I'm going to start with the opening remarks. My name is Tiffany. I'll be the room lead. I'll be hosting the morning session today. We have Andres over there. He is our room assistant, and he's going to be on the camera. On behalf of the organizers and volunteers, we thank you. We would love to welcome you to Vancouver Word Camp 2023. I will also like to acknowledge we are gathered today on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Saleh-Waututh nations. The theme of Word Camp Vancouver this year is Connected Again. This is the first Word Camp Vancouver in four years, and as a WordPress community, we are finally able to reconnect at Word Camp, and we're very thankful for it. Show of hands, who here is their first time here at Word Camp? Okay, keep your hands up. For those who have been here, look around, and please make the effort of welcoming these people, meeting these people, making them feel welcome at our WordPress community. Word Camps have a code of conduct to provide a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for everyone. This means being considerate, respectful, and collaborative. If you have an issue or see an issue with the code of conduct, please reach out to one of the volunteers or the organizers. The organizers will be at the registration desk. There will always be one there. We offer coffee and tea in front of the theater of C-300, and that's where the sponsors tables are. This is also where lunch will be served. To connect to Wi-Fi, use the UBC Visitor Network and scroll down and agree to the terms. And while you have your phones out, reminder to turn your phones onto silent or vibrate, just to respect our speaker today. Finally, we would like to thank all of our sponsors this year, and in particular, our Gold Sponsors, Affinity Bridge, Blue Host, Go Daddy, Jetpack, Simple Hosting, SiteGround, and WeGlob. WordCamp is an all-volunteer conference. None of the speakers, organizers, or volunteers are paid to be here, so when you get a chance, please thank them for their time and effort to make this happen. Our first speaker today is Mike Shishka. The title of his presentation is Beyond Code, Creating Value Through Outstanding Customer Experiences. Again, it's Beyond Code, Creating Value Through Outstanding Customer Experience. Please welcome Mike Shishka. Hey, good morning, everyone. Switch over to my... Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to WordCamp. Excited to be with you here today and tell you a little bit more about myself and my agency and our journey over the past 15 years of doing work in website design development and marketing and some of the things that we've learned about customer service that I think were pretty instrumental to our success. And then there's no secret that we have a new competitor out there in the form of a robot. So this has been something that's on my mind a lot the last year, so I wanted to leverage my... What I've learned about customer experience and where I see that going with some of the new opportunities and challenges that are coming... Is there a remote mic, by chance? Okay, hopefully that's better. I like to walk around, so... Great, so my name's Mike Shishka. I'll put this up at the end as well if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn. I would love to do that. If you'd like a copy of the slides at the end as well, I'd be happy to send them off to you. They're mostly just some kind of aids to go through the talk today, but if they're interesting to you, I'm happy to share them. So I come all the way from the foreign land of Redgear, Alberta, and it's been really great to be visiting Vancouver this weekend, meeting up with some of our remote team here. And yeah, there we go. So a little bit about me. This is my wife, Allie. We work together at the company so I could do a whole other talk about what that's like. She's our operations manager, so she's really instrumental in project management and creating that back end experience that ultimately our clients might not see all the details of, but definitely impacts the work that they do. We don't have any kids, except these two right here. So on the left, this is my dog, Logo, and on the right, this is our Chihuahua Pixel. So these are our fur babies, as you would say, and this will come up a little bit later. So in addition to building websites and writing content and doing this kind of work for our clients, last summer I embarked on one of the biggest projects I've ever taken on. I've worked on some pretty big websites and that was building a new deck. And why I'm showing this to you today is because I don't know how to build a deck. I definitely don't know how to build a deck like this, but through the process of talking to some contractors and seeing what construction prices were like over COVID, I thought to myself, you know what? I think YouTube can teach me how to do this. And we're a year into the project now, summer too. It looks much more along than this one, but I think this for me was one of those things that really shows you that you can do something that you've never done before and you can do it like a professional can if you're willing to take the time and to learn. My neighbor was a construction foreman for 40 years now retired. So he gave me lots of advice over the fence. And one of the things he said to me is he said, Mike, an amateur will take four times as long to do it, but it might be a little bit better than the professional. And that's because you don't know what the tolerances are. You don't know where the margin for error is acceptable. And I think this is a good lesson in us taking on new things that we don't know how to do yet. And it's very possible, especially with YouTube. So I run a digital agency called Reaction. We've been around for about 15 years. We've got a core team of about 10 people and then we work with a network of contractors and freelancers. So call it about 15 to 25 people at any given time. And we design and develop WordPress websites. Sort of. So I was at WordCamp US a few weeks ago. This was in Baltimore slash DC. And I was at WordCamp and I was in a circle and I was talking to a group of other agency people, developers, and the common question comes up, oh, what do you do at Reaction? And I said, well, we design and build WordPress websites.  And I was at WordCamp with a friend of mine, Jason Nickerson. He's pretty well known in the WordPress and hosting community, runs a fractional marketing company now. And he said to me, as soon as I gave that answer, design and build WordPress websites, he said, Mike, that is not true. I looked at him and I said, really? Okay. And he goes, no, what does your homepage say that you do? And it was like, right. We don't just build and design WordPress websites. We help our clients make big things happen online. And I realized that this can be a fluffy marketing statement and maybe your business has your own version of this. But it's really important because designing and building WordPress websites is not what we do. It's how we do what we do. We help businesses solve problems. We help them achieve their goals. That is what we do for them. WordPress is just how we do it. And how we do things changes over time. It evolves, new technologies, new platforms come about. And in reality, clients don't really care how we do things. It's a bit important. But they really care about what we can do for them. So I wanna tell you a little bit of a story here. Some of you may have heard this before, but this is a story about the Ritz Carlton and a stuffed animal named Joshy. Now, I stole this story from Scott Stratton. If you haven't heard of this guy, he's a Canadian author and marketer. He runs a podcast now, it's awesome. And Scott Stratton, he wrote a book back in 2009. So this is just a year after my agency opened. He wasn't super famous yet. So he came to Red Deer to do a full day marketing workshop. So I sat in a room with maybe 30 other business owners and got to spend the day with Scott. And he told us this story of Joshy from his book on marketing. So basically the story goes like this. A family, and the reason I'm lifting this story from him is not because this was the only example I could think of, but this was a story that I still remember to this day, almost 15 years after hearing it, and I still think about this a lot. So it was really impactful to me. So this family goes on vacation, they stay at a Ritz Carlton, and after they leave, they come home, they realize they left their son's favorite stuffy Joshy behind at the hotel. Now, I don't have any kids, but some of my employees that do have told me that when your child leaves their stuffy or their security blanket behind, this is bad. It's like realizing you left your phone somewhere. So the parent did what I think any responsible parent would do. This is probably what I would do if I had kids. They lied. And they said, nope, Joshy isn't lost. He's having an extended stay at the hotel. And this was good enough for the short time. So the dad quickly jumps on the phone and he calls the Ritz Carlton and he's not only hoping that they'll help him find Joshy, he's hoping to help collaborate this lie as well. So they find Joshy in the lost prevention, lost prevention, or they find him in the lost and found and they take Joshy on a tour to help build up this story of his extended stay. So here's a photo that the staff took of Joshy enjoying some extra time by the pool. Here's Joshy having a round of drinks with his friends at the bar. He managed to get in a couple rounds of golf over this time but unfortunately Joshy doesn't have any money. So in order to pay for this extended stay, he had to work and log a few hours in lost prevention to make sure that his bill was covered. And if he's gonna be an employee of the resort for this time, then he's gonna need an ID card. So they went ahead and created a badge for Joshy. So they took all these photos. They included the ID card. They sent it back to the family. And now not only did the son get his Joshy back, but all these photos, the ID card, and this memorable experience around the extra stay that Joshy had. So this isn't just a cool story about a lost stuffed animal. And if you've ever left something at a hotel, which I have and you've called, it's not always easy to get that item found. And if they do find it, they probably want your credit card so that they can charge you for sending it back to you. And it's not a problem, but if you've had to go through this experience, it's not great. And I had to call and follow up quite a few times just to make sure my item was sent back to me. So what this story really taught me almost 15 years ago was that it is possible to create an exceptional customer experience that offers an ads value over and above the product and service that you just sold or delivered to your client. So it's the way you deliver it, the experience that someone has that can add sometimes exponential value to what you've done. So this was something I thought a lot about in the early days and still think about today. So this is a picture of myself in the background. There's Lisa, she's at the conference with me here today. And this is a photo back from our early days because this is where our journey begins in 2008. That is me sitting in an iMac box having some probably non-alcoholic drinks at work. So back in 2008, let me paint the picture for you. This is the era of glossy buttons. Everything was shiny. Skeumorphic design was in. Can we make it look real? Like it's really a notepad on your phone. Reflections were everywhere. You guys remember the iTunes library, all those reflections, oh yeah. And you had to make rounded corners by slicing up a table and using image sprites. And this is a seven slice table, but if you wanted to do an offset shadow, you needed to do nine slices and it was kind of annoying. CSS3 was coming out around this time with border radius, but it wasn't widely adopted yet so this is what we had to do. It kind of sets the stage for where we were at from a web development perspective. And just a few months prior to me starting the agency, Steve Jobs had unveiled the first iPhone in end of 2007 and he showed the New York Times website on there. And if you notice something, it's not responsive. And there's also five columns. So this is the state of the web. Glossy buttons, reflections, slicing up corners in your tables and looking at five column websites on your phone. It was early days. And just a few years prior, we were still convincing people that the internet wasn't a fad. And in 2008, a lot of the websites that we were building for companies, it was either the first website they ever had or the website they had was built by a friend or a friend's kid and this was the first website they were getting from an agency or a professional company. So there was a lot of education that had to go through this process. And even today, the web is much more mature, but your customer purchasing a website from you, this is likely still maybe the first time they have ever bought or gone through the process of building a new website. And even if it's not, it's probably only the second or third. This isn't something that somebody, it's like buying a house.  