing. And I think don’t skip that step. I think you’re going to do the step either way, but it’s better to do it at the beginning.
Lee:
That is so cool. And so true. And even asking those questions about just the little bits like this form, what does the client expect? Sometimes there’s even a payment gateway hidden in there. I found that out recently. Someone had a form which looked like it was just a calculator. So it was just calculate. And I was asking for, I was like, give me a spreadsheet or something like that that’s got the calculations. You must have a spreadsheet. And they sent the spreadsheet over and then asked a couple more questions. And it turned out that whatever the result was, that person then had to pay, but the client wasn’t going to offer that information. It was just a picture. So without asking those questions.
Now I do want to ask you to kind of shift the conversation a little bit. And this is something that I think more and more people are talking about in the Facebook group, particularly. And guys, if you’re not part of that, let’s head on over to wpinnovator.com forward slash group. We are rocking about 950 WordPress developers and designers in there all asking questions. That’s pretty cool place to be. So head on there. But one of the questions that people are asking regularly is how do you generate leads? And I’m interested in maybe how you generate leads and keep your pipeline going and maybe how you keep an eye on that pipeline as well to make sure that there’s enough money for the end of the month. So big question, but I’m sure you’re going to learn us some.
Jackie:
Generating leads. I, one thing is I get a lot of referrals from existing clients. So that’s one thing is nurture those relationships, stay in contact. Don’t be that web developer that vanishes at the end of a project and you don’t ever hear from them because you’re afraid that they’re going to ask you to do something. So stay in touch with people that you’ve done work for. I have a lot of people that are on support with me so that I’m continuing to support. So I have an opportunity to have an ongoing conversation all the time with them. The other things is, you know, I spend time writing articles on my site. I do the rethink.fm, although that does not necessarily bring you leads, but it definitely helps you build your authority in a space that, you know, for things that you’re talking about. So when I talk to clients, potential clients that come in through website forms and referrals, those things help kind of build your credibility along the way.
And then I learned a couple of processes from Erin Flynn. She was on Rethink early on, I think in season one, and she had some great templates and things to build like a welcome packet and an intro packet for clients so that can help you screen whether a client is a good fit for you at the beginning. And I had not done that before. And that was really a big help for me. It was already, you know, she had laid out exactly step by step how you should go about building this and she had some nice templates. So I basically just filled in all of my information. But when a client would contact me asking about work on a project, one of the things is, you know, you can send them some questions to get some more details about it, but you can also send them your intro pack and it kind of outlines how you run your whole business, what your hours are, you know, all of these things. And number one, it shows you have a process, which is great because people seem to be much more comfortable when they realize that you have a process and it looks like, you know, you’ve, you’re doing this on an ongoing basis, right? You have a way of handling things. So that also adds credibility to how you work. So I find that those things have been really helpful. And then of course, networking. So I get a lot of leads that come from people in my peer group that don’t necessarily have time for a project right now. They’ve been, it sounds like a great project, but they’ve just committed to doing this three month project with somebody else. So networking and staying in touch with your fellow peers is, and rethink helps with that as well. So maybe rethink does more than I think it does.
Lee:
Well, there you go. You need to rethink, rethink.
Jackie:
I need to rethink, rethink. But yeah, so far I haven’t had any difficulties in, you know, having dry spells or anything like that. I typically, you know, I have a wait list right now for doing projects. And I also have an agency that I’m working with that I do an awful lot of work for them too. So I’m staying pretty busy.
Lee:
That’s really good. I think you hit the nail on the head with the process because sometimes it’s not so hard to generate the leads. It’s actually maybe harder to convert those leads because, you know, if I think about it now, we probably get two or three requests a week, if not more sometimes, but it’s, you know, to be able to impress the people with your process from the get-go to help them feel that they are going to be ushered through the entirety of this project and in good safe hands, that makes you a far more attractive prospect. I did a video last night. Was it last night? Yeah, I did a video. Yeah, it was last night on the YouTube channel. And I was talking about the magic of the process and we were just talking about Disney and how if you go to a Disney park, in most circumstances, they have nailed the process of you getting into the park and getting, you know, to your first ride and there are people involved and it’s smooth and slick and everything’s been thought out. And it’s actually a pleasure to get in versus if you were to then go to, say, Universal, you might see one person at the door where you’ve paid for the ticket, but then you don’t see anyone for ages and you’re kind of trying to work out where to park and how to get into the building and maybe where to find things. And it’s all kind of stressful. So you being able to say to them, hey, all right, well, here’s how this is going to work for you. There is a magic in that process that it’s appealing. It’s attractive to people because most people who are requesting websites actually have no clue how websites are built or what’s expected of them. And it’s kind of scary. So to know you’re in safe hands and to know there’s a process, I think that massively helps in conversion when you do get that lead in. Because I think I do this a lot. I just assume people know what’s going to happen next. And that’s probably one of my failings.
