Starring Alfred Lunt in The Gentleman from the Islands, an original radio play on the Cavalcade of America sponsored by the DuPont Company, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Tonight, the Cavalcade Playhouse is especially proud to welcome for his first sponsored appearance on the air the celebrated American actor Alfred Lunt. The play he has chosen for this event tells the story of a gallant and courageous gentleman from the islands of the West Indies whose destiny it was to secure the unity of a great republic. The gentleman's name was Alexander Hamilton.  The DuPont Company presents Alfred Lunt as Alexander Hamilton in The Gentleman from the Islands on the Cavalcade of America. It is near midnight, the night of June 17th, the year 1804. Over the grains, country estate of Alexander Hamilton on Manhattan Island, the moon rides high. Up the lane to the mountain house, silhouetted sharply against the moonlit shrubs rides the man on horseback. He draws up before the portico, dismounts and tellers his horse. In a few quick strides he is standing before the lighted French windows of the master's study. He looks about him, then raises his crop and wraps on the pane. The man inside rises from the desk to answer the door. Who is it? I have the honor to call upon you, General Hamilton, on behalf of a friend. May I come in? Why, Mr. Vanessa, at this time at night? Come in, sir. Thank you. I trust I do not disturb your household at this hour, sir. The friend I have the honor to wait upon is most impatient. Well, sit down. Sit down. Cigar, brandy. Take it all. This letter, General Hamilton, if you will be so good as to read it. Must I know? I think you'd better. Well, if you insist. Hand me the letter opening there, will you, sir? At your service, General. Thank you. Excuse me. Sit down. Sit down. Be comfortable. Thank you. I prefer to stand. This letter is from Aaron Burr. I recognize the hand. That is correct, General. But I don't understand. He seems to be agitated about some newspaper story. You knew nothing of it? No, sir. I never read scandal-mongering journals. Apparently, your friends do. But this concerns something a Dr. Cooper says I said two years ago. You deny, having said it, that Aaron Burr is a dangerous man not to be trusted with the reins of government. That is only the published utterance, General Hamilton. Colonel Burr has reason to believe that in private, you have sought to place him in an even more despicable character. Mr. Bernass, despicable and more despicable is not worth the pains of distinction. Then you accept the challenge. All right, Colonel Burr, a letter I don't believe in acting in haste and I don't understand perfectly as yet what Colonel Burr's motive is in this affair. It couldn't be that you are afraid to meet with Colonel Burr in the field of honor, sir. The field of honor. I couldn't meet Aaron Burr on the field of honor. He wouldn't know where to find such a field. You may tell Colonel Burr that he can wait upon my pleasure. It is not my custom to receive wild challenges to my honor in the middle of the night. Not so far as you think, sir. Then beg your friend to tell me why, why after all these years of political rivalry between us he has chosen this night to resolve the matter. I have retired from public life to all intents and purposes. It is a man with a case of power at the age of twenty-five or tire forty-seven, sir. You belittle yourself, sir. That is my privilege, Mr. Bernass. I bid you goodnight, sir. I wish, General Hamilton, goodnight. Alexander? That's it. James? We didn't mean to disturb you, Father. Mother was worried and called. Alexander, I was certain I heard a horse in the drive. James thought he heard a tune. That's absurd. You've been claiming it, Father. Who was it, Father? Now, what have I done to deserve this, my wife and my eldest son? Doubting my words. I don't blame James, my dear. I made him come with me. I had such a plain feeling. We're boating almost. I must say you are, till it's your day. Forgive me. Tell the truth. I'm glad you're not scared. I'm a school-endable city. Goodnight. Goodnight? Well, when did you decide about that? Just now. Father, someone was here. Why don't you want us to know about it? Good heavens. I have been away from home before. Anyway, James is old enough to regard the things. I can't bear it. I felt it in the country, you know. Why, Mr. Golden Knight, I have there hoped you'd done with politics. The buildings that take you away from us like this I might have been tested now to fight state and politics. You'd like that? No. The President's a passing fancy. That was never for you. The Constitution was your work, and that's something that was good for all the time. Yes. If it takes. But there ever any doubt about that? I doubt it at once. No, I don't know. That's why I'm going to the city, Betsy. I have to find out. Tonight? Here, old girl, I shan't be long. What in thunder? Hamilton, come in. Come in. I'll make a light. I know the hours late, Judge Pendleton. Don't think nothing of it. I just dozed off in my chair, as you see. You saved me a bad case of stiff joints. That's better. What brings you out at this hour? I just had a visit from Mr. Vaness. The so-called affair of honor. On whose behalf? Colonel Aaron Byrne. I trust you didn't do him the honor of noticing his challenge. Not yet. You intend to do so? I might. You mustn't consider it. Byrne is a deadly shot. This wouldn't be his first do, you know. But it would be my first do. First performances have a way of sticking in the public mind. Precious little comfort. That would be if it were your last as well. I'm not so sure of that, Judge Pendleton. Why this concern over Byrne whom you've always held beneath contempt? Because I have reason to believe there is more to his challenge than meets the eye. Don't forget, Judge Pendleton, I'm not a bad shot myself. Byrne doesn't gamble for little stakes. If it were only his personal honor at stake, he would have challenged me long ago, for I have never made any secret of my contempt for the man and all he stands for. Oh, don't forget, Hamilton, you have time and again frustrated Byrne's highest ambitions. When he wanted to be president, you chose Jefferson instead.  He'd set his heart on that Governor's chair. Ah, but why did that Governor's chair mean so much to him? That's what I must make sure of, Pendleton. If the answer is what I think it is...  You'd only make him a martyr. Ah, but if Burr killed me, what then? It's unthinkable. This whole thing is unthinkable, Hamilton. It must not happen, this duel. Judge Pendleton, of what must happen and what must not happen, neither you nor I can be the arbiters. Tomorrow I shall see Burr's political crony swath out. What good will that do? Good, if he tells me the story I think he will, well... It is always a final decision which no man makes for himself. You are listening to Alfred Lott in an original radio play, The Gentleman from the Islands on the Cappalcade of America, sponsored by the DuPont Company. As our play continues, Alexander Hamilton played by Alfred Lott is in the headquarters of the Society of St. Tammany, talking with one of New York's first political bosses, a gentleman by the name of Swarthout. Let us be realistic, Mr. Swarthout. You know perfectly well that without my support, your party cannot elect Colonel Burr or anyone else to the governorship now or ever. Oh, now we know why you opposed Colonel Burr's election as governor. You wanted the job for yourself, eh? I haven't said so.   Excuse me, Mr. Swarthout. I didn't want to interrupt, but the gentleman was most insistent. What gentleman? Speak up! Mr. Cheatham said... Bring him in, bring him in. Where do Cheatham sees you, eh? I wager to his... You wager what, Mr. Swarthout? Mr. Cheatham, I believe you have met General Hamilton. We've met. I hadn't dreamed we'd meet again. Perhaps you've been dreaming of other things, Mr. Cheatham. General Hamilton has decided to let bygones be bygones. Isn't that so, General? I haven't said so. No. I assure you, Mr. Cheatham, General Hamilton is only waiting to find out what we have to offer him. Where? Is that so? Gentlemen, let's come to the point. It has been suggested that the Office of Governor of New York might have its attractions for me. I didn't tell you that I resigned from public office once, because it didn't pay. Secretary of the Treasury of the United States of America couldn't make it pay. What you need is counsel, young man. Well, I'm willing to listen to your proposition, gentlemen. Willing to listen? What do you think of that, Cheatham? Willing to listen. When we tell you what we have in store for you, you may think at first your ears have been deceiving you, Hamilton. Well, get on with it. Are you quite certain of our ground here, Swat Up? Mr. Cheatham, you let me handle this in my own way. Hamilton, here's the story. Our friends in New England have taken Colonel Burr into their conference. They plan that New England and New York shall secede from the Union.  Indeed we are serious. And what's more, I am confident that the French minister has assured Colonel Burr that France will back us up with all the military power she has. And when Napoleon's agent says that... When Napoleon's minister says that, beware you will be his next victim. Would that be so unpleasant? Napoleon is realistic. And so are we, the manufacturing states of this country. Jefferson is bound and determined to ruin our foreign trade. All for the sake of a vague, romantic notion he calls democracy. We can't compete with a disciplined, organized nation like Napoleon's France under such assistance. And so you propose that we should play his game. Just so. You begin to see the possibilities, my boy? I do. And I have just this to say. A more evil, skittless, rotten, treacherous scheme has never come to my attention. Swine. That's what you are. Filthy swine. May God forgive the American people forever having allowed men like you to be born on the soil of a free nation. Do you think the unity of this vast continent is subject to the whim of your little corrupt thirst for power? I tell you it is not. And never shall be. And just how do you propose to stop us, General Hamilton? With my life, if need be. My life is a little thing compared to the future of the unity of the United States. My name goes down in history as a matter of small moment. How this great nation survives in history means everything. Excellent. Excellent repast, my dear Mistress Hamilton. And music with the feast. I have never dined so royally. I held out against the musicians as long as I could. Such an extravagance. But Alexander would have it. James, when you're the head of the house, I adjure you do not follow your father's example. You see, the thanks one gets for a generous gesture from the women, at least, and the women. It's they we strive to please after all. Don't be deceived, Father. Mother loves it. She told me so before dinner. Now you're too old to be carrying tales, James. But it's true, Alexander. It's wonderful to see you so full of the enjoyment of life. Oh, one would think I had done nothing, but add columns of figures for low these 20 years. And today is an exception. It's the 4th of July, you know, but no brandy. You'll be drinking toast till morning, I suppose, at the celebration in town. I certainly hope so. Well, I wouldn't have you miss it for the world. Aaron Burr will be there for certain.  