So I wanna talk a little bit about what the competitive landscape looked like for us back in 2008. We had maybe three or four local competitors. These were marketing companies primarily that got into building websites in addition to the marketing work that they were doing. But we started hearing a lot of things from our customers, about the clients we were getting, about their experience with these other local competitors. And some of these things unfortunately are still true today. And it's things like not answering the phone. And when you are saying to your customer that we are a business and we are professional, most businesses answer the phone. Also not responding to customer emails within even a day or two. It was just pretty common practice to send an email to your web developer and you might wait an entire week to hear back from what they said. And if this, I do think still happens a bit today, but in 2008, this was pretty normal. There was often very long periods of time between when you did sign a client, between those client touch points. And there wasn't a lot of proactive communication about the process or what was being done or what was gonna happen next.  It costs a lot of money. It's gonna take a lot of time to complete. And you don't actually know what the outcome is gonna be. And neither does the person you're hiring to do it. That sounds really mysterious and scary. And then when you add on slow response time to an email, weeks and weeks without hearing from them. There's this idea that in the absence of information, people will fill that gap with the worst things they can imagine. I haven't heard from him for two weeks. He probably took my money, moved to Belize, and I'll never see him again. Maybe he's just working on your homepage. But you don't know, so you'll make something up. And we also found a lot of times where the client was left either hanging at the after the project was over. Here's your website, here's your files. We got it up and running for you. See you later. And part of this comes from the need to move on to the next project. And you've got another client there waiting, ready for your time and attention. But there can also be some friction and frustration at the ends of these projects where you're trying to get this online and when it's done, you just want to be done. So this is what the project lifecycle looked like back then. I think it's pretty similar today, but this is what we were seeing. There was often a kickoff meeting, and then you as the web designer or the web design agency, you'd kind of go into your cave for a few weeks and you'd be doing your magic and working on some very mysterious technical stuff. And then a few weeks to a month later, you would emerge with a homepage mock-up. And it was amazing. And you'd send it to your client over email and say, look at this, it'd be a JPEG. Look at this amazing JPEG of your new homepage. And the client looks at it and they go, why is my business all written in Latin? And I didn't know that we sold rocket ships. Why are there pictures of rocket ships everywhere? And they would email you back your feedback and you'd go through rounds and rounds of design revisions on that homepage back and forth, back and forth, and you'd get the feedback and you'd go, oh, I don't know. And then you'd do the feedback and you'd eventually get them to approve a homepage. Then we get to the point where, do you guys remember, we'd say, please send us your content. And then the waiting game would start. We'd be waiting and waiting for that email. And you'd follow up. How's the content coming? So we're still waiting for content. At a certain point, you'd just say, you know what, we're gonna just start building it anyway. So you'd start the development and you'd build the site and you'd send that client a staging link and it's all full of placeholder content. And the client looks at it and they go, now we got over this Latin thing. Why are there still rocket ships everywhere? And the answer is, well, you didn't send us your content. So that this would motivate them to start getting you their content because now they can see a webpage up. They start sending things, you trickle in, they add it to the website. And there's this back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until you get to the point where the website finally feels like it's ready to go live. And then you launch the website and you think, thank God it's over, we're done. And you've got other clients waiting to go and then you know what happens? The post launch revisions. Oh, my customer looked at it and they noticed this or I forgot to add this full of point on. And CMSs were not incredibly advanced back then. So a lot of these updates just came back to you as the agency or the web designer. And again, you're trying to move on to the next project at this phase. You're trying to get those revisions done, but then this is where that cycle of not answering the phone, spending a week to respond to the email comes in. And to me, as a new business owner, starting this agency and hearing this from my clients even starting to see us doing some of these things ourselves, it became very clear that our competitive advantage was not going to come in the form of writing better code or delivering a slightly more polished user experience than our competitors could. Our advantage was gonna come in the form of providing an exceptional customer experience. So what I did is I started to break down what does this mean in terms of pain points for my customer? Well, it's slow communication. It's rushed onboarding. Large gaps between touch points. Feedback was not efficient. And most clients are not writers, photographers, or SEO experts. They're not actually qualified to give feedback on most of the things we wanted feedback on. And when you add in all of that point about not knowing the process, not knowing what's happening next, it creates a lot of frustration. The end result might still be amazing. Great website, the customer can be happy. The website can even make amazing results for the business. But their memory is gonna be about the process they went through and what it was like to work with you. And there were many clients that would finish a website with another agency, and then just wanna move it over to us because they didn't wanna work with that company anymore. So we knew that a five-star customer experience was gonna be critical to our success. So what does an elevated customer experience look like in the context of an agency? Well, for us, that meant having a really tight sales process because this is where you have the opportunity to set the standard right from the start about what that client can expect when they're working with you. If it takes two or three days to respond to a sales inquiry, how long is it gonna take once you've actually been hired? So responding to sales inquiry same day incredibly important. Sending the client an email ahead of that sales call of what we're gonna talk about and what they should be prepared to talk about. Explaining that this is not the sales call, this is just the introduction and here's what's gonna happen next. Talking to them about the timeline of when they're gonna receive the proposal from you. Even if it's two weeks from now, tell them that and then deliver it.  So then we really focus quite a bit on our onboarding process. So not just the onboarding call, so sure you can, we've changed up this process over the years, sending questionnaires, trying different methods. What you actually do is not the most important thing but having a thorough onboarding process gives the client the opportunity to feel like you have learned everything you need to know to be the best salesman in their company. That's really what they're expecting. If they want their website to sell products, get registrations, collect donations, you have to become that company's number one salesperson and having a quick onboarding meeting and then jumping into the homepage design does not demonstrate that you understand their business. And honestly, even if you've worked with clients in the same space and you know their industry and their business, going through these motions isn't always for you, sometimes it's for them to make sure they have the opportunity to share what they think is important to be contributed to their project and it will surprise you what you hear sometimes. So this is where we started adding stakeholder interviews and this doesn't have to be crazy complicated or really this big process. You have the kickoff meeting, you ask for two or three of the most important people in the company for me to talk to. It's usually another salesman, it could be the owner, it could be someone who works on a production floor or delivering the service and have a 15 to 30 minute chat with them. Ask them about their job, how do they get new customers? You build your own questionnaire, but for the client, the company hiring you, they've seen this sales process, they're feeling really confident through the onboarding, you're talking to their employees so now they feel like okay, well, they're getting, they're doing their due diligence, I know whatever they come up with, at least it's gonna be rooted in some actual knowledge about our business. And at the end of the day, what we're really doing here, yeah, we're collecting some research to help the project, but we're building confidence with the customers, really what we're doing. This one seems obvious, but sending regular status updates is critical and what regular means, you get to set that expectation. If it's every two weeks, you tell the client it's every two weeks and that's when they get their status update. Might be every week, it might be once a month, the frequency doesn't matter, but establishing what that frequency is and sticking to it is what's important. And whether you're behind or on track, this gives you the opportunity to create those regular ongoing touch points with a client and you can template these and if you're doing a website project, that's your main thing, you're gonna find that the status updates after the kickoff, after the discovery process, after the design, they're kind of similar.  