Morning everybody What I am up to is I started a Sorry, I started a new personal like life-tracking site for myself So whenever I do someone like Twitter pocket Facebook all that it logs it in one place so I can remember how much I love the internet Do you guys love the internet? It's awesome. It's not all here But another reason why we're all here is because presumably we've taken time out of our week You know probably something came on Friday took off work, and then you're coming and spending your weekend instead of doing something like It's not an eye probably playing Pokemon right now or something. So I'm doing something like that. You're here to learn about WordPress. I Love it. It's what's kept me from having to get a real job for several years now And I want to talk about that process with the guys. So real quick. I've worked with other agencies You know as an employee. I've worked as a contractor for other agencies. I've done the like Elan's getting work online thing Self-employed for several years first at my own company where I called all the shots And now I am partners at a company called dinosaur iceberg in Orlando Doing all the things that were just described And so I've gone through the first run the gamut of the different ways to work on the internet I'm sure there's lots of other Creative methods out there, but the one I like best is the one I'm in right now, which is partnering I don't have to do everything myself. I have other people who can help me Get all the work done, but still have a lot of fun doing it And I also have a lot of fun putting slides together. So if you don't care about what I'm talking about at least you get to see some gifts but Hopefully, yes, I'm out of that So who here currently works for themselves? Okay, who here who doesn't work for themselves wants to work for themselves So pretty much the entire room was covered in that so you are in the right room good For those of you who don't already work for yourselves. Are you sure? Are you sure you want to?  So there is the potential that you won't have regular income You need to be able to manage all of these costs yourself You're not going to be able to just expense something to your boss You're not going to be able to say well, you need this tool and here you pay for it or you're not going to be able to say You know you need to pay for better internet access at home because that's kind of one of the important things working on there You have internet access You also need to maintain your own work life balance. It means something different for everybody I know some people say that doesn't exist can't happen. Some people are very militant about I Clock out at this time and I'm done Or maybe you do something in between sometimes I just I mean I like being on the internet So sometimes in the evening when I'm done with dinner I just want to sit down and get to work on something or last night I was doing some client work after After off the party and everything You need to be able to manage all of those client relationships yourself One of the things that I like the best about being an employee at someone else's company is that I was handed a list of tasks I was able to complete those tasks check them off. My day was done Now I have to do all those things like following up with somebody and making sure that this invoice gets paid and giving this person a Call and oh this thing went over time or over budgets now We need to make that phone call that I don't really want to make or You know now we need to find some new people because we need to find some new clients So I need to manage all those relationships all those extra things that you're doing this because you really like building themes Let's say But that's not a business. That's one of the things that you're selling you have 90% of the rest of business that That you have to do to do that one thing that you like And finally you need to find some kind of market or niche We're gonna go over all these things a little bit more in-depth but what I mean there is you're going to have to You're going to have to choose that thing that you're gonna work on as opposed to doing everything I love doing everything. I can't make time to do it all and sometimes I oversell my cell phone Oh, yeah, we can get that done this week or oh, yeah I've never used this tool before but how hard can it be to learn and then How hard can this be? Let me let me just take some time and then that time turns into Weeks overdue or oh, we need to retool everything we do because I found this new tool It's there's too much to do So that's it. I love what I do, but it is I mean it's hard work right working for yourself There's a way more than you probably thought when you went into it's for me. I know So there are some steps that you're gonna take. I'm going to talk on all these things as a very Broad overview, but if you you know have like if you're here for some specific tools I'm going to list a couple of those as well, and then of course at the end if you have specific questions You need to have some sort of plan This is pretty much me whenever I Whenever I'm talking to clients, I'm like, okay, I have time to get this done And then I kind of I don't know where the time goes.  I'm just gonna run through these real quick You need to have some sort of client relationship management tool You need to have a contract tool or something to your estrus and invoices project management tool time tracking Calendar all those many things that you need to make sure the business runs the asterisk at the end of everyone is because Choose the right tool for you. I'm going to give you some examples of tools to use But it doesn't matter which tools I use it matters Which tool you'll end up using so you might say Okay, I need something to track my time. There's Dozens hundreds of tools out there for that doesn't matter if you find the perfect tool if you're never going to use it We've tried a bunch of tools that people say are the best and just because for whatever reason it didn't fit me I didn't end up using it and that's worse than no tool at all this thing Oh, yeah, we have something for that. We just I don't I haven't logged into it in weeks take a look so So I'll mention the ones that I do use but I'll mention a couple of other common ones You should be doing some sort of time tracking We use toggle internally because it has a nice open API that I can put that data wherever I want and I could put it right into our Estimate or excuse me our invoicing system so I can just keep an eye on how much time we're spending on each project There's other tools out there. There's harvest if you use them for your invoicing already They already have their own time tracking. Why not stick with that? If you don't want to have to think about it at all rescue time is a really good one that It can just sit on the background of computer and log what you're doing for you Then you can tag things later if you want so you can say okay at these times. I was working on this project or whatever That's if you really don't want to have to think about it really hard Yeah, I was gonna keep some sort of detailed finances You don't do what I did for the first few years and just keep like a spreadsheet that had you know like okay These are the numbers and I don't know taxes something over here It was it was kind of it was kind of a nightmare, but I mean thankfully it all worked out But if you have a system in place It's a lot better than trying to wing it when it comes tax time And when it comes to getting people to pay you and tracking that they actually paid you for things We use a quick books There's another one I used to use called fresh books Harvest again if you use that already if you have you know all of these have a lot of intermingling features Time-tracking estimates invoicing the tools tools themselves don't matter. It's how you use them Need some way to manage your projects I'm not always the best at this I don't always take the time to log what I'm working on and I just go cool I did this thing and then now I have a partner that's you know that there's other way of employees and we have partner and They're like what did you do today and I have to go back and look you know I don't remember did you get this thing done for them? I think I did I don't know I didn't check it off. So so we got a little organized I got a little more organized working with others my personal favorite is Trello I even use that in my personal life just for like I'm gonna keep track of this, you know, whatever the trip I'm going on. I'm gonna put it into Trello. I do all of my to-dos on a daily basis from there We have base camp is another popular one I really enjoyed it they actually change their fee structure. So it's not super crazy expensive anymore So we may look into going back to that one and then two others that I tried and personally don't like but a lot of people Love them podium and sauna Again, I'm just gonna reiterate it doesn't matter what tool I use just it matters what tool you are going to use Choose one run with it. It's a lot better than spending weeks trying to find the perfect one as I've done You need to have some sort of process while you're working That is my process on certain days what I'm trying to figure out what's going on. What's wrong with something? But that does not actually fix anything it ends up making the problem worse So part of my process is as I mentioned we track everything in Trello So if anyone here is not familiar Trello, I'm gonna do a really quick. I can't like point at it Over on the side over on the right side There's a menu there that has the people who are involved in this project and then a stream of activity This is a project that we were almost done with but you notice that we have These lists those are the gray boxes at top for the for the setup the design development And then things will be completed Things that are in green those are checklists So we were able to actually like say we need to work on the home page And then I made a long list of all the things that need to be done on that page I could just go in and check them off when they were done. You can also assign these cards to people That's where you have our little user icons on them and you could assign dates to them as well So they can get notifications in whatever manner they choose of you know, this thing is due today at noon So we have that system in place that allows us to make sure that things are getting done And if something's left behind we can you know have a discussion via the card like Why is this thing not done on the home page because we're waiting on this picture from the client or whatever But it's a system that makes it a lot easier when you're working with other people But it works great when you're working the loan to to make sure that nothing gets left behind and make sure that everything's where it needs to be Another mention that little icon up top is that you can attach files directly to these so you can invite your clients Stawn to this and say you know we need that picture for the home page and I can just Drag it right onto the page Having this in place has saved a lot of headache of trying to figure out where I'm at What should I be doing right now that is? The biggest problem that I have is when I sit down in front of Peter going okay great I have a hundred things to do. What should I be doing right now? That's if somebody could make that decision for me I would probably pay you like a lot of money Just to