Aaron Burr will be there? Of course, isn't he always? Why? What's the matter? Nothing. Just... I'll have to polish up my speech. Well, Pendleton, let's be getting on. Good night, Father. Good night, Judge Pendleton. Good night, my dear. Hurry home and drink a toast to General Washington for us. Two toasts. A dozen. Well, my boy, so you decided. Yes. You will be my second and the first one. You know I can refuse you nothing. You remembered to bring my papers. Thank you. You saw swat up? I saw two swine. And I smelt the filth of the pig pen the third sent his challenge from. Have you considered you leave a wife, children? There are things that mean even more to me, Judge Pendleton. I see. And another thing, you must perch our adversaries to keep this matter secret. No one must have an inkling of it. I want my last days with my family to be happy. Hamilton, please. No, no, my mind's made up.  Got you home earlier than we expected. I'm very much obliged to you, sir. You were magnificent, Hamilton. The way you face Burr as if nothing had happened between you at all. Nothing has happened yet. I spoke to Van Ness in the course of the evening. July 11th is the date. At Weehawken Heights across the Hudson. The New Jersey laws on dueling are more liberal. July 11th. And this is the fourth, the fifth now, six days. Well, good night, Judge Pendleton. Good night. God bless you. Why, Betsy, still up? I found these papers here. I've been reading them. Well, that's a woman's privilege, my dear. Such a lot of papers. It seems as if you must have been writing letters or making speeches 24 hours a day for the past 15 years. How did we ever find time to be in love with each other? That was easy. Thank you, sir. I'm learning all your secrets. Oh, here's one. Remember this? The letter I wrote told. Cheat him after that scurrilous story he printed about our marriage. I'll wager his ear is still burning. Go all of the man, intimating that I married you for your money. Well, didn't you? Of course. But that's our business. Well, then, I'm glad I had some money. You rarely mean that, Betsy. What do you think? Oh, forgive him, my dear. These old memories, we've dug up how rich they are and how many things we've learned, especially me. Oh, here's the letter from General Washington after you quarreled. Remember? Oh, yes, I remember. He said I kept him waiting. I stopped to talk to Lafayette on the stairs. It couldn't have been more than two minutes, but General Washington insisted it was ten. Naturally, I had to stand on my honor. You had too much honor in those days. I like you better now. Perhaps I haven't changed as much as you think, Betsy. Why do you say that, Annette? Strange tone of voice. Alexander, what is it with you these past weeks? Have I seemed not like myself? Too much like yourself. Your old self, I mean. This elation. I remember you like this before when you were going to Philadelphia to stand up against your elders for a constitution you wanted. I survived it, didn't I? Yes, and I prayed for your safety every night. You were so outspoken. There were so many hot-headed men there, the kind that fight a duel at the drop of a hat. What is it, Alexander? Did I say something to offend you? No. No, of course not. Just remembering old times. Too much of it for one day. Sometimes I feel I've known you so little for all our years together. Yet I'm glad. You've never seen so human, so alive. I've never loved you as I have these past weeks. They've been the happiest weeks of my life. Say that again, that's it. The happiest weeks of my life. You do mean it, don't you? Oh, thank you. And now I'll say good night again, my dear. I have a little writing to do before I come to bed. Good night, my love. Father, may I come in for a moment? Why, James, are you up to? Yes, I waited up. I wanted to talk to you without mother here. Secrets from your mother? I'm flattered. Well, I'm preparing for my region's examinations now to win the college, as you know. And I thought, well, I wasn't sure whether I'd be going.  Well, I'm not going to put that idea into your head. Not this letter. You left it out on the desk. I wouldn't have looked except for what it says on the top. Well, I don't have any plans in the event that I should not return. Have you showed that to your brothers? No. I wanted to be sure what it meant. That doesn't mean anything. I was thinking of taking a fairly long trip, perhaps to Canada, naturally. If I went by boat, there's some danger. You're lying to me, father. Yes, perhaps I am. Are you going to fight a duel? You know I don't approve of dueling. I didn't ask you that. I asked if you're going to fight a duel. No, we'll put it this way.  I understand, father. And don't worry. I won't say anything to mother, not till it's all over.  I have no fears for you. Be a guide to your younger brothers and a comfort to your mother. I'll do my best. Now, good night. I've worked to do.  Goodbye, father. Good luck. Ten faces, gentlemen. Ten faces. Ten faces. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Is that satisfactory to you, Judge Pendleton? That will do. Mark the place. Now, then, do I have the honor? Very good, sir. I choose heads. Heads it is. General Hamilton, your choice of weapons. Thank you. This one will do. Colonel Burr, I have the honor. Well, let's get on with it. At your service, sir. That says, gentlemen. Are you ready, doctor? Ready, gentlemen. Very well, gentlemen. Present. Fire! Doctor, Colonel Hamilton, he's hit. Why'd he hold his fire like that? General Hamilton, General Hamilton, can you speak? Please, sir, I'm a doctor. Let me get at that wound at once. It's too late, doctor. This is a mortal wound. Looks bad. We'll have to get him across the river some way to a hospital. The bullet has entered his lung. Gentlemen, bring a stretcher. Over here with a stretcher. Hurry. Not just a moment. Before we start, well, I should die before we reach the color shore. Let my wife recall it once. Break it through her gently. But impress upon her that I have meant that she should understand why I have done this. The papers must be published. Just as I left. Tell her this is my legacy to her. And to my country who listened to him, he doesn't know what he's saying. First of all, mad these last days. First of all, to the Holy Spirit. The suicide brought on my madness. Brought on my madness, yes. Well, whose madness? Does one argue with a dead man? For I am dead, but not half so dead as Aaron Burr shall be before ever death touches his body. God give him the strength to go on until his every intrigue shall be shown for what it is. Shall we lift him up, doctor? Yes, gentlemen, lift him. Lift him up. Oh, wait. Oh, please, one moment. Yes, General Hamilton. My pistol. Be careful how you handle it. It might go off into harm. It hasn't been fired, you know. Now, the star of tonight's cavalcade, Alfred Lott. Thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. It has been nearly a century and a half since Alexander Hamilton sacrificed himself that our country might continue the course chartered by the founders of this republic. It is my sincere hope that in our play tonight there has been some measure of inspiration and encouragement for the gallant men and women who today are fighting to destroy the evil forces once more abroad over the earth. Thank you. Next week on the cavalcade of America, the distinguished character actor, Dean Jagger, in a new and thrilling radio play called Man of Iron, a story of John Erickson's invention of the monitor. Don't forget, next week, Dean Jagger as John Erickson in Man of Iron. The orchestra and musical score tonight were under the direction of Don Voorhees. This is Clayton Collier sending best wishes from DuPont. This program came to you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company.


saying something really low I don't want to say something crazy high in case you think oh there we go I'll just say that so I sort of see it from both sides so that's how I go about that then if they say no unfortunately I can't work with that budget I always try to recommend them elsewhere I might either recommend them to someone I know who could work within that budget range or maybe even just say you might need to try up work or something um yeah yeah you're welcome okay next person the mic please hi you mention you have a plugin to do all that right right sort of the plugin is it's really a place to store deliverables so it's basically if you have a welcome packet and you have all the different files and folders and links dotted around everywhere it basically just keeps it all together for your client so they just have one login and they can see everything it's not a project management tool in the sense that it doesn't do any of the it doesn't have any of those extra bells and whistles mostly because I found when I had project management tools my clients weren't using them so I switched to something a little bit more simple but yeah it just keeps it all together yeah okay alright there was one more person okay hi there how do you handle like clients slightly bigger maybe they have like an RFP or something where they want you to kind of go down deeper do you kind of put them into your process kind of work a bit around just maybe some stuff on there so with RFPs I don't I've never answered them personally because when I worked in an agency I learned and I don't know if this is just either maybe it's England I don't know but I found that with RFPs a lot of the time they already know who they are going to work with and they just have to get other quotes we have to get X amount of quotes from people and so you almost never end up winning them so I always just ignored them if you did need to do that I think to be honest it's a little bit out of my expertise range because I've never the only time I've answered one was when I worked in an agency and we had the team members available and they take like maybe a junior member of the team to work on the RFP and then they have it signed off by a senior member I think it's easier for agencies to do that route but I'm sure there are people who do it successfully I just I wouldn't actually be able to help much with that because I've never done it I'm sorry Thank you Someone read back please Hello How do you differentiate your onboarding process based on whether the client is like non tech savvy or whether someone needs to speed things up because they are comfortable with onboarding themselves meaning that I have seen cases that they feel the onboarding process is really slow because it's really in depth and welcoming for a non tech savvy person but they are frustrated just because of that and on the other hand if you try to speed it up it's much more difficult for a non tech savvy person so how do you differentiate it between these two types of clients That's a good question I think for my onboarding process it was never it was never too slow I think the only thing I would potentially do is if I had a really non tech savvy client I would maybe add in an extra call which would be more of a welcome call where I would go through the onboarding process with them so you know I would go through because I would send the documents and then it's really up to the client whether they read them or not if I got the feeling that this client really had never done the project before and I think one of the questions in the initial question email might be have you worked on a project like this before that kind of gives me an indication of how much hand holding they might need I might just like spend some time and