Hello everyone, welcome to the first mindfulness session for the conference. My name is Kim Siew. I'm so feeling so pleased and privileged to be here. Firstly just to give you a heads up that sometimes my internet can be a little bit intermittent so if there's any disruption as a result of the internet do please bear with us. I would like to think though that it shouldn't happen and that this should not detract from your mindful experience of being here now. I want to first acknowledge that I'm delivering this session from the land of the Ghana people in Adelaide and that I recognise the importance of their connection to land, water, culture and community and that I respect their eldest past, present and emerging. Now in terms of the structure of this session, I would like to first take about 10 minutes to get us all on the same page on what mindfulness is. I'm sure most of you here would know what it is but I still think it's useful to get us all on the same page. I also think that it's good to bust some myths for some of you who think that you don't know how to practice mindfulness or you don't do it well and then I would also really like to share some research on the benefits of mindfulness. So for some of you this might be old news and if it is well sit back pretend you're 5 years old again and you're listening to your favourite bedtime story just relax. And then after that I will guide you through mindfulness practice. I do want to emphasise that please stay safe. So at any point during the guided mindfulness practice if you feel uncomfortable, there are strong emotions arising for you. Do please resource yourself and what I mean by that is if you have your eyes closed then do open your eyes and take in your surroundings and taking your surroundings sorry just checking on my internet and also and if you need to stand up go and get yourself a drink etc. I would like to think that this won't happen because the guided practice really I've I guess designed it to just help you feel more centred and spacious and hopefully even walking away feeling a little bit more uplifted. So let's get on the same page as to what is mindfulness. So I'm using John Kabat's definition which I'm sure many of you here are very familiar with which is that mindfulness is awareness cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular way on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally. So when you look at that definition it really seems quite simple isn't it? It's really about cultivating our awareness paying attention to what's going on right here right now and not judging whether it's good or bad. So it seems simple but obviously it's not easy to practice and this is where I feel like busting some bits might be helpful. So because of the fact that we are so conditioned to for our mind to wonder all the time it has a tendency to think about what's just happened or you know worrying about the future it's good to have an anchor to anchor our mind to a certain object of focus so that we can pay attention to what's going on right here right now and so typically breaths are used otherwise it could be our five senses you know sight, listening to sounds, smelling, touch and of course we can also anchor our attention to sensations we feel in our body. So when you think about that then really we can practice mindfulness anywhere anytime and you know using our five senses when you're going for a walk, when we're eating tasting, smelling, looking at the food and also in terms of movement whether we're going to the gym whether we're practicing yoga or tai chi or qigong these all can be done very mindfully because we're just really paying attention to what's going on right here right now so I guess the myths or a lot of people have this misconception that they can't practice or they don't know how to practice mindfulness because their mind is busy all the time and really that is quite normal and the aim of mindfulness is really not about getting rid of thoughts it's really about being able to be with what is going on in this present moment and one meditation teacher I know actually says that he likes to define mindfulness as being intimate with this moment right here and using John Kabat-Zinn's work he also says that basically the attitude we want to cultivate and embrace during a mindfulness practice are these seven attitudes first it is with a beginner's mind so every moment we bring on that curiosity as if we're sensing our breath for the first time and it is the first time because it's a new fresh breath so the beginner's mind is one attitude it is that we're not judging so whatever that is going on in this present moment we allow it so we let it be, we accept we are not striving so we're not trying to achieve anything certainly not trying to achieve enlightenment we'll get there but the more we strive the more whatever we're trying to achieve is elusive and of course we want to be patient with ourselves and then trust, trust that we have the ability to do this to be present, to be mindful now in terms of sharing the research I was very very surprised when I looked into this that there are now more than 17,000 publications showing positive effects of mindfulness from improving our general well-being to reducing depression, anxiety, physical pain, stress and giving us better self-regulation so what's happening in our body when we practice mindfulness through starting with grounding and centering it activates our parasympathetic nervous system so what that means is our heart rate slows down, our blood pressure slows down and it also comes down that fight, flight, or freeze response part of our brain which is the amygdala and then what it does is it gives a chance for our prefrontal cortex to be activated so we can regulate our emotions, we can make better decisions and you know for everyone here who are mental health professionals the research actually shows that it could improve our therapeutic presence so in other words with the more mindfulness practices you do the more compassion, self entombment you'll be cultivating and also you get a better perspective on suffering whether it's your own suffering or your client's suffering which meant that you can then build a stronger therapeutic alliance with your client and there are evidence actually to show that basically patients show better improvements whether it's symptoms reduction or rate of change when they're treated with biomedical health professionals who meditate versus those who don't meditate there are just better results from those who meditate so the other thing I also want to clarify is what is mindfulness and what is meditation so meditation really is a formal form of mind training so it's the liberal training of attention and awareness so there's that combination of concentration and awareness that is in play when we practice meditation and there are of course many forms of meditation from mindfulness meditation which is what I'll give you an experience of and then loving kindness meditation which I'm sure many of you would have practiced before mantra visualization etc ultimately the aim of meditation and mindfulness is over time it gives us the we start to become aware of our conditioned habits of thinking our conditioned mind and we can also start to see especially through mindfulness meditation that nothing is permanent the pain we feel the emotions we feel it's not permanent and with regular practice it does cultivate that acceptance and openness and really increase our self-awareness as well as window of tolerance so I like what one meditation teacher says that really the practice of mindfulness is you can kind of relate it to as if we are trying to drink water in a cup when we put a table of salt into that cup of water we put a table of salt into that cup of water it's really quite un-drinkable because it's very salty but when we put a table of salt into a big pond you can still drink the water even though it might taste slightly saltier so this is what mindfulness really helps us to do it expand the capacity the openness of our mind so that we become large containers for whatever challenges that we face and this is where you know it's increasing that window of tolerance I also like what my teacher, my meditation teacher Jack Comfield says he says that we have within us unlimited capacities for joy for communion with life and for unshakable freedom and I think this is really what mindfulness gives to us is the fact that with regular practice we realize that we are much more spacious than we think we are we are able to make choices we are able to regulate our emotions so we have a choice we have a choice in terms of how we want