And these status updates don't just have to be what we're working on. This is your chance to say, and here's what you should be working on. So right after the kickoff, have you started collecting some photos? Have you got your sales brochures put into Google Drive for me? You can be giving the client their action items here too and you can start seeding in little bits of education. Next, we're gonna be working on your site's development. Here's what we're gonna be doing. If you're interested, here's a bit of information about that.  It's the confidence that's being communicated here. So this is another thing that we learned, not as early as we should have, but we never ever send work over email. We always present it. So whether that's in person, in a video call, or just recording a quick little loom screen capture and sending it off. It is very important to not send work through email because you don't have the opportunity to explain your rationale and to sell it. And if you've ever heard the term voices from the shadows where your work is shared with other people at the company that you never had a chance to talk to, well now they're looking at your work and making feedback and criticisms and comments about it, but they never got to hear the rationale. So even just recording a little video can then ensure that when that proof or that staging link is being sent around, that video can be sent with it, providing context to everyone who reviews it. It's also just really good to get your face in front of the client as much as possible so they feel comfortable looking at you, hearing your voice, and that actually goes a long way in building that rapport and the confidence. And we also now always include time in the budget for content interviews and writing. Even if the client thinks that they can write their own content, we still include time on the budget for this because we know it's gonna have to be reviewed. We know that there's gonna be feedback that we have and I make it very clear to my clients if you're gonna write the content for your website then for that portion of the project, you are on the project team and you work for me and I'm gonna direct you with what to do and I'm gonna give you feedback. And the client goes like, whoa, really? But think of the confidence that builds and then they usually go, oh, well, if it's that serious, maybe you should do the first draft and I'll review it. I'm like, yes, you should. And we not only embraced, but we started to encourage those post-launch updates because this is where you build reoccurring revenue. You get the client on board with changing the website after it's finished. You're building the idea, you're planting those seeds that the website has never finished. Oh, you forgot to send us something? That is so awesome. This is a great example of how your website can keep growing with your business. Let's get that new page added. It's gonna take four hours. It doesn't have to be free. It doesn't have to be included in the original project scope. In fact, it can help to get that client on board with more updates. So let's look at this competitive landscape now 15 years later. Well, we have remote agencies like Reactions. We used to have three or four competitors in our city. Now almost every agency is potential competition. There's freelancers. There was always freelancers, but there's more freelancers than ever and it's easier to find and work with them as an individual company. These aren't bad things. These are just, that's the competitive landscape. There's global talent, the ability to go to other countries with different labor markets and rates and you're not getting subpar work. You're just working with somebody who you never would have had access to before. We have no code site builders and they're getting kind of good guys like Wix and Squarespace, like they're not terrible. This is competition for us. There's industry specific and more productized solutions than ever and now we have to worry about robots. So when I think about my journey building the agency, customer experience and how even the process of building WordPress sites has changed and now I think about AI coming into the mix. I think about it in a few ways. So we've got AI being integrated into plugins themselves. You've probably seen, Yoast now has AI suggested page titles and meta descriptions. That's pretty cool. It's helpful to the user, but I see some other interesting implement implementation of AI within plugins to help with the setup or the configuration. And this is taking the technical expertise out of the process and it is giving more capability to clients or to freelancers or people that you might be competing against. Code co-pilots is a huge thing in the general development world using chat GPT or specifically tuned models to help write code, but co-pilots that are specifically trained on the WordPress codex, the VIP development standards, those are starting to come out and some of these co-pilots even have integration for very specific plugins. So if you use ACF and Ninja Forms on your website, well, your co-pilot knows that and they're gonna, when you say, help me write a form on a page that has these things, it's gonna give that to you with ACF and a Ninja Form. The CEO of GitHub says that by 2030, 80% of code will be written by AI. So what that means is not, doesn't remove developers from the equation, but it moves them up the value chain. A team of 10 will now be a team of two and those two people will not be writing code, they'll be reviewing code. AI is like a huge wave coming in and web developers and people in the digital industry are sitting on the beach. Some are building sand castles and getting a tan and other people, like me, are looking up YouTube videos to try to learn how to surf because we know this is coming, we don't know how to do it but we want to have a surfboard so we're ready to catch the wave, whatever that means for us. These no code and low code builders that are out there, they're getting good, as I mentioned, but they have a unique advantage to integrate AI because their ecosystem is closed and they have much more control over the code base. Imagine a situation where you're a small business and you need a landing page. So you say in your little Wix or Squarespace bot, I need a landing page to promote my sprinkler blowout services for the fall. Here's my pricing and I want to make sure I include a picture of this and that. And then the AI will respond and say, are there any specific keywords you want to offer? Is there a call to action? Here it is, okay. Here, let me show you three different examples. Which page do you like best? And you'll be able to then say, I like the banner from this one and the CTA from this one. And clients will be able to Frankenstein their own sites. And if you think, wow, maybe one day that'll happen, but AI is pretty bad. Have you seen some of the stuff that it produces? I like to say AI is 90% accurate. You just don't know which 10% is wrong. So that might be true, but to think that we came from a time of slicing up our tables and now the internet is literally in every lamp and light bulb in my house, we've come a very long way in a very short time. So to think 10 or 15 years from now, the things aren't going to continue to change is just not the case. So this is where the necessity for us to move up the value chain comes in. So our clients, they know their business better than anyone else. They know what problem they have or they know what goal they want to achieve. We need to prove to them that we know how to solve their problem or achieve their goal. Not how we're going to do that, but what we're going to do for them. So I'll kind of wrap up here with this idea that AI is very unknown and facing the unknown is scary. And sometimes doing new and exciting things are scary because they've never been done before. And you need bravery in a sense of adventure to want to capitalize on this movement. And I think that's really good because there's this quote that fortune favors the brave. So I want to feel like I'm a brave AI adventurer. Okay, so what's next? I don't know. I was gonna hopefully if someone here knew the answer but nobody does and that's kind of the cool and exciting part of it. So here's what I'm doing right now in my agency. I'm continuing to focus on those fundamentals. Client response time, lots of touch points. I want to out educate my competition through the process. And I want to make sure that my clients leave this with a great experience because I know for at least the next few years using AI and these different tools isn't going to come with a great customer experience. It's probably going to be quite frustrating. And if you don't know how to pull all these pieces together as a client then these tools are just creating the how, not the what. So I am right now trying to find ways to use AI to complete more of my personal daily tasks to make me more efficient. So I have time to think about those fundamentals. We're now in the stage where we're using it personally each team member. So now it comes to how do we incorporate this into our standard operating procedures? How do we make AI tools and prompts a part of how we work, not just from one developer but from an organizational perspective. So every developer not only uses the tools but uses them the same way. And last, I am keeping my eyes open. I am trying to learn absolutely everything that I can and I'm trying to stay alert to what's happening because this could change really fast, potentially a lot faster than this last 20 years of the internet. So I hope that this talk, if there's nothing else, inspires you to go make big things happen online for your clients. And I really appreciate you taking the time to be with me this morning. Yeah, we've got a few minutes for Q&A here. So I'll definitely answer any questions. And then if we go over all, we can just hang out outside there. Do we have any questions for Mike? I'll come right. Maintaining all of this in the background? On the AI side specifically or on the business back in collaboration? Oh yeah, awesome question. Yeah, so the question was, what are the tools or the systems or processes we use behind the scenes to build this customer experience? I mean, at a really practical level, we're a teamwork.com company. We really love that suite of products. So they have teamwork projects, which is their project management piece. They have a CRM for keeping track of all your leads and your sales communication. They have something called Teamwork Spaces. That's a documentation library. So we use that to keep track of all of our standard operating procedures. And they do some cool stuff in there too, where you can mark SOPs or documents as required reading for team members. So they have to read them and acknowledge that they read that. And then just like Google Docs, you can update them within the team and tracks the revision history and all of that. So you can take what would be kind of boring company documentation and turn it into more of a living library of institutional knowledge within your company. So Teamwork is something that we use for a lot of that stuff. And then something that we should have honestly done a lot sooner is implementing a ticketing system to manage communication with our clients. And not just for support tickets, for the whole project process. I had this feeling that a ticketing system would be impersonal or would take away some of the