1:5 Building A Better WordPress Business

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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. Hi, and welcome to the WP Innovator podcast. This is your host, Lee Jackson. It's just after Christmas. I've had an amazing time. I got a retro LP player or record player. I don't know what you would call it around the world, but it's a retro looking portable record player. I've been going around all of the charity and the thrift shops picking up really ancient records and having an amazing time. I also got a kindle, which I absolutely love. It's immense. I mean, it's not big, but it's immense for me because the house is full of books and it's great to be able to fit thousands of books on one device. I've had an amazing Christmas, an amazing time with the family, and I hope you have had too. Okay, so this podcast, we interview Troy Dean. I've got to admit, I was blown away when he accepted the invitation and I was really excited to interview him. This guy has been a huge inspiration to myself. I've followed a lot of his documentation and his courses and he's really helped transform my business through his amazing information, his amazing courses.

Lee:

That he produces online. So sit back, relax and enjoy Troy Dean. And if I haven't wished you it before, I wish you it again. Mary Christmas.

Lee:

Hi, and today I'm really excited to introduce you to Troy Dean. I think I need a sound effects machine right now. We tried this with Kim as well. But Troy Dean is here, the man who did the Cadbury song. That blew my mind when I listened to that. If you don't know what I mean, go and check out Troy's website. Troy, how are you doing, mate?

Troy Dean:

I'm good, man.

Lee:

How are you? Well, like I said earlier, I'm full of cold, but dedicated as I sit under this duvet to try and get rid of the echo. People who are listening to the last episode will have heard a bit of a dull echo and had to send the sound file in to some guy to try and dampen down the echo and the loudness of the last episode. So hopefully me sweating under this duvet will help. If you hear a third, I've passed out, that's fine. You just keep talking, Troy.

Troy Dean:

No worries, man. I love your commitment to the art, dude.

Lee:

Exactly. Well, guys, Troy is a guy I've been listening to. He's got a great voice, as you can tell. I've been listening to this guy for probably about a year. He's got a podcast called WP Elevation. He's a consultant, a speaker, and he is dedicated to helping businesses do amazing things with WordPress. But that's my introduction. Troy, could you tell people a bit about yourself? I'll let you fill in all the gaps.

Troy Dean:

Sure, man. I started out as a WordPress developer back in about 2007 and grew an agency here in Melbourne. And then released a plug in, a WordPress plugin. In fact, as pretty much as soon as I started using WordPress, a buddy of mine, Brian, and I built a plugin together, which is the video user manuals plugin just to train our own clients how to use WordPress so that we didn't have to keep going through the same questions over and over. That plug in grew into a nice little thing. We built an audience around that just through email opt ins. And those plugin customers just kept asking me lots of questions about how I was running my consultancy. The consultancy, I wrapped up the agency in 2012 just purely because I was in business with the wrong business partner in that agency, which is a whole other conversation we can have if you want. But he's no one to blame. We just were incompatible. I dissolved that agency and went back out as a freelancer and then started to teach our plug in customers how I was running my business. That became WP Elevation, which is now between that and video user manuals, the plug in.

Troy Dean:

That's our core focus now is we'll still occasionally do a client site just to keep our hand in consulting, but it's not really our core focus. Our core focus now is just building this community of WordPress agencies, all helping each other grow and build good consulting businesses.

Lee:

Yeah. And if you're listening right now and you heard Troy talking about WordPress agencies in the community, I recommend you go check out WP Elevation. Troy has created an amazing resource. I actually used myself some of the proposal documentation that Troy's put together, which has helped me win some amazing contracts. Sweet. Yeah, I know, man. I'll tell you all about them sometime. But I pretty much use it every week. Awesome. Yeah, go ahead, guys, and check out WP Elevation. Now, one of the things that really impressed me as well, mate, with your video user manuals was the fact that you'd managed to source British accents and American accents, et cetera, for all of your videos. Where did you find all those guys from?