book in an extra call with them and go through all these problems and how it works and go through that way but I would recommend probably having your onboarding process be really really fast and streamlined but slowing it down if you think a client needs it rather than having it really slow and then speeding it up if you feel a client doesn't need it if that makes sense thank you very much do we have other questions please okay good hi I just have a question about when you sent a proposal I learned actually two other tricks that when you send a proposal make a short video explaining the proposal freelancers and they were talking about actually presenting their proposals on a call in person I found that was quite interesting actually because it's not something unless you do paid discovery which is basically where the client pays you to do a proposal which for that garden design company is exactly what happened we paid them to do a proposal I'm actually very pro paid discovery it's just too much to go into in the talk but yeah I think anything that you can do with a welcome video is a great idea to just walk them through it or I'd maybe even change what I say and say maybe go through the proposal on a call with them and get them to commit to it there and then but that's not something I've tried but I can see it working really well but the video is a great idea because it's like a mix between the two it's not a live call that you have to do but it's not just sending a proposal and hoping for the best so it's a good idea maybe in the admin bar sorry? that's exactly it, that's it you saw the same thread thank you alright thanks I'm going to watch that again, that was great oh thank you do you have any advice on writing contracts and if you ever skip the contract completely or how do you simplify it enough for the client where it's not intimidating I think that's a good question with contracts what I did unfortunately this isn't available anymore so I can't point you to the link but there was a service where they well it wasn't a service, they had a contract and then they had a guide to the contract where the contract was rewritten in plain English that just explained what each term meant and I went through it and where you need to tweak it it was for freelancers Paul Jarvis if anyone remembers him years and years ago he did a lot for freelancers and that was really helpful for me because I felt like before I felt I had a contract that was kind of a standard one that I'd found but if a client ever challenged me about any of it I don't know if I'd be able to really say oh yeah what that was so I really liked having being confident in knowing what each part of the contract was for and why it was there that said with contracts it's really difficult because depending on the price of your projects how enforceable they are is I've never been in the process where I've had to enforce one and when you're working with clients in different countries I think unless you're doing really really big projects I don't even know if it would be worth enforcing it like if a client didn't pay like I don't know what you could do so it's one of those things where I think yes it's important to have a contract because you know it just adds a little bit of cover for you in practice how much it would help you I don't know because you'd have to get a lawyer it costs a lot of money maybe it would cost more than the proposal itself and it depends what you're charging I don't know if I would not have a contract yeah it's difficult I think that's just something you'd have to decide for yourself yeah you could potentially not have a contract and just go for it I think yeah yeah no worries thank you very much any more questions please okay have one hi Laura really great talk really enjoyed it thank you very much thank you when you come to proposals there's acceptance rejection and ghosting what happens with process do you go through when you immediately get an email saying oh thanks I'll be in touch and then you know like chasing it and we'll have you so you know what I mean I know what you mean I have I do have a couple of follow-up emails that I'll send usually you can kind of tell if they're not really going for it if they if you really think they're just ghosting you I would instead of trying to win them back I personally would try to get to the bottom of why so I'd say something like you know it looks like you're not interested or you found something else would you mind telling me why like why it didn't work out just to get feedback for me to know like where did I go wrong in the process I think that would be more valuable than actually even winning the project in a lot of cases because you don't always know like what you're doing you know you think you're doing everything right and you don't know what your client thinking but yeah the ghosting is is really really tough the other thing I would say is that's why the pre-qualifying is really important and hopefully by the time you get to the discovery call you know if your websites really good as well and that's going to help have your clients hopefully ready to work with you you would hopefully be fairly confident in the discovery call and then if not if it doesn't work out you don't want to have spent much time writing the proposal so it's why I recommend maybe like 30 minutes max to write the proposal after the call have it super super templated and a couple of follow up emails and then just use it as a bit of a learning experience and like I say every the way I just try to think of these things just to make me not too depressed when they happen because they do happen is that every call is another practice at a sales call and every person that you interact with can be added and they might end up using you in the future like it's not wasted as long as you haven't put too much time and effort into it it's not fully wasted but you can't control whether a client gets back to you or whether they accept the proposal you can only control what you're doing and giving the best proposal that you can and doing the best process and just trying to like get feedback on like how you're doing and then doing things like learning about sales learning about how to do calls and just keep practicing but I don't think there's really another easy answer for it unfortunately Yeah I'll exactly the same Just very quickly follow up on what sort of like time scales do you kind of go like okay I've not heard back in like two weeks or something is there any sort of time scale I don't have a specific time scale I suppose I would probably I think yeah two weeks I think sounds reasonable it depends on the size of the project as well though in the size of the budget like bigger projects bigger budgets bigger companies might have a different process that could take longer so it's going to be a little bit of trial and error you know if it's kind of a smaller company maybe you're just talking to the founder I would say two weeks is reasonable if it's a bigger company maybe you would want to find out from them what that process is for getting things like this approved because there might be extra steps you need to take it might take a little bit longer and all that kind of thing so yeah two weeks to four weeks I would say All right thank you I'm afraid that's all the questions we can take Thank you Laura once again please a round of applause that was wonderful I totally enjoyed that for you Thank you so much and we have a little token for you a little gift for you but first let's head about the text so they can take the mic off all right thank you everyone and that should be the end of the session but before you go quick information for you there's another WordPress session at the Trianty balcony you can go to level two to get there you should take a lift from track one and if you take you there so please if you want to be part of that session do head over there we'll be talking about five for the future how can someone become a sponsor contributor and how a company can do it and employ you to the WordPress project so please go out there and learn about that and discuss with the people there right okay so that will be all for this session we'll be garden again for the next session so stretch your legs take your time and just like I said get to know each other person next to you say hi say hello but basically the whole idea is for us to be able to be friends thank you very much Laura please thank you okay so please hello hello hello good afternoon and you're welcome to track three how is everyone doing this afternoon how is everyone doing this afternoon great okay so my name is Kingsley sorry if you're here before I'm just going to keep repeating that you will never forget my name after today so my name is Kingsley I work with automatic as a happiness engineer and I'm going to see for this session we are going to be bringing a very interesting speaker to the stage to talk to us about creating in simple words making money so Roger is going to be talking to us about creating monthly recurring revenue for WordPress agency owners and I'm sure even if you are not an agency and you are a regular freelancer you should also you could also learn from these and how to you know get a steady stream of income which is what we all want at the end of the day right so great so he's going to be looking at you know the past the present and the future so showing us different ways because he has seen it all basically he has run a successful WordPress agency and now he's the chief commercial officer for a cloud platform so that should tell you that he comes with a lot of experience as well so and then he got into the whole WordPress design through web design and but now he has moved on to you know present a WordPress as a software service and he's going to be showing us live on the different steps we should take and how that is going to come you know how you can start and actually launch something like right so with a round of applause please join me to welcome Roger Roger is from Netherlands by the way and please a round of applause while he comes on stage to teach us more about that thank you so now here on stage you see the Dutch guy explaining you how to make money so through Dutch fashion it is exactly what we're knowing about I see some people coming in I'm very happy that you're joining me here today I know you could have been doing other things like printing a t-shirt with GoDaddy or expanding your collection of socks for example I know I have so yeah my name is Roger I am indeed the CEO of WPCS and today we're going to be talking about MRR for wordpress agency so I'm going to step outside of the light for just a second and by show of hands who are the agency owners in the room please alright that's great thanks thanks for being so honest you can stay for the rest of the people I think it's pretty clear you can go it's fine now I'm trying to create a moment here with my peers obviously not all of you are agency owners but I think most of us are trying to predict our revenue I was just having a meeting with a very interesting other agency owner from Portugal and to be quite honest with you the reason I wanted to do it is because I wanted to be a digital nomad I just wanted to know how much money I would have in the next 6 months so that I could go to Thailand or Bali and enjoy my life building websites and so I want to start this slide by addressing the elephant in the room I'm obviously not talking about Vikas