one-on-one communication you have with your account manager or your project team. In fact, it's actually just gone one step further in showing the customer how organized we are. So of course, if you submit a support ticket or make what we call an on-demand request, that goes through the system. You get an automatic email. Of course, the status is tracked through it. So that in itself makes customers feel like you're really on top of their stuff and it's never going to get dropped. But we've even been incorporating that into the project process. So when we're in the content phase, communication around content is on that ticket. And then if the client logs in, they can sort their ticket by category and then they would see here's the seven tickets that are part of your website build, the kickoff, the design, the content development, those kinds of things. Hopefully that answers your question. I feel like I should be getting an affiliate commission from Teamwork for that. Yeah. Can you talk about your team's makeup in delivering? Do you have a ton of account management people on the team? Yeah, good question. So we don't have a ton of account management, so we're a... I call us a small-ish team. I feel like we're still pretty small. So one of the very first hires we ever made was an account manager. Because this idea of not answering the phone or responding to emails was something that just hit home. I couldn't believe that that was, you know, like I couldn't believe that that was what it took to be competitive or to have an advantage. So account manager was probably our very first or second hire. And today we actually operate with one account manager, but then we have some of our more senior people interacting with clients. And doing that through the ticketing system makes it really easy to have multiple team members contributing without anybody feeling left out, or like some comment came out of left field to the client. So our team is basically we've split it up into two groups in terms of makeup, so we have what we call the core team. So these are my full-time, salary, benefit employees, and then we have the remote team. So these are our contractors that actually do the delivery of the work that we do for clients. So the core team is really focused on this customer experience. So that's account manager, project director, senior developer, operations manager, self, and then I have an executive assistant that allows me to have a lot more of that service, provide a lot more service to my clients. So you're mentioning you have an account manager, do you also have a project manager or the account manager becomes kind of the project manager at the same time? Oh yeah, good question, because the terms account and project manager, they mean different things in every agency. So no, the account manager does nothing but service the accounts of those clients. So their sole job is to make sure that the customer is communicated with, staying up to date and what we say is you are the voice of the client on the team and that person is the one that's champion for the client at all times. So our project management is done by my wife, our operations so we consider that operations, but because we work in such a collaborative flow and we've been doing it for a while, we think that the original setup of the project, the forecasting and the scheduling is on the operations side, but once the project has started, task creation, following deliverables, comments, that actually gets handed over to the project team then. Can I ask another one quickly? So one thing we're dealing because I have a very similar agency as yours and often is we're doing work that is very custom that we've never done before in WordPress, etc. And one challenge is always kind of the over budget situation where basically you've evaluated for a certain amount of hours and then you see that your developers are working so much and like, okay, and how do you deal with this usually in your agency? How do you deal with it in your agency? Do you need me to repeat the question or did you get that? Okay, so it depends why you're going over budget. If you misquoted that's a tricky one because you have to decide as an agency are we going to go back to the client and just say we misquoted. We didn't account for these things so we need an extra 40 hours to complete this feature request. I don't think we should be so afraid to go back to our clients and just say we made a mistake and we need a little bit more money. I showed you the picture I was building my deck. Well, I hired a landscaping company to do all the rest. I did the design but moving dirt and planting trees felt like a little bit too much labor for me. So I brought in the landscaping company and they gave me a quote on everything that I had asked for and during the project they actually talked to me about how the way I wanted my trees planted so close to the fence they had to dig them by hand because they couldn't bring their machine in they didn't really account for that they just quoted me on planting seven trees and they said it's going to take a little bit of extra time and I thought that seems really reasonable you got to dig the hole by hand you can't use your tractor so sure build me some extra labor so I don't think clients are always so opposed to paying more if you can explain why the other thing is if it's scope creep so if it's because you misquoted sure you can go back to the client or you can decide to eat it but if it's scope creep this is where having really good conversations with the client about how the scope has changed since you originally started and we can go in with a change order but I like to try to push those things to a phase two because I don't like the feeling of running out of my client all the time so if we can say hey you know what that's a little bit different than what we initially planned to do so why don't we complete this phase get it live and then we'll do a phase two that includes that and they tend to be pretty receptive but I mean there's no like great it's a challenge getting onto it though as early as possible if you're in a six week sprint and you're finding out at week five you're going to be late or over budget we're not going to make it as soon as you think that that's going to happen plant the seed talk to the customer and ultimately it's going to make you seem like you're just very diligent about what you're doing I had to anyway so I'll ask a simple one as a business owner when you start a company you're at a stage where you have certain set of clients who've got you as a reference and you build those up more on cost perspective so how do you transition from your positioning as a more cheaper resource to a more efficient and a better agency to work with so the heart of your question is it how do you compete with lower cost solutions is that the heart of it you know it's tough because so my accountant is also one of my best friends and I asked him once like over drinks I just said how much would you your firm want to pay for your website he said as little as possible and he and it was like right I'm a business owner too if I was going to buy something I want it to be as less you know cost as possible you don't want to sacrifice the quality you also don't really want to overpay especially when it's a business expense this isn't like a personal luxury that you get to enjoy all the time so I think it's really focusing on and also every agency will say that they offer great service and great quality so just saying that isn't really a competitive advantage you have to you demonstrate that you've created great results for other companies in the past it's a bit of making the client question whether they would get those same results with a different solution and I also know that really well built and maintained websites don't need to be rebuilt every three to five years we have clients with websites that are ten years old and the problem is we built them too good and they don't need a new one so we're now just doing you know we might build a whole new theme but the core is still amazing and this isn't maybe a great business model if you want to rebuild your client sites every few years but actually showing someone how an investment into a good website is actually an investment into an asset for your business and smart companies are even listing their websites on their balance sheet as an asset and what a sell your company that's website is worth something not just the amount you paid for it but all the time and effort that went into creating it isn't going to have to be done by the person who acquires the business so you can actually take a bit of a confidence approach a results approach an investment approach and you start to just paint the picture to the customer that this is a really well thought through process and that other person I was talking to was just asking me questions about my brand colors awesome okay thanks so much everybody really appreciated being here have a great rest of your time at WordCamp


Good afternoon and welcome back to the touchline on why 2-5 for my name is Max Oluwaseke. This is the big interview I was telling you about with one big man and the greatest soul on earth, Mr. Dev Etale. Foma football of course he featured for several clubs locally KCB, Kangemi FC and lately TASK FC under the tutelage of Foma a tactician for the national team Rambes Taz Jacob Ghostmule. Before heading overseas where he joined British Army and things happened as they happened and of course he's here to share his side of the story. Big man good to see you man long time. How have you been? Thank you for having me. I'm good. Good to see you man and how does it feel being back home? This time when I'm back home it feels a bit different because I came because obviously of the circumstances that happened to my best friend Kevin but sometimes I look at life in the sense that we cannot question what God has planned for us and I believe everything and everyone has its own time. Definitely. I'm reliably told that you traveled for 16 hours to be with the fallen soldier Kevin or PO. He was late to rest last weekend and you are by his bedside even the time he left us. How are condolences and sorry for losing our best friend? Yes thank you. It's a very sensitive topic for me right now. I don't think I want to go into details and speak about it because I also want to respect the family of course because they are also grieving and so many people are still grieving. So for me right now it's just praying for the family and just making sure that as we live as human beings that we do appreciate life and we just be positive in each and every day and everything that you do in life just make sure you live an impact. I think my brother has left a huge impact in the sense that from him not being here the love that has been shown to him has been extraordinary and he's really inspired so many people including myself. Wao. Good to hear and we hope that God will continue granting the family enough strength and fortitude to continue with standing with the big loss but away from that Dave maybe if you can just take us through. So Robert interview you sometime back alongside our former colleague Shiko Keitani when you were at Raraka I think just trying to catch up with your former team Task KFC but now of course you've done a lot of interviews locally and even overseas and people really want to hear your story. Just tell us what happened you are relating service to you know British Army you know Queen Elizabeth herself. What really happened during that Afganistan scenario? It was that day was quite the previous night we had a briefing and every night you're normally given a briefing on where you're going to go and patrol for the day. So we were given that briefing and we were actually being told that we are going to the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan Helmand province and actually that night I didn't sleep because as a soldier when you're out there on operations with the kind of job that I was doing you're not supposed to sleep without your boots your trouser or anything on top with your weapon on your side because anything can happen anytime.  