Troy Dean:

That's a good question, actually. My business partner, Brian, does that. I think he probably went shopping on Elance or Odesk when they were called that way back when. He auditioned a bunch of people because we wanted a US accent and a UK accent so that it was a bit more of a native experience for our customers over there. Then we just built really good processes, really solid processes around that so that every time WordPress gets updated, I get a copy of the script now from one of our staff in the Philippines, Michelle. She goes through the whole plug and goes through all the videos, goes through the new release of WordPress and works out what needs to be updated. She sends the scripts to me. I record them in Australian. They also, at that point, go off to our US and UK voiceover artists, and those girls do their voice job. Then it all goes back to Michelle, who fires up Screen flow, and she goes through and remakes all the videos with the new interface and puts our voiceover, lays them up, and then spits out three different versions of every video.

Lee:

I love the fact that you said you do yours in Australian. I don't know why that just made me laugh.

Troy Dean:

We don't speak English down here, we speak Aussie.

Lee:

Australian.

Troy Dean:

Yeah. Australian, Australian. 

Lee:

I'm holding myself back with all of the Australian stereotypes, but I've also got this terrible habit of mirroring people's accents. So if at any point today I start to talk slightly Auss, I'm not making fun of you. It's just this mirror response when I'm chatting with people.

Troy Dean:

The funny thing is I actually went to school with a bunch of Brits, right? So if I'm hanging out with some British mates and I've had a couple of beers, I do the same thing. I'll just fall into this really bad impersonation of a Cockney accent. And yeah, my mates, occasionally look at me and they're like, What are you doing? I'm like, I can't help it, man. I just get lazy. I love accents. I just find the South African accent actually is my favourite accent because when you first hear the South African accent, you can't place it. It's almost New Zealand, it's almost UK. It's part Australian. It's this really weird hybrid, and it's one of my most favourite accents to try and mimic when I'm hanging out with South African people.

Lee:

It's the one I think I find the most impossible to mimic as well. So many South African friends. I guess I best shut up. I wouldn't want to offend them when I try. I also learn as well that you don't say to someone, if they're from Zimbabwe, are you from South Africa? I learned the hard way. But Kieran won't mind. He's a good friend of mine. No, that's awesome. Excuse me, this cold is... I'm struggling with this cold. So what I'm really intrigued as well to find out, Troy, is when you first started the business, were you doing design and WordPress development, or were you focusing mainly on the development side itself?

Troy Dean:

So when I started out as a freelancer, I was just doing the development and I was using way back then, I was basically using Woo themes because this is like before theme forest really took off and I hadn't really got my head around Genesis and I found Woo themes. So I was using some of their premium themes to begin with because, see, I love design, but I'm really bad at it. So I can't draw a circle without a compass. I'm a terrible designer, but I know good design. You're in me, both of me. I love good design. I see good design. I'm like, Yeah, that looks amazing, but give me a blank page and I'm not good. So I started out as a developer and then I partnered up with a guy in 2009. So I'd been going for maybe 18 months on my own. And then I partnered up with a guy who was a local designer who lived in my area, and we just met through some networking events. And we partnered up and formed an agency. And so then he was the designer, I was the developer. And then we grew that so that we both got off the tools and we were doing marketing and account management.

Troy Dean:

And we had contractors and a team doing the actual design and development and project management work for us.

Lee:

Yeah, that's amazing. And I guess as well as the lesson there is play on your strengths because I myself started back in 1998, my first website that I built. I'm old enough. I was only kid but I'd learn programming so I figured, Oh, I must be a web designer. And I was trying to build all these websites for people and I sucked. The code is amazing, but the designs suck. Yeah. I soon learned the hard way.

Troy Dean:

Yeah, definitely got to play to your strengths.

Lee:

Absolutely. So what I'm intrigued then, buddy, is we ask everyone who joins these podcast the same sorts of questions. Obviously, as you can tell, we duck and dive here and there when I've got something that I'm just intrigued at. I'm sure people want to find out. But one of the questions we do ask is as a consultant or as maybe as when you were freelancing in the past, whichever, what was the biggest challenge to your business?