by the way he is not an elephant he is wise like an elephant and he eats predominantly leaves but I'm obviously talking about Shopify so Shopify I notice is something that we are not allowed to mention you know and obviously I'm not here to promote Shopify or sell you WordPress but I do think that there's a lot to learn from Shopify and we can only do better than Shopify if we can first learn what they do really well and so as far as I'm concerned and the way I look at it Shopify is what I see as the ultimate website as a service they give you a website and they pretty much sell you the whole solution and they provide value up front which I think is very valuable and something that is sometimes missing in WordPress it takes a while even if you're an experienced WordPress developer to put something in the site and then sell it to your customer and then they are like wow this is awesome and I think the WordPress community can actually do better by adopting a product based mindset so like I said you deliver value up front you wow them and then you go from there and the way that I've personally experienced how you can do that is by creating a website as a service so website as a service is quite simple I know sometimes it's a little bit confusing as per the definition but it really is you give people the total solution in an often standardized but very niche specific way in a way that they can onboard themselves and then you skill that up and that is something that I've experienced personally as being the best recurring revenue model for agencies but that easy or as planned really so to give you a bit of context as to where I come from this is what Amsterdam looks like during the pandemic and we had been an agency for quite some time we transitioned from a marketing agency to also include selling websites and at the same time we were building a startup for hotels and also our agency was surfing mostly gyms and restaurants and on the 23rd of March we were supposed to launch our app which is my birthday and on the March 17 the whole country went into lockdown so within a course of a week our entire business the app that we were supposed to launch and the agency that we were successfully running collapsed and you can imagine that to be a shock we were just basically way too shocked so we had to let go staff we had to leave behind the app somebody asked us today if we did something else with it we did we transitioned the app to help people get things nearby and it really didn't work but at least we tried what we noticed looking back is that we were mostly serving or building projects I love projects I love the fact that you can really focus on a project for a customer, look at it from all angles and then just absorb all the work and then build the hours but now we had a much smaller team and Mara was pretty low and we had to find a way to pivot out of a crisis and trying to find a way to do so some guy trying to give good advice said it sounds like you're giving away free nachos so more drinks and it was a bit of a weird statement but he said it in the context of you're often selling websites for a very low price so that you can then upsell services on the back end and that is exactly what we were doing we were very often just giving away websites for free and then upselling marketing services content and what not on the back end so now we were back at square one we needed to find a new way to scale up our agency obviously I still wanted to go to Bali even though it was completely forbidden at the time and we started looking at MRR generating revenue models and I'm sure you recognize most of them so let's talk about the first one development retainer model great model if you are a big agency already if you have the staff on hand that can immediately service the customer and then build those hours going months forward build some pipeline if you can also target larger agencies love that I actually see somebody in the room right here doing that Jimmy that's a great model didn't really work for us with a small team but it was pretty good when we were doing it at the time maintenance is something that I cut my teeth in and also cut myself with it's really fun if you're selling people plugin updates and then something goes horribly wrong I think we've all seen this year a fair amount of vulnerabilities with plugins and then you have to spend significant time fixing those so the small retainer model that you charge on a monthly basis doesn't cover all the extra effort that you then suddenly have to put in let alone the weekend spend because you auto set your plugin updates on Friday which is always a lot of fun I love it when hosting companies say you can automate your updates with us set it on Friday and then you can spend your entire Saturday afternoon not with your friends reporting one of the less scalable models that we thought was a really great idea at the time Sebran who's my co-founder in the back here he loves creating dashboards and he built a really really great dashboard metrics are his thing not so much for our customers though they often couldn't really understand what the metrics meant and so you spend most of your time explaining a standardized dashboard that perfectly and beautifully draws in all their metrics into reporting and then you have to explain what conversions mean or what top of funnel and bottom of funnel really is time spent on site how that actually leads to more conversions and you actually only can really skill that model if you have a sophisticated customer that seems to me and then my favorite for sure the least scalable model at the time obviously we now are all using AI to generate content even though we are hesitant to admit it but yeah I'm a content maker by trade I wanted to standardize the content I thought it was a good idea to just charge a monthly fee and then generate blogs and photos and videos and then you have scope creep because they want another video or they want more photos or they want a blog updated every month it all works and you can charge a few thousand here and a few hundred there but at the end of the day it's really hard to predict whether or not they're going to stay because you spend most of your time on the phone discussing or arguing with angry customers about what the reporting means or whether or not the hours in your development retainer really are amounting up to what you promised so we needed to shift we needed to shift that project-based focused to a product-based model and on the photo right here you see another one of my co-founders in the crowd, Baynon and I'm challenging you to pronounce that name if you're not Dutch and he calls me up about two weeks into the pandemic and he says to me we're probably going to be selling more websites right and I say yeah I'm pretty much pretty sure we have to because you know we're all stuck at home and he says yeah I think I'm going to build a platform that will allow me to spin up sites automatically and then let customers or users rather onboard themselves and then we can charge a monthly recurring fee and then as they qualify themselves because they need more stuff we can upsell more marketing services and I was like that sounds really cool but it's never been built before and he says now I have no idea I'm just going to build it and so the moment I slam down the phone I pick up the phone again and I call a friend of mine who has another agency and I say hey look my other co-founder has just pitched me an idea for this platform of really no idea what it means but we can standardize sites and it sounds like that's what you're doing as well in a very unscalable way you want to partake and before we knew it we were supposed to launch a tool for ourselves and it turned into a cloud platform pretty fast so over the past few years I've spoken to hundreds of agencies first because we didn't have self activating you couldn't activate your description yourself so you had to literally go through me and after because we were interested in the agencies actually building a website as a service and what I know from experience and from the conversations that I've had here is that of the few agency owners that are actually in this crowd pretty much all of them have considered the website as a service model at some point if only we could make it work so again the last model is the complete opposite of what most agencies are doing these days and I want to take an analogy that I borrowed from a friend Vito from Atorim who is solving a similar problem in a different way they're standardizing the collaboration and communication with the customer and we are standardizing the building of the product and scalability itself but he likened agencies with Michelin star restaurants I'm guilty of that I tried to turn every project into a multi-course meal and a multi-course meal is great because it is more expensive but it's also very unscalable I don't know if Michelin star restaurants are your thing but they are pretty much always empty and that's not because they are unpopular because they have very few tables and that's really what it is you have to spend so much time on the actual product itself and there's so much scope creep and your customers get so much more demand because they're paying for it that it's a very unscalable way of doing it and most restaurant owners burn out I personally regret never being able to eat at Noma I would love to on the opposite of that you have the product based agency and I honestly just spoke with an agency owner who has a similar idea of doing it but he's approaching every project as a product which means that he's looking at it from how can we create as much value to the user as soon as possible and I'd like to slightly adapt that what if we could just build one product one time and then distribute that to as many users as possible and then make it as low touch as possible so then you can truly offer more salty nachos and sell more drinks on the back end right so we started looking at other successful business models outside of WordPress and so we returned again to Shopify again we didn't want to do Shopify we wanted to be in WordPress but we did want to take the scalability of Shopify and then turn ourselves or rather our users into Shopify but using WordPress instead pretty soon we found out that three guys building a cloud platform is a little understaffed so we were fortunate enough to get Dexter on board he's wearing black in this photo who is also a very old friend of ours I've known these guys for 20 years so I can truly say I have a company with my best friends and we started building it now there may be some of you in the audience who are thinking hold on I know how this works I can also do this with a WordPress multi-site because I can just build a product and then spin up new subsites and I can even automate that with some tools and yeah sure that works for a while fair enough but at some point it is going to have some sort of scalability conflict if you're familiar with WordPress multi-site you know that all the subsites are in the same WordPress installation and within the WordPress installation they share the same database and the same file system they're also on the same server so as your file system becomes more complicated and you're basically sharing all the user data in the same database and your scalability is very difficult because you have one customer it becomes really popular and it basically breaks the scalability of all the other subsites on