just to be able to give you the exact answer and not have me have that fear that I'm doing the wrong thing right now I also I know that we've had people talk about all sorts of frameworks and themes out there. I personally use Genesis for a lot of things and This doesn't matter the code that's up there But what I'm displaying is a part of our functions file for our custom Genesis theme that we start every project with or most of our projects with The idea is that we have this really strong base that we've built up over time and every time we think oh There's a new way to do this slide out menu for mobile I'm going to put that into our base theme and then we just you know We version control we have it up on github so we can pull it down whenever you start a new project So if somebody comes to me and says I need this theme built when we pull that down We're halfway done with the project already and it gets over that blank page feeling that I get of Where do I start on this? I just set this up You know put some some of their content on the page and I'm already halfway done with the project I can get that feeling of accomplishment very early on that I can keep building momentum on If anyone here happens like sometimes You know I write I'm writing a blog post and I stare at that blank post page all day You know, I can't really put any starter Text in but I can put some starter code in that that removes that fear of staring at a blank page all day For those of you who already work for yourselves who works from like an office or a co-working space Yes, it's still pretty much everyone's working at home, right? Like yeah so I work both from home and from a co-working space and It's really hard to stay focused when you're working at home. I I Don't have anyone looking over my shoulder to make sure that I'm typing real words on the keyboard So I have to I have to make ways to stay focused and you know There's so many tips on oh make sure that you have a separate office and that your family knows that this is work time and not you know Family time whatever all those things most important for me is having a routine that I stick to So I you know get up every morning and I have a routine for when I get started with work And when I'm done with work for the day and other people are aware that that routine exists So they aren't gonna you know if they go oh, hey, I'm free today You want to go grab lunch and go to the mall or something something they'll you know take way too much time Well, I'm working right now as you know I have an easy out and not feel guilty saying no I don't want to spend time with you because I'm doing that thing that pays me to keep spending time with you You have to have some sort of motivation for this My motivation really is that freedom that liberty that comes from working for yourself that ability to say I'm gonna do What I want I'm going to choose the clients I want I'm going to decide when I feel like working Do I want to spend time after the party sitting at work, you know because that's what I feel like doing right now Then I get to do I want to Do I want to take a few hours off during the day to go do? Whatever thing it is. I can do that because no one's telling me like no you have to be here right now That's my motivation. You have some other motivation.   So that's one thing that I don't have to do that anymore I work out of co-working space, but it's it's just a couple miles from my house You know, it only takes only takes a few minutes to drive down there or I can take my bike down there We even have little Orlando if we have a train system now that goes right like a block away from my office So it's really nice. I can choose if I want to go into the office that day It's not as stressful as when I was forced to go in at exactly nine because if you're five minutes late or 20 minutes early. That's not when we start work Sorry, I work on the internet. You're the internet's awake 24-7 You have to set some sort of regular goals. I have goals set out both daily These are my tasks for the day weekly. These are the updates We send weekly updates to our clients so I at least know I need to have something done So I can tell these people at the end of the week what I've done this week And then we have a couple of long-term goals So we're interested in working on this project and we know we can't get started on it now But we are looking to do that within this year So I have some projects some personal projects that I'm saying I'm going to Make sure I devote some time this year to work on it's a bit longer term But I have something to look forward to It really helps keep you motivated when you have a plan Again, that's the hardest part of my day is that Is that sitting down and not knowing what I'm going to work on The way I got over that was the night before when I'm finishing up work for the day I look at my to-do list and I move over so I'm doing all in trello. I just drag over the cards to my Today list of the things that I know I'm going to do the next day And then I can go in in the morning and it's basically like having someone something they know Here's what you're doing today I still maintain a work environment. I do have a separate office in the house I don't like have a whole room. I spare bedrooms. So you don't need to you know, as long as you have a place that is set aside that Isn't the kitchen table while everyone's preparing a meal or isn't uh, isn't in the living room right next to the television Uh, I have a place that I can stay to remove some of that distraction and that if I need to I can shut the door But then I also differentiate between my on and off time You need to have that moment of I am done working for today It's really easy to answer emails at all times a day or take client calls or You know decide that you need to work on this because this thing is due this week And I need to do it all right now. I do have that time of You know when my significant other is home We are both done working for the day and I can go great now. I can do whatever I want this evening without feeling guilty Finally you need to have perspective. This is probably the most important perspective in my life Nothing cannot be improved with pizza I I live by that motto But more important I also live by the motto that this stuff isn't important So this is important to us. This is important to our clients But this isn't the end of the world if You know if I deliver something a day late or this isn't the end of the world If man, I thought I was going to get these five things done today And I only got these two things and I got sidetracked by Whatever It's really easy to let all of those problems get to you. I've Always struggled with having um feeling I'll say feeling inadequate feeling inferior and that I didn't get as much done or oh man It's really easy to get on like twitter and facebook and see what everyone else is doing Everyone is perfect on the internet, right?  They are perfect. Everything is amazing It's really easy to compare yourself to that and feel like you're not doing enough I mean there's there's different I I don't think I can tell all of you how to solve that problem You know because I can't just say turn it off or ignore it or whatever But uh find find those wins for yourself find the things that sure this person is doing x But that's not really what I want anyway. So why am I jealous of them? I like Again for me I like the fact that I make enough money to live comfortably at home And be able to do what I want with my day and be able to choose the projects that I like and be able to say You don't have a budget, but I really like your I really like your company I want to work with you or you do have a good budget, but I really don't like your company So I'm not in it just for the money, you know forget it like they're You know everyone's all you'll find that client you it feels really great To be able to say no to people um A piece of a piece of personal financial advice that I got a few years ago before I went so Solo uh freelancer I made sure that I had you know a fair amount of money saved up in the bank so that if I turns out I sucked at it I could go back, you know survive for a few months But but a good piece of advice somebody gave me was um having an fu fund set up And that is um the the idea of that is that someone says, you know I want you to do this and you can go to them and say no you I don't want to Obviously, I don't say that to people all the time. I'm not saying. Oh, just go out and fall over now but uh, but when you when you want to it's It's really empowering like that is probably the That is one of the best feelings in the world being able to say no. I am in control of my life I am in control of this. Uh, that's the most important thing that I get out of coming to work camps That's the most important thing that word presses didn't make that control that empowerment that uh, I don't have to worry about somebody else, you know Taking away the thing that I work on because it's free.  You are Jeff Or as much as they're just coming Yeah, so um, so I do discuss uh the word of mouth on my next slide But um, the question the question is um, if I set aside specific time for marketing during the week The answer is yes and no So yes, we do have a regular email that goes out and uh, generally since it goes out on friday I'm usually working on it on thursday because I put that off until thursday Um, but uh, I don't say okay monday morning from this to this. That's when i'm working on this because The the work I do is a bit. I would love to be a bit more structured in work, but it's It's really fluid, you know when when you come and go well, I thought this was going to take five hours But end up taking 10 hours. So now all these other things are pushed down the chain We we do do some marketing now, um, mainly just like But I don't do any paid marketing. Uh, we we do solely like social media marketing We put things on our blog. We um attend events like this, which are amazing for marketing But no not any one specific time Not not any one specific blocked off time for it um Honestly, I kind of like I don't almost say I judge but when I see something and I'm like, oh, you know Um, so and so shared this funny article and then I look and it's like a buffer link You know, it almost feels cheap in the bit that I'm like, oh, okay They weren't really thinking about this right now when I am they were just thought about this like a week ago and Just sent some computer said, you know tweet this out right now Um, I much I much like I much rather like that feeling that I'm experiencing something at the same time Someone else's so if I'm like, oh look this cool thing I found online That's because I just read it and so you're going to go read it and then you tweet at me and it's fresh in my mind And you know, we can have a conversation about it So when it comes to finding customers, uh, I'm not humongous fan of the idea that the customer is always right Um at the same time, I think the customer Can be right so The problem that I have with yeah, that is that is absolutely That is absolutely something we run into on a daily basis so So it's funny. It's it's like it's it's a joke, but at the same time, I just have to be good at my job to explain to them That uh, that this is what you want But this is why we can't get there right now And there's so many ways you could do that we break things up into phases So we can keep clients coming back and we can say listen We can do this