Troy Dean:

Processes. The biggest challenge was initially finding clients to pay you to do the work. That was the initial challenge, like, where am I going to find these clients? Now, I was doing a lot of voiceover work, so I had this network of people that worked in the postproduction industry here in Melbourne. I had a lot of studios and filmmakers and postproduction houses and those kinds of companies that I had a network. Fortunately, I started to pick up some work through that network. But then very quickly, what happened is you get into this cycle of getting a job and then you basically have to put the handbrake on the business while you go underground and do that job for a couple of weeks or however long it takes you. Then you deliver the project and then you get it over the line and then the client's happy and they pay the bill, and then you turn around and go, Right, where's my next project coming from? That was the biggest challenge. I recognized very early on that you can't be the one who is going out there and doing the sales and marketing, getting the job, account managing the client, and actually doing the work and managing the project and then delivering it.

Troy Dean:

You can't play all of those roles in the business. If you do, you just burn out really quickly. That was the biggest challenge, I reckon, that held me back for a while and surrounding myself with other people who could do certain things. The first thing I did was actually got rid of the coding of the websites. I found someone to do that for me. Then when I partnered up with my business partner, I was like, Okay, we need some clear definitions and who's going to do what. I got off the tools very quickly. It was my job then just to go out and do sales and marketing and to speak at functions and drum up business. We had a team behind us then who could actually pump out the work. I think as a freelancer, it's really tricky to... You almost need to get people on a waiting list and say, Well, I work... A buddy of mine, Andy Clark, he works in weekly sprints. He's like, Well, I've got the third week of January available. Do you want it? And if you do, then you pay him a weekly fee and he just works on your project that week.

Troy Dean:

And fortunately, because he puts out great work, does good quality work, and gets good word of mouth. He's not sitting around twiddling his thumbs, but that's how he manages his time. You basically book your week with him. And if you want three weeks, then you book three weeks, depending on the size of the project.

Lee:

That's an incredibly clever way of doing things. I mean, we work on sprints for projects, but never really thought of booking in time in advance. Again, even for me and my team as an agency, that's the one thing that I recognized early on. I used to have, well, I still own a third of a design agency, and one of the problems we had, very similar to you, was we'd get the projects in and then it was all hands on deck. Everyone was delivering, delivering, delivering, and then suddenly by the end of the month, everyone's happy and oh, crap. What is the next paycheck? We've got people to pay. What do we do here? So when I started Lee Jackson limited, which is, well, leejacksondev, from that point on, although I still have got to nail processes, I've got obviously WP Elevation to thank for a lot of that. The idea was although I do still do a lot of the code because I absolutely love doing it, I've really tried to balance out who does what. I do probably 40 % of the code now, whereas I probably did 90 % when I first started.

Lee:

And then there is now a growing team of specialists. Someone actually looks after social media who's better than I am looking after it, and so on and so forth. So totally relatable to everything you just said. That's just awesome. You said as well finding clients. I mean, for the freelancers who are listening, how were you finding clients when you first started?

Troy Dean:

So here's the thing, right? Here's yeah, there's a real key distinction here that sales is awkward and uncomfortable if you're asking for something. So I tend to be a pretty good salesperson. I've got a natural ability to speak to people and be able to get them excited about something. But I know that a lot of people find selling really awkward. Over the years, I've developed this philosophy or this mental approach that if you see selling as trying to convince somebody to buy something, it's always going to feel a little bit awkward. This isn't a PG rated podcast, isn't it? It's like trying to get laid too early in a relationship. You just have to know when and it should happen organically. The way that I approached it was, and I'll give you the approach and then I'll give you something very tactical that I did, which is the example. But the way that I approach that is, how can I position myself in the network that I had as someone really valuable to that network so that people would just want to come to me to get their website built, rather than me going and asking them, because that I think is the game changer.

