1:7 Valuing Time To Make Better Decisions

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Lee:

Hi, and welcome to the WP Innovator podcast, the WordPress podcast for design and web agencies. Let's make WordPress work for your business.

Lee:

Hi, and welcome to the WP Innovator podcast. This is Lee, and today we've got a fantastic interview with Jonathan Perez. Now, before we get started, I'd really like to encourage you to go and check out SociPress and get on the beta list. Now, SociPress is a set and forget Twitter solution that will allow you to share and re share the really awesome content that you or your client are producing within WordPress. Now, there's also a whole ton of extra features such as a library of tweets that you can develop and curate that you can keep sharing and re sharing. And you can also tap into multiple RSS feeds. So essentially your WordPress can be tweeting for you on a daily basis on a schedule that you have set. So it's going to be perfect for design agencies and also for their clients. There's a whole range of different packages, but if you imagine from one WordPress site, because it's active per user, you could actually manage multiple Twitter accounts from just one WordPress installation. So that could be perfect for your entire team. So if you could go ahead and check it out, I'd love you to get on the list and I'd love your feedback.

Lee:

As a thank you, if you actually get on the testers program, you'll get a license free forever. But if you don't, you'll also get a huge discount for the first year if you decide to go ahead and purchase the product once we're live. So you can check it out on .leejacksondev.com/launch. That's leejacksondev.com/launch. Okay, without further ado, let's crack on with the show.

Lee:

 Hi, I'm here with Jonathan Perez, and I'm really excited to get chatting to this guy. I knew I was going to hit it off when I started reading his website. Me and Jonathan. It's Jonathan, isn't it? I said John.

Jon Perez:

Jonnathan. 

Lee:

Jonathan. Yeah, we were actually, we were saying before we hit record, it was like Jonathan or something like that. We're going to call him Jonathan Perez. Anyway, I was reading up on Jonathan just earlier on. Kim introduced us together and Jonathan is a guy after my own heart. He's very much focused on supporting designers and developers around the world with their WordPress websites, with design, et cetera. So I knew I was going to hit it off and I'm really excited today to introduce him to you all. So I'm going to shut up for a second. Jonathan, would you like to say hi and give us a bit of background about yourself?

Jon Perez:

That was a beautiful intro, by the way. Thank you. 

Lee:

It was a very messy intro, but I like it.

Jon Perez:

It's all right. Well, I appreciate it. I am after your heart. Let's go. I am Jonathan Perez. I'm from New York. I've been creating websites for about 12 years. I have two domains right now, surefirewebservices.com and surefiredesigns.com. It's been quite a journey trying to discover exactly what I wanted to do with my career, with my freelance career, with my entrepreneurial career. And it's still a journey, always learning, always trying to move forward, always trying to find the next best thing that's going to be a big win. And that's where I am right now. So I have experience designing, developing with WordPress, with Genesis, with plug ins, with clients, everything, like an all around guy.

Lee:

An all around guy. So let me guess, outside of the digital space, you strike me as the guy who can probably play the guitar as well. This is a guess now.

Jon Perez:

That's funny. I did take guitar lessons.

Lee:

No way.

Jon Perez:

Yeah, I did. I'm creative, so I am musically inclined. I've mentioned this on one podcast a very long time ago, but I used to have a rap album when I was a teenager where I made beats. I did the music, wrote the music. I used to play the bass, the trumpet. So, yeah, it's been a while.

Lee:

You're like my New York clone, except I never had a rap album.

Jon Perez:

That's what the New Yorkers do. I don't know how you guys do. But everyone raps now.

Lee:

That's amazing, mate. So is the album available online anyway?

Jon Perez:

Oh, my God. You know what it is. It is online. I'll have to get the link. I got to find it, though.

Lee:

That'd be it. I got to put that on the show notes. Share it with the world. If it's on Spotify, you'll earn your... Isn't it 0.02 cents per play.

Jon Perez:

I was 16 when I did it. I don't think there was a Spotify. There was barely an internet.

Lee:

What is internet?

Jon Perez:

Yeah Really. 

Lee:

That's amazing. Without giving too much away then, I guess roughly how old are you so we can gauge your age here?