for you right now and then let's see how it picks up your business And then we can do this other cool awesome thing that you want to do Normally break it up by things that are less mission critical. You know, I don't want to say you need All this you need this cool interaction on your page and all these cool little features that are going to take Way longer and a way more budget to do when really you want to find out is anyone going to actually click to buy my product You know, and then maybe they don't and you've wasted a whole bunch of money that you didn't need to So I don't think that clients are ever wrong so much as Either not educated or misinformed And in that in that case, I need to do my best efforts to explain to them. Here's why this is what you want And uh, this is what you can get That one Another I I need to know when I draw the line with clients one of the important ones for me is working hours I tell them I have, you know, monday to friday nine to five There are way too many clients that feel like they can call at nine p.m. On sunday I don't understand what it is about nine on sunday But that's the time that everyone decides that they want to call and those good of voicemail And then on monday morning, I respond to them I might have my phone in front of me But that doesn't matter that I don't want to, you know, show an availability that I don't want to have Same for responding to emails or same for I have clients who will try to dictate the time that I work like oh, no Well, you can work on this tomorrow and get it to me tomorrow afternoon And you know, I just have to go or I can work on all of my other clients that I already have And put this in the schedule that you know, I'm telling you upfront again. It's an education thing I tell people upfront. This is one we can start working on your project We do have a do you want to start working on this quicker? It's going to cost more money, but You know giving people that upfront notice of this is one we can start working It helps manage their expectations So I can let them know that yes, you are valued But no, you are not valued any higher than all the other people who already have come to us I still do things to keep my clients happy I know a lot of things I've said have been kind of negative, but I don't I'm not a negative person I will do more than more than my fair share of extra work for my clients And when it doesn't come to that, it's also me Doing a weekly Q&A session for our meet-up group for doing a few hours of a help desk We do those at the Orlando meet-up about once a month We do two lecture meet-ups a month and then we have ward camp. I travel to other ward camps I do plenty of extra work for people for free That that doesn't make me feel guilty when it comes time for the paying clients But when it comes to those clients if they say well, I really want to do this thing And we haven't been able to work it out, but then I don't know maybe they say oh, I want to do this tool and we say well We can't really do this thing because you know, it'll take way more time But then I find a way to do it easier later I have no problem jumping in and just doing that for them It gives them it gives them that extra value that makes them want to keep coming back Keep referring new clients to us. I mean everyone always says Under promise over the liver and that definitely works out here I tell people listen, this is going to take us about two weeks If I think it's something that's going to take me a week to do that way if something does come up and it takes me But seven days instead of the 10 days. It still looks like I did it three days early It's not it's not lying to the client. It's saying I'm building in some gap time So that you are going to be more appreciative when you get something Um, I do keep uh, we we do do regular Follow-ups with our clients every week so we let them know here's what we are working on Here's what we have a problem if we have any Here's something cool that we did for you or if it is something that's a bigger issue I won't just wait until the end of the week to send that email. I'll say, you know, listen We're doing this and it looks like it's going to take longer than we originally thought I make sure that I keep people up to date on where we are because I've had so many people come to me and say Well, I paid somebody to build a site for me and then they disappeared for a month And then they came back with something that wasn't what I wanted at all And uh, have anyone have you any of you guys gotten those clients before? Like it's those are the best people to please just because you go. Oh, that's not me I can you know as long as you've come and work with them on the process We do like a waterfall process um from that trial and card for we we do things in the uh, You know research wire framing design development launching all those different phases So we make sure that they are signing off on each one of those phases before we move to the next There's no point that someone's like, well, that's not what I wanted at all If they ever say that I go, well, you know just a few days ago you signed off on the wireframes and You know, why'd you sign off on those if that's not what you wanted? Uh, but more important I'm not going away for a month and coming back to them with something that they aren't happy with If they aren't happy with it. It's not because of a month of Miss communication. It's because Of maybe a week at most and then I only have a week's worth of work to revamp it some way That's the best way I found to get repeat business Keeping your clients happy Clients I've had clients that I even thought hated us who send us repeat business and another friend They're like, oh, no, it's just you know, maybe they were having an off day when they sent whatever email or we had that phone chat But we got the work done. We kept it under budget We kept it within the time frame and that's all they really care about. Do you need someone who's reliable? I know I know this guy. That's the best way that we found to get work Um to answer your question. It is mainly word of mouth Uh, finally, um, sorry. I want to do one last hand-raising thing for those of you who do work for yourself. How many of you Literally are working for yourself. You are the sole person in your company Most yeah most everyone who is already working for themselves Um, you've probably figured out by now. You can't do everything. You need a team Even if your team sometimes is a little bit clumsy But you can't do everything you need your team of vendors around you to handle those tasks that you can't do so Few ways that you can do that build maintain relationships with other people Word camps are a great place to do that. I developed. I don't design. Oh great. I designed but I don't develop Perfect. We can work together. You may not have to actually hire anyone like hire someone as an employee or have someone hire You as an employee, but you keep trading work back and forth It's also an extra great way to garner business because there's that designer that you work with who does all your design work And he has access to a whole different network of people or um, there's the uh, you know Marketer that she has a whole stable of clients that oh well, they wanted someone to work on their site But they didn't know anyone reliable now they do now they can send them to you Um, you might establish your own fees to work with people So there's designer that I work with that we both charge each other half of what we charge our clients. Um, Just because we keep sharing business back and forth. And so it's still profitable for both of us You can choose to do that or not do it.  Um, those are all personal decisions to make If you have something that you're not good at just be aware of it And use other people to fill in those gaps. I'm not a designer. I am not a marketer I have other people who can do those things for me. They can do it a lot better than I can in a lot less time That's worth paying money for I am not going to try to go out and learn something that is not in my wheelhouse at all Just to save a few dollars now That's it's not going to give me good client I also try to delegate as much work as I can So I know those things that I'm good at and I know those things that I enjoy doing But then I also know if if this project requires let's say a lot of data entry I need to put a lot of posts that they have from the old site that isn't in wordpress So maybe I can't migrate or whatever something something that is like time intensive but not necessarily Very mentally intensive. I try to offload those as much as I can You know, I have people who are no wordpress really well Even if they aren't developers, but I can just say here go put all this stuff in make it look nice Clean it up make sure you know, whatever everything's in there Um, and that's again a lot cheaper to pay someone then take all of my own time to do it That I could be that I could use that time to charge a client As I mentioned before under promise over deliver do not tell someone you can do something if you aren't 90 sure that you can do it I do make promises that I am not a hundred percent sure I can keep sometimes But I never make one that I think I can't keep it's more like I don't know. I know that I do a lot of WooCommerce sites And I've never used these digital downloads, but I'm betting I can do it So I go yes, we can do this for you Or you know some other fill in the appropriate tool at the very least I know that I have other people to lean on to help if I have those problems, but I am not saying Oh, well, you know, we're really great in wordpress. We've never looked at Drupal before but yeah, I'll do your Drupal project for you And then, you know, it turns out that I have to learn a whole new system I'm definitely not going to be able to keep that promise But what I do like to do is learn on the job and that's whatever you're doing You can learn something you're going to learn something new with every project Or at least I hope you are I one of the things I strive to do is learn something new with every project that we're doing Put another tool in our tool belt Keep myself mentally stimulated. So I'm not just, you know, doing the same thing over and over again You can do that on your own time and you should But you can also again doing that 90 percent promise there You can take that extra 10 percent and learn while someone's paying you to do it You know, it's I already know I'm going to be able to keep that promise but bonus I'm getting paid to learn how to use this tool Finally, uh, I'm going to start with the I'm going to finish with the easiest task because you guys are already doing this Stay connected. Uh, one of the best ways that I get business is from referrals It's from word of mouth is from people that I chat with at these events By the way, I'm going to be in the happiness bar most of the afternoon if you guys have any questions attend events, uh, I Do that all the time. I love going to conferences. I love meeting new people I love chatting about whatever problems people are having and you know, maybe ways that we can solve them Maybe I can't maybe I just want to chat about Cats I I'm a dog person. Sorry. I just turned off half the room here Pokemon if anyone's pokemon, we will totally do a pokemon battle later But but the the point is there are a lot of people including people in this room That I know simply by going to these events and I've learned about them and