Troy Dean:

If people are coming to you and asking you for help, then you get less push back from them, you get less scope creep, you don't have to talk about price so much because at the end of the day, it's like, Well, dude, you called me, remember? I didn't come to you and ask you to let me build you a website. You called me. This is how I work and these are the prices that I've got. If you're not happy with that, then that's cool, man. You can move on because there's people behind you who are happy to work with me. How I actually did that just happened completely accidentally. I had this idea that I don't want to sell my services. I want to just be seen as someone who is valuable in my network. The other thing was that I was working at home and I was getting cabin fever and I just needed to get out of the house. I put on an event once a month called Freelancer Friday as a bit of a a piss take. Basically, I just picked a pub and I said, Right, the third Friday of every month, I'm going to go to a pub at 4:30, down tools early, go to the pub at 4:30 and just start having some drinks.

Troy Dean:

And if you guys want to turn up, my freelancer buddies, then by all means come and join me. If not, then screw you. I'm going to do it anyway. And the first week I did it, 23 people turned up and we all sat around and had dinner and talked shop and compared notes. I think a couple of them went home with each other that night and it became this thing that every month we would have this event. And it ran for about 18 months. We had a Christmas party one year. We raised about 800 bucks for a local charity. When people would move to Melbourne from interstate, they would email me or call me and say, Hey, I know that you're on this thing called Freelancer Friday. I'm new in town. I want to come along and meet a bunch of freelancers. That was the single best thing I ever did for my business. I never pitched my business at those events. But people would come up to me and introduce themselves because I was the organizer, and there was no structure to it. I didn't make a speech or anything like that. My job was just to introduce people to each other at that event and say, Hey, Paul, you own a studio.

Troy Dean:

Mark's a graphic designer. You guys should talk because you might be able to share clients. And I would just introduce people to each other. And I picked up so much work out of that network just through word of mouth and met so many people and expanded my network just by being the organizer and the facilitator of that event. 

Lee:

Well, that's fantastic. And I'm sure that's pretty inspirational. I mean, we've all got local networks and we've all got pubs down the road or pubs as they would say over in Australia there. I presume you're referring to a pub. Yeah, exactly. Well, if you're listening to this, you've got a pub down the road. There are people in your area who are freelancing. What a great idea. I guess that leads me then on to the next question, which I'm not sure whether this was what you picked for this section, but what one thing, idea, or product has been a complete game changer for your business?

Troy Dean:

It changes depending on where you're at in your business. But that was the one thing for me that was awesome to get me started. But then what happened is I found myself spending a lot of time having coffee and lunch meetings with prospects. I actually had this brief. This is a true brief I got one day from a guy who wanted to build. This was when Facebook was really new. I think I've had this brief. It's functionality was quite limited, but it was still obviously going to be a big thing. He was like, Look, this new thing, Facebook, it's good. But the problem is it's too generic and I want to build a Facebook thing, but just for homeopaths in Australia, because he was a homeopath, right? And I'm sitting there at this lunch meeting going, Okay, yeah, there's a fair bit of work involved in that. And turns out he had a budget of $500. Now, when I first started out, I stupidly would say yes to projects like that because I needed to learn how to use WordPress and build websites. The cash was I wasn't relying on the web design business 100 %.

Troy Dean:

I was still doing voiceovers and playing gigs as a muse around town. But I thought, Hey, why not? I'll build Facebook for homeopath for 500 bucks, you idiot. And six weeks later, I'm like, Dude, please have your money back. I can't do it. It's just ridiculous. This is way too big a project. So what happened is eventually I got to a point where I realised that meeting someone to talk about their project was a complete waste of everybody's time, including theirs, which I'll explain in a moment, unless they had really done some thinking about their project and could answer some key questions. So the big game changer was I turned my phone on silent, and it's been on silent ever since. That was about, what are we, 2015? That was about 2010. About five years ago, I put my phone on silent and it's been on silent ever since. I put an auto responder in my email saying, If you're emailing me because you want me to talk to you about building a website. This is what you need to do. Essentially, you need to go and fill out a form, an inquiry form on my website.