Jon Perez:

I'm 31.

Lee:

Mate, 31. Slightly younger than me then. I'm 33. Nice. I've lost my... Welcome to the future. If you see a picture of me, that's your future, mate. All my hair fell out now.

Jon Perez:

I know it creeps up fast right after 30. Once you get 30, it's like, Oh, I'm getting older.

Lee:

And that happened.

Jon Perez:

Yeah, I'm there.

Lee:

That's awesome. So you mentioned you had two domains. You've got two different websites. Do you mind just filling us in on the two different channels you've got there?

Jon Perez:

Sure. So I have my B2C, which is business to consumer. That is surefirewebservices.com. That's basically the client front. I built that site up a lot to gear towards Genesis developers, different developers for tutorials and things like that. A lot of my business in the past two years came from that website. That's where I have courses available, where I teach a few things, and I have my services available for building sites with actual businesses, like other businesses, one on one. Then Surefire Designs is my B2B website. This is like my baby now. This is where I'm really pushing in 2016. That's similar to what you're doing. That is, I'm working directly with other agencies, freelancers and developers, and I'm basically anonymously providing work for them. A lot of that is overflow project work, things that they can't finish, or things that they have a deadline for but they don't have the means to complete it. Then we step in and we fill in that gap for them.

Lee:

That's awesome. When you say the gaps, that could be anything from web design from scratch or converting an existing design into a WordPress theme maybe, or even project managing or consulting on a project, the whole nine yards. 

Jon Perez:

Yeah. Well, we do custom tailored solutions. Initially, I started late last year. I had set price plans for monthly design web services. But after talking to a few people, there's never one thing... I mean, in my opinion, if you only have one thing, you're selling one product to one specific individual, and then they got to find you. So if you're not marketing to that specific niche or whatever it is, it's hard to get in front of those people. So I broadened it up a little bit. I dropped the prices and we've been doing custom tailored solutions because it allows a few more leads to get in. And since we do a variety of work, it didn't make sense to be that one person that just does the design stuff. Considering we can help out with hosting, we can help out with maintenance, we could build the WordPress teams, we could do the designs. So I didn't want to be tied into one thing.

Lee:

That's amazing. 

Jon Perez:

So now we do custom tailored solutions.

Lee:

Custom tailored Solutions. If you're listening, well, you will be listening because you can hear my voice. I don't know why I said that. But I'd really encourage you, if you are an agency, to connect with Jon because there's nothing like having somebody who has a real broad range of experience in all different aspects of digital marketing, preparing sites, project managing, etc. A lot of agencies we found, and they've come to us through the podcast as well, have explained that they have a great design background, but the internet took them by surprise. They got thrown into building websites pretty quickly. There's nothing better than having a resource like Jon, obviously all myself or other people who have got that experience. I believe you've got some agency experience as well in the past. Having that broad experience because there are probably things that Jon will see in a particular project that you have, which is an opportunity for you to upsell to your client or to add value to your client, et cetera. So it's definitely a good idea to make connections with people like Jon, et cetera. You put quite a lot of content out online, I believe, as well.

Lee:

Which blog should we encourage people to go and check out?

Jon Perez:

All of them. All of them.

Lee:

How many do you have?

Jon Perez:

Well, I have the Surefire Web Services. It's a good blog. That's pretty much where most of my business and connections come from. Surefire Designs is still new, but there's a few posts up there that you can check out. And then I'm launching just an entrepreneurial blog. This month I'm launching it called Developer the Millionaire, and that's going to be awesome.

Lee:

That's awesome. And we're going to pick up on that later because this excites me already. Actually, no, I'll cover that in a bit. Okay, well, obviously, we found out a lot about you. Sorry to throw loads of questions at you, but I'm just fascinated about how you work. This is all stuff that I'm intrigued in. It's great. Like I said, just before we recorded, it's great to meet somebody who is doing a very similar service to me. I've been doing it for about two and a half years, and you're the first person I've met that's in the same mindset and in the same space. So it's really, really exciting. Thanks. so as a consultant yourself, what's been the biggest challenge that you've had for Your business? 