I've learned about their businesses And I've learned that okay This isn't something that I can do but I can pass this on to this person One of the biggest places that I get referrals is from other agencies These people are not your competitors in the room or at least not straightforward your competitors These are potential allies So I don't have enough time to take on this project or this project has too small of a budget for me Or this project has too large of a budget for me or you know, whatever fill in the blank or Oh, this person needs a A buddy press site and I don't do buddy. We do buddy press fun and say I don't know. I'm seeing an example I'll say buddy press and I don't do that But I know this person if they're really awesome at it That person would have never gotten that lead because they weren't here at this event But they had somebody who was there to do it for them That's one of my goals is to have you guys basically sell for me go I know this person who you know didn't make a total fool of himself on stage. I hope Let me send him over to you I do follow what other people are up to so I get to see where the new trends are So that when someone, you know, when a potential client talks about Whatever new tool I'm not completely into art going on. I've no idea what you're talking about At the same time I can offer new solutions to people like well, you know This new tool just came out that can do this for you I just did a Shopify build a few weeks ago and Shopify added this new WordPress integration this week One I would have loved to have it back then but if anybody asked me now I go. Oh, yeah, we can do that Um As I mentioned before make time to learn keep keep learning new things There is there are people here who know way way more about WordPress development than I do They are the best people because they love showing other people the cool things that they just learned how to do and Keep making time to keep learning that if you just try to keep doing the same thing you're doing now You know for the next year. You're already going to be outclassed by other people around you Uh at the same time make time for yourself do things outside of the industry find other things that you're interested in I you know, I'm joking about it, but I do go to like gaming tournaments. I do go to nerdy events. I do go to uh I got a client from going to b-sides I don't really know much about web security, but I wanted to learn more about it I went on my own time and uh got a new client out of it bonus. I wasn't even expecting that So, you know, do remember that there's more of a world outside of here than the Marketing world or the development world or the wordpress world. There are other groups of people out there to talk to You can find me on twitter. Uh, that's our company. That's my weekly newsletter of weird web stuff And those are these slides Any questions? Oh, yes Yes clients could be done. Uh, could be oh, excuse me Clients can uh do commenting on trello and they can also move assets onto trello and download them One of the nice things about trello is that you can Make boards locked down to whatever level you want So you could say they can lock or they can You can lock cards so a client can't move a card from one list to another But you can say they can still drag assets onto the card Um, I have not so I'm not I'm not from here. Fellini's I will have to get the if it's nearby. We're leave we're going back to Orlando tonight, but if it's nearby, I'll stop there for dinner Yeah So right now my partners, um, I've worked with contractors in the past at my previous company and This is my fourth word camp atlanta and every year before this I was coming in as david from orange blossom media But that was basically me with contractors Now I have dinosaur iceberg, which is me and four partners or no, excuse me four partners total And then we contract out a few things that we don't do. Um, a couple of them are here today I'm actually giving a talk in another room right now, so Can't see each other's talks, uh, but we try to complement each other's skills So I enjoy the development, but as I mentioned, I'm not really a marketer I am not a um, I'm not the greatest at client management Like I don't always remember to get those emails out in time So I have other people in the company who those are the things that they are good at I've identified that weakness and Offloaded it where appropriate We do that based on ownership. We do a pretty simple split. We're all even even partners even ownership Um, and then the income is we do a draw on our account. Um, so we We we take an equal salary each month Um, I'm sure that I mean It doesn't concern me quite so much to think that oh this month I did more than this person or this person did more than me because then that's that's me saying to my partners Like I don't value you as much or Um, you know, I don't think that you did as much work or I think I did more work than you and it's really it's different work You know, maybe this week the thing I did was more mission critical because this client had a fire And I was the one that put it out. Maybe next week that won't be me Yes, sir. How many you should try to bill? I probably bill for A third of the time that I actually work Maybe half if I'm being generous maybe half but not no I work many more hours than I actually bill clients Which is why I have rates set up with that in mind That uh that those those non billable hours doesn't mean that I'm not doing something important It might just mean that you know, it's important for me to make sure that this Email goes out and this invoice gets created or whatever task, but that's not something I can You know make you pay me to do Both uh, so we start by billing by project generally Um, the reason being is that we can kind of get an estimate on how many hours it's going to be But no projects or projects are the same. So I'm not going to be able to make a great estimate upfront But if I come to you and say this is our hourly rate That doesn't mean anything to you as a client. You really want to know. Okay. How many hours is it going to take? so I can charge $10 an hour and take a hundred hours to do something or I can charge $100 an hour and take 10 hours to do it because I'm You know better than that person to charge 10 Um, are they getting the same value probably not but they're paying the same price Um, but so we start by project and then hourly comes in when Additional tasks are added to the scope or if they later come back and say You know great. We just want to do this one extra feature now something like that Website maintenance and things like that. Do you build that? Is that like currently a Lovely fee or do you put that also into your project price? So we have a um, we actually have a separate service setup. It's called site healthy So you can find on site healthy.com if you want to look at it It looks pretty similar to wp site care maintain wp curve There's a lot of them out there that do that that's their whole sole project they do is maintenance but the way that we work it in is um Our clients get a few months of that for free when they're done Like we build that in that they get a few months of that So hopefully they want to keep using it later. That is one that they pay either monthly or annually for Covering, you know hosting backup security ongoing maintenance things like that based on whatever their specific tasks require But they would keep paying after After the main project is done, but we set it up as a separate Set up as a whole separate system in the event that and I've had people do this. That's all they want They already have a site that they like Yes, sir So I'll try to say this in a non controversial way I do only work with people who I know in person who I've already met Generally people who live in orlando our entire team We're all orlando based and it's not because like I need to see you come into the office every day or whatever It's still everyone works remote But it's much It's much more that I've met so and so and I know that they're really great at doing buddy press integrations And so I want to hire the person to do this project that is really good at buddy press Because you know this project requires that as opposed to I'm going to look to get someone who can do this Really cheaply The only downside then is that the people who are good are usually also really busy as well But I don't I don't choose to not you I don't choose to not go overseas For that it's more just the relationships that I built up the promise of continue to work So if I'm hiring somebody Overseas say three lands or something which I've done before and mixed results, you know, it's not all bad. It's not all good But if I'm hiring that person that's a one-off thing, you know, maybe I'll keep hiring them later But it's a one-way mode of communication. But if I choose to I don't know pass the project on to brad back there because he doesn't look like he's paying attention If I choose to uh, send him something maybe he'll do the same to me In the future, you know, and then then I've made that money back Um, any other questions I said brad no Yes, sir I do discounts when I choose to do them and I make sure the client knows that they are getting a discount Um I try to be a bit hard line on on our costs and everything and on on what we do because I'm not I get there's a bit of negotiation that goes into it But at the same time when I'm making a scope for somebody I say this is how long it's going to take This is how much it's going to cost Like that's that's it. That's our We're a bit busy right now. Um, if you choose to come back Uh, if you if you can work out the budget later choose to come back Or if you would be okay with uh, some other systems say that we Work on it in spare time over the next few months as opposed to working on it solely this month Um Or if there's some other value for that I've done a lot of again, I've probably done more free work than I've done Pay to work. It's not that I don't like doing free to work free work. It's that I get to choose those times. I do it. I did a You know, I've done sites for some nonprofits in the area or for friends or Actually friends are the worst though because then they just expect it for free But but I make that decision generally when it comes to making a scope making contracts. They're not really negotiable Um, it's it's it's more just I don't have to put as much effort or thought into it I don't want to do an email or call chain back and forth to somebody, you know haggling on price I would much rather just say this what's gonna cost No, okay That's why we also have people who do client relationships so that now they can keep following up those people whereas before I probably wouldn't Yeah Um, normally so there's a few ways I could do that one way you could just be describing to them All the many things and then halfway through a description of here's you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah They just are like, okay. Cool. You know sounds good Um, or I can just you know remind them that just as you have other clients I do as well I mean most people most people are really understanding like if I don't I don't go into these things with it with an adversarial approach I try to go in with a professional approach of you know, this is You came to us for a reason. Somebody told you that somebody told you that we were good or you've worked with us before or Whatever in some way you found us. I didn't