to feel and we become much more comfortable in our own skin we don't judge others and most of all we don't judge ourselves because we're much more accepting so on that note I invite you to meditate do a mindfulness meditation with me for today because it's the first section I'm going to just take you through a grounding practice with your five senses then going into your breath and then into your body and I will also then guide you to become aware of your emotions I thought this might be a good practice especially in relation to this evening's panel of discussion where you'll be talking about complex case scenario and how you would respond so becoming comfortable with our emotions being there and open and accepting of whatever arises is a wonderful way for us to learn to regulate our emotions so that then we're not just reacting to situations but we're responding in a way that is deliberate and as I said before during the meditation if at any time you are feeling some intense emotions do just open your eyes and resource yourself so on that note please sit in a way that you're comfortable sitting and what I invite you first to do is to look around you and maybe look at one particular object and really take it in like what we said about the beginner's mind it could be even your fingers, your keyboard whatever that you see in front of you and seeing it for the first time what are you noticing about it that perhaps you haven't noticed before you to close your eyes if you're comfortable closing your eyes otherwise bring your gaze down towards the floor but what I'd like you to do now is to tune in to sounds around you what can you hear near or far to feel what can you feel perhaps it's the clothing on your body maybe it's your hands placed together your thighs on your chair what can you feel what can you smell and finally what can you taste now what I'd like you to do is bring your awareness to your breath and for the next few breaths I invite you to deepen the in-breath and deliberately slow down the out-breath as you slow down the out-breath you could almost imagine that whatever tension you might be feeling in your body is being released together with that out-breath into the earth into the ether you to just breathe naturally not changing the rhythm of your breath but again with that beginner's mind what can you notice about your breath perhaps just as a start where are you noticing your breath it's difficult to notice the breath you can always place your hands on your chest or on your belly embodied presence invite a sense of calm and ease to grow see how the breath is breathing itself the mind wanders as we said before that's very normal just like guiding a puppy to search bring your attention back to the breath to this anchor of being here now and you might even start to notice that there are other experiences sounds, sensations, images let them rise and fall like waves of the ocean around the breath I invite you to check in back with the body starting with the head relax your face maybe give yourself a little smile this allows the frown of your face to be ironed out maybe let your jaw drop a little to unclench the teeth so softening the face maybe slight tuck of the chin relaxing the tongue at the top of your mouth relax your shoulders let them roll down towards the spine just notice what are the sensations you're feeling around the arms the middle part of your body the heart beating perhaps as you're noticing the breath breathing into the lungs or sense rather the digestive system working acknowledging these amazing organs working on your own accord to keep you healthy attention to your pelvic area to your sit bones supported by the chair the back of your thighs so what feedback are you getting from that part of your body what sensations are you feeling we sense our knees, our shins your ankle and then your feet sense the ground supporting you as you become more present to your body I invite you to become mindful of any emotions that call your attention you can bring the same mindful loving awareness to them as you have to the breath and the body when an emotion arises let go of attention to the breath receive the emotion kindly it can be helpful to name it softly be feeling peaceful calm or maybe sad anxious bored so name them softly and then let them go as you attend to this emotion notice carefully where you feel in your body also notice that the emotion in your body is a constellation of sensations how does the emotion respond to kind awareness does it change all this spacious awareness can kindly notice the emotions as they come and go the breath is always there for you to come back to knowing whatever that is arising to just be like waves you are the gentle presence that is spacious and steady calm and steady witness acknowledging every moment as it arises but you now to just tune back into the body and the breath and again take some deep long inhale and some long and slow exhale and I shall complete the mindfulness meditation with three bells thank you everyone I hope that was a good practice for you my hope and vision is that one day we will all embrace mindfulness practice like we embrace brushing our teeth we wake up in the morning we brush our teeth we all don't think twice about whether we should how much time we have to brush our teeth we just do it because we know brushing our teeth is good for our teeth and there is now enough strong evidence to say if we practice mindfulness it's good for our mind it's good for us, it's good for our life and as mental health professionals we tend to look after others and not ourselves and so I ask that if you or encourage you that if you don't have a regular practice start with little bit you know maybe two minutes three minutes each time so there's this poem here that goes little by little I'll learn to know the trashed wisdom of long ago and one of these days perhaps we'll see that the world will be the better for me and do you not think that this simple plan made him a wise and useful man or woman so on that note I hope you've enjoyed the session I just want to mention that I do offer a free online meditation session every Wednesday from 7 to 7.30 am at the late time you can email me my email address is on the slide or you can also look up talks and blogs from me on my website cheetahlift.com I wish you all a wonderful evening thank you for your presence and thank you


of provision to um or uh new cp cycles in order to take advantage of those numbers and so that's going to be an increased need of staff on my team next fall to do that and then in summer of 2024 um to do the new cp base years um and doing that will allow us to draw down more federal funding but it's it's a lot of additional work on my team um and this year we have had to push off a bunch of our federally required administrative reviews to next year in order to get all that work done so we got a waiver from USDA to allow us to do that but at some point we can't you know it's been a long time since yeah um so i am concerned about that and just trying to balance all that work but if we if we go to that from 18 to 20 what 20 20 8 thousand i mean that's a tremendous amount of money i would think so there should be well there'd be more work involved so of course you need a little more labor involved to manage it so um so so that's one concern i've got for next year um there i think the the biggest complaints i heard were from independent schools um and the way that you handled independent schools in act 151 is that you provided funding for um if they were state approved independent school and i should say independent schools are allowed to participate in the national school lunch program as long as they're either state approved or state recognized and or not for profit so we do have about 20 independent schools that do participate in the programs generally some of those um we're you know serving high need students prior to covid um and have you know long been doing cep um but then some of those are like you know the academies and those sorts of schools um so the way that you set up funding for independent schools was that if the school was state approved and they offered universal meals to all of their students the state pays the universal meal supplement for the publicly funded students attending that school so that required some changes to our claiming system in order to be able to make that all work um so we spent about $18,000 not just for the independent school side of things but to make the universal meal supplement work in our online claiming system um and so those independent schools when they report their claim each month to us they report um the number of