Jon Perez:

Growth. I've been doing a lot of this by myself. So a lot of the decisions from a Solopreneur, it's hard to bounce off of anybody that has no idea what you're doing. So when I make a decision, it's literally hit or miss. There's no one I could go, Hey, do you think this is a good idea? They say yes or no. It's me going, Yes, it is. No, it's not. It's not going to work. It's going to work. It's not going to work. I've learned to just pull the trigger. Just pull the trigger, measure it, see what's working. If it doesn't work, change it. I'm not tied to anything. I think it's a great method for really people who own a website and it's your business. If it's working, awesome. But obviously, there's things that aren't working, so you should definitely be looking into that and changing it and seeing what does work until you're constantly evolving. 

Lee:

That's amazing. When you say growth, is it been generating new opportunities that's been the hardest, or is it actually coping with the growth itself?

Jon Perez:

Well, I think it's specifically for me. I was in a situation last year where I had a brand new baby. So being solo, I had to step back a little bit. So the year before that was an incredible year. I grew my business, quadrupled my income. I wrote a book about it. It was called...

Jon Perez:

We'll get to that. But I documented everything and it was great. But then when I had my second son, I had to pull back because I'm a very family oriented person, so I couldn't work till midnights anymore. I couldn't be up till two in the morning creating websites. That put me in a situation where I stopped because I didn't want to keep taking things on, but I had to really reevaluate my business and how I spent my time and what would be beneficial to me to spend my time on. Would it be wise for me to spend 20 hours on a project, or would it be better for me to manage someone to do that while I just focus on my business. And that's actually what pushed me towards working better and closer with other agencies and freelancers because I did speak the language. I know the quality of work that I want to put forward, and it was just easy to communicate and relate to that audience. So looking at it from, I guess, a bird's eye view, that's what I did. I put together a team because I've worked with a lot of different freelancers in the past, people that I trust, people that I've worked with.

Jon Perez:

And now it's good. It's going well. Did I hit the question? I think.

Lee:

I covered an awful lot, which is amazing. I'm throwing you a few digital high fives over there as well. From my own background, I started exactly like you with regards to being a freelancer. I started off in the freelance space. I was on places like maybe People Per Hour, Upwork, etc. I found I was taking on quite small value jobs, but despite the fact there were small value jobs, they seemed to be awfully hard work as in there was an awful lot involved. I just remember getting to that point where I realised I was charging too little. I was having to try and fill my time with tons and tons of these small level jobs from these places. And like yourself, I've got a young daughter and I was finding that I was less and less time with the family. It just totally wasn't working out. And that's where I realised I needed to niche down. And exactly what you've done is niche down and target a particular client base. And most design agencies listening right now will have some niche client. For example, the agency I'm a part of over in Bedford niche right down to event organizers, and that's their only client base.

Lee:

I think John Lee Dumas is always saying the riches are in the niches. I say niches, by the way.

Jon Perez:

I don't even know what it's called. Nice niche niches.

Lee:

Niches. But the riches are in the niches. And that's where I have found that I've been able to grow my business far more successfully because I've been able to target a more audience and become the expert in my field just like you becoming the expert in our field and showing we've got that the credibility, the experience and the ability to help. And you said you're growing a team as well, which is really exciting. I remember the second big project I had which allowed me to then take on my first hire because I had a full time. I've got a range of freelancers, but I also had a full time hire as well, which was super exciting. That was the beginning of last year. Was it? No, it wasn't. It was actually the beginning of the previous year. Time just goes so fast.

Jon Perez:

Yes, it does.

Lee:

For his old geezers. Dude, so...

Jon Perez:

Us 30 somethings. 

Lee:

Us 30 somethings. There's a program here in England called Grumpy Old Men, so I'll try not take us down that channel. So, mate, you may have touched on it, but perhaps you can expand on it. But what was the one thing or the one idea or even maybe a product that's been a complete game changer for your business?

Jon Perez:

The one product?

Lee:

It could be product, or idea, or thing, or whatever. It's a very open question because it may not necessarily be an idea. It might have been something that just changed your life or changed your business in a significant way.