pay for any marketing. So I know it's not that you saw my billboard or my facebook ad or something So just Trust that you are going to get what people have promised you Yes Generally to We can work that out more we've actually had clients request more and we've changed the budget accordingly Past to I've done something wrong by you having Problems still like I've completely misunderstood your project if if it goes past that But at the same time we had a client last year who paid us A fair amount extra to to have that up to three and then they only ever actually used it on one page But I think it was more just you know, maybe they had it it was a corporate concern or they just wanted the The security and the comfort in knowing that it was there So that was actually a bonus for us, but I don't really upsell that to people But there is a limit on how much back and forth I will do you know to appoint it can get excessive Any other questions you guys are in like the sneaky short lunch line? Oh Yes I'm sorry Oh some examples of contract tools We do them internally if we actually built a cool little tool, but that doesn't really help you So two tools that I do like Our tool is based off of sprout invoices. That is a wordpress plugin that starts free and has add-ons for it. It is a It's it's basically makes an invoice an estimate system on your website Uh, I've used proposify in the past Proposify.biz It is a tool that makes like pretty looking. It's um PowerPoint system for proposals basically like it templates them out for you when you put your content in Your contract shouldn't have to change too much. I paid a lawyer to make to make our first contract Uh, you know didn't cost too much money But we get to keep reusing that same contract while still having a bit more security than Or a bit more comfort than uh, than the one that I might have written myself Which I did start from when I wrote myself and then she looked at it and she changed so many things But those are those are two good ones sprout invoices you can find at Sproutapps.co. I believe you can find on the wordpress repo as well um and proposify Anymore before we go After lunch, I'm going to be in the happiness bar all day if you want to talk about theme or plugin development That's what I do. Um, I already probably saw about 10 people yesterday. So please come find me there later. Thanks


Hey, good afternoon here. Tom Stewart. I'm with Liz Trotter. This is smart business moves. Hey y'all. Ah shoot, I just remembered that Somebody asked me For something and I forgot to get it to them. Well, darn me Was it something that was supposed to be done here as part of smart business moves? I'd be some kind of a surprise Really? Hmm I forgot to do my part Would have been a surprise for me, I guess Writing this down you get all the surprises. I'm you already got all the hats. Oh, I know All right, I got it Okay So what are we talking about today? You know what we're talking about. We're talking about KPIs today Well, I just really wanted to ask you because right before We're talking about anything happening in the COVID world or PPP or Employee retention tax credit any any late breaking development stuff going on there Kind of think if I have heard anything I haven't heard anything That is oh, I did actually hear one thing I was advised to go in and Anybody that's had COVID to go in and get a blood test and something else.  Well, that's are you making so that's what they're advising people who've had COVID. Yeah, exactly I guess it's good. Good advice. You know, there's all kinds of Unintended consequences after getting through the initial bout that can pop up Strokes and things like that just weird stuff and definitely lingering there are lingering Am I trying to say Things wrong they're lingering things happening, right that that hurt and I caused trouble afterwards So that are my nearing comparison, but Symptoms There you go Sometimes it seems like English is not my first language, but it actually is as good as it gets isn't it You know a little bit of Korean though, I know a little Korean I know a little French and a little German I know a Modicum of Spanish So I actually think that might mess me up all these like disparate languages out there English is such a struggle because you got Like what is that word no, that's not the English word for it. I'm gonna go with that town That's what I'm going when Debbie's asking a question here that we might be able to hope it was she wants to know When can you ask for your PPP loan to be forgiven? I Assume that you're talking about your first PPP loan because It'd be too early for your second if you you know, you've gotten the monies you wouldn't have an opportunity to have Spent them all on the things that it's intended to be spend it for On in order to be forgiven. So for your first one You have up to ten months as I understand it after you received the loan to ask for forgiveness. So I Don't know say you got the loan May 1st of 2020 I think that you've got up to the beginning of March or the end of February the end of this month I guess would be 10 months, wouldn't it? well, if they got it and No, if they got it in May Yeah, so that's the fifth month, right? So yeah, yeah, yeah because so then be the end of March Yeah, so not this month next month in the March They've still had well now because they get to the end of April. That's 12. So it would be the you know May at March would be month 10 in April be month 11 So right now it'd be 13. You're right. So what's 12 would be? You're the math guy I love testing you. I want to make sure you're you're paying attention I love this list past So, you know now's a good time, you know, if you've gone ahead and you have Met, you know the requirements and I guess you would have because the money's would have had to have been spent by the end of 2020 right for the first round in order to get into the forgiveness window You certainly want to make sure you get it done before you've used up your 10 months from when you receive the funds Because at that point I think it's too late You know that there are going to be some people that are going to mess up and there's going to be a whole big thing But you just don't want to be part of that group to be Just just do it within the 10 months and and save yourself a bunch of grief and hassle They were recommending, you know as as soon as maybe a month ago to wait just a little bit longer until the new president was put in place and End of the year came see what else was coming along But the information that we're hearing now is yeah, it's okay. We're there aren't going to be a whole lot more Benefits coming down the pipe here. They got that nice short form. So yeah If you received less than 150,000 I understand it's really a breeze to fill out Yeah, this is awesome. Yay Right this now. I'm writing myself all these notes today I've been using my journal so trying to trying to Handle it correctly like a big girl. Yay Liz It's so much to keep up with isn't it? Oh my gosh, right? Somebody was recommending to me because I like to read a lot and sometimes I struggle finding different things that I want. They said yeah, you should get into podcasts and Start start listening to podcasts and I Just started to look at like yeah, that's a good idea I'm an hour of my day was gone was like What happened right there? I just lost an hour and I hadn't listened to any podcast. I had just looked at Who makes them and how you do it and all that good stuff? So Yeah You want to get to work? I do Okay, let's do that ask today. Look at we're getting to work at 208 common or 508 in your world I'm proud of us We got a lot of work to do We're talking about improving productivity and the productivity again being Defined as a loud time divided by actual time And we want to improve productivity because of the improved productivity that is going to help us lower our Loaded direct payroll to revenue And we want to worry about Robin's sucking up over here Tom KPIs are fine He's kissing up. Good job, Robin I Yesterday Robin, but Tom did show that he posted the Timelines for attention. We posted it specifically for you. We just forgot he forgot to tell anybody For a week and I forgot about it But if you go to smart business, I mean cleaning business today forward slash smart SMB resources here I'll drop the link in chat You go to that link this First one here, you can click on it. You'll download that Document that Liz had with the reasons that people leave Oh didn't eat slipped right in there between your little links there. Hey, didn't eat Okay so at this point we all appreciate why we want to Lower a loaded direct payroll to revenue because that gets our cost a good sold down which gives us more money to play with After we pay our cleaning technicians and we want to do that by not necessarily paying them less but helping them to Produce more to be more effective to be more productive Hence productivity so we can pay, you know a great wage We still have a small cost a good sold and a cornerstone of that is going to be training We talked about training in terms of you know You got to look at somebody's talent level as well as their skill level and talent is Kind of the God-given, you know attributes that that they came to the job with you know, how fast they are how strong they are Things that arguably you really don't have a you know, I guess you can even improve talent But it I mean that's a that's a heavier lifted as an employer. That's usually outside of our realm of Jurisdiction but the skill part in terms of being able to use the talent you have in a way to get the most out of it Well as you had an example of that yesterday with a technician who was relatively slow But what was it what was how did how did she learn to? you know Clean at a reasonable rate where her productivity was was you know, at least acceptable Yeah, her productivity ended up being over a hundred percent and she use So just some basic systems. She learned how to do thing. Well methods is actually what you have on here Tom She learned methods for increasing her speed while still moving her body very slowly So she never did really speed up her body Intentionally she never felt like she was going faster speeding up But just the repetition of doing these new These new processes and cleaning in these different ways Doing them repetitively she she automatically got faster, but she's still always maintained very very steady when she cleaned and She appeared to be cleaning very very slowly. She wasn't but she appeared to be cleaning very slowly She was just exceptional at doing things like When you would wipe something in a hand with and Your next one a lot of times people just keep going over things, you know and wiping might be wiping wiping wiping She was just exceptional at one hand with and then over up an entire hand with over Down an entire hand with she was just and she knew how to she used her hand exactly right to capture spin capture spin capture so she really just She perfected Cleaning cleaning technique the hand movements and also the foot movements She focused a lot on not moving her feet again. She didn't want to move a lot. And so she didn't she She's the one that really helped us to And slices a term that we got from Joanna Douglas I'm just cleaning in the slice you stand in one area and you clean this area and then you move to the next slice and She was ridiculous Ridiculously, but boy if we saw her you'd be thinking she was slow So in this whole area of methods, there's