the same server that results in security concerns and technical issues and to be clear I'm not a hater I love multi-site maybe not for the WAS model then so instead we did something else we started looking at Kubernetes which is the dominant and scalable cloud infrastructure of SaaS companies and with it we were able to build a containerized platform and this containerized platform introduced something called multi-tenancy and with that we were able to combine multi-tenancy and work-press so now you've got the scalable infrastructure of SaaS companies but you're using it to scale WordPress instead so how does that work so we were able to identify three scaling challenges that WordPress has if you're using it for a website as a service first of all operational scalability we want to be able to do exactly what SaaS companies are doing which means we want to unify the development we're building a single product and we're distributing that product and then we want to continuously update and upgrade that product as we go and for that we need individual WordPress installations that are still unified in development so the way we do that is we combine the code so the plugins, the language files and the theme files we keep the databases separate that means that after we spin up a site whatever the customer is doing in the site remains there that's something that we can organize and therefore we have security we have scalability all right cool so we've tackled how we build and maintain our product so now we want to sell it we want to sell it fast how do we do it, we automate it so we build a storefront and the storefront connects to an API with the API you can sell your sites automatically it's just a WooCommer store you're selling products these products however are websites are loaded with content with plugins, with themes that you as an agency owner have configured because you know your audience you know exactly the type of service that you are giving that has been working for you in the past all you need now is a scalable way to build your agency so cool we have an API, we can sell websites automatically maybe we use it also to update our CRM everything works finally we do not want to mess around with servers maybe you by not not me also I hardly know what they are and I'm pretty sure there are plenty of agency owners here maybe except for Jimmy who also really have no idea how they work or how they scale so we're doing a containerized platform that results in serverless scaling so that I don't have to worry about that anymore cool so if you transition from an agency a project-based agency to a product-based agency and you're Dutch like me so you're focused on recurring revenue then you suddenly find yourself in a startup space and you can actually go the VC route and I was talking to a lot of other agency owners and product companies in the beginning of this week and one of the things that we can all agree on is that WordPress historically has not prioritized these models after all we're still selling yearly licenses and then a company like NitroPack comes along and they start charging monthly and everybody gets upset but we are actually providing the value we are actually improving the product why not be compensated for that and then we can thrive together so then the question becomes are we wazing sorry so in our case we wanted to be neutral in the beginning we didn't want to join with a particular investor that made it hard for us to partner up with other companies after so we went for Axel Springer which is a very big media company in Germany and another company that you might have heard of and after a while which is by the founders of Yoast and we were able to and by the way I'm not plugging Yoast even though they have a booth here at Emilia and you can actually pitch or start up there and they'll say yes on the spot so if you have a startup idea or you want to build a product within WordPress and you're looking for funding please go over there and you might find yourself with a new investor but you can implement SaaS methodology for WordPress and then start building products by your WordPress portfolio or you can build an actual SaaS with WordPress and that enables predictable recurring revenue and then we can all go to Thailand so one of the case studies that I'm personally very proud of and I also have a booth here at WordCamp Athens or Europe rather is Oliver so what Oliver has done is they've built a POS that is very much integrated with WooCommerce and based on that they call as Commerce Development Kit so they've built a total solution with a curated library store of plugins that you can use and upsell to your customers and the WooCommerce store seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce or rather with the POS and they've built out so many different products that are completely satisfied so they manage the infrastructure they manage the products and all you have to do is build the perfect site for your customers or if you're doing it for restaurants or whatever you need they got it for you and it just happens to be hosted on our platform so what is the big takeaway here why do I think that WordPress agencies should adopt a product-based mindset if we can offer standardized and accessible product it doesn't mean that we should do away with projects like I said in the beginning I love projects, I love looking at it from all angles but if you can sell sites that are standardized and they are completely ready their solutions you can give that to your customers straight away and you don't have to onboard them, they'll onboard themselves and then you can create sustainable MRR because they've got something that they can start using it's fair priced much lower than when you're selling a big project it's almost in the range of maintenance but a little bit more and then when they become more successful you'll upsell the services that they need based on the data that you're getting from how they're using the product from the interactions that you get with them but you start with the value first which is one of the big problems that WordPress currently has if you look at the churn that hosting companies have I mean we're looking at what 30-40% in the first month that's because it just takes too long before there's value in your WordPress installation and as I said earlier we're starting out but also the experience developer so then we find ourselves back in the WordPress community and this is where all of you get involved and by the way it was just said that I was going to launch a live product and I don't know how many of you are here to see me crash and burn but I'm not allowed to so after this presentation I'm going to go over to the inside WP booth to see me crash and burn there feel free to do so so what do I mean with the product based mindset for the WordPress community so what's so cool about WordPress obviously and I'm not trying to sell you this because you are already here is that we have this ecosystem of companies that are doing what they do best and then agency owners such as the few people in this room can actually combine that can implement that for their customer it's been serving for so long that they know how to build value for and then you don't have to do all of it but you can take what you need and then turn it into a product and so it lends itself as a perfect vehicle for a thriving ecosystem if you can deliver the value up front if you can stack it with whatever they need to solve the problem right now and they have less turn, more activation and you have so much less work because you're just developing one product right and we all focus on what we do most or love most and do best and so therefore finally we the WordPress community can do better than Shopify by focusing on our customer which is a niche right on this one single audience that we have been serving for so long and that we love so much instead of building this very big thing or doing this one single big project but doing this one big product and serving a lot of people at the same time so in light of that collaboration I want to finish this presentation with a bit of an overview of a way that you could do that so you I've mentioned because before are wise, elephant in the room or maybe not in this room hopefully and what they do is they launch short-lived websites right which it's a really well if you want to launch a demo right now they're launching integration with our platform that allows you to turn into WP into a storefront so you build a site with WP you save it as a template you create a storefront on their platform and you spin it up on a platform such as WPCS and then you can manage and maintain all your sites as one again I'm not allowed to show you that live but I think I've made my point and I hope that recurring revenue could be something that is within our grasp if we take the right approach which I hope you'll agree with me is product-based that's it thank you everyone and thank you Roger now we have 15 minutes that are about for Roger to answer your questions if you have any questions can I see your hands please one okay hi really interesting project mandatory question what about GDPR yeah what about GDPR like for all different websites you have like different builds like usually or maybe it's solved through like your method but usually like with each project there's different requirements to put everything together data privacy imprint and all of that and like it's your solution for that to cater to the different needs yeah thanks what's your name by the way Oliver all right so let me answer this question by talking about our platform as little as possible right which is kind of the beef that I have with multi sites because what you're saying is what if we accidentally or maybe a little bit on purpose share user data right which is definitely not what we want so let's just say you're building websites or you're building a product and you can automatically provision those so you have the foundations of a website as a service well one of the things that we definitely need to get in order is that those sites need to be separate so well fortunately we have built what wasn't going to mention our platform but we've built a way to actually spin up individual sites so they skill independently but they're also shared we're actually rather they're not shared they're individual they're isolated but yeah like you say you want to do that on in a data center in the region where you're serving it instead of in some shady country where you don't know what they're doing with your are you from Germany by the way great country for GDPR you should all host your sites in Germany you're not allowed to do anything and then second of all you need to have individual sites so that they don't interfere with each other but yeah no it's a great question it's very important thank you thank you very much experts in this hi thank you for sharing it's really interesting so what you're saying is like as they first come on they onboard themselves like we're automating and we're standardizing that framework so what I'm saying in this particular model is you're using it as your most accessible product offering so you have a product that you can deliver to your customers straight away they onboard themselves and you're standardizing that so you're unifying the development and the maintenance and at some point that portfolio might have a few outliers so it could be that they are so popular that they're