Jon Perez:

Okay. I think the realization of... I'm trying to word it right. The difference between a freelancer and an entrepreneur, coming to find that out as I started to build the business. Also, the realization that everything we use is just a tool to make us money as an entrepreneur. And that's literally anything. I was a very heavily influenced Genesis framework person. I still love the Genesis framework. I use it all the time. But realizing that it's just a means to an end. There's no reason for me to spend 50 hours creating a custom site from a theme, from whatever the case may be, when there are tools that are going to help expedite certain processes and deliver the same product in return. I think realizing that and then just valuing my time a lot more helped me just make better decisions on 10 hours versus 3 hours with the same amount of profit. It was a no brainer.

Lee:

That's an awesome statement. It's just valuing time.

Jon Perez:

Yeah. It's hard to realize, though, because I know coming from the freelance world, you like to learn and you like to do different things and you get heavily involved in coding. But I know so many people that would get stuck on something and spend five hours on it or two days on it and only to realize they just forgot a comma. You know what I mean? Of course, and we all have. If you were a freelancer in the past, you've definitely been there. I guess part of the rush is just figuring it out. But then when you start to weigh, Okay, I need to make money and I can't charge my client 20 hours because I forgot to put a comma somewhere, you weigh those things out and then your mind starts to think. You come up with different methods, different systems, different strategies. You start putting them into place and then you could really sit back and focus on your business if that's what you're doing.

Lee:

That's really good. I guess the idea as well is trying to teach my own guys the idea of I know as a developer, you really want to do it in code because it makes you feel pretty proud and maybe you get a bit Snooty or a bit snobbish like I used to. But eventually you realize that you're going to provide the exact same value to the client. The client doesn't know how to do X, Y, and Z. You're going to provide that solution. They're going to be able to sell whatever their product or service is with whatever it is you've done. And if you can do something in three hours and provide that same value and provide that same profit, bada bing, bada boom, that is absolutely incredible and amazing and exciting.

Jon Perez:

Exactly. 

Lee:

I don't know.

Jon Perez:

No, it's great. 

Lee:

So passionate about this. Obviously, you deal with Beaver Builder. It splashed all over your website. When they released Beaver Builder, I don't know.

Jon Perez:

It was a godsend.

Lee:

I was actually speechless at the time. I tried their demo for a few minutes and I was like, Oh, I feel a bit threatened by this. I don't like this. Then two days later, having read the documentation, I was like, Oh, I can make modules with this. I can build entire sites with it. I can create child themes and I can still do some of the code that I used to do if I need to. But also I've got all of these modules that I can drag and drop in. I can keep clients on brand. That's one thing that bugged me so much would be I'd create an amazing site and then someone would put comic sand in there and make the text read in center alignment.

Jon Perez:

True with it all. Stop it.

Lee:

But we've got these tools. That's awesome. Yeah. Now, beautiful that was. This is probably going to be the theme of the podcast, I think. It's got to be the title of the podcast about valuing time and using tools, etc. Absolutely. I got to find a way of putting that into a nice short title because that is so inspiring, mate. Thanks for sharing.

Jon Perez:

I've always been a stickler for my time, only because I don't like working long hours. I like my family time. I like my casual time. What is it? The four hours work week? I haven't read it yet, but it's true.

Jon Perez:

You don't want to work. I got to read it. 

Lee:

You got to read it. It's incredible.

Jon Perez:

I bought it. It's on my queue. But yeah, you value your time. And then when I found Beaver Builder, oh, my God. I just looked at it because I was messing around with page builders at the time and I tried I think it was called page origins or something like that. I tried the Thrive one. I tried one that was on Theme Forest. I was like, oh. I am a very simple person and I like when things are I download it, I can click it, I know how to use it, done. But trying to figure things out that should be really simple, I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I don't want to spend an hour trying to figure out how to add a heading tag or something. When Beaver Builder came along, I was like, Wow, this is great. Drag and drop. Look, I made an entire landing page and it took me 20 minutes. So much so, I loved it. I made a course on it. The course is actually called How to Make Web sites Faster and Better.

Lee:

We will link to that for that in the show notes. You're going to have to send me all these links at the end.

Jon Perez:

Definitely.

Lee:

And we'll get them into the show notes.