this general concept of economy of motion where You know, there's a difference between motion and movement You know, it's not like, you know, there's sayings things like, you know, the shortest, you know Distance between point two points is a straight line that you want to be teaching techniques that allow your cleaning professionals to Get as much movement with as less motion as possible And there's I guess explain that Tom. What do you mean by that? How do you get the most movement with as little motion as possible because I think a lot of people confuse those two words, right? You very much somebody clean that isn't very effective and they might Be on one corner of the room doing something for a little bit and they run all the way over the corner of the room they do something and they go somewhere else and do something and There isn't a system in place Whereas if somebody has a system in place and you know, there's a lot of different ways for the system to gather but they're all should be designed in a way to minimize the Movement or excuse me the motion involved to actually get the work done that that you want to dirt get done For instance Top-to-bottom left-to-right is something that that often times is said where you might start at the Doorway of a room and start at the top and work your way around the room from left to right top-to-bottom Back to front. Yeah. Yeah And the thinking between top-to-bottom is you got this thing called gravity that if you start at the bottom And work your way to the top then if you're knocking dirt down Then the stuff at the bottom that you already clean might get dirty again. I Don't know Liz. Do you do you buy that? I? do especially with Maybe areas that have not been cleaned as Often as as like Recurring cleaning, you know as often as we might be cleaning in our our businesses so I think a lot of people have seen that with first time in cleanings or With homes that I've just really got like single cleanings where there's a lot of buildup Even when you are really working hard to capture all of the dirt and dust a lot of it still does go into the air and then settles and Then as it settles you you begin to see I'm sure most of you have been in a situation where you have seen that thing cleaned you or you've cleaned it yourself You know what was done the customer calls and says it's journey doesn't even look like it's been dusted You look at it yourself, and you're like what the heck it is dusting. I'm the one that cleaned it so that that absolutely can happen the Dust etc. I can get into the air and it does settle so the smarter move for me is Started the top work your way down. What's this third blink? You ever heard of the word? No, is this what it is? Come on, you have to I swear not in any language Tom Okay, I Swear that this Not me. This isn't the first time that that we've talked about maybe on smart business moves But over the well, I don't know we don't really do this in foundations. Do we so I'm okay You ever see the movie cheaper by the dozen Frank and Lily and Gilbreath. Yes, okay, and they're kind of like efficiency Freaks trying to have all those kids. Yeah, that's a that's a I mean I don't know the movies based on on real people there really is a Frank and Lily was a Frank and Lily and Gilbreath okay, and one of the things that they came up with is stair blagues and There's basically there. They're they're the basic motion elements and any work that's done is Done with a combination of these motions or these activities search find select grasp hold Transport loaded transport empty Kind of kind of get the point now any work activity can be defined by putting these together in various combinations of what's being done and I'll drop this link Anybody wants to know more about fairer blagues I'm totally wanting to look at this and and check it out a little bit more and Out of those stair blagues they define some of them as effective that actually are You know necessary in order to do work And work in our case is playing something and they've identified some of them that are Ineffective and it doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have them at all that you you know that that they're gonna be completely eliminated these are The basic motion elements that you really want to focus on and figure out how many of them can you eliminate and how many of them can you reduce because They really aren't getting you The outcome that you're looking for there. They represent potential wasted time Okay, this makes sense to me. I like it. So like one of them here is search If you're doing something you have to search for something, you know, where's my you know, whatever Anything you're wasting time absolutely whereas Use is use. I mean if it was a way that you can use it more quickly That's great, too But you're actually cleaning something if you're using it, but if you're looking for that brush if you're searching for that brush or plan as another one where You're in a house and you're having to figure out well, what am I going to do? What product do I use? What tool do I use? Where do I start? Who's cleaning what? Yeah It doesn't mean that you're gonna make 100% of the planning go away but a lot of times with good methods you can Reduce the amount of time and there's less trying to figure stuff out and searching and Certainly any type of delay is avoidable or are you know unavoidable? You wouldn't want to get rid of Yep, that makes sense. I like all these rest hole position That is I'm trying to figure out how it would work and clean I don't know if it works in cleaning But like if I am in a manufacturing process, you say I'm an assembly line and I've got a part I want to be able to take that part and just put it right where it belongs Rather than having to fiddle with it to get the threads lined up So everything is in the right position. I think that this could could make sense, too For example your if you have squirt bottles or spray bottles in a caddy that you would definitely want the handles all Pointing in and when you go to grab them, they're ready to go and they don't leak onto anything So I think position could although this says it's ineffective. So maybe I've got that wrong Well, no, you don't want to you want to reduce the amount of time that you're having to do that So Yeah, so if you could come up with with with methods to reduce the amount of time that you have to fiddle around with that Yeah, absolutely. Oh that okay. I can actually think of a couple of examples for a position then Having designated spot where everything goes back in that exact same place Yeah, using color-coded spray tops and labels and various things so at a glance you aren't searching for the Window cleaner because you know exactly where it is in the caddy and you know what color it is Maybe better yet you're wearing an apron and the apron has the ability to carry a couple of models on you So where you are having to? Walk and you know, you can you can you can say arguably that search Walking is a form of of searching walking is a Really big waste of time That's one of the things that you want to reduce Between select and search walking. I forget what it is. It's been a while since I've done this professionally But walking falls under this ineffective side So the fewer steps you can take to clean a room or a house The more productive you're going today Yeah, absolutely anybody that's ever timed to this tested this knows that this is true Though the amount of steps that you're taking really really impacts productivity. It's interesting that they have Inspect on here. I understand why it's on there But it's interesting because I think that a lot of people would not think of it as being ineffective Right, they might be thinking of it in a different way Well if You're having the less time you have to spend Inspecting the more productive you're going to be yeah, do it right the first time so that no one is needed Yeah, it doesn't mean that it has to go that it should go away completely But if you've got a really bad process where you're having to Inspect and again if you go back to like a manufacturing process where there's multiple steps on a Assembly line if you're having to do like heavy inspections on on every point You've got some pretty some pretty serious quality issues if that's necessary And I would say that that's true in our business as well if you find inspections a necessary part of Of The process to be able to maintain the quality levels that you need But there's probably some other stuff that you can do instead. That's not ineffective or less less ineffective more effective what More do we want to say about? Training I mean the whole thing is cool in the methods, but there's so many I mean there's so much more there than Just the the methods part of the training well so I Guess part of the training and increasing productivity Should be talking a little bit about on repetition maybe And just the the practice that people get so that they have more time to do the stuff that needs to be done Because repetition does does Me know speed things up We got going on there Tom Yeah, I'm trying to get my desktop organized So you say repetition just the general practice. It's like practicing any activity you can Yeah, or to build your speed up. Yeah, the more you do it the faster you get It's why they don't recommend that you God Brain is struggling language skills are lacking today Why you don't jump from thing to thing to thing and instead do one activity because the more you do it in In a row without a break Then the faster you will get at it. So they they really recommend that you not You know a lot of people think that they're really good at jumping from task to task to task and back again And being able to do that. There are a lot of studies that show That's nowhere near as productive It takes time for your brain to shift. It takes time for your body to shift takes time for everything to shift So that the repetition I think is really really important and Something that goes along with the training I mean the technician is part of the whole productivity answer if you will but The tools you provide your technician and the cleaning products the cleaning agents you use All of those are part of the equation as well absolutely, I Can be a really excellent cleaning technician, but if I've got really crappy tools and Really lousy cleaning agents. I'm not going to be nearly as productive, right? absolutely, yep and that's why Your cleaning professionals get so or my cleaning professionals get frustrated irritated upset if they don't have the correct tools if For whatever reason they didn't get and you know enough plots for the day and now they're they're having to know manage their the amount of towels that they have so Tools are a really big deal Well all of it and the supplies the equipment For productivity absolutely, I'm thinking of so many things like I'd like my brain's like so fast that I talking like long cords on your vacuum cleaner and Spray bottles that actually spray or sport bottles that are even faster than spray bottles or So many different things Yeah aprons long cords I can tell you I mean there's a lot of material out here on this and the whole idea of Like speed cleaning Jeff Campbell wrote the book on it Debbie partnered with him a number years ago And Debbie's carrying it on and she still promotes speed cleaning speed cleanings got a lot of the principles We're talking about here In terms of reducing steps and you know wearing aprons