public pay publicly funded students um uh the number of meals eaten by those students and then the number of non-publicly funded students um they get the federal funds for the non-publicly funded students but then they only get the state universal meal supplement for the publicly funded students um those schools um we heard some some complaints from uh independent schools that did not have a lot of publicly funded students um just feeling that it was not fair and we also heard some concerns from schools that were not state approved that are state recognized um feeling concerned that they weren't eligible for those funds I also had a kind of a logistical question which is um when we're doing CEP or um uh the subsequent years of provision two we're not actually claiming meals based on the the actual student who ate it's all percentage and so um we couldn't figure out you know is this this particular student publicly funded or not and should they get um reimbursement for that so what we came up with and I'd love some legislative direction about whether this is an appropriate um whether this is how you'd like us to handle this going forward is we have those schools um who were in that situation report the number of publicly funded students compared to their total enrollment and we use that to calculate a percentage and then we applied that percentage to their paid student percentage um and that's how we figured out how much to fund them um it seems like a good solution but it wasn't you know exactly what you asked us to do in terms of funding exactly those meals because there's just no way to figure out exactly who is eating those meals sounds like a pretty fair way of doing it in a quick way I mean I think the education committee will probably yeah dig into it a little bit so yeah those were some some general thoughts about um how you might consider that going forward and then just to keep in mind um for your cost estimates going forward that USD updates those meal reimbursement rates every July um and one of the reasons that um that the that we're uh state funding is costing so much this year is because we didn't expect the reimbursement rate to be as high um and the difference between those two reimbursement rates to be as high um we based the estimates on last year's reimbursement rates so that's just something to kind of keep in mind when you're appropriating knowing that that number that per meal reimbursement is likely to grow every year um and just to keep that in mind the way you structured it it allows for the funding to be paid out um but uh you just wouldn't want to to make an estimate based on um assuming that that will never grow well um other questions for rosy thank you thanks for everything yeah yeah great work it was very very important to solve I guess we've got some work ahead it would be helpful if I got some of these numbers sure yeah I'm happy to write this up for you yeah and and obviously you know that's that's that's my math and you definitely want to bring jfo in and ask them to check it um but I'm happy to provide that to you yeah every day yeah so if there are no um no further questions uh thank you very much and we'll adjourn our meeting


Mae yw'r M80 motorway, gwneud yn Glasgow yn Stirling, ac mae yw'r qurter o'r £1 miliwn statiw, yw Arya. Rwy'n gweithio ar 33, mae'r statiw yw'r mhermeid yw'r Sculter Glasgo, a'r Dysgott, rwy'n gweithio'r Sculter Kelpi arall. Ond yna'r stori yw'r statiw, ac mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio ar 8 miliwn, North East. Rwy'n gweithio'r statiw ar Arya Ffadilla, a'r mhermeid y Romain Emperor Antonius Pius, a bod yn cyffin i'r Romain Empire ar 138-161 AED. A'r 142 AED, Antonius Pius byddai'r Romain trwps i'r gwmhwgol, sy'n gychwyn i gynyddiadu'r gwaith, fel Y Llywodraeth, Felly, yw'r diwrnod gyngor Patrick yma yn y Bibliotr, i ddian i Bones o'r ddiwrnod 4. Mae gweithio gallwn ni'n gweld y Wahanol Antirang. Mae'r gweithio'n ddechrau'r ddechrau yng ngyfodd y Romain, o'r 100 yn ysgwrth o Hedrian. Mae'r gweithio rhaid o'r Romain yn y ysgwrth y modern yng Nghymru. Felly ddim yn ei ddweud i ei ddwylo Casil yn y Falkirk. Mae'r gweithio'r Romain yn y wall Antirang. The Wall itself took 12 years to construct and ran 39 miles across the country and it stood at 3m high and 5m wide. The Wall itself was built on stone foundations but it was constructed mainly by turf hence why there's not much of the wall left today. A ditch was dug a massive ditch just north of the wall by the Romans as extra barrier of defence and this is still present today as you can see. These strange holes in the ground at Rough Castle are actually the remains of a Roman defence of booby trap that was just north of the wall. The Romans hid sharp wooden spikes smeared an animal fat to encourage sepsis in the victims in the holes and covered the holes with ferens to conceal them. These traps are called lilies meaning lilies a name coined by Caesar's army years earlier given how they looked. These traps were obviously meant to give the Romans an extra layer of defence against the people of ancient Scotland and Antonin's wall was attacked on various occasions throughout its history. But who were these people of ancient Scotland? First up is the Caledonians a tribal confederation that were considered to have occupied the region more north of this territory in general. The Caledonians were known as a fierce tribe of ancient Scotland or tribal confederation and they fought the Romans on countless occasions. Second up is a tribal confederation of Scotland that you perhaps haven't heard of unless you watched the previous video of mine. The Mai Tai a tribal confederation of ancient Scotland that occupied an area extremely close to the wall. The Mai hill in the Ocals in the Stirling area, which is just east of where I'm standing now, was the stronghold of the Mai Tai and there probably came into conflict with the Romans on countless occasions. The Romans used diplomacy as well as military tactics on numerous occasions as well though and there was potentially agreements at various points in the short time the Romans occupied this area. I know for instance that Roman coins have certainly been found all over Scotland and were given to the native peoples at various points. For a more detailed breakdown of the Mai Tai, this ancient tribal confederation of the land we call Scotland today, I'll link a video above as I made an exclusive video on the Mai Tai. I will also put the link in the description below. Another ancient tribe in this area was known as the Dam Noni. As far as some of the attacks on the wall and some of the general conflicts in this general area, one of the things that was written as I was walking around this place states that according to legend, a Pictish army led by Graham or Grim breached the wall about 500 metres west of here. Very quickly if you enjoy my videos and you would like to support my work in general through Patreon, I get exclusive benefits for only a couple of pounds per month. All the links will be in the description below. Thank you and now on with the video. Entering wall was protected by 16 forts with small fortlets between them and trip movement was facilitated by a road linking all the sites known as the military way. Decorative slabs were created by the Romans to commemorate building the wall. The bridge nest distance slab is one. Found in the 19th century in Bones, in this beautiful slab marked the building of the eastern section of the wall. Entering's wall was obviously a way for the Romans to fortify their position in Scotland, the land we call Scotland today. And it was a way to keep the barbarians as they saw them north. The wall also served as a way for the Roman emperor at the time, Antonius Pius, to flex his muscles. After all, his predecessor, Hadrian, had a wall in the north of England, what we call England today. So why shouldn't he have a wall named after him? The area around the wall became a strict military zone, with around 9000 Roman troops stationed along the wall. The Roman presence on Entering wall was quite short lived however. When the emperor Antonius died in the 160s AD, the Romans retreated back to Hadrian's wall. A combination of various factors, the death of the emperor of course, the headache of managing such a long supply chain to the northern wall, as well as repeated attacks from the natives, meant that manning and maintaining Entering wall just wasn't worth it for the Romans, and they retreated south to Hadrian's wall. For ways to support this work, I'll be in the description below. Patreons are a great way to support this channel. Thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time.