Jon Perez:

Yeah, absolutely. In this course, I basically... It's a funny story. This guy wanted a website and he was like, Listen, I need this website by Saturday. And it was Thursday. I was like, Are you kidding me? He's like, Yeah, I need it by Saturday. I need everything built and I need all this and I need all that. And I was like, There's no way this is going to cost you 20 grand and I got to have to code it. I was like, This is impossible. I'm not going to be able to get it done. And he was like, Well, try to figure it out and see what you think and then get back to me. So that night I was messing with Beaver Builder and I was like, You know what? Let me run an experiment. So I did a three day challenge. I challenged myself. I said, Let me see if I could actually do this in three days. I told the client, I said, Listen, I'm going to try something different. If you're cool with it, just let me know and then I'll take on the project and I'll finish it. So he's like, All right, he was cool with it.

Jon Perez:

Three days later, I made a fully functional website with eight different page templates, some cool fancy portfolio viewer, single post page style. It was a $20,000 website. It was a big website done in three days with Beaver Builder and I loved it.

Lee:

That is awesome.

Jon Perez:

Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, time for profit, profit margins, whatever you want to call that, it was well, it was good. Could you imagine?

Lee:

That's insane. In fact, all sites I do now are heavily focused with Beaver Builder as the main way of building up the content of each page because I used to use advanced custom fields, still do use advanced custom fields for certain things. But the fact that you can create custom modules in there and then people can drag them in wherever they need them. That's freaking awesome. The loop builder itself as well, where you can insert posts, etc, is pretty damn powerful. But again, it's super compatible as well. We sound like an advertorial here, don't we?

Jon Perez:

Goodbye, Beaver Builder.

Lee:

Goodbye, Beaver Builder. But the fact that you can drag in widgets, et cetera, just makes it insanely compatible with all sorts of different plug ins and you can put all sorts on there. So leejacksondev.com, totally Beaver Builder. My new SociPress website. I knocked that together this morning in 20 minutes, like you said. It's a landing page with a video that I did with me being cheesetastic on there, encouraging people to go and check out the new product that I'm making. So Beaver Builder, Amen, Hallelujah. I'm going to put that link in the show notes as well. I'm pretty sure people have heard of it, though, because if you've been listening for a few weeks now, I pretty much mention it every single episode.

Jon Perez:

It really is happening. I know, right? I'm called Rob. Hey, Rob. You know what I did? I just compared the times and I was like, I could custom code this by hand. And then I did the same thing that would have taken me five hours and 20 minutes. And I was like, done, sold.

Lee:

Yeah, exactly. And you know how to do that, which is awesome. And the end user, the client, doesn't necessarily know how to do that. So again, they're still getting the same value from them. They're still getting what they need to do their business, which is absolutely awesome. It's taken you yourself 11, 12 years of web development and self training to get yourself to a place where you found the tools that you need to minimise the amount of time you have to put into things but still provide epic products. Absolutely. You've nailed it, man. You're the man.

Jon Perez:

All right.

Lee:

Digital high five again.

Lee:

Boom. That's amazing. Well, we've talked about Beaver Builder quite a lot. I guess we should talk about plug ins in general. I ask everyone on this podcast, what is your most favouritest in the whole world WordPress plugin and would you recommend it to our community of listeners?

Jon Perez:

Besides Beaver Builder?

Lee:

Yeah.

Jon Perez:

Wow. Plugin, plugin, plugin. I use the Views plugin a lot. Okay. Yeah, I don't know if you're familiar.

Lee:

With it. I am, yes. I was looking at it only the other day because I wrote a blog post on creating a web application. And if you're doing things in the front end, you can use... I put a note saying, Hey, I've not checked this one out, but this looks like it does the same thing.

Jon Perez:

Yeah, the Views plug in is my go to whenever something a little more complex than what Beaver Builder can do needs to be done. And I'll use the views plug in for that.

Lee:

So do you want to expand on what the Views plugin is and does?

Jon Perez:

Sure. I think the website is WPToolset, something like that. But they got 50 plug ins. They have types, they have views, and five or six other ones. I don't know. I mainly just use types and views. Types just creates a custom post type, and views allows you to make complex loops with just using a few short codes. As long as you know HTML and CSS, even if you want to add some JavaScript in there, you can literally build anything that you want and then just add in the little short codes where you want to put them, and then it'll output your code without doing any complex PHP or anything Like that.