Troy Dean:

On that website, inquiry form, it asks some key questions about your project, including your budget, what your success factors are, and what the key objective is, and why you're building a website. Because what I realized is that people have ideas for websites and web apps all the time, and they want to sit down and have lunch with a web designer to pick your brain so that they can get clear about their idea, which is great. I'm happy to do that if they're paying me as a consultant. But there's this weird thing where they expect you to come and do that for free because you might end up building the website for them once they've picked your brain and downloaded all your intellectual property and all your years experience into their head. And they go, Oh, wow. This is great. Really interesting. I'm really glad that I've learned all this stuff. I think I need to go away and think about this for about two and a half years and get my shit together before I come back to you and give you the project. Thanks very much. By the way, I'll buy lunch. Oh, great.

Troy Dean:

So I've just been here for an hour and a half and you've spotted me a $13 sandwich. You know what I mean? By making them fill in an inquiry form before you meet them, it actually forces them to do the thinking. The reality is that about 70 % of the people who want to talk to you haven't done that thinking, and they're not ready for you, and that's fine. So that just reduced the number of poor quality leads coming into my business. I know that most people have a problem with this because they think they're going to miss out. The reality is you're just going to miss out on incoming leads that are not right. And you're actually going to free up your time to get on with building your business and focusing on the clients who are right and who are ready for you.

Lee:

Wow. That's incredible. It's something myself I've learned probably, again, hashtag relatable. It's something I've learned really only in the last year. I suddenly realized that when I was at these meetings, my brain essentially was being harvested for information. I was giving people epic ideas and then was never hearing from them again. And then finding they'd potentially even used someone else as well, which felt even more annoying because my amazing ideas were being utilized by anyone else. So like you, I don't quite have the same process as you. I was madly writing that down when you said that. I do still have an initial 20 minute conversation, but it has to be on the telephone. And then through that, I'll try and weed out, is there a budget? Is there any product brief? And if there's no product brief at that point, I'll then say, Right, okay, if you've no product brief, you've got an idea of what you want, you're going to need to pay me a day rate to come out on site and let's hash a brief together. And that brief, you can take away with you and never talk to me again, or you can have me quote on that brief as well.

Lee:

And obviously, what normally then happens is they want me to build it as well because I've got an understanding of their project more than anyone else because I've helped them develop that brief. And that's only really been in the last year for me. I've got that was a slow lesson for me over the years.

Troy Dean:

Yeah, it's a discovery day. So the thing is, if your MacBook starts to die and there's some things wrong with it and you have to take it to a shop, unless it's under Apple care, right? If you take it to a Mac workshop, the guy around the corner here is like, No worries, bring your Mac in. It's 99 bucks for a diagnosis. So I'm paying him 100 bucks to open it up and without paying the 100 bucks upfront, the guy's not even getting his screwdrivers out of his toolkit. So once I've paid, he opens it up, and then later that day, he rings me up and he goes, Listen, man, your mother board's cactus, it's going to cost you 1200 bucks to get it fixed. You should just buy a MacBook Air for like, 3,800 bucks. I'm like, Yeah, cool, no worries. But I spent the hundred dollars. Now I actually know what the problem is. You go to a doctor and say, Doctor, I got a few things that are ailing me. Can you prescribe me some medication? He's like, Sure, I'll give you a diagnosis, but I'm not going to give you a diagnosis for free and then make money off the medicine I'm selling you.