So actually that night I didn't sleep the way I was supposed to. I just had this weird feeling about the next day what was going to happen. Yes. As human beings sometimes you can tell when something is not right and you feel it inside your guts. Got that bug.  So that's where I was and we actually left for the patrol about six a.m. in the morning. We went to where we were supposed to be for the day as our operation and as we were there I was driving a vehicle it's called a jackal vehicle. So the vehicle itself it's an armored vehicle it's open at the top but we've got my commander who's on my left hand side who's got the light machine gun and we've got the heaviest machine gun at the back. So there we have the gunner and then we have two other people at the back. So we went to where we were supposed to be kajaki and we stayed there the whole day. But now when it was about half six in the evening my friend at the back he made a comment that he's quite bored and he needs some action. And we said to him me and my commander don't wish for something that you're not ready for. We didn't even finishing saying those words. The next minute we've been ambushed the Taliban are firing to where we were and I was the leading vehicle. So they were targeting us because I was carrying the captain who was the commander. And you know when you're in the war zone these Taliban and terrorists all they believe is taking out the leader of the group and it's me who was driving him. And from there my friend at the back he couldn't even cut the weapon to start firing because to suppress them so that we can look for alternatives on how we can leave the area. So I ended up had to leave my driver seat jump there push him to the side and start firing back because if I didn't react they were reacted. It would have been bad to us because the next vehicle which was next to us was about 50 meters away from us apart and we were only four vehicles and it was a mission of about 12 people. It was only patrol. Yeah and so the Taliban's were getting stronger and stronger so we had to ask for help and we got the help from the Americans who helped us using their jets to try and drop the bombs so that we can distract them for us to extract the area. So they did that so I drove for about 50 meters away from where I was and I drove over something called an IED and it improvised explosive device which was chained to four IEDs and from there I can't remember anything. I just found myself back in the UK in hospital unconscious. You usually see them on TV but for you you experienced it live.  Now you ventured into motivational speaking overseas alongside your friends whom you survived together that particular situation. How has it been like? It's been amazing because there's nothing beautiful in life like using your story to inspire someone. There's nothing beautiful like using your story and someone is coming up to you to tell you that you've actually changed my life and for me when I'm back in the UK so far we've inspired more than 10,000 students and we do normally go to corporates as well. We go and speak to them and I believe in life everyone has a story and everyone can inspire someone. I always like saying that all of us that we can inspire someone. Sometimes it's just the way we are selfish that we want to be successful or to be in a state where we can do things but we don't want to share. And that's why sometimes I like saying that if you have knowledge and you don't pass it on it's not knowledge anymore. You know you have defied all odds thriving and succeeding overseas in whatever you are doing, whatever you are venturing and specializing into what has been the secret behind that. You believe that inability is not disability and that the biggest weakness a human being can have is bad attitude. That's because even as we are sitting here today, there are some people right now as we speak they are in hospital. There are some people who are in a coma. They don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. For me I only lost my leg and broken bones on my body. That's your picture on the screen? That's my picture, yes. So that's the vehicle that I was driving that day and that's the day that I got blown up actually. That's the same same day that I got blown up here. Easy man, easy. So you were telling us about your mandate right now, motivational speaking? Yes, so for me one thing that I always carry every single day is I've seen so many of my friends who are triple amputees, double amputees. They are in a very very difficult situation than I am. I always pray to God and I say to God that thank you for the way I am because my life is much better right now with one leg than the way I had two legs. And that's because I've learnt to appreciate life and the small things in life and I've adapted to make sure that I can use them to inspire someone. And that's how I look at everything. Case in point, back home now because when you talk about Kangemi, you played for Kangemi All Stars. Kangemi United. That's where I grew up, I used to play there also. You look at our case scenario here at home, you played football here. Do you first miss it? To be honest, I'll be genuinely honest with you people. I don't miss Kenyan football. I like that. I'm just going to be honest. I don't miss Kenyan football. And it pains me a lot that what we used to go through during my playing days is what is happening right now. Even worse. Yeah, even sometimes now I think it's even worse because if you try and look at the way our sports in general is being run in the country, there's no integrity. You need to have integrity in anything that you do in life for it to be successful. And that's why we are not being successful in anything that we do when it comes to sports wise. It's like even in general in life, if you don't have any integrity with yourself and you have that mindset of saying that you know what, I'm going to do things the right way to get to where I want to be. You won't be successful. And I think the problem that we have here in Kenya is we are trying to build a wall before laying the foundation, which is the brick. Yeah, true. Yes. And you find that we are trying to rush doing so many things at a go instead of taking step by step. And it's just like in general in life. Life is a process. Yes indeed. You know where you are yesterday is not where you are here today. And I think that's what we are lacking in our in our sports. And it pains me as a former footballer that I get so many messages from footballers telling me Dave, can you help me pay my rent? You know, can you help me come to the UK so I can join the British Army? Will you advocate for someone upcoming like William here to play football? Oh yes, you know one thing that I wouldn't like to do is to try and tell someone not to do something that they love. It's their passion. It's their passion. Someone like William if and other young footballers who are pursuing to be great footballers in the country, they need to realize one thing. For you to be successful, there are so many things that you have to deny yourself in life. There are so many distractions out here. I'll use the example like mine. I don't want to use someone else's example. For me it was the clubs, the distractions of alcohol, the distractions of things like Mira. When you take consuming those things and you're taking those things you're actually destroying your body. So when it's your time to go and perform, you're not performing. You keep on asking yourself, why am I not performing? And you start blaming other people instead of blaming yourself first because I've seen so many great examples here in Kenya. So many footballers are languishing in poverty. Why is that? Some even the guys you played with back then. Oh absolutely. Some of them even the ones that I played with when I see them I feel like crying. And that's because if you realize in our Kenyan game, in our football, there's no education on telling players how to invest. If you look outside the UK, when I first went to the UK I was playing for a semi-protein that was paying me 200,000 Kenyan shillings a month and we used to train three times a week. And the players there have already been taught on how to invest. We have someone who used to come and tell us how to use our money about education. And it's the same thing that I had both of you speaking here. Even if you're playing football, the future has to be made today. Absolutely. It has to be made today. It's just like the example that you've used here about Michael Olonga. He's bright upstairs but he's playing football. Look at this player who plays for Leicester City. Ndidi. Wilfred. The Nigerian. He's also in university. So many players in the APL actually go to school. And people don't know.  Got an MBA. Account economics. And people could not believe that. Kielini, the Italian defender of football. People thought that all the time is just football. All the time is just football. Got an MBA and people were like shocked. Company. Another player got an MBA. And they are still in football. And for us here, even those stories we don't want to give them out. Of those successful players. And that's what I was saying to you before. If you look at the leaders of our Kenyan game. For me, I think I can say everything that I want to say because it's good when we are honest with each other. If you look at the people who are running the football game today. And the people who ran football when I was still playing. There's no difference. It's still the same. Yes, there's no difference. It's still the same. How does a team, a national team go for the Africa Cup of Nations and yet players are complaining about allowances? In 2020 we are still talking about allowances. And the money was already disbarse. And the same players, they are scared of coming out publicly. Because maybe they will be tempted and they wouldn't get their sport back in the national team. We are mentally has already been put in that category. We had for the platform to complain. It's not used for them complaining. Because even back then during your time in the late 90s and early 2000s even the Musaotian went through that. They could not talk. They are talking now when they are retired. They could not speak. But even the captain Mugubi himself, all that exposure he had, he came out today with all those problems that were going on in camp. Yes, and that's because you can't blame the players. Yes, you can't blame the players. If a player doesn't decide to speak about what's happening. He's just trying to be professional. He's trying to protect his future. And you know, they believe, we all know that if you play for the national team obviously you get more money than sometimes some players get more money than the way they are getting in their clubs. So you can't blame them of not coming up and speaking about it but the thing that I would like to say and this is to the people who are running Kenyan football and sports in general. They don't have integrity amongst each other. And that's why I keep on saying this. Foundation is key in everything