basically just they require so much effort from your site or they just demand so many different resources and at some point they develop themselves into a project so the idea is not to just forgo any form of project but to use it as a platform from which your customers turn into projects and then become more dedicated more of a spoke so yeah to basically summarize your question yes you would offer them a product that is easily onboarded too easy enough to get started with sometimes by themselves sometimes with a little bit of hand holding and then at some point they might turn into your bigger customer as it were what's your name by the way? Josh Thank you Any more questions please Okay Please You can shout Yes To be able to make this sustainable as a business and where does Shopify fall down compared to the model that you're trying to incorporate and do you see it as lots of agency owners trying to do Asking me to compare WordPress with Shopify and now I'm supposed to sell you WordPress at WordCamp So let me maybe phrase it a little differently or put it in a different angle I think what we can learn from Shopify is that it's an all encompassing solution so one of the few things one of the things that I really admire or rather respect about Shopify is you get one bill so I was talking to from Yoast yesterday and they have a Shopify app and it doesn't show up on your bill you just get one bill from Shopify so you'll pay it for sure because otherwise your site goes down and it's an e-commerce site so you're not going to not pay it so that's great it's a solution it's all encompassing I'm not saying but I'm not saying just to make that a little bit more complicated that we should have an app store with some form of control or oversight from some form of entity that kind of just goes against the open source nature and the distributed way that we do things but what I am saying is that we can work together more by adopting that mindset and then this WordCamp becomes more about how can we partner up and build a product for the end user and not so much about abiding by some form of rules Thanks Someone at the back please Hi there Really good presentation Thank you so much One question that I didn't quite catch You have a product for onboarding a lot of new clients on a daily basis I'm assuming How do you handle when those become projects are they still on the same platform or do you kind of move them to a new environment where you can do more customization and kind of adapt to their needs Right, cool, thanks Yeah, that's One of my favorite questions because it's a question about vendor lock-in, right? Yeah, not only about kind of the flexibility that you need to add to the clients that have particular needs Yeah, so I don't think there's a company that can be the end-all be-all of anything and so the way that we've approached it is I hope in true WordPress manner touching WordPress core is less as possible actually we don't touch WordPress core at all so in our case if you take out a site, it's just a site you can use it anywhere else and so the way that we see it is we offer a way to productise WordPress but at some point in time if your customer is successful they'll leave our platform at least it always should remain your customer so that's a good job Okay, so your target audience is agencies primarily our kind of resellers Well, if our audience was primarily agencies then some of these people in the room wouldn't have much use for me but fortunately no a lot of plug-in companies are using our platform to turn their business into a SaaS so for example if you have a plug-in like an LMS or a WooCommerce store or you make marketplaces you can just SaaSify it straight away If that's you by the way let's talk after, I'm happy to show that Thank you Thanks Right, any more questions please Good, because I'm touched Yeah, we still have some time so one quick question for you What are the typical most common use cases you see for WordPress as a service? Yeah, I mean it's maybe a bit obvious because I've mentioned Shopify so much but it's mostly WooCommerce optimized websites So say for example you want to build a Shopify alternative we have many customers who have started to lose customers to Shopify and so what they do instead is they build a Shopify alternative but using WooCommerce instead or something else like NorthCommerce for example I mean it's important to have some form of balance because it's just ready to go and that's something that they offer that's the number one use case I see the second one obviously portfolio sites because it's usually the most accessible thing that people need is the first thing you think about but the thing I like a lot lately is LMS so learning management tools especially during the pandemic everybody suddenly became a coach and a mentor and a consultant so obviously we have a lot of wisdom on our fellow neighbor so yeah no if you wanted to build a SaaS that makes it easy to sell that set wisdom that's something that we often see as well Great so you would say that there are other niche that are not explored yet that people can still build solutions for For sure so when we built the platform we knew for sure that there were going to be use cases that we hadn't even thought of before so for example a ready to go podcasting servers I never expected that many people were suddenly in the linking bio industry or we have people building sites for what they call again dark kitchens you can say we have sites for municipalities that do something with ticketing I don't know I don't get into all of it but yeah no it's very wide it's very very broad anything you want to do or you can productise that you know really well and you think I can build a site for him I might as well build a site for all my cousins then you can definitely productise that as well oh great thank you very much thank you for we are grateful for having you here with us and a round of applause for him please I want to hear a round of applause please thank you very much alright this is the end of this session and the next session will continue shortly in about 15 minutes please just go over there so they take the mic off and then you can come back for your gift please okay great welcome to the final session today for track 3 and today we will be talking about taxes basically if I count the number of times I've had users reaching out to me and asking about why do I have to pay more than what the bill is why do I have to pay this why do I have to pay that now today we have someone who would actually be clarifying that for us and explaining how you yourself can be compliant and still explain to your confused customers why they have to pay additional taxes here and there on your website as well today we have Evo Evo will be joining us from Spain and he's going to be talking about how not to let indirect taxes stop you from selling online so whatever the barrier is that is stopping you from making money online on your website and your business he's going to be talking a lot about that now he works for a company that does that does tax compliance or really major companies and today he's bringing his expertise to reach out to all of us here in WordPress in the WordPress community for those people who might not have the opportunity to be able to consult him one on one because of course like I said it works with the top tier companies up there so today you have the opportunity of listening to a tax expert and it's going to teach you talking about a whole lot and how you can go about these things now in his talk we're talking about tax compliance specifically on selling online so and then how you can work with it on your WordPress site to ensure that you are compliant and you are not breaking any rules or any laws depending on your respective government so with a round of applause please join me to welcome Evo and as he comes online to take on the stage Thank you for the introduction so I'm here today to speak about indirect taxes and how you can use WooCommerce to comply with indirect tax laws First of all, what are indirect taxes? Just a fancy name of describing the taxes some of which are behind me here I'm sure you know a few of them in the US you have sales tax in Canada and Australia you have GST in Germany a Mirvert Stoyer in the Netherlands you have Beta Day and almost all countries in the world have these and they're called indirect taxes as opposed to direct taxes that are directly collected by the government you as a business owner get a great joyful job of collecting those on behalf of the government and that can be a bit of a hassle so I will explain exactly how you can do that I will cover how they are calculated how you can configure WooCommerce to correctly calculate your taxes what the limitations are because no tool is perfect and WooCommerce is no exception and then finally I'll talk a bit about conversion rates because that's a question that frequently comes up as it is connected to tax calculation so I work as was said in the introduction as the head of sales at the sales tax automation tool and don't worry I won't be pitching any of our products but we do get a lot of inquiries from people who start selling online or have a modest business and need help with their taxes and in most cases they don't need a tax automation tool they just need some basic consulting which is logical because taxes are boring let's face it and most people don't start a business because they want to deal with taxes and moreover there is a lot of foot standing for fear, uncertainty and doubt in the industry by sales consultants or tax consultants who are incentivised to do that because it will attract more customers and they can bill more hours by making it look more complex they can justify sending larger invoices so the result is that a lot of people don't really know how to deal with taxes and we see three archetypical ways of people who contact us who deal with taxes in an unhelpful way and the first strategy we often see is this one the ostrich strategy people who say this is complex what I'll do is ignore this old text all together, stick my head in the sand and hope it will disappear but unfortunately it doesn't and often they are close having an anxiety attack every time they get a regular communication from their local tax office and it's taking a lot of their brain space and mental space and that's completely not necessary the next archetype is the polar opposite of this one analysis paralysis people who want to know everything there is to know about taxes before they even make a sale or launch their business founders who launch their business in Europe and want to know exactly how their product will be text in different states of the US how the thresholds are in different states how to register once they hit such a threshold and it's taking up a lot of their time which would be better spent focusing on their product or doing marketing or sales and then finally geofencing people who are worried about how to comply in certain regions and then just geofenced their solution making it unavailable for purchase from for people from certain locations and that's a lot of lost market potential also not necessary I vividly remember the conversation I had with an influencer one day who was about to launch his online product he was based in Europe and he had a lot of followers in India he was really worried about what would happen he was convinced he will launch this it will blow up, I will have tons of sales in