Lee:

 Is this mainly around repeated content, so a list of posts, a list of team members and authors, or does it do more?

Jon Perez:

It's everything. It's looped content. It's single page content, archive content. It's really powerful. A little confusing to use, but it's very powerful. If you know how to use it, use it right, you can create anything. On my site, Surefire Designs, the testimonials, I used views on that.

Lee:

I got to go check this out.

Jon Perez:

Yeah, and it was really simple. It's just a few custom fields, testimonial, and then they line up in a certain way. If you actually go to the testimonials page, and that's all dynamic. I made one view, and then anytime I put in the testimonial, it'll just fall into place. 

Lee:

That's cool. I spotted a new plug in I shared the other day actually as well called the Easy Query. I thought that views was similar to that, but it sounds like there is an awful lot more available. I guess there's a bit of a learning curve, though, with views. It seems like you do need to know some HTML or CSS. Is it slightly less intuitive, say, than Beaver Builder? Yes. Okay. So powerful, but just maybe if you're going to check it out, guys, just be prepared to spend a bit of time because I'm going to do it as well. 

Lee:

I love learning new things.

Jon Perez:

I have a course. Wink, wink, wink.

Lee:

I forgot about that. Guys, don't spend any time learning how to do it. Go check out the course.

Jon Perez:

Yeah, it's so funny. On the course, it's Beaver Builder, Views and Genesis.

Jon Perez:

Those are the three plugins that I use. It includes a mini course of how to use Views, which I'm going to update.

Lee:

How to use Views. Cool.

Lee:

Yeah, it's there. It's nice. That's awesome. Go check that out, guys, because I certainly will. All righty, so other than your amazing websites and courses, what blogs or online resources would you recommend to the people listening today?

Jon Perez:

The WP chick is awesome.

Lee:

She is amazing, isn't she?

Jon Perez:

Yeah. Kim Doyal, go check her out because she's brilliant. She's just an awesome person, too. Web design from scratch. That's my buddy Ben Hunt. He's light years ahead of his time. If you listen to the things that he says now, they'll be happening 10 years from now. This is his whole... There was a conversion explosion in the past couple of years. He's been talking about conversion optimization since 2000. He's really good. I'm actually going to be working with him on web design from scratch for beginners. I don't think if anybody's a beginner, you should definitely check that out.

Lee:

Well, I think there are definitely people in the podcast audience who are beginners, and we've had a few contacts already. Some of the people who are running agencies as well are not necessarily the people that are technically skilled. They've got other people on it, but they want to learn an awful lot more about how the site build process happens, et cetera, because they can then talk about that in their sales meetings or with their customers, et cetera. People definitely want to know more information and learn more information. I get the feeling I think I heard you on a podcast a long time ago, and I think I remember you mentioning Ben Hunt. Am I right in saying that he's a bit of a mentor or an influencer for you? 

Jon Perez:

Definitely yeah.

Lee:

 I thought as much.

Jon Perez:

When I started getting into web design, I used to follow his blog. This was 2002. He was so on point with all the things that he was doing, I was like, Man, I got to work with this guy one day. One day he put out this course and he's like, Oh, this is the course. It was like $1,500 at the time. I was like, Oh, my God, $1500. But he was like, $1500? I'm taking on 20 people to work with me and we're going to figure out a bunch of stuff. So I signed up. It was an investment and it was a very well spent investment. He's a good friend of mine now and he's just very awesome, very brilliant. And he's from the UK.

Lee:

No way, I did not know that. Yeah. Wow. Good things come from England. Shame I'm Canadian.

Jon Perez:

There you go. I am.

Lee:

Actually Canadian. I was I was born in Canada. My parents are English, so I'm as British as they can.

Jon Perez:

I thought you sounded a little Canadian. It's okay.

Lee:

All it is is that when I'm talking to you, I'm accidentally mirroring your accent and I can't help it. So if you are a broad Irish right now, I'm not going to do an impression because I'll probably offend Ireland. But I'd be accidentally mirroring the way you talk. I'll probably start saying things like, To be sure, or something like that.