that we do in life. Right now if I say to you, you tell me if Kenya we have under 16, under 17, under 19, under 20, under 23 can you tell me if these categories of these age groups is running and they are being run well? Actually the case in Kenya, we have had that discussion very well. The case in Kenya at the moment it's more of a pilot project. It's not the way it should be done and how it's done outside there. You get that they selected kids of under 13, under 17 and put them in one particular place which many people will not like because it does not show the whole Kenya. It's like a daycare program. It's like a daycare program. Actually that is the name because now you're talking of under 13, you're talking of under 17 who you cannot say you have taken because of merit. You cannot put that into perspective and at the end of the day it's more of the people in office playing public relations with the population so that they can get back to us. And now that brings us to the question of selection criteria. We have had public outcry over representation that the players being selected does not represent national outlook. What is just trying to say? Did that happen during your days? It was even worse. It was even worse. It was even worse. I remember we went to play KCB. We were playing short agencies. I don't know if you can remember that. Yes, of Naivasha. And my coach came up and told me that if you score a goal today since you're the top scorer you'll be called to the national team. But that day I had a good game, laid an assist, but I didn't score but I wasn't called. But you see the kind of merit on how people are being selected to join the national team here in Kenya is totally different. I've even heard stories, not heard stories, I've even known that you have to give a coach some money for you to be able to be selected in the team. And this is where sometimes when I look at these things I ask myself the question where are we headed as a country especially in sports? Football. Let me speak about football because that's what I know. That's the sport that I know. Where are we headed? Where are we going to be in the next 10 years from now? Because if you look at how sports is being run outside the country I did my UFAB license coaching course with English FA and I did it with Gary Neville. Gaspoit was there. Same class. But if you look how these people they've been groomed professionally it's absolutely exceptional. There is nothing like shortcuts you have to graft hard for you to get what you want. It's about merit and competence. It's about merit, competence and that integrity that you have for yourself as an individual for you to be able to achieve what you want in life. If you look here in Kenya majority of the people who are running the football game it's about themselves. It's not about the players. They have an interest in the game for them and not the game itself. I have a question for both of you. There is this player who got injured while training for the camp of the Africa Cup of Nations. Mandela, brand Mandela. Right? And there was another player. File Monotien as well. Na, that's the name that I was looking for. How can such a player not get medical attention from the federation and yet he got injured on national level? Actually it was a game of musical chairs between FKF and Gormaya football club. A team he features for who should supposed to spawn for his treatment. And I think Gormaya had now to take responsibility because he had been left just wallowing. This is someone who is representing our country. Why does he have to go all those through hardships for him to get treatment? Small things like that they make you sit down and realize we still have a long way to go. And what I am getting for you is, yes we have got sports mentorship and all this conversation but from what you are saying is our sports administrators need these talks more than even the players. Because they are the ones who run the game at the end of the day. They are the custodians of the game and everything. And are they willing in the first place to be available? Na, that is what we are talking about because when you talk about 2002 I remember like the former president of football Kenyan Federation Samyamuaya was in office I think we back from 1996 when Peter Kennedy left the office and he was there for a span of I think 16 years and in that time there was nothing tangible you can talk about Kenyan football. It was all about people suffering. It was all about court cases and all that. He left. We had Nick Muendo coming and the accomplishment everybody talks about which people don't usually like is to the African Cup of Nations. Yes, as a team we have got to the African Cup of Nations but what do you have to show for it at home and that is usually what people suffer from. You believe with the kind of potential plenty of talent locally Kenya ought to have surpassed what they did in Egypt during Afghan campaign? For me, I would look at it this way. Yes. There are so many great players in this country. So many beautiful young talent in this country. Until some of them are running to feature for overseas entities. Yes, but my question lies in like this and that's the same thing that I was saying. The people at the top who are running the game their interest is not to see the national team succeeding to where we are supposed to be and that has been the problem for so many years. Their problem upstairs is about how much money am I going to make when I'm in this office before I leave and that is the wrong attitude to have because there's no way you can tell me right now that Kenya, our football, we cannot even compare it with the likes of Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania. Look at the fan base in Tanzania. It's absolutely amazing. Kenyan players are leaving Kenya now to go and play. Yes, Tanzania. Actually, it's a huge exodus. It's a huge exodus. I remember when we went there in 2006 when I was playing for TASCA we were going to friendly matches with Yanka and Simba. That is the first time ever that my legs were shaking. Because the stadium was full. The noise coming from the ground. I couldn't even believe that this is just a friendly match. One thing that we do tend to forget is these players, why they engage themselves in so many things like gang-related stuff. It's because our football in Kenya is not being run well. A player goes home. He hasn't been paid for three months. He has a family. He has kids to feed. What do you expect? There's no way you can tell this player on that pitch and perform. That's why when I look up I've gone to so many EPL games. Thanks to Victor Onyama. He used to give me tickets. I go to the games. I see how football is being run. Where I live, I was interested when I was doing my coaching badges. I go to football clubs. I see how they are being run. What they are doing is nothing complicated. We can all achieve what they are doing. But the question is with us we have that integrity to go and do it. Because at the end of the day you find we are fighting amongst ourselves. Because I'll start saying using different words towards you because of my own interests and not the player. And yet we forget the office cannot be there without the playing unit. Which is the league and the players. And with this politiki we had a 2022 World Cup in Qatar because the current president of Football Kenya Federation I remember interviewing him during his campaigns in 2016 he said that was his ultimate goal seeing the national team qualify to 2022 World Cup. The thing is the guy you get into the office you sell the dream without working on the dream in that you are telling people we are in office 2022 World Cup that's where we are going. But what are you doing to make sure that you are going to that 2022 World Cup? So the dream never gets executed. You want my honest opinion? As usual. That is a dream. You are not going to do the World Cup. I'll tell you straight up. I'm not going to hide and start telling you hobs. But really you have the caption for the link. Ken is not going to the World Cup. I'm going to the World Cup and the reason why I'm saying that we run our football we are not going to be making steps going forward to make sure that we represent our country that we're supposed to be represented. Because if your house is rotten what do you expect the plane units to be? It's just simple as that. And that's why I keep on emphasizing about integrity and I'm sure both of you can relate to that. If you don't have a proper well managed house then inside the house definitely you won't achieve anything. And you see like football which I think is the most popular sport in Kenya has been one sport that has never had integrity since its inception. Let's not say that it has had integrity. You realize that even the presidents who are there since I think the 50s, the 60s, 70s and all that they never talked about integrity in football. They were ever fighting and all that. The best president we could say we had was Netumatiba. The moment he talked about professionalism let's professionalize the league in the 90s war came out. And he was like I cannot handle this and he left the office. The likes of Martin Shikoku they left to run for office. Likes of Omino they left to run for office. Alfred Sambu they left for office. So what you drink to any sinwetis that they use football as a platform to venture into politics. Because in Kenya people are putting that political, musical game all the time in that everybody for him to be relevant he has to talk about politics. So these people even even when the late Daniel Toroticha Arap Moe passed away think Samu Nyamuia came out saying that he told Miki Janao where we are under Linda Ampira. But now him coming to Linda Ampira what did he do for us? Nothing. But this is 2020. Since the 50s when football was big in the country and all that it is the first time we are having an office. Just a national office for a secretary. Just look at that and people are talking about 2022 World Cup. So in your interactions with the likes of Gaspoyet you know big man I know him very well. Fund memories of him during his playing time and Gary Neville. How is their view, what is their view of African football? To be honest I didn't even want to discuss about African football. You didn't want an embarrassing response? I didn't want because it's embarrassing. They will be brutally honest.  