and using long cords And I guess we learned the other day that Jeff Campbell was an industrial engineer I guess I knew that but you know, I think that's That certainly makes sense and that's awesome Sharon ten bird is another person that really does a good job with training Technicians how to be productive very good. She puts a ton of focus and On that whole idea and just Stays at it and that's really why she's such a large component of Aprons not because she thinks people look good in aprons not because she wants it done her way But because it is so much more productive There's bottles versus spray bottles, that's a huge one too. That's also great for to reduce repetitive injury The actual Wipers or towels you use And I'm not gonna say rags because we don't clean with rags Thank you, Tom People vacuum cleaner you use can make a difference How does how does that? Matter Tom aren't all vacuum cleaners don't they all pretty much do the same kind of job? We've actually Done some studies and actually there's some videos on the maid. Excuse me on the modern cleaning website that back CC help us with that where We basically put a clock on cleaning rooms using various types of vacuum cleaners like backpacks versus Uprights versus canisters and there's pros and cons to all of that But the larger space you're doing the more productive you can be with the same backpack vacuum Starts getting into all kinds of nuances in terms of how big the powerhead is for instance, you know Is it a 12 inch versus a 14 inch? Here's a resource That if anybody really wants to get nerdy on this might find Useful this is from ISSA. It's 612 cleaning times and these are like synthetic standards where If you want to know How long does it take to clean to vacuum a thousand square feet of carpet? There's a lot of caveats to that, you know, it is it is it is it Yeah, type of carpet and how Densely furnished is that space? There's a lot of stuff that you're needing to move around or is it open space? And they also get into The type of equipment you're using Are you using an upright or a backpack or a canister and you have a powerhead or do you have a nozzle? And is it 10 inches 12 inches 14 inches and all of that affects how long it takes to clean? that's awesome and Yeah, it It's a fun read if you're into stuff like that. It does sound fun to me gosh look at this Robin more fun right here And you know what I haven't looked at this in a while You know, I've got this and it's it's a I guess they still do it on it. Is it a download or is it a DB I have it on a desk on a DVD. Oh This is it's an open order your copy of the Times yeah And you see where it says it used to be 540 times, but now it's 612 Nice there. I have this 400 and some so they keep So now you have your nighttime reading there Tom, yeah, I've got a upgrade Yeah, you know a couple hundred times to check out Ah Robin was saying that he does use a speed cleaning method as well. I Really think that Using the speed cleaning method Even if you don't use all of it, you need to use some of the basic tenants from the speed cleaning method Yeah, because it is just so Common-sensical and So helpful for making people for helping people to be more productive Yeah, and actually I guess that that's a piece of it as well When you want people to be more productive, you can't make them more productive You can help them to be more productive by providing the correct training tools equipment and the correct mindset If but if they don't want to be productive There isn't a lot that you can do except provide the great stuff and give them the right mindset and then there you go want to talk about the towels and the wipers just for for a minute though because It makes a difference. We've done a lot of studies with this too and Not all microfibers the same and a lot of times we look at all of these tools from a commodity perspective and That you know, if I can get vacuum a or vacuum b or vacuum c or towel a bc, whatever You know, how much does it cost? What is my upfront cost in terms of what am I going to have to reach in my pocket and pay for it? And for just about every tool that's up here That's not the real cost you need to be worried about the real cost is How long is it going to take my cleaning professionals to get the job done using this tool? because Some towels clean better than others Certainly some cleaning ages chemicals clean better more more quickly than others and if you can get the right combinations of wipers and chemicals and Your whole tool suite together engineered with productivity in mind the first question you need to ask is How much time can this tool save us or this product is cleaning agent? Whatever and once you figure that out then ask well, what do I have to pay for it? But we are living in a world now where minimum wage is quickly becoming a 15 hour a dollar a dollar per hour thing and we're gonna have to be paying more than that as as You know cleaning companies. There's going to be easy to work out there for $15 an hour and You know, what's you know fully loaded you're probably going to be pushing, you know 20 bucks You know an hour or so at that point every three minutes is costing you a buck, right? so What is it? What does that mean? You know if I can save myself? You know five minutes over the course of a week by using tau a versus tau b that it really doesn't really matter how much tau a cost it's Cheaper from an overall cost standpoint than the more, you know Value-brand, you know price. Yep that less expensive one Using the clients back as we use a shark and they bagless upright life or clean professional use and effective a lot of people love the Different shark models. They're very very popular so and I Somebody drove me down a rabbit hole today, and we wound up looking at those. There's a busy and shark vacuums out there, aren't there? Yes, there are so many different models There but there are probably five or six really popular ones for our industry though That I've heard over and over again Color coding towel system. Yep. That's that's good too color coding towel system absolutely can improve productivity Yep There are just so many things that that you can do in in training especially to and in Just in your systems to improve productivity Microfiber is kind of the norm now, you know Liz, you know, I don't know if you can remember back that far when Microfiber wasn't even a thing everybody clean with something Cotton absolutely and there, you know a lot of people well a lot will still to this day Don't like microfiber because once it starts stops working real well It you know, it feels like it pushes the dirt around it and it does unless it's wet, right? And so it's you've got to have high quality microfiber And so if you're buying low quality microfiber, you're finding that it's not working For really really quickly. It seems like this stuff just doesn't work and so there are quite a few companies still that are cleaning with hot towels or Did I hear the other day? I heard another something Maybe it was cheese cloth But but cotton because they don't they don't feel that microfiber works and The problem with microfiber is again got to have high quality microfiber or it does break down too quickly And then it doesn't it doesn't do its job Good sources for microfibers Good sources for microfibers Tom Ah Microfiber wholesale and there's a couple of advertisers that are in cleaning business today Microfiber wholesale is one of them and there's another one as well microfiber drag, maybe Kick around cleaning business today. You can see some links there There's another company out of Chicago called perfect clean that they make a Really quality product as well Again, I would would encourage us for this equipment not to be thinking this is commodity purchase Oftentimes we do it's like, you know when I'm buying gasoline I'll go across the street to get you know gas, you know two cents You know a gallon cheaper because that is a commodity my car doesn't know the difference But don't be buying these tools based on price buy them based on performance Won't you figure out what performs the best then I ask how much does it cost? Thank you. Yeah, direct mob sales. That's another one Robin. They have good microfiber Yeah, I think you can find them on cleaning business. Yeah, you can you can Let's try to let's try to move on a little bit. Is there anything we want to say about Equipment I guess the only other thing that I have to say is any piece of Equipment any tool that you have any supplies that you have all Should be looked at under this This microscope of productivity So can I be more productive with this thing than another thing? so Because if you can you're going to it's going to cost you less in the long run You can be more productive you will be saving money in the long run. Let's talk about Performance pay and there's two primary ways. I guess there's there's there's three I'll just go ahead and list them. We all know about commission or Sometimes that's called fee split Or what's the other one job ticket hour? Yeah, job ticket hour is a second one Which is basically being paid based on We'll go back and explain what all these are a lot of times and Got a third called split hourly Then you are gonna have to add bonus bonus You did that that would get that we count. Yep That would definitely count if you guys know of another method of Performance pay another type of performance pay drop it in comments for me. These are these are the four that immediately pop up for me All right, so Let's let's kind of do these out of order Yes split hourly is a type of pay where when you're cleaning technicians are punched into a job or On a job actually clean at home they're being paid a Hourly rate that's higher than the hourly rate they would get when they are between jobs like driving between jobs so Example this might be you might pay your technicians $12 an hour when they're actually clocked into a job cleaning it and Eight dollars an hour when they're driving from job to job that would be an example of that and Go ahead. No, I was agreeing. Yeah, okay That it's a performance pay it has more that particular type of pay has more effect on Efficiency than it does productivity. We haven't gotten to efficiency yet So we'll we'll cover that tomorrow, but just just just so you know, that's that's part of the consideration Talk about bonus for a minute, how are bonuses used with to encourage people to be more productive so a lot of times people will our companies will give bonuses for people who meet time goals or Meet meets whatever time frames. They're supposed to be cleaning in so they'll get additional pay per hour Or they'll get a bonus at the end of the month or at the end of the week or whatever No, they'll get paid more when they when they are more productive So they'll just get paid more money. So sort of the idea of like that you shared yesterday, Tom If you have a more productive employee, you can afford to pay them more And so that's how this bonus system will work with people I've seen I've seen people do that with like One, you know, I'll mention Kathy gauge I don't know if any of you guys know Kathy, but she came up with a lot of innovative things in the area of Residential cleaning in terms of how to manage that the financial side and manage productivity She invented the master schedule if if you guys are familiar with with with with with that concept of Way to put together a calendar to do your your easily scheduled like weekly and every other