Troy Dean:

You got to pay me for the diagnosis. Why, on Earth, people expect web designers to give free one hour consultations and a free diagnosis is beyond me. I think it's because as freelancers, we've allowed that to happen over the years because the customer's always right and you go along and you'd be nice and polite and you take a brief and then you write a proposal and then sometimes I'll accept the proposal. I just worked out very early on that that was going to kill the business if I didn't. I have to charge for every minute that I'm engaged with a client, otherwise it's not sustainable for me. And also, the client values your information and your advice more if they're paying for it. If it's free, they tend not to value it.

Lee:

Absolutely. And I think as designers, as web developers, because we all... I mean, what we do comes very easy to us. It feels easy, and we sometimes undervalue that through pricing and also by just giving our time away for free in these sorts of free, pick your brain, $13 sandwich meetings. Although you were lucky, I never actually got my meals paid for. I had to pay for them.

Troy Dean:

Yeah, that's right. I'll get lunch because you might be a client one day.

Lee:

Exactly. And for me, I'd had that background of about eight years ago, went into a design agency, and that was the whole idea was you schmooze the client, you talk to them, you find out what they want, you put together a brief and hope that they'll eventually buy it. So when I first started this company a couple of years ago, that was exactly how I thought I had to carry on. But it didn't take me long as the the sole guy to work out that wasn't really working for me. It was an awful lot of work to try and win some business, and then it wasn't really necessarily appreciated. Like you said, undervalued as well. And again, I guess for designers, it's one of the things that design agencies particularly do get frustrated, I know this process very well, is that the pitching process where you have to pitch your design amongst a whole load of other guys, and it can really devalue and demotivate designers and design agencies.

Troy Dean:

Absolutely.

Lee:

 They're putting themselves out there and their clients like, I like brown.

Troy Dean:

My wife used to work at an advertising agency part time when she was in uni, right? And she was the receptionist there. And they were pitching for a new client. And so they spent 50 grand putting together this presentation and this pitch for this client. And the client would just wheel these advertising agencies in all day long, getting all these ideas. And at the end of the day, they would take all the best ideas, give those best ideas to their existing agency and go, There you go. There's our new brief. They're the campaigns we want to roll out. No intention of ever hiring a new agency, but they'd put this request for pitch out and all these companies had come in and pitch their best ideas. So I was listening to Dan Kennedy years ago who was saying, back in the glory days when he was pitching as an ad agent, he wouldn't even turn up unless he was getting paid, basically a day rate to pitch. So he's standing in the men's toilets one day in this client building, and word had got around that... I'm sure Dan probably would have leaked it because he's that guy.

Troy Dean:

But word got around to all the other agencies that he was getting paid. So he's standing there, some guy comes up, stands next to him. They're at the urinal. And this guy's like, I hear that you're getting paid to pitch. And Dan's like, Yeah. And he's like, How do you do that? You can't do that. We all just come in here and we pitch for free. That's just the way this industry works. And Dan says, Well, that might be the way that the industry works for you, but the industry for me works like I get paid to pitch. And guess what? My way is better because I've got some cash in my pocket right now. You don't. So who's the Muppet? And just because that's the way it's always been done doesn't necessarily mean that's the way that you have to play by those rules. I would never expect the design agency to come in. We're having some stuff redesigned here internally at the moment, and I would never expect the design agency to come and show me concepts without actually agreeing to hire them first. We've got a portfolio website. If you don't think we can do the job, go and check out our portfolio.

Troy Dean:

If you look at our portfolio and you like what you see, hire us to do the job. It's that simple.

Lee:

 Exactly. And it's like a relationship isn't built on trust from the beginning, isn't it? I would trust a design agency to be able to deliver the goods. Therefore, I will trust them with my 50 % share of here's the deposit. Equally, they would therefore trust me enough to complete the work, trusting that I would then pay them the rest at the end of the project is a two way thing. Exactly. It's definitely been a frustration. So hopefully, if you're a designer and you're listening to this and you do feel stuck in a pitching process, be it freelance or be it agency, there is definitely hope. There is definitely information out there to help you break that cycle of being stuck on the pitch. And that's something that my own agency over in Bedford, it's been a slow process. We've had to do pitches still for quite a while, but we've been taking ourselves out of that. And we've actually used WordPress as a technology to help us get into places instead. So we're coming at it from a different angle, using the website first and showing our steel there as it were, and our worth.