India and then I will have a problem so he was close to a panic day attack had already researched extradiction treaties between India and the country where he lived and this is also completely unnecessary because you can comply with taxes in four simple steps not easy always to implement but four simple steps where you are obliged to register in most locations there is a threshold meaning that if you sell for a certain amount only then you have to register for taxes in other countries such as Spain it's from the get go for example in the UK it's 85,000 pounds if you would be based in Spain you would have to register before you start selling and the way to find this out is by visiting your local tax office people are often hesitant to do this because they are afraid their head will get bitten off or something in general they are kind people and they also have information on websites otherwise you can consult with your local chamber of commerce and there you should also be able to find this information registration itself if you have the obligation to do so is usually quite easy you fill out a form and then you get a tax ID and with this tax ID you can start collecting taxes it's very important never to start collecting taxes before you have registered for in the tax jurisdiction in question because that would be illegal and then finally the fourth step you would have to file all the taxes you have collected so the tax calculation in itself is the most complex part because the tax you have to calculate depends on where you are based where your buyers based the type of product you sell the amount you've sold whether your customer is a business or a consumer whether it's a B2B or a B2C transaction and there are as many cases as we probably have companies in this audience so it's recommended to always consult with a tax advisor before implementing any of these configurations I suggest because you might get in trouble if you configure things the right way best case scenario is some paperwork worst case scenario you get paperwork and a huge fine so always confirm it and what I will do is I'll cover the US and Europe because I think that will be most representative for people here today and it's a bit dry tax calculation and we're approaching the end of the day so I hope you'll bear with me so the first scenario I will cover is how to sell, how to calculate taxes in Europe and you sell in Europe so I imagine I start a webshop in Spain and I start selling t-shirts so from the get go what I would start collecting and calculating on all transactions would be my local Spanish tax rate so if I would sell as t-shirts to somebody based in Spain I would calculate the Spanish tax rate if the person would be based in Germany I would also calculate the Spanish tax rate but there is a threshold you should be aware of of 10,000 euros for sales within the European Union so if you sell for more than 10,000 euros outside of your home country so in this case it would be outside of Spain to Germany, the Netherlands etc once I hit that I would have to register for a system called OSS and this is probably the only time today you'll see it where it doesn't mean open source it means one stop shop and once you're registered for the one stop shop you would collect the tax rate of your buyer's country so from that point onward if I would sell a t-shirt to a German consumer I would calculate the German tax rate if my buyer would be in Greece I would calculate the Greek tax and of course for Spain it would remain the Spanish tax rate and it's also important to differentiate between B2B and B2C transactions because indirect taxes are a consumer tax so businesses are exempted so when I make a sale to a business that is in Europe but outside of the country where I'm registered what I would have to do is validate that they are indeed a business against a system called FIS and if it is the case not to calculate any taxes so I might also have sales outside of Spain internationally if I would sell my t-shirts around the world they would be exempt from indirect taxes but I might have to pay export or import taxes or what have you if I would sell services B2B services are exempt as well B2C services you have to charge your local tax rate for those and it's very important to know for sure whether your product is B2B or B2C for example CO packages it's quite clearly a B2B product because no child is going to ask for a CO package for their birthday but imagine I would sell for example tennis consulting where I would consult people on how to improve their tennis strokes and I would not collect any taxes and the tax office would ask any questions and then it would say well it's a B2B product they would probably argue that given my tennis skills it's highly unlikely that any professional players would purchase my product so it would be a B2C product meaning that I would be on the hook for any taxes I would not have collected and then finally for digital products there are thresholds so digital products are things such as downloads SaaS products membership sites and there are thresholds around the world for that because countries if you think of a country as a company they want to maximise their revenue as well so they start taxing sales on consumers in their country from companies that are not based on them this is why they are launching digital tax laws and most countries around the world have thresholds you should be aware of such as Switzerland South Korea Australia and once you hit the threshold you should also register in that country and start collecting those taxes now if you are based in the US it's usually a single rate for most states some states have no sales tax such as Delaware, others have a single rate other states are a bit more of a nightmare because in the US there are more than 12,000 different texture addictions there are swimming pools that are in their own texture so you could be in for a treat depending on the state where you are in and it could be a bit more complex usually a single rate some cases however you have to configure many different rates and then if you are selling to other states there is this thing called nexus there are two types of nexus economic nexus physical nexus economic nexus came about a few years ago because there was a US Supreme Court ruling that made it possible for states to start taxing transactions on people who are based in the states from sellers who are not based there again to maximize revenue for the state and most states have since then launched different nexus laws meaning that if you sell for a certain amount to different states you have to register there and start collecting and calculating those taxes going forward typically it starts at about $100,000 for example New York it's $500,000 so once you hit threshold you have to register there as well apart from economic nexus you can also get physical nexus if you have employees or a warehouse in a different state it might also mean you have to register there and start collecting those taxes now if you are based in the US and you sell internationally if you are selling to the EU you can register for the OSS for the one stop shop system meaning that there is also a 10k threshold and from that point onwards you need to register for the one stop shop and start calculating the tax rate of your buyer's country so if I would sell downloadable products from the US once I would hit the 10k I would register for the one stop shop probably in Ireland because everything is in English and it is digital but you can register in any European country that you like and once you are registered you start calculating the tax rate of your buyer's country so if your buyer is in Greece the Greek tax rate of your buyers in the Netherlands the Dutch tax rate and so on for physical goods there is the import one stop shop with a value of €150 registration is optional but highly recommended if you are registered you already calculate and collect taxes on sales on goods that are valued less than €150 if you do not do that customers would have to pay this VAT at the time they collect their package so they would have to pay the courier or go to their local postal office and pay before they can get access to their package which does not make for the best user experience and will probably lead to some returns as well for goods over €150 that is not an option and if you sell to the rest of the world it depends every country is different so you would have to investigate on a case by case basis now how can you configure all of this in WooCommerce first of all you have to enable the tax calculation people sometimes say well I don't have this tax these tax options in WooCommerce you do make sure you check the box so you can start configuring taxes and then you have a whole range of options the first choice you have to make is if you want to input your taxes inclusive or exclusive of taxes I always recommend doing it exclusive of taxes because if you do it tax inclusive and the rates change you have to update all your pricing which is a bit of a hassle then you probably decide to calculate taxes based on your customers address because as we've seen in the cases discussed previously that's usually what should be done shipping tax also usually standard in most locations in some cases it exempt so you might want to check this as well with your tax advisor then you have an option to create additional tax classes which can be interesting if you sell products that do not have a standard tax rate because usually products that are considered bad for your health such as alcoholic beverages or basic necessities such as bread are taxed at a higher or lower rate depending on whether or not they are dangerous or a basic necessity so here you can create those tax classes so you can later associate products with them and charge lower taxes then you have to choose whether you want to display your prices inclusive or exclusive of taxes I would recommend doing it inclusive of taxes especially if you're in Europe in some places it's illegal to do it exclusive of taxes because it would mean that customers see a difference price at the time of the checkout and what is advertised to your website so in some cases it's illegal if it's not illegal the Europeans expect to see to expect to pay the price they see advertised if they come to their checkout it would be a conversion killer and then tax totals do that itemized because it gives the clearest overview the next step is configuring the tax rates you have to do that manually or you can also find a CSV online there are many different websites that publish CSVs with tax rates as you might know not everything you find on the internet is true so be careful when you upload a CSV file you found somewhere and also rates change so you should be stay on top of it for example Germany temporarily lowered their their vet rate after the corona pandemic to stimulate the economic recovery so you have to stay on top make sure to update your rates once they when they change and then finally you have the option here to associate the products with the different tax classes as I mentioned then it comes time to filing for every transaction what you should do is generate a tax receipt or an invoice which is basically the same thing because this is the basic underlying document you need and the first thing a tax auditor will ask for one day when you're submitted to a tax inspection and invoices have to meet a certain set of criteria they have to clearly