Jackie:
I think also picking the right clients is another process that you have to go through. Curtis McHale has had tons of information available about that. And if you subscribe to his email list, you’ll get lots of information, but also just how to screen clients so that they’re the right fit for you and you’re the right fit for them. That’s really important too, because you don’t want to be halfway through a project and wish you had never taken it. And sometimes again, it all goes back to asking the right questions is taking that time in the beginning to ask the right questions. And sometimes it’s, you know, you might have somebody that, and typically you’ll get these where somebody is in an emergency situation. They’re in a hurry. They need something that the previous developer didn’t do something right. And these are all typical red flags that you’ll get that, you know, this could be an issue. And then taking that time in the beginning to ask the questions, okay, what’s the sense of urgency? Why is this happening? And get a feel for it can help you avoid working with a client that’s not a good fit for you where it really doesn’t benefit either party, right? So they’re not getting what they need. You’re not getting what you need. So ultimately you want to look for clients where they match your workflow and you are actually able to deliver services and actually help and provide value to them. So, and I have, that’s why I have clients that have stayed with me that I work with and they’re just handpicked clients that we have a very good working relationship together and I deliver value for them and they recognize that. So it’s a great relationship, but taking the time to find those is, you know, it’s your job to do that. So don’t just assume if somebody sends you a lead that number one, you have to take it, right? And even if you have the time available that you have to take it. So be selective when you can, but ask the right questions in the beginning. And like you said earlier, a client may realize through an interview process with you that what they thought they needed is not actually what they need. And that’s, you’re already adding value right there by helping them guide their way.
Lee:
Exactly. Curtis is a legend, by the way, guys, if you head on over to episode 60, we interviewed him and hopefully going to tantalize him back because he is full of knowledge, but there’s also a full transcript on there of the interview we did and an email template that you can use, which we actually still use to this date when we first get an inquiry, which asks about, I think, seven questions just to kind of unpack what those needs are and also to try and get an early idea of things, even as important as budget. So if the client knows that you are more expensive than they anticipated, then that’s going to not waste their or your time in maybe hours and hours of conversations before you start arguing over the price. So that’s a really good call there, Jackie. Jackie, you’re a legend. I really enjoyed this conversation. I kind of want to do another podcast with you at some point if you’ll come on again. But until then, how can people find you?
Jackie:
You can find me at JackieDElia.com, on Twitter at JDalia and at Rethink.fm.
Lee:
Rethink.fm, where there is some great content, by the way, guys, as well, especially episode 16, I think.
Jackie:
Episode 16 was you. Oh, was it? It was a great episode. It was a great episode. We had a great conversation. I really enjoyed it.
Lee:
Me too. I do. I think we get on really well. And I think people can tell on this podcast right now, like we’ve just had a totally unplanned conversation, which just comes in so much. Unscripted. Unscripted conversation. I had no idea what we were going to talk about or say.
Jackie:
Neither did I. But it was brilliant.
Lee:
I said, didn’t I, right from the beginning, I said, nowadays, if you listen back to like episode one or two, like I asked the same five or six questions because I thought that’s what I had to do, like interview style. And this is still kind of an interview style. But nowadays, it’s just I prepare as in I know who’s coming on. And I know the history, you know, the history. But then that’s as far as it goes. I try not to plan questions because all the questions that have come out since have been prompted really by the things you’ve said. So when you mentioned the fact that the software company came into your family business, you know, that then prompted a whole lot of questions. And it was great because I was going on the same journey as the listeners. Instead of me knowing everything about you, I go on the same journey as the listeners whilst interviewing you. It’s so cool. I love this job. I just need to be paid for it now. It’s a great podcast. So if you want to sponsor the WP Innovator show, get in touch. That seems like a good segue.
It’s a great podcast. So if you want to sponsor the WP Innovator show, get in touch. That seems like a good segue. It does. We’re always joking on this podcast because I don’t make money out of it at all. It’s just something I do for fun. I don’t make any money on Rethink either. I do generate leads. I do generate leads and convert them. So I suppose in theory I do because like you said, it boosts the credibility. But actually as an entity in its own right, it actually doesn’t do anything other than it’s a great blast and there’s an awesome community around it as well. So all righty. You’re a legend. Thanks so much for your time again. And I’m totally going to send you my booking link again so we can arrange something else.
Jackie:
All right. Thanks very much for having me on. I’ve enjoyed it very much. Take care.
Lee:
All right. Bye.
Jackie:
Bye.
Lee:
And that wraps up episode 93. In next week’s episode, that is 94, by the way. Thank you, GCSE education. In next week’s episode, we are talking with Laura Elizabeth from Client Portal, a brilliant plugin for agencies and essentially any service provider out there that allows you to outline the project for your clients in a really nice, attractive way. This kind of sounds like a plug. I guess it is because we use it and we love it. But anyway, we’re actually talking to her not necessarily about that plugin, but we are talking to her about project management, about onboarding, about setting expectations. And it’s a fantastic episode. She’s learned much over the years and shares a lot of wisdom. So that’s next week, episode 94. If you’re not part of the Facebook group, then please head on over to wpinnovator.com/group. And you’ll be redirected to the Facebook group where there are now over 1000 designers, agencies, awesome people, WordPress geeks, gurus, etc. And my mum still hasn’t joined. So go ahead, check that out, share gifts, share cat pictures, and maybe even some WordPress related stuff too. See you next week. Can’t think of anything else to say. Ta-ta.