hey guys check this out 1 million seven thousand two hundred and fifty eight views two thousand seven hundred and eighty subscribers that's a milestone for me stay tuned i'll tell you what we're going to do next so what i'm going to do i've hit a milestone my personal milestone which is a million views okay i've only got 2700 subscribers all right now that's not a lot i understand that but the the views i'm kind of proud of that for only having 800 and some videos almost 900 videos so that's a lot of views so to me personally i'm really proud of that so i'm going to be doing a giveaway and what what i'm going to give away is this clock right behind me but what we've got to do first is some work on it let me explain okay guys this is the clock that i'm going to be giving away it's a pretty clock but as you can see it's missing the glass it needs cleaned up it's been hanging here in my shop so we're going to clean it up real nice we're going to um put some slack on it make it shiny we're going to put new glass in here maybe even plexiglass so it doesn't get broke as easy for someone and inside here i've got some little battery powered led lights i don't know if i want to put them on here or what but there's room up inside here to put them lights and we'll be doing a video together on that too we'll put the lights in it once everything else is done it's a very pretty clock this is what i'm going to be giving away i'm going to do the giveaway on march let's see here a little over 30 days about 30 days because uh february is only got 28 days in it so it's going to be we'll call it saturday march 21st at 8 p.m eastern eastern time now you know it's not brand new but once we clean it up we'll get it looking decent i'm not going to really do much sanding on it it's got a little couple little imperfections but that's character it's not an antique clock you know it's just a battery powered clock but this is what we're going to be giving away so you know you may want to stay tuned for that i'll have more details about how we're going to give it away let's see how do you guys want to do that how do you want to do the giveaway there's the clock hmm let's see so i think what we'll do is i'm going to do a video all right on the clock when we start working on the clock on the video of the clock i will have you if you're interested in entering the giveaway you must be subscribed please turn your bell notification on of course give me a thumbs up and in the comments all you have to write is entry okay and i will take all your entries and we may do some kind of thing that they do on the internet that automatically picks the winner um so that's what we're going to do so remember that not on this video but keep your eyes open so hit the bell icon so you'll get notified when we do the clock and as on that video in the comments like i said make sure you hit the like button subscribe and hit the bell icon and comment entry that's all you have to do and we'll pick a winner from that on March 21st will be a Saturday at 8 p.m we will do um we'll do a live stream how's that we'll do it live so that should be pretty fun all right so anyway guys that's what we got going on uh like i said i know it's not much it's not a hundred thousand subs you know but unfortunately um youtube doesn't recognize how many views you got um so but i do and i'm kind of proud of that so we'll be giving away this clock so good luck to everybody and remember hit your bell icon so you can get notified of when to put your entry when to enter the uh the uh the giveaway so um i'm going to try to get to this clock uh maybe this weekend i'm not sure but it's going to have to be soon okay so we can we can do this do this together and um you'll get to see everything i've done to the clock and if you win it then you'll get this particular clock in the one with the video um of us going over it and all that stuff and putting the glass in it probably plexiglass we'll just have to see um so yeah and um i will sign it on the back too so anyway guys thanks for watching i appreciate it and uh god bless you all shade bear to admit the man legend i'm gone for now bye bye guys we'll chat soon


How are you all today? Pretty good? Excited to learn some stuff about Roy Chris? Well, I'm Bobby Clark, and I will introduce this here, Wesley Lewis, just to give you a little bit about Wesley, and after you hear my words, the next one will be Wesley. Wesley is North-West, North-East Florida native, I think he's from Polacka, Florida. That's right, Lake City. Sure, you all agree with that, that area there. He unexpectedly lost his job and attended the WordPress Jax in 2017. This led to the bold decision to try to pursue WordPress as a full-time career. He founded 180 Digital, a small but growing digital agency focused primarily on local nonprofits. Despite the trial of trying to grow his business while also growing his family, Wesley has experienced one of the greatest years of his life and wants to tell others about the beautiful freedom that can come with running your own business. Wesley Lewis. I'm really excited about this opportunity. You don't really know how much it means for me to be standing here talking to you, because really, this talk is going to be part my story, part lessons learned. So, really, last year, and I'll just kind of get to the chase. Well, real quick, I'll tell you. Like he said, he introduced me. I started 180 Digital last year after attending WordCamp, and we're hanging out in Orange Park. He's a little more about me. I wanted to show this picture. This is my family. They play into this story. So, that's why I wanted to show you a picture. This is not just a thing to get you to do all over them. They're very important to me. Some other things about me, just so you know. Number one, I'm a dad. Two, I'm a husband. I am also a pastor locally, but I'm also a developer, which is why it's my full-time job. So, what I wanted to do is just kind of break down my story, exactly what happened to me last year. And I think, maybe at some point, you might be able to relate to some part of my story. And I think that we can go through this process, and then I'll go through kind of six hurdles, excuse me, that I've had to overcome this last year that I feel might apply to you. So, I just want to start out telling you about my worst day ever. Last year, it was right after the first of the year. I went to work. I worked at a nonprofit over 12 years. I was executive director there. Had done everything, ran everything, took care of everything. Went in to work with a normal day, just expecting a normal day. Went in, normally we have a staff meeting. Went in, had staff meeting. But this was a little bit different than a normal day because I had something exciting this year. My wife and I were expecting our fourth baby. And so, I wanted to kind of let everybody know we were super excited about that. So, during the staff meeting, I was just like, hey, you know, I got some news. We were expecting our fourth child. Most of the staff there was excited about that. Except for one person, that was my boss. And so, I thought that's kind of weird. Normally, he'd be excited for me. So anyway, he immediately had staff meeting. He went to his office, closed the door. And probably about two hours later, so he said, hey, come down, I want to talk to you. And so, I came down and sat in his office and he broke the worst news for me, which was that they were about to let me go. There were some financial issues going on and they decided that the best way to solve that issue was by letting me go. Now, there's a couple of issues with that. Number one, I was the sole income for my family. For me, that was it. I worked and supported all those beautiful people you saw a second ago. So it was all of me. My health care was attached to that. And I only had a few weeks to figure out what in the world I was going to do. So it was my worst day ever. It was really the day that my world kind of came crashing down. And I hadn't done anything wrong. I did my job well. I served my company well. Everything was going great. It kind of completely caught me off guard. And even though it wasn't the best option for me, they decided that they would let me go. So my question is, what would you do in that scenario? I probably did it. That's why I'm asking. Cry? Cry? I did that. I went home. I left, went home, and I cried. I'll be honest with you because I thought, man, I got to tell my wife this and this is going to be a lot of changes for our family. What else would you do?  I didn't do that, but I was upset. And probably like most of you, I went and applied for everything. I was like, I got to find something now. I had some money saved up in the bank, but I knew I needed to find something as soon as possible and I had to take care of them. So that was my goal. I applied for everything. I applied for government jobs. I applied for local jobs. I called friends. And the thing was, because I was sole provider for them, I couldn't just make minimum wage. That just wasn't going to work. It would take up all my time. I still would be able to pay my bills. So I had to find something that would work for me, that would enable me to provide for my family and we lived extremely frugally, but at a level that we were comfortable with, that just didn't happen. I worked out every lead that I could find. And not that the job market wasn't well, but I came out of a job market that basically took an entire year to try to find another equivalent job. So I had a year, but I only had a few weeks of pay. So it really wasn't something that was pleasurable, but I say that to you that in that moment, I started to think about what was going on in my life and I started to do kind of an inventory. A personal inventory where I started to think, you know, I had been involved in doing building websites for friends and for companies and for people. For about 10 years, I had worked with Juma, I've worked with Drupal, I've worked with WordPress, and I'm just kind of one of those guys who likes to figure things out and do things myself. So that came in handy and I thought maybe, maybe that was an option. I thought maybe, I have just a little bit of time here, so maybe I could just think about it for a second, that WordPress full-time is an option for me. And so it was really in that thought I came to