week at every four week jobs But she had a pay system and I'm doing this from memory and Liz I'm getting this wrong straighten me out that her own cleaning technicians were responsible for calculating their Revenue per labor hour and they had a goal that they were able to hit that goal then they would get a bonus Yeah, that's exactly what she did But when they hit that goal then basically their new goal became So it was constantly driving them to generate more revenue per labor hour, which really is You have to be more productive to do that Yeah, and she did she didn't change the payroll percent to revenue number often she just Kept it out there all the time, you know We need to be hitting this number and I don't remember what she was hitting in those days, but it was Every week every week every house actually every day Well, and and I think what she was actually having them measure was their revenue per job hour Which is a little bit different if they you know Clean a hundred and fifty dollar home and it took them three labor hours to do it that would be fifty dollars per labor hour per per per job hour Is that ring a bell? No, what rings the bell for me is the payroll percent to revenue For claiming technician to figure out because I don't even know what their pay Was Very easy Know what their pay was they all knew what they were getting paid. They would do it at the end of the day Right, and they knew how many hours they worked So what I remember is they knew what they got paid They knew how many hours that they worked so they have their total pay and then that that's what they used it for There's a direct correlation between Revenue per job hour and your loaded direct payroll to revenue Yesterday a hire your revenue per job hour is the lower your lower Loaded direct payroll to revenue as so you could do it either way. I guess it's just a function of you know who would what day do you have available at the end of the day and who can you know What your employees find more easy to calculate but They come in every day with it with a calculator and kind of crunch numbers, right? Yeah at the end of every single day Yeah, that's what they did From her there's a couple of the things that we haven't gotten here yet in terms of expectations and accountability So that kind of fits that model, right? Absolutely. Absolutely Let's talk about commission paying job ticket hours. Let's talk about job ticket hour That's when you pay even a higher hourly rate per The amount of labor hours that you estimate it's you think it's going to take to clean the house How you calculate that I guess I don't do we do we do we Do we care how you would go about figuring out what you would want to how you'd want to pay The question is well, how much do you pay per hour if you're doing job ticket hour Do do we do we care at this point or do we just want to leave it to say that? It's a higher hourly, right? You might I'm thinking everybody down here always wants to know what are the benchmarks? What are the standards? What are the averages? So if you have something I think that's gonna be great. Well, I was Kind of pulled into this discussion today too Yeah, if you're doing job ticket hour, don't worry about any of this mess over here. We don't need that Think But say you want to pay $95 an hour Yeah, excuse me $15 an hour if your target that's your target, right? Yeah, you got an efficiency and we haven't gotten to this yet So this might make more sense tomorrow an efficiency if you remember is being defined as The Yeah, the time that we're actually on a job clocked into a job divided by our total clock time Which includes is job time plus driving and meeting time or whatever So when you plug in your efficiency You're basically taking into account the non productive time So if 15 is your target then the formula is pretty simple You take what your target is divided by your your your company efficiency and it gives you the hourly pay that you should do while somebody is You know Based on the allowed time of the job Yes In this case if you want to do job ticket hour and you want people to somebody make $15 an hour and on the average Efficiency is 80% then you pay them 1875 while they are You know not even while they're on the job that would be applied to the allowed hours for the job so how that usually works is so if you had 1875 was The The job ticket hour usually what they do is they apply an amount to the house So they will say I'm gonna use $20 because easier for me. So three hour house. We pay $20 an hour So we're gonna pay $60 job ticket hour So we're gonna pay $60 for you to clean this house. So if you get it done in two hours, great You just now made 30 bucks an hour So that's sort of the incentive for a job ticket hour is And it's a lot of people think it's easy on the company as well because they just say how much they're paying for house So mrs.  Smith's house pays you a different amount of money the other performance pay that we're gonna talk about is Commission, which is just a percentage of the revenue that's generated and a lot of people want to know a g how do I figure out what percentage just to pay my people and That's kind of straightforward to figure out as well. If you have a couple of basic KPIs You got to figure out what your target hourly pay is You need to know what your efficiency is just the way that you did over on the job ticket hour But you also need to know what your average revenue per job is So in this example, we want to pay $15 an hour for clock time If you have an average revenue per per labor hour or job hour same thing of $50 and an efficiency of 75% Then if it's a one-person team, then you'd pay 40% per per person And basically if you got two people on the average you pay 20% or three or four It would be per rated that way the formula is Let me see if I can actually show this in a way that would be This link somewhere or this is just on your desktop. It looks like maybe an Excel or something Yeah, it is and this is out there for downloads somewhere But I don't know where it is it would it be helpful if I put this in cleaning business today Yep, people will love that I promise you but aren't a bunch of these calculators are I think on YouTube Yeah, I don't know if there's a I did this for a more for Main service success on that. This is this is part of that. So this is it. I don't have a KPI video on this. I've got like a 40 minute video on this that I gave to a more that's out there that Have a link to I could could share as well if somebody wants 40 minutes of what to do with this spreadsheet But Basically what we're doing is we're taking the $15 an hour and we're dividing it by this $50 times point seven five that point seven five basically is Taking the $50 an hour you making while somebody's clocked into a job. He multiplied times point seven five That's the average revenue that somebody is generating while they're on the clock So over an eight-hour day that they work an average of eight hours 50 times point seven five whatever that is would be the average revenue per clock hours opposed to job hour Does that make sense does that make sense everybody I Talk with people a lot about this a lot. So I Get it fairly easily, but I know that it's a new concept for a lot of people So I'm curious the people that are on today. I can't remember who else on I know didn't eat son Robbins on Debbie's on Sam's on okay Sam makes sense you okay. Awesome. Thank you so if I'm making an average of $50 generating $50 per hour for the time that somebody's actually clocked into a job and if the average company efficiency is 75 percent then $50 times 75 percent comes up to be 3750. This is the average Revenue that's generated per clock hour. So that's including drive time and everything So does this make sense to you Linda? I see Linda's on here, too. Um, I Do have a question Tom. So how do people are we going to be talking about how they figure out their average efficiency factor or? Yeah, efficiency is coming tomorrow Okay So tomorrow y'all don't know what this number is. Tomorrow is the big efficiency day The difference is a wonderful number. You can do a lot of cool things with it productivity is an important number, too but in the few minutes we have left this is just talk about how these performance pay systems can increase productivity basically all of them are giving people incentive Well, I'm gonna take that back Arguably the split hourly is is more of an efficiency thing than it is a productivity thing So I am gonna draw a line through that I would argue that Split hourly doesn't really motivate somebody to clean a house faster because they're making more money while they're cleaning a home What it does motivate them to do is not to goof off between jobs Unless Tom the only time I can think that it might work is I know that some people pay more money They have split hourly for deep clean versus recurring clean or initial cleans so that people will speed up during those cleanings More than less. I'm sorry. They pay less So that people will speed up during those cleanings Because they can tend to take a long time Okay So it's the only time God I've been doing this for a while. I've never heard of that No, because it's a harder work. It's a lot harder work than maintenance cleaning So, I don't know. I've never cleaned the home, but that's what I've been told My gosh. Yeah, so that that's not true. I have but you know, I Firstly have never seen you clean anything. So I'm not sure I've never given this thing much thought I pay percentage commission only total per house. Yep. So Total 44 percent per house Okay, hey Sam's given made central a plug. Thank you, Samantha Yeah, they central does make all this really easy. Yeah, it's true Especially efficiency because it is tough to track. I used to make commission But people had a hard time understanding why they only got paid 45% of the job or what that equated to so then I switched to Buy the job pay. I know the percentage calculation, but they know on a three hour house They get paid $60 and that equals to $20 per job ticket. Yep. That's what we're just talking about And clean that house.  Hey, I've never seen him clean anything I've seen him hold the clock actually that's not true. I've seen you clean walls down whiteboard walls getting the In the war room cleaning You really scrub up on the on the war room that's for sure Okay, um Don't got it. We're out of time again. Yep. Sorry Tom We won't we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit more about how commission and job ticket hour In particular can be used to increase your productivity and what that means to You're loaded direct payroll to revenue and then we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna go deep into Efficiency tomorrow Tom Sam wants to know if yeah, yeah, it does. Absolutely Job ticket hour was Relatively new. I mean it's been around for a while, but I mean well to me it's central actually been doing it for for a while We added that a while ago, but it was the last it was the last pay type that that we added Yes, we're I can and it does all the prerations for you So if you got multiple people on a team or somebody gets there later leaves early It does all the arithmetic for you. So you don't you don't need a spreadsheet anymore. Thank you Robin It is It is past time of the hour Right now Okay guys, we'll see you tomorrow Expectations and accountability to tomorrow is a big day. We're gonna start tying a lot of this together So hope to see you then bye bye