So it's embarrassing. You don't even want to talk about those things. All you want to do is to learn from them on how you can be better or someone how to do things the correct way because if you look at Kenyan football from way way back even when I was playing these things about over age players has been there. This thing has been there and it's not the players who are doing it it's the people who are surrounding us telling us you know what you need to put your age behind for you to be able to play in the under 17 under 20 but the question is are we not hurting the people who are supposed to be respectively playing for those age groups? We don't even think about it but if you look at the bigger picture it's going to affect Kenyan football hugely and that's because we are putting people in the under 17, under 20, under 23 who are not their respective ages they are not that so you find like where we headed we are killing the game so we need to sit down and think about ourselves and say ok look let's go back to the drawing board going back to the drawing board is from scratch it is the same thing that both of you are here when did I leave Kenya left Kenya in 2006 we are in 2020 right now 14 years later why don't we have an under 17 representing us in the under 17 world cup under 20 world cup you know have we ever asked ourselves about these questions under 23 olympics Africa cup of nations cup of nations under 17 14 years down the line 2020 right now we are still talking about the same things that used to happen 14 years ago that just shows you how bad we are doing that just shows you how our leaders are rotten to the core about themselves and not the players and not the game a few feedbacks coming in from umoja saying there is one man who is talking and being blood and Leonest I like him for calling out the ills in Kenyan football the likes of Bonfa Sambani the usual critic now should also follow the same route think Bonfa Sambani has also been doing that trying to castigate the administrators for not doing the David Bonfa Sambani played for FC Leopards I think he played for Rivertex and then moved from Kenya went to Yanga one of the first Kenyan players to really shine in the Tanzanian Premier League and all that and then left for India so he has seen what football can do for betterment what football can do for people to prosper for it to change and everybody that's why when he came back into the country the same scenario and Bonfa Sambani is older than David and you know what that is one man that I do respect totally wow so there is similarity and resemblance you know why because when Bonfa Sambani went with him at Taskar he used to advise me a lot he used to tell me to stop doing these things on the side the things that I used to do but I never used to listen to him but now when I was sucked from Taskar I sat down and realized you know what Bonfa Sambani was actually telling me things about my own interest to be a better player because he could see the potential that I had but I got lost you know in these things the side shows, shenanigans all these things that we do outside and stuff like that but that is one player that I totally respect in this Kenyan game right now because that's why he's still successful up to date Bonfa Sambani you have support from David Alley the big man also another guy Felix in Brutzi David Alley in an operation there are two things involved it's either you go to raise the flag or come back wrapped in it he won, salute Dave because that's good statement of course coming through Edmund or Lupe saying man his story is a real testimony one minute you are okay the next minute everything is different it's really humbling story to hear from him so a lot of messages coming through trickling in and people and I think as we look for a winding up I don't know what will be your latest submissions on where you seek to see Kenyan football going forward in the next few years even as we remain pessimistic that you won't qualify to have World Cup of 2020 Qatar that is a very tough question to ask me honestly honestly that's a very tough question for me this is one thing that I believe in life there's no magic it's about principles that's how I was taught and I'm glad that I went through the military the best in the world and I learned so many things if you don't have integrity respect and knowing that in life everything is a process to be honest you'll never go anywhere and I think the problem that we have with us right now is we are trying to do so many things quickly at once before we can sit down and think about the structures on how we can tackle certain things in our country you know I remember when I used to play we used to have Coca Cola yes where did that tournament go because it was pulling so many great players we used to have Robi province Jansa province we should bring those things to the fold and the people who are running this game in Kenya they should actually call themselves for meeting individually and even you remember Sakata the one that was getting sponsored by Safarikom I'm told that someone from the federation wanted a kickback and you know Safarikom by the much of their professional approach to issues they said that is the case we will pull out exactly and now and put both of you on the spot right now it's about KPL look at the rangots that they are having right now with the current office it's not good for the game it's not good for the game it's not good for the game totally and those people who are sitting on those seats they should actually call themselves for meeting one by one and realize that they are not doing this for themselves it's a disservice to Kenyan football it's a disservice to the country because we want I want when I'm sitting out there I can proudly say that Kenyan football has actually gone somewhere all my friends who are whites in the UK they only know Kenya through athletics they keep on telling oh you Kenyans are good at that don't mention anything to do with me about football it's actually a shock to them that Wanyama played for you it's actually a shock they saw that at least we had one great player who played in the Scottish League and the EPL and we need to have more of them we need to have plenty of players coming out from Kenya going and representing us in a respectable way to carry our flag whereby if you walk on the streets you're proud to be a kid you remember Divoko Rigi when he scored for Belgium in 2014 Kenyans were proud to be associated with him saying that you know Divoko remains a Kenyan and do you honestly think that the father Miko Kof did a good thing he was wise to have the boy you know switch his nationality to Belgium 110% he did not switch he was born there he was born there but of course he patriotism was the factor but he had a choice yes but I would say this Miko Kof did the right thing for letting Divoko play for Belgium because he wouldn't be at Liverpool if he was in Kenya I would even say this tell me any national team outside where you've heard that they've heard rangos about wages about players not being able to be paid in time in time name for me any country right now I don't remember I don't remember you've been in the sports scene it's been a logistical challenge here in Kenya absolutely and this is the question that I ask if you're not paid right to come into your office every day will you have the motivation to come and work the next day no way I think you saw recently there was a big story about the United States World Cup team the ladies and the men after rapping and they won the World Cup and there was a discrepancy on wage the men's team they paid higher wages than the ladies team and now it is now all level then England followed it up and all that and now it's all level playing field let me add something to that look at Brazil what they've done Brazil also Brazil has now stated that the women's team they are going to be paid the exact same wages as the men's team now it's all about equality and everything but you realize that these federations when you are a player and you have been called by the national team they hand you a contract they realize that now you are a national treasure you are coming on to represent the country and everything they give you and in the event that the contract is violated then that attracts legal that one comes later when there are problems but you realize with national teams it's all about respecting you as a person and coming to represent us so they give back to you and another thing that I wanted to actually add on it quickly yes Denis Oliyech the best striker that Kenya has ever produced we've got Taita Sumulama one of the best midfielders that Kenya has ever produced these are the type of people now that the office is supposed to work with them to shape the Kenyan football because they know the hardships of Kenyan football and that's a good point how comes you know the local administrations are not working with the players it's because I can answer that very clearly it's because when these players come and start talking about the problems of what these players are facing the office won't like it because it's the reality people are struggling and that's why it's so bad and it gets to me when I talk about Kenyan football if I add on to that it's now like the way you have done the UFB lines and all that and the case like the one of Simon Mulama think you went to the United States by a scholarship and all that he has seen how it's done outside there he wants to come and replicate it for us so that it can go ahead now the people in office don't want that actually he's come here several times and in partnership with the way he studied think there is some university in the US where a lot of young people have gotten an opportunity to go there and acquire academic and even co-curricular requirements and I think that's one way of giving back to the society I think he's doing what he witnessed overseas the way things are being done is a sports manu played in Kenya has got a degree in sports management and all that from a reputable institution it's come back to your country then the administrators are like no no no this David Guy these are the guys who want to kill our Kek I'll say this I spoke to a player who's a very good friend of Nick Mwenwo and this player is I won't mention his name because I don't want to put him on the spot he was one of the best left backs in Kenya they are very good friends and I was discussing him with this thing and he said to me Nick Mwenwo doesn't want former players who know the game to be in his office all he wants to do is if you're a former player he has to dictate what he wants he doesn't want people to come and challenge his ideas because we've got so many greats look at Muso Tieno there's so many names that we can mention here they're supposed to be the ones who are helping the current office on how the list is endless but you see the same players are still languishing in poverty players are still in a state of confusion even the current players who are playing right now they don't have any mentors to mentor them they don't have any they don't have people to tell them look when you get your salary this is what you're supposed to do look at investments all they're doing right now is getting the money blowing it out and then later on they're in poverty and it shouldn't be like that it's been a fantastic interview quality conversation indeed of course touchline is the show we're still on till 3 o'clock my name is Max Oluwaseeko so Robert is here with us and big man of course glad to have interviewed him a man who played for football some time back task FC included KCB as well and then went overseas and he narrated the UD land predicament he went through and it's an honour having him to share inside of the store and glad that you've been inspired by his wise words of course Dave good to have seen you and of course we're looking forward seeing you in the future and even as you seek travelling back you said on Wednesday probably we shall be in touch but just before you leave this is your camera in a minute please talk to Kenyans talk to people who are watching talk to the upcoming footballers and talk to everyone who has given up is living in despair and he needs a message of hope All I can say is one thing anyone can inspire someone only if we just don't think about ourselves and right now about to the Kenyan players you know there's there's this how do I put it the road to success you have to be very very careful with yourself as an individual you have to have integrity you have to have discipline and you have to know yourself fast as an individual where do you stand and where do you want to be in the future Kenyan players the ones who are playing right now they should get it for free from me don't make the same mistakes that someone like me made 14 years ago and the current players who or the former players who made and that is make sure you protect yourself as an individual because you're an asset to yourself you have to go out there and sell yourself and that is by performing because there's no shortcut hard work there's no shortcut to it if you get any shortcut that means trust me you won't be successful in anything that you do in life so if you're focused have integrity with yourself self-discipline you'll be successful definitely of course that's the message not only to coming footballers and you know the sportsmen but even us who are here in studio and my friend Josaina who is watching so after the show maybe wherever you intended going hope you've heard from the big man David of course it's glad having you man thank you for coming through thank you for having me keep in touch right God bless you too thank you for coming through it's the touch line it continues until 3 o'clock remember the kickoff Arsenal against Fulham English Premier League back on the fall of course it's kicking off this particular we can format just on card how about we discuss that after taking a short break we will be back with the fan zone it's the fan favorite segment the touch line continues don't go away stay tuned