WordCamp, Jacksonville, 2017, without a job, without any income, without anything. And I sat in this room and I listened to the speakers and it was really in that moment that I had this light bulb moment that showed me that there are so many ways to make a full-time income with WordPress. It's just unbelievable. Because there were people here who were agency owners, there were people here who were theme developers or they ran a blog or they developed plugins or made templates. There were so many different ways that people made a living doing WordPress and it was so inspiring to me that it made me just really think this is maybe this, this agony that I'm going through is really an opportunity for me to do something great for me and my family. So as I left WordCamp Jacks in 2017, I started to hear this kind of small voice echoing in my head and it sounded a little bit like this. It didn't quite sound like Shia LaBeouf but still my thought was I think I can actually do this. I think I can actually do this. I think I can actually begin to create work towards the type of life I wanted for my family but also be able to provide it in a flexible way where I could spend more time with my family. And so as I said that, I'm like I really think I can do it. So my journey leaving WordCamp Jacks 2017 I started 180 digital I started going through all these hurdles that I'm going to talk about today and this isn't an exclusive list. I started kind of a creative agency. I know there's so many different ways that you can make WordPress full-time and this obviously is not going to cover all of them but I'm just hoping that maybe some of what we talked about today you can apply. But I do want you to know that it is possible. So if you're going a different route maybe some of these hurdles that you're going to encounter will be a little bit different but for me this is what happened. So here I am a year later am I 100% full-time I want to get full disclosure here no I'm not okay. But here's the thing I am almost there. So like I have made such progress in this last year that I'm almost there I'm like I'm almost there I will be there by the end of this year 100% for sure. And so as things are growing these are the hurdles that I had to overcome. So the first thing I want to talk about and this was an issue for me especially kind of with a scenario that I had to deal with is the first hurdle I had to deal with was myself and simply put I did a serious evaluation of me. Okay I sat down I made lists I said what are my strengths what are my weaknesses I had to know because honestly I wasn't going to kind of fully commit to this if I didn't think I really had what it took and as I started to experience you know really what I had the skills and the experience that I had I started to think man I've got a bunch of administrative experience I've got a lot of technical skills I could code and I could design add some creative skills I had this web development skills I started really doing inventory I'm like I think I can do something I think I have the skills necessary to do that so I started to think well what is it my passion in life and for me my passion was to help people I love to help people if someone if I do something for somebody it helps them it makes me feel good so I started to think well what could I do that I could involve my creative skills my technical skills in the word of world press technical skills administrative skills all those things put together that can really help people and the answer to that question for me was starting an agency and I took a disc assessment if you're familiar with that which is a personality profile a serious personality profile not Facebook personality profile but a serious personality profile where you can kind of help identify your strengths and weaknesses and personality type and it was through that I really thought I think I'm the person to start an agency so as I started to go through there I kind of asked myself this question what do I have going for me and I don't mean do a serious evaluation so that you can figure out what your problems are to figure out what your strengths are what do you have going for you and when you feel like that you start to really think man I've got some skills I've got some value I've got some things that somebody else wished that they had that's important to realize about yourself because I remember last year you know somebody was talking about I was in a session with Jay Owen and he was just talking to somebody and they were just like I hate to talk about money and he said to her you probably hate to talk about money because you don't think you're worth the money and it was important for me to establish am I worth somebody paying me to do something I started to think yeah but somehow we have a tendency to become blind to that to ourselves so we don't think about that we don't see ourselves that way we think everybody else can do what we do maybe in this room but not out there in the world they can't do that so for us when you have skills and abilities identify what those things are ask yourself what do I have going for me the mistake here the biggest mistake you can make is undervaluing yourself okay undervaluing yourself once you figure out what those things are you can do that you can do that so yes first rule I had is yourself I think for me it was I had to figure out who I was and if I had it had it for me and I felt like I did so my first tip I have a couple tips in here just know who you are know yourself really do an honest ask people because sometimes not that you would have leaned fully on that but ask people do you feel like I have what it takes someone who really does you most of the time they'll encourage you to say yes but sometimes you need some encouragement alright the second hurdle that I faced was identify my market figuring out what it was for me that I was going to do best I know I was going to start an agency there's so many different things you could do so many industries so much potential work out there I need to identify exactly what was my market I need to define my focus and my niche and understand who I could relate to best you know it isn't about necessarily being exclusive to them it's about identifying who you had the greatest potential with so that you can go out there and target them first because if you were like me I needed to make money and I needed to make money quick so I needed to figure out who those people were so that I can do that my dad is an avid fisherman and you know he says this you gotta know what you're fishing for you can't just put anything on a hook and throw it out there you gotta know what you're fishing for and so I would identify it's kind of a silly question but what am I good bait for if I'm the bait here who's going to buy to that who's going to want to be the person who works with me who's going to want the skills and abilities that I have and identify that market so find the needs in that industry when you figure out maybe now for me I had a lot of skills and abilities and nonprofits and understand how that culture works so I knew that that was going to be the industry that I was going to primarily focus on first so I started to think about what are the needs in that industry specifically because I knew it well I knew what the needs were so I could kind of tailor what I was going to offer to somehow help someone else's need because that's it you gotta find somebody else's ache you gotta find their pain okay what's aggravating them then you have to solve that now whether that's a new website or graphic design or managing their social media which for me most nonprofits hate that okay they don't like doing that so that was one way that I was able to kind of offer a service to them that they felt was valuable so I asked myself this is an interesting question what language do I speak what's the language that you know well now we're talking about you can speak all kinds of languages but in an industry you know the lingo you understand how people talk in a certain industry you know the co-phrases you know the acronyms you know all those things that's a good way to help you understand what specific area or market you can go with I started out this thinking man I'm just going to go and try to do everything for anybody and it was too broad too early for me I realized really by trying to do everything for everybody I'm not really going to accomplish a lot really to kind of get going to get traction at the beginning I needed to focus on this specific market another good reason that this was my market is I had a ton of connections so therefore it was going to be the fastest way for me to get going was hurling over this my market and figure out who that is the third hurdle that I had to overcome was figuring out who my client was so if I identify a market that's a little different than who your market is because your market is you're understanding an industry your client is questioning who is really looking specifically who is looking for someone like you and for me networking was the key to try to figure that out I needed to understand who was out there and I began to talk with people I had lunch with like a million people I just started to get out there and put my name out there give people cards just get my stuff out there to the people that I thought were in my market to see who might be my client networking is so important because working in is a great networking opportunity here get out there and talk to people and let them know that hey I'm trying to start something and you'd be surprised at how many people actually want to help you start something they want to help you be a part of that they want to see people succeed so they're willing to go out there kind of on a limb maybe recommend you when you don't really have a whole lot of portfolio you know and you kind of go out there to try to do that so understanding who is looking for someone like you another kind of phrase we can't build a bit of we don't have basements in Florida but you know if you were up north maybe you can't build a business from your garage we'll say that we got garages here you can't stay at home all the time and expect your business to grow now for me in my industry that is true now if you're a blogger yes okay that probably could work because you're just getting content out constantly