Jon Perez:

That's so funny.

Lee:

I can't help it. I think it's scientific. I think some people actually accidentally do that.

Jon Perez:

But anyway. It makes my New York accent.

Lee:

New York.

Jon Perez:

Coffee.

Lee:

That's awesome, man. So that's Ben Hunt and it's webdesignfromscratch.com, I believe that website is.

Jon Perez:

Yeah, we're transforming it this year and it's going to be a few courses on there for learning HTML, CSS, the basics getting started.

Lee:

That's amazing. So you've heard how awesome Jon is and the amazing things that he's discovered over the last few years. And this guy, Ben Hunt, is the guy who influenced Jon and has been around for many years. Although from the picture he doesn't look old enough, none of us look old enough really to have been around for as long as we were even to remember CRT monitors, surely not. But anyway.

Jon Perez:

Oh, boy. Bringing it back.

Lee:

Bringing it back, old school. The big clunky Dell keyboards. I missed that sound. I really miss the old Dell keyboard.

Jon Perez:

The hammer sounds?

Lee:

I miss it.

Jon Perez:

I just never liked it.

Jon Perez:

Cork, cork, Cork. They still sound.

Lee:

So busy.

Jon Perez:

That is true. You'll type one sentence and it sounds like you've been typing for hours. That's true.

Lee:

Okay, I'm crying a little bit here with laughter. Not about the Dell keyboard. I'm not that. Yeah, okay. That's where we're good. All right, back in the room. Focus, Lee. All right, so we've covered a load of amazing stuff here. There's two things we're going to do. There's a last question, inspiration. It's an inspirational question that we can give to the people listening, something that they can apply to their business. But then what I'd like to do before we wrap up is talk about your upcoming blog, the Developer to Millionaire and your podcast as well. First of all, pens at the ready if you're listening, but let's hit with a question. What's the one action that people could apply to their business, maybe their agency, that you've learned that you believe will make a difference to their business? That's one action that they could start doing today that will make a difference to their business.

Jon Perez:

Stop. Just stop, take a break, sit down for a few minutes, an hour, and literally just look at your business as a whole and make note of why you're doing what you're doing, what you're doing, and start to just analyze it a bit and make sure that you're happy doing exactly what you're doing. Then if you see things that need to change, make note of it. If you see things that are working, make note of it. I'm starting to get into the habit of writing things down because it makes your focus and just clears up so many things when you actually visually see it instead of thinking it all the time. So that would be my advice. Stop, take a look at everything you're doing, learn why you're doing it, why you're doing each action, things like that, and just make sure that you're happy doing it and then make your changes whenever you need to change. Is that a lot? Is that more than one thing?

Lee:

No, that is. Well, it's definitely more than one action. Well, the one action is stop. Stop. Stop. Yes. But then you've added immense value there. Stop. Why are you doing what you're doing? What is it you're doing, etc. And that all goes back as well to the thing you were talking about, time and tools, etc. As well. Why am I doing it this way when I could be doing it that way? It could be one of those conversations you have with yourself in your head when you take Jonathan's advice and you stop. That's awesome advice.

Jon Perez:

Just to touch on it a little bit, entrepreneurs, we're always going. We're always moving, always thinking, always just coming up with the new idea or whatever it is. So stop.

Lee:

Just stop. I'm trying to resist to sing The Carpenter's.

Jon Perez:

Go for it.

Lee:

I'm not going to. So off the record. I'll do it later. Your fellow great advice, mate. And if you've not thought of it, which I'm sure you have, you totally should go down the lines of offering some form of consultancy and working with people, unless that's what you're going to tell me you're doing as part of a developer to millionaire. So could you tell us more about what the Developer to millionaire blog is and the podcast is going to be all about?

Jon Perez:

Absolutely. I have thought of it. It's just really figuring out how to do it. That's where I'm stuck at. But the podcast blog Developer to Millionaire, it's basically my thoughts, opinions, advice on entrepreneurship. And it's coming from the perspective of a developer, a freelancer, someone with a tech background who is on this journey to become a millionaire. And everything I learn or advice that I've taught or whatever it is, I share it on that blog. It can get greedy at times. This is one of those blogs where I feel really free to say whatever I want to say. Never trying to offend anybody, but sometimes I'll get pissed off and do a little rant. But it is what it is. I want to keep that raw, greedy style. I don't want to be the guy who's behind the microphone talking like this saying, Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is my podcast.