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Hey everyone, welcome to path to nowhere. So this game came out Really out of nowhere was launched on October 27. So that's roughly four days from from the official launch Gonna tell you I'm gonna tell you guys my first impressions with the game been playing it since the first day I didn't have the time to put out anything. So let's jump right into it the stars of this game are obviously the sinners so they are fugitives and This game kind of feels familiar. It's like the suicide suicide squad So we're gonna be we're gonna be hiring or or arresting sinners and Bringing them to fight for us or for the chief So that's the concept basic of this game. The UI for this game is pretty much very it's Kind of cluttered in a way, but once you get used to it, you'll know all of the placements were to go What to do first? But before that let's go over all of the sinners that We have so far. So I have from B rarity to a to s rarity again this game you can really use up to the lowest rarity of B They are, you know, um, the game is not really built on the most powerful Sinners so it's they're gonna be you're gonna be using or from the start at least or up to the midgame You're gonna be using a lot of bees and a's and there are bees and a's that are gems in this game starting off with labyrinth EMP they're the best to start level them up They have you go the copy their copies are going to be abundant in this game So you better start leveling them up and using them aerial is actually good for level a For level a when the heck out there are Tremendous, you can use them if you like this art style this game is going to be for you So again use the lower rarity's There they are good to go and you won't have a problem progressing through the game using them. I've been using both EMP and I used the moldy actually before Here as one of my defenders Kinda, but if you if I mentioned defenders they have a different type of Description of what the classes are so I've been Dura the defenders Furry is a Furry is actually a type of Sinner that you can redeploy and attack Near your enemy far and away your ombra is kind of your Your warrior type furry fury furry fury is your assassin type reticle is going to be your your range type Arcane is your mage type with AOE and High explosive damage dealing and catalyst is you're going to be your healer So those are the classes in general. So anyway, let's go back to the main menu and Let's go next to bureau. So this is going to be your office This patch system is going to be here to get more more Resources archives is going to be here. So your archives it will give you additional resources This will pertain to the collection of Your sinners depending on the group. So the more sinners you collect, definitely you'll be getting more resources Then the last part would be the interrogation this part. I Was actually surprised to see the backstory of each of Not not not each of them right now, but I already tried some of them and finished the interrogation for Chelsea Ariel and 99 so one tip one one other thing 99's backstory is a bit creepy. So Just take my word for it when you see her back story. So again, very very interesting on how they were able to Kind of tell the story for each of them through interrogation. So that is it for your bureau Next we're going to be going to this city. So this city is roughly your Main story component. So here you'll be able to farm progress through the story The star of this game is also very interesting If you don't rush through it read through the story for every stage that you go through The rest here is going to be your farming stages for the resources that you need I went out. So This see here you have two content right now. One is of livian pit. Okay, so Kind of your tower stage. I cannot enter because I don't have any currency yet But again back to the explanation The tower stages have different as you can see Stages here. So for each number here There is around five to seven stages that you can complete then once you unlock it the next one Because of your progress then you could go down that It's more of a going down the rabbit's hole than more of a tower and the last one is broken Frontline so the broken front line is a boss with escalating difficulty So there are different bosses and OPE and they are open roughly on different schedules So you'll also be getting a lot of resources here to claim for the game and That is it going to arrest Arrest is basically your summon system. So like to summon at least 110 pull for Or Zoya here Let's do one. So as you go through the summon system If you don't skip this you have to drag this one and look for them look for The sinners that you see here as you can see there that is gold already, but you have to finish all of it for it to open and I think we're good.  That is the yellow one that we're looking for. So another copy for Zoya for my collection Again, the artwork for this game is on point or even beyond on point. I Am liking it and I hope you guys like it as well So let's just skip this and look at what we have so another copy of Zoya then your Guarantee Resets, of course. So that is it once you get the one you Get a SRang than it resets. So that is it for your arrest. Let's go to a combat scenario guys and Let's see how the game, you know is being played for those who haven't played the game or you know is trying to Think about playing the game. Let's do one stage here By the way the combat Feature or the combat section is kind of interesting you if you're not familiar with arch knights So again, this is a tower defense Strategy game, but with a twist you can move your sinners around so here here are your Victory conditions survive for 120 loose serious and serious and is actually damaged to your your chief so we have a vacancies of Four deploy four. So let's do a let's start this Okay, before we go to starting this so you have to check out the number of mobs coming in so that is 15 This one the three is Sun. So Sun is the damage Delta to your chief, which is this one So when that reaches zero then you've lost the game if you get hit once you actually Can clear it perfect. So you have to at least defend your chief there Then 25 25 is going to be the number of times you can move your sinners. Okay, so let's do this one Let's see how everything goes Right now this is a stage going down in an elevator. This is kind of Weird because I'm already at I think chapter four So I have to move Move people around so that I could reach them So This is going to be weird because enemies just keep on appearing here so you have to make sure that you react well and Move them to other places so that you won't be able to take much Damage so once you this small circle here is actually a their ultimate So once that small circle circle is lighted then you can use their open just click on the sinner Then click on the ultimate then you can either redirect it the damage to a specific enemy and Let it lose or just click on it and For example the sinner will just do their thing. So again, this is a very complex stage here. I didn't expect this to happen because I Don't know where these things are popping out So just have to make sure that you are nimble enough to know There you go, we're good because the objective of this stage is just to survive So skip Okay, so let's go back to the Chapter menu. For example, you didn't complete this completely. So a perfect clear You can still do a multiple clear just to farm resources. That's what's good about this game Free clears are the best in a game that you don't have to have a certain currency just to have three clears and Again, you don't have to clear a stage perfectly to raid multiple or one time so again best I think best feature so far in farming and for our Events guys, let's go back to the main screen. So currently we have This event, I don't know if you can still hop on this So this one will get you knocks for free. You can actually complete all of the tasks here This is this is opening tomorrow the seventh day, but I think you can still hop onto this You still have eight days to complete this event This one is luggage rewards and I think this is the last one is a skin for EMP What else surveillance order is also an event? This is kind of your battle pass that either you purchase or you play it for free Again, there are a lot of rewards in this game. I Actually think that this game is free to play There are a lot of farming farming opportunities here for content Almost all content that I've seen has Farming for a hypercube which you use for summoning even for sharing your your achievements actually gets you hypercube So again, this game is very very generous in terms of summon currency this one is your Your premium currency that you have to buy But this one already the hypercube already makes you do summon so I would suggest that you don't use your your red cube which is Called ultra cube Not not consume your ultra cube towards hypercube. Just farm hypercube to do your summons Okay, so also take note that there is an assist mode so that if you missed If you think you've missed a couple of couple of stages this assistant will tell you what to do and probably Point the way where you can do that thing that you missed My overall thoughts for this game. It's really a must play again. It's very very free to play friendly I don't have a problem with looking for resources If I just want to finish something in terms of summons I can easily farm the hypercube for for your arrests. So again a must play You'll never, you know, you'll never regret playing this game. If you're thinking about it, please do Play it and see for yourself This game is similar to arc night, but arc nights, but again, it adds a layer in terms of Challenge in combat as as as you've seen earlier. It's kind of Same different from arc nights So I'll leave that to you guys or if you like this or you like arc nights better But for this, I think the the layer of difficulty in moving around Your sinners is actually a a very positive effect for me and If you love this game, please do support it anyway guys. So that is my First impressions of the game so comment down if you have been playing this game or You're thinking about playing this game or I've convinced you in playing this game So thank you very much guys for staying this far. Take care. Stay safe. This is the warden and I'm out here