but for me part of me finding those clients and in that network was that I needed to get out there and find those people go out and find them and so I asked myself who do I want to work with who is it going to be enjoyable for me to work with who is it that I understand I can communicate well with and I identify those people and the mistake that I think is made sometimes in this place and let me say I've made these mistakes okay I put these up here not because I didn't make them just because I did make them thinking everyone is my client not everybody is your client especially going to be a good client it can be your client you have to find someone who is just right for you you're looking for someone that is looking for someone like you who has a problem that you can help resolve so you're the best bait for someone figure out who that is and go for it it's not like you're not going to fish in the rest of the pond it's not that you're not going to do that but at least at first for me because I needed to get this done as quickly as possible I needed to find that person so that hurdle for me was identifying who my client was and I want to just talk about this real quick about building relationships over customers for me as starting an agency I knew from the beginning partly from my experience with nonprofits that relationships pay off again and again and again okay through referrals through reviews if I work with my clients and I really intentionally build relationships with them that's a two way street they're going to start to trust me and then when they trust me they're going to bring more more work my way I'm going to become their guy if I'm their guy, quite a few different people I'm going to have a full time income so I want to become that so I want to build relationships so I'm just going to go out there find somebody to do the work and turn it over I want to build a relationship with them that's going to happen there there's things that need to make sure that you can build somebody something and send it off but it's not going to stay that way because they don't know what they're doing so understanding building relationships I just want to say this real quick and we'll fly through this what customers they want it now they want it for the lowest price they're not loyal to you but if you focus on building client relationships like I said it builds trust relationship with them they're going to give you great reviews I have no problem giving reviews when I ask somebody they're like yes I would love to hear from you they do that for me so they go on there and they give me a review part of that reason I do that I don't want to take this for granted because building relationships is easy for me I just have a lot of experience with that some people it doesn't come naturally my wife is introvert she's an introvert that's kind of obvious but I just want to make sure how do you build relationships with clients I really listen to them I sincerely listen to them and I ask questions about the things that they tell me I want to know more about them and it isn't necessarily questions that completely revolve around work or the project I'm asking them questions about themselves sometimes because especially when you're trying to design something for a client you need to know about who they are as a person so that you can design something that really represents them well so through that process I get to know them ask them questions and I'm honest with them I'm like hey I'm starting business here I'm trying to get things going for my family they want to help me and I try to be genuinely helpful I give an example today I was working with a marketing client she never used Pinterest never used Instagram she's all about Facebook and I'm like you need to be on Instagram and Pinterest and part of what she paid us to do was to set her up on those so we set her up on those I had to sit down and show her on her phone how to use Pinterest and how to use Instagram now did I have to do that no was that in my contract with her no but that was me being helpful to her when she sees that I'm being helpful to her she responds in kind so that's how I build relationships just really simple so you do those things, you're likable people like you, they're going to like your Facebook page they're going to give you great reviews things of that nature as long as you're doing good work I say you do that and do good work things will be well the fourth hurdle that I had to face was building a team because do you remember when I talked about understanding who you are the first hurdle part of understanding that is understanding who you aren't what your weaknesses are so once you understand what your weaknesses are you identify who you need because if you're not good at something you don't need to be doing it there's things that you're going to have to do as the business owner but at the same time those things that you're not good at you take up the most time you're the least efficient at them so at first you might think I don't have the money to hire someone I don't have the money to pay somebody to do that that's not true you need to find someone who's better at doing something than you are pay them a little bit to do it they're going to do it faster they're going to do it better which is going to make your client happier so understanding who you need as on your team identifying those people by understanding what your weaknesses are that helps you to know hey, these are the people I'm looking for so through this networking that you're doing this how I got the people it was through referrals hey, I know somebody okay great, I want to define people who are local so I like to meet people kind of meet them face to face stare at them or something like that so I understand who they are make sure that they're a good fit for me so I want to define somebody right around me so I'll look first depending on your type of work-press business I want you to look online and find someone but for me, I wanted to invite them to do to be part of my process I wanted to invite them we have meetings every Monday if I have a client and I have something that's pertaining to them I bring them with me and we go through that it just helps me, to me in my opinion it helps to be more efficient and build a better end product so for me, I'm trying to do what I do best that's my goal, I'm not there yet I'm trying to do my best I don't realize for me, orchestrating this whole process is what I do best I've realized that over this whole year that my gifts and abilities I know about Photoshop I know about coding and am I a pro at all those? no, but I can understand I can speak all those languages I can understand the problems so my gift and my ability is to administrate all that but either way, identify what those things are find people who compliment that ask yourself what don't I have time for? now this is a question I'm asking myself right now as things get busier and business starts to build I'm like, man, I just don't have time to get this done I don't have time to do this and maybe it's even something I'm kind of good at but there's other things that are more important like meeting with clients and I want to be the person who does that so I ask myself what don't I have time for and then I'm going to try to find people specifically to meet those needs now, I work with all the people that work with me are freelancers I pay them well they're freelancers so they're working on hourly rates so if I need to pick somebody up I can pick somebody up and find somebody mistake is at first I try to do everything myself and it took me forever to get projects done it took me forever and I thought that's not helping my client relationship that's not helping me be efficient so over the course of me starting out trying to do everything myself to realizing I needed a team the fifth hurdle that I had was my process for me because I'm kind of an administrative guy I love processes I just love them I love figuring them out I love figuring out how work flows together trying to make things efficient for me, efficiency is the key to my organization now we the most efficient, no but we're trying to get there and part of what we're doing that is understanding trying to make work easier and understanding how I work best figuring out my project flow and for me this process is priceless because here's the cool thing about this is that when I get better and I get more efficient me and my team my company overall gets more efficient if you're a blogger you're going to get more efficient at doing your content and cranking that content out there now always your content is going to get better you're going to get it out there quicker and the quality of it is going to be better so the people are going to pay more for it so the thing is the more efficient you can get in your process and delivering that better end product you're going to spend less time on it and you're going to get paid more so I knew that that was a goal that I had I needed to get projects done as quickly as possible as I can but still deliver that best end product and I do that and so investing in that efficiency is part of how I try to get that forward and keep that going so this efficiency is crucial to keeping projects on timelines understanding what needs to be done what it needs to be done, what does it do so that's not holding up other work all those sorts of things so we actually have eight depending on nine possible stages of development and depending on the project and we work through those stages we understand what stage the project is in I'm a visual guy and I'll say this too with our process I'm still figuring these out I'll tell you one thing like Asana can you all use Asana in here to develop a few people I'm feeling better now I'm pulling two people away with their hands I guess because I'm a little bit creative I'm visual so I have a hard time using it for workflow it's what we use right now but I know there's got to be something better out there so if you have suggestions let me know but it's part of my process right now but I know it's not the most efficient and I feel like I'm learning to do things the Asana way which isn't what I want to do I need something that works for the way that I work so figuring out your project flow ask yourself how can I make things easier how can I make