indicate who you are as the seller who your buyer is the date of the sale an itemized overview of the product sold with a description of each the value, tax rate applied and a sequential number because that's one they need to be in a sequential series all your invoices because that's one of the first things they will look at to detect fraud and if you think you're in the right wrong place and you're not really that interested in taxes here's one takeaway you can use anyway from this presentation if you ever find yourself in an airplane and you just want to relax and the person next to you doesn't stop talking when the inevitable question comes up what do you do for a living there's no better conversation killer than saying I'm a tax inspector you also need to collect location evidence because if I would sell my t-shirts from a Spanish webshop and 80% of my sales would be outside of Europe and I would not have collected any taxes during the inspection they would ask questions right because they want to maximize their revenue and they would say hey you've not collected taxes on so many sales I would have to it's not a problem necessarily but I would need to be able to justify that the way to justify that is by showing the billing address of the customer so I would need to have the billing addresses for digital products typically don't have a shipping address and you can collect three data points if two out of those three coincids you've established a buyer's location in a legally valid way so the three data points that you can collect are the billing country of the customer, the BIC which is the location of the bank that is the credit card and the IP address for B2B transactions you also need to validate those and in Europe you can do it against a system which is being made available by the European Union you can input the customer's tax ID there it will then tell you whether or not it's valid it will also give back a check code that's very important you store that because a company can be in business today and the tax ID can be valid today but not tomorrow so you should store that and then if it's indeed a valid tax ID no taxes are applied actually doing the filing so remitting the taxes you have collected to the government if you're in Europe you have the OSS the one-stop shop which makes it very easy because you can file your taxes in a country where you're registered for the entire EU so if you're registered in Ireland and you collected taxes on sales to Germany, Greece and Spain you just pay the Irish tax office and they take care of the redistribution for you if you're in the US it can be a bit more complex it depends a bit on the state I mean if you're registered in many different states it's a bit more cumbersome because you have to fill out a lot of tax forms you have to fill out a different one for each state and some states also want a detailed breakdown because they have many different layers of taxes such as Colorado where you have the state tax local tax, city tax special taxes etc so filling out those forms can be a lot of work around the world it's generally easy it makes a lot of sense for governments to make it easy because you want people to comply and the way to do that is not to make it cumbersome but your mileage may vary in some countries it's still very difficult to register and file what are the limitations of WooCommerce if you use WooCommerce to calculate your taxes you have to make sure you keep your tax rates up to date as I already mentioned there is an add-on that WooCommerce has made available and you can use for that as well I haven't used it so I don't know but I assume it's quite good concerning that everything they put out is quite good if you sell for multiple locations that's not possible to configure so if you have stores in different locations that's not something you can use WooCommerce for there are the thresholds that I mentioned you have to monitor and that's also not available out of the box with WooCommerce and then finally the location evidence and the tax IDs is also something that you would have to use other plugins for now finally a bit about conversion rates because a lot of people are worried that when they start calculating their taxes on their checkout page their conversion rates will drop to the floor the evidence I have is anecdotal but I've seen many many businesses who are afraid of this happening and it's almost never the case usually there's no decrease or the decrease is almost statistically insignificant if you sell physical products you have to start you need the billing address shipping address of the customer so it's not something that will complicate the checkout digital products you have the location evidence you can collect so it's also not that conversion the only thing you should be aware of is the tax inclusive versus tax exclusive because if you sell in Europe and you start adding taxes on the price of the checkout it could be or it would be a conversion killer for sure in the US people are quite used to it so that brings an end to this presentation it may sound a bit overwhelming after all the information I mentioned I suggest if you feel overloaded start with your business where you're based what you have to do to comply and forget about all the rest and now we have plenty of time to answer all your questions so thank you very much thank you very much that was really interesting I learned a lot I have one question I'll get back to the audience anyone have any questions about taxes okay the mic please hi Evo thank you we are neighbors I'm from Portugal from Spain right and this is about when selling in the EU physical goods regarding the location of the tax so you mentioned the billing address but I've been heard from tax advisors the shipping address so for instance if I have a shop in Portugal and I have someone buying from me from Spain but they want me to deliver in France where are the tax collected you take into account both the shipping and the billing address so you calculate it based on where you ship from and for that you typically take the shipping address so where you ship from and the customer is the billing address so your shipping address so where you ship from and where you build a customer to where they are built yeah the billing address alright thank you another question please Mike thank you as well so the people give me an address a prepaid credit cards and I have to trust them do I have to have technical measures to verify a location yeah so officially you need two coinciding data points to establish the location in a legally valid way PayPal already gives you the billing address so you will have that I would recommend also collecting the IP address and then if those two coincide you have established a location in a legally valid way if it's not the case and you have the doubt you can always connect with a customer and ask them to make sure you apply the right text thread okay thank you alright thank you very much any other questions okay I'm not seeing any hands so I guess that's all from the audience I have one question though now as you mean there are two things that are inevitable say rain and tax basically right so let's say someone it's not really aware about the whole tax scenario and stuff and then doesn't file it properly doesn't collect the right taxes from the previous sales and all that what are the implications for that business and for that individual well if you don't collect the right text thread you don't you have not collected them right historically you can get in trouble if you get the tax wallet so the government knows you're registered right you're registered as a business you've made these sales so they will ask for a list of all your transactions and if they find out you have not collected your taxes you could you could get a fine oh okay good just wanted to know about that but it's good you were asking for a friend right next question it says is it really necessary to register for tax collection if you hit the threshold in a foreign country so if I'm in a different country but I sell to maybe an external country and then I hit the threshold there is it still necessary yeah so if you sell for example digital products and you sell them around the world some countries have a zero rate threshold meaning that if you sell 110 euro e-book you should already register officially and start filing your taxes there no tax advisor will tell you this but I'm not a tax advisor so I can say it I recommend being pragmatic about it it's like if you walk to the center of the city you walk home 3 o'clock in the morning there's no traffic whatsoever nobody on the street you come across a red pedestrian light a red traffic light what do you do right if you're like me nobody's coming so you cross but that does not mean it's legal because the law does not say you cannot cross a red traffic light unless at 3 o'clock in the morning you're walking by yourself there's no traffic coming etc so if a police officer sees you you can get a ticket and I think it would even be right to get a ticket because if a police officer sees you it means you did not look carefully before you crossed or you did see the police officer it would be a bit disrespectful so the same for Texas it would be pragmatic I mean if you have to pay 1,000 a year and need a local fiscal representative to file 100 euros in Texas it does not make a lot of sense but it also does not mean you cannot get in trouble but if you do get in trouble I think as an entrepreneur you have a really big PR opportunity there as well to exploit thank you very much we have another question just a minute thank you for all the information I just wanted to double check this 10k threshold in EU also applies for services for example I have a service provided from Greece in whole Europe and I reached the 10k from clients from Luxembourg let's say anywhere do I need to register yes but typically services are B2B so I assume you're B2C so normally you need to okay thank you and just to make sure because I think she has if you reached the 10k for example in Luxembourg correct me if I'm wrong but it used to be per country but now the 10k are all over Europe so you do not need to reach 10k in Luxembourg you need to reach 10k in Europe period so it's really fast outside of your home country if you sell in Greece and you sell for if you sell 2000 to Spain 5000 to Luxembourg you got to register alright thank you very much any other question I guess that is it and we've come to the end of this talk so I want to say a big thank you to Ivo for coming and giving us this enlightenment and helping us understand better about taxes like I said two important things, rain and tax you cannot avoid them so a round of applause for our speaker please thank you alright thank you very much so Ivo just head over to the tech guys and then we can take the photographs okay so this is the end of day one please note that we are meeting tomorrow there's going to be talks, panels and WordPress connect sessions as well if you are doing yoga remember it starts by 8.20 and if you are part of the hiking group it starts by 8.20 6.20pm definitely then remember you have we have launch points at different corners we have different areas you can get hydrated or something like that you can see a different point and just help yourself and I will say again please network as much as possible and reach out thank you everyone and God bless


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