Lee:

Are you taking the mic?

Jon Perez:

Yeah, exactly. There's personality in it. Done a few interviews and it's going to launch this month. It's going to launch this month. And if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a freelancer, if you're a developer, it's definitely something that you should check out and listen to.

Lee:

When you say that it's going to launch, is that the blog or is that the podcast that you were also talking about?

Jon Perez:

I'm just doing everything at once.

Lee:

Big bang.

Jon Perez:

Big bang. This week I've been recording, I've been editing, I've been writing some more posts, and it's going to launch I spoke with Kim, we're going to launch five, I guess, posts initially, and then I'm going to release one every week. There's a lot of content on there and it's just thought provoking, I think. And then yeah, definitely check it out.

Lee:

Well, I think you've already provoked a lot of thoughts throughout the last 40 minutes. I guess we've been going on now. You've been absolutely amazing. I can't wait to see this launch, mate. Is there a page that we can go to to go into a email list or anything like that to be told when it's going to happen?

Jon Perez:

Yeah. Well, if you go on the site now, I just put up some random stuff that said... Because I'm not marketing it. So when this goes live, I guess this will be the first marketing of it. Just go to the homepage. developertomillionaire.com.

Lee:

Developetomillionaire.com. That's what I was reading after because I need to put that one in the show notes.

Jon Perez:

As well. Yeah, you go there.

Lee:

Developertomillionaire.com.

Jon Perez:

Yeah, I have cool intros.

Lee:

Well, no, you can wrap yours.

Jon Perez:

I did.

Lee:

Oh, no, you've not. Have you?

Jon Perez:

I did. I did. I wrapped the outros on three of them. Yeah, but it takes a lot of time.

Lee:

To do that. I really want a preview.

Jon Perez:

I'll send it to you. I'll send you the first episode. You can check it out. That would be amazing. It's fun.

Lee:

You've been a great laugh. You've been full of amazing information. How can people connect with you? Actually, no. How can people connect with you? And then we'll wrap up the show.Sure. 

Jon Perez:

surefiredesigns.com. You can tweet me @surefirewebserv, S E R V. You can find me at surefirewebservices.com. I'm on Facebook. I don't know the URL.

Lee:

It's Facebook. Facebook.Com. 

Jon Perez:

yes, there you go. You can just hunt me down. My social links are on the sites. I love to connect. I love to meet new people. It's always a pleasure. So if anybody wants to chat, definitely reach out. This is always fun.

Lee:

Yeah, and I'll mirror that with regards to chatting with Jon. He's super friendly. We got on straight away when we were talking on Facebook, which was great. I'm always a bit nervous of adding someone as a friend and having a chat with them initially because you don't know them. But he was super friendly straight off the bat.

Jon Perez:

Lee's lying. I threatened him. I said, You better put me on your show.

Lee:

No, no. Are we good now? Can you release my family?

Jon Perez:

I will let them go. You're lucky this time. That was fun. This is definitely pleasure to have. Great time.

Lee:

Absolutely brilliant. Mate, thanks so much. Thanks for being on the show. You're a star. I can't wait for your podcast to launch as well. We're looking forward to it. Thank you for your time. Take care and this is the end of the show.

Jon Perez:

Sweet. Goodbye, everyone. Yeah, there you go. Thank you.

Lee:

And that wraps up today's podcast. Thanks so much for listening and I'd really love to hear from you. So if you get in touch, it's leejacksondev.com/contact. Let's have a chat, discuss what you'd like or dislike about the podcast, and let's make this an even better resource for you. Now, I'd really, really love to connect with you who are listening. So I'm offering a free 10 minutes strategy call for your web agency, your design agency, or your web business. So go ahead and check out leejacksondev.com/freecall. That's leejacksondev.com/freecall And let's get on Skype and start talking about your business. I look forward to hearing from you. Have an amazing day.