things easier and easier not so that you deliver a worse in product but easier for use that you can be more efficient to deliver a better product my mistake that I made was just talking to everybody how do you do this, how do you do this I got started, I subscribed to stuff that I did not need and you used this, okay I would subscribe, sign up for it use it for a few months why did I use this I haven't touched this in like 2 or 3 months so I would cancel that I started doing things like everyone else that's not how you're going to work so figure out how you work and what your process is this is something that I had to learn don't let learning hinder doing don't let your learning hinder doing for me I do, like I said I started out trying to do everything myself I have so much stuff to learn I have so much stuff so I signed up on like Code Academy and this class and that class I had some cash I was trying to invest in my business but I realized I'm sitting here doing all this work I'm doing all this learning but I'm not doing any work if I'm not doing work then I'm not making money so I need to balance this learning and doing together so don't let your learning hinder doing and I find that this is true I went to school straight through I was 7 years through school, okay, masters degree all this kind of stuff and there were guys that were there with me who were working and they took them twice as long to do it but they knew what they wanted to do and so I feel like for me when I go back and I take a class for something I don't know specifically exactly what kind of class I want to take and how it's going to help me how it's going to benefit me how it's going to make me more efficient so don't let your learning hinder you're doing the last hurdle is pricing so I did all those things I realized who I was who my market is who my client is who my team's going to be what my process is going to look like how much that's going to cost me and everything and ultimately I came to okay now what do I need to charge how do I need to deal with that price well just from my experience the number one thing that you're selling is yourself the number one thing that you're selling is you so if you go to talk to someone and you're able to make them comfortable with who you are whether that's over the phone or in person they'll be much more likely to go with you why because I had clients come to me they got proposals and they talked to people over the phone I like to set up a consultation before I tell someone what their price is going to be I like to meet them face to face yes that takes up more time for me but it helps me establish that relationship with that client so I like to get to meet with them and I talk to them I tell them about myself like hey I'm a dad I'm a normal person I'm a regular guy but this is my job this is what I do and I find that when I present myself in that way people are more apt to go with me even if I do charge a little bit more than other people other thing don't be afraid to talk about money people are coming to talk to you they are expecting you to give them a number so don't be afraid to talk about it and think like I said earlier as you get better you can charge more what I charged a year ago what I charged down is much more than what I charged a year ago but I knew I needed to get something started I knew I needed to get the ball rolling and I wasn't as efficient back then I wasn't as good as I am now so I realized that as I got better I could charge more because my own profit is going to be better now because I work in the world with nonprofits who don't typically have very much money there's a ceiling there I know that but I'm able to say here I am not just as some guy who works out of his house who can build a website but I'm an agency who has graphic designers and developers and marketers a better in product a better solution to your problem now I can charge them more and also when you're thinking about your pricing think about your long term goals for me I knew that I wanted to provide an income for my family I had done lots of reading and one thing that I knew that I needed to do was establish reoccurring income and depending on your type of WordPress business especially in kind of a creative agency you know you're just hopping from one project to another and there's kind of a feast or famine cycle that goes along with that and I read enough to know that from the beginning I wanted to work on those relationships with the clients so that I could have that reoccurring revenue so that I could establish relationships with them so I'm not broke all the time and even still over this last year it's like a roller coaster I get paid but then I don't get paid the rest until I finish a project and I'm like man I got to get this project done because I need to get paid but understanding what your pricing is by knowing what your process is what your team is what your skills and abilities are all those things play into what you're able to ask now yeah figure out what everybody else is doing figure out what the going rate is but if you're just starting out you're not going to be able to ask that you're not going to be able to ask that but figure out what that is to set yourself a goal you can do it and really for me the question I ask myself in this whole process is really how can I bring value or more value to my clients how can I bring them a better value not just they're going to pay me but how can I give them more for their money I'm going to start asking for more money but I need to give more when I do ask for more money to give a better product I'm not talking about money being apprehensive about talking about it when I meet with a client I hear about the project I want to know what they're really looking for what are they hoping to accomplish with that that all helps me to build that relationship with them and then I don't give them a price for that consultation I think about what they're saying I kind of use a more value based pricing strategy I hear them, I talk to them I get to know them understand how this project is going to benefit them I go back and do a proposal and I send it to them and then I talk over it with them I learned this never do anything for free I should build a little little asterisk there but free doesn't mean for not any money you can do things where your payment isn't necessarily money maybe it's a referral maybe flight it's going to be good for your portfolio maybe it's going to be good experience for you maybe just know how something is going to benefit you have an understanding from the get go that this is going to benefit me this way this is going to benefit me exactly how whether that's a great experience for you I have a few projects right now I'm doing for free and the reason I'm doing them for free is because I need to add them to my portfolio they're not a lot of work I can kind of do with my spare time but for me it helps give me credibility into my industry specifically growing outside of my nonprofit market my investment project for lower amount or almost free or something like that to understand I'm also usually get some recurring revenue from that so I don't actually do it for free but it kind of helps introduce me to a sector it helps me introduce me to a new thing so just some ways for developing recurring revenue each one of these hurdles could be a whole session in and of itself especially this one maybe next year I'll have more insight into this and I'll give you some more how do I do that through retainers number one developing ongoing relationships with those clients whether that's maintaining their website supporting it we do graphic design retainers marketing retainers social media support retainers we do a lot of that kind of stuff so we can really help our clients whatever the problem is typically we can help them with that but understanding that these are relationships so from the beginning I knew I wanted to establish retainers I knew I wanted to offer them I knew I wanted to price them hosting this is something that I do and this is something that I've created but it's something I've partnered with an existing post you can use like type host here you could talk with I use dream host as one of the sponsors they have some WordPress optimized hosting and here's what I do I offer that to my clients I manage it for them I maintain it for them I install premium plugins on there for them so I offer them a value added service that they appreciate that they're going to get for less than if they were to try to go out there and get it themselves and the last way and I kind of call this my icing on the cake because if you get these other two things going on and then you have these other projects but repeat business somebody comes back to me again I know this maybe isn't reoccurring technically but repeat business when somebody comes back to me and I just did a great project for them and they have a little bit of something extra like hey can you design this project or can you design this booklet for me hey can you do this and kind of maybe optimize this social media post for me okay sure I've established a relationship for them so they're going to come back if they have any needs and I've already established a pricing structure with them so they know how much it's going to cost and the great thing for me is that's like icing on the cake that's like extra money that I can figure out what to do with so for me those are some of the keys to long term success is developing that reoccurring revenue and that's very important so I just want to kind of in conclusion say this in reality the reality is that you can do wordpress full time now I'll stand here and say I am like I said I'm not complete there but I'm almost there in one year going from not having a job to deciding to do wordpress to starting an agency to going through all those hurdles okay it is a process and it'll take you some time but it can be done and what I love is that there's so many ways to do it there's just some with wordpress flexibility there with ways that you can make wordpress your full time income let me say this part of part of what I do for me is I love spending time with my kids I love being at home I love the flexibility that comes with me doing wordpress full time I make my own schedule I take projects or I don't take projects or I delay projects according to my schedule and that's great okay for me because I want to spend as much time as I can with my family so you can do it and it can be the best thing so for me my journey over this last year started kind of an agony but I would not change it for anything okay because this year not only am I happier I'm better okay maybe my income isn't quite what it used to be or quite where it's going to be though it's not quite there yet but it will be and I'm sure of that but for me I have existed in this world wordpress for this last year just full time guns blazing and it has been the best year of my life so I want to encourage you all to do the same if you're there if you're on the fence like me probably not most of you guys are probably already doing this but for me if you're on the fence it can be done and if you need some help you need some coaching I'm just kind of maybe I'm a few hurdles ahead of you I'd be happy to help you any way that I can but you can do it so I appreciate y'all how let me have this opportunity to speak this morning it was my it was you know the last year I was like maybe it really wasn't just a thought in my mind maybe I could speak next year things go well okay here I am I'm super excited about that not to answer any questions we got a little bit of time here let's see we've got still only five minutes so this may be did you walk us through a typical full day for you okay depends on what day but typically I'll say Monday Monday is probably my favorite day we wake up I'm getting up I'm getting my projects ready just kind of helping to understand exactly what needs to be done over the course of that week I'm going through going over all my to-do lists making sure that all my projects are on time we have kind of a staff meeting at 10 we go over all the projects their current state where they are what needs to be done that week assigning those responsibilities and after that point usually on Monday I have client meetings so I'm going out talking with clients and usually in the afternoon usually lunch meetings so after lunch I come home and I'll work on projects myself so depending on the project I might do some work on Tuesdays I have a co-working membership at level downtown I go down there work all day but also it makes for this I do a lot of meetings and that's part of what's saying what don't I have time for I don't have more and more meetings which are paying off for me this last month I landed the biggest retainer that I've ever had partly because I had invested in a relationship a year ago so that's a long time I know to invest in it but those meetings and talking with people getting referrals is mostly what I do and then I do some of the development I gather from something you said you don't have any full-time employees they're staying as contractors I wonder if you could talk a little more about that how you found them how that works just from like from a business standpoint technically paperwork and working with them in and what yeah, luckily for me all the people that work for me right now I know personally some of them I've got to know this last year so most of those came to me by referral so as I was out there everybody found out my friends networks was like, whoa, Wesley lost a job so that's a big deal so for them, what do you do it I'm like, hey, I have to work here I'm like, I think I'm going to start a digital agency okay I know this person, I know that person so it was networking through my existing network that led me to the people that work some of them, one of them Steve, I worked with him previously so I knew him now everybody's got typically a full-time job so this is something to do with their spare time as things grow yeah, I want to hire full-time employees I'm not there yet because I need to make a full-time living for myself and not that that has to be a great huge amount, a big figure but I need to be there really for me, but I go a long term just to do that but for right now, I mean, when you go online Trevor actually is one of the guys that works for me it's back here in the back we find people at Upward or some of those other sites where you can find and a lot of those people the issue is a lot of those guys are overseas so sometimes there's a language barrier especially when you're talking design you need to really have good communication when you're talking about design I have a question about pricing without getting some nitty-gritty of it like what's coming up front I know you have this struggle you need money immediately and you're trying to start out full-time workers so like how do you negotiate when you're trying to get a new client what comes up first and what comes later and what you're offering I was wondering if you could elaborate on that yeah, when I had that first consultation meeting which was part of the reason I love to have those is I get to know that client I try to figure out exactly what their project is not in extreme detail but almost and then I really understand I kind of do more of a value-based pricing which is I understand the value that I'm bringing to them because if I'm going to make them a ton of money I have a right to charge a little bit more because it's more valuable I'm not talking about I don't charge $10,000 but I understand what the value is and I'm bringing to them also in that meeting I also help to communicate I communicate that value to them so I'm helping them understand how I'm going to help them here's the things that we could do here's that and so it's through that relationship that I help them understand how I'm going to benefit them I learn more about their project I go home and I think about it I don't always do this right I just blew a previous job third day because I overpriced it that happens too but I think about it I say you know they're at this level they can afford to pay this I bring a lot to the table for them so I'm going to adjust my price accordingly with them so basically I go back and I have proposal software so I put it together I have a basic understanding of some standard rates that I charge especially what my costs are to people that do freelance informants I have that established so I can do a basic estimate how many hours it's going to take me how many hours it's going to involve from them so I can get a good understanding of what my cost is going to be and then I can kind of go up from there alright alright I appreciate it thank you all very much


The time is here, the time is now, it's time, it's time we head to, well it's a Darwin first but we're heading to Bali man. So this video is going to be, this video might be you know pretty uh, pretty unexpected, some of you guys did know I was going, some of you guys didn't, sorry I'm slurring my words right now, I've only had three hours of sleep, probably two actually. I don't really care about sleep right now, it's uh, it's Thursday the first of November, it's 3.55 in the morning and I'm about to go and pick up my sister and we're going to head off to Darwin. So this video is going to be called Alice Springs to Darwin in the same theme that I did my previous travel vlog. So let me just spell out what we're going to do, Alice Springs to Darwin, Darwin to Bali, I'm going to go Bali to China, China to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Bali, Bali to Darwin, Darwin to Alice Springs but the first leg and the last leg we're driving, so me and my sister, I'm about to go pick her up, Alice Springs to Darwin, it's 1500 kilometers, I've done it plenty of times before, it's four in the morning, I've got no time to lose, it's probably like 15 hours of driving. My sister and I decided to share this drive, save some money, I don't know whether it's a good idea or not, ask me, ask me in 15 more hours but in the meantime we're going to get some coffee, I'm going to go pick her up, put the suitcases in the car and we're going to head off, completely pitch black outside, you know I'm going to come back to you guys when it's sunrise, probably about six o'clock.  It's a friggin 55 meter long truck, that's called a road train and that's because we're in central Australia and that road you see behind me is 3,000 kilometers long, that's over 2,000 miles guys, the Stuart Highway, so anyways as you can see the sun is up, it's exactly six in the morning and we're at our first stop, Tea Tree, the Tea Tree Roadhouse, so Anna's inside, we're going to get another coffee, we're at 200K's in, we've got 1,300 to go, I'm going to stop up the car, get another coffee and I'll see you soon. We're on mate and we're in Tenant Creek, believe it or not, how you feeling? Buddy good, need this coffee. Yeah it's uh, I don't know if you can see that right there, it's 909, we've been going for five hours, it could be a quick look, a quick look at what we've got going on which is not a lot, as you know and it's raining, oh okay so 500K's we've got 1,000 to go, probably 900 or something actually, that sounds a lot better, we'll stick at 900, 990K's to go, I want to say thanks for being here, this is Alice Springs to Darwin, I'll see you in a bit. Alright everybody, we've made it to a place they call Elliott and there's fuck all here as well, there is one cool thing that I wanted to climb but I'm not going to, I don't know if you can see that but that's a that's a massive water tower and you'll probably see a few of those around here because of the fact that it is absolutely stifling hot right now, it's fucking, I'd say it's at least 40 degrees Celsius, I'm not sure if you can see that either but we've got 735 kilometers to go, if you guys have come traveling with me recently you'll have seen a hell of a lot of this coloured dirt, that means we're in the Northern Territory and it's about time we continue, so two coffees down, 760 kilometers down, 735 to go, I'll see you there. Thoughts mate? Red dirt and I feel bloated from eating so much popcorn, can you look up what temperature it is right now, I need these people to know, it is 36 degrees with a high of 41, it's 36 currently, it says 37, 37 alright, okay can you look up, before we do go, can you look up 37 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit, what is 37 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit? About a hundred, about a hundred degrees, still a month away from summer, well no did summer start this month or next month?