Lee:

And then because we've developed that relationship of trust, et cetera, then the client's more willing to just go ahead and commission straight fly out design work. So that's one of the ways that we've applied our structure over there. That's awesome, man. That's awesome. We're definitely on the same page. And the minute you told me about your wife, the guys taking all those ideas and giving it to their internal agency. I nearly snapped my pen.

Troy Dean:

Because.

Lee:

I thought of at least 800 times that's happened.

Troy Dean:

Totally.

Lee:

I'm not going to mention any names, but it just... Yeah, okay. We're like two old men moaning on the podcast. Hey, but all is good and there is hope and we're proving it on a day to day basis. That's awesome. Hey, mate. So you are obviously a WordPress geek, so I'm sure this WordPress geek is listening to this. I'm one, you're one. What plugin would you recommend to the community? And it can be yours because I'd recommend it.

Troy Dean:

Well, sure. I mean, that's a given. Of course, I would recommend the video user manuals plugin. But this is a really hard question. So I think I'm going to make this recommendation based on what I think is possibly the most valuable plugin, could be the most valuable plugin to your business. I'm a big fan of having a list of prospects, leads, clients that you have a great relationship with. I'm going to say, I don't actually care which plug in it is. I'll tell you which one I use and what my preference is. But if you don't have basically an opt in form of plug in on your website, if you are not proactively offering free content as a way of collecting email addresses, then you need to start immediately. The best time to start building an email list was yesterday. The second best time is today. I happen to use OptinMonster, and I've used them all, and I just think OptinMonster is the best in terms of the interface and its functionality. But there's Thrive Leads, there's SumoMe, there's a whole bunch, whichever one, it doesn't matter, just have some plug in functionality that allows you.

Troy Dean:

I mean, video user manuals was basically built on pop up opt in forms. That whole business was built on offering three free ebooks on our website to WordPress developers. You'd hit the website, the pop up would appear, people opt in for the free ebook. The amount of great feedback and testimonials and thank yous that we get for those free ebooks is just ridiculous. Then those free ebooks lead to a percentage of people buying the plugin because it solves a very specific problem. That's my number one recommendation is get some opt in plugin on your website and make sure that what it is you're offering people to join your list is compelling and is valuable and give away as much free content as you can and get those people in a list and then get them into some discovery workshop or some group workshop or some way that you can basically flex your muscle and prove to them that you're the right person for the job.

Lee:

Mate, that's awesome. I'm a big fan of OptinMonster. I've also used Thrive themes a lot. I particularly like the feature where if someone's scrolling so far down the page, it'll then pop up. So if you've got them to 70 %, you know they're pretty engaged with the content and then getting them on that place. And one of the things I love about the idea of eBooks as well is an eBook only really needs to be a very high level as in here are the basics, here are things that you can action right now, you don't have to... People think when they create an eBook, they have to create tons and tons of information. It has to be a 475 page document. It can literally be a few pages of just really valuable content ideas that people may not really have thought of, simple stuff that people can apply. And that's really helpful to people because we're all busy, we're all on the job all the time, and we don't always see the bigger picture. And it just takes someone to put out a nice simple eBook with some clear information just to catch people's eye and to inspire them.

Lee:

So that's OptinMonster. If you want to go check out, I'll put that in the show notes. So on picking your brain for your plug ins, I'd really love to know what online resources are you a regular reader or consumer of?

Troy Dean:

Yeah, that's a good question. Wordpress stuff, I just tend to look at WP Tavern and of course, WP Elevation. We've got a whole bunch of guest bloggers writing for that blog there. In terms of just general entrepreneurship and business stuff, I tend to listen to the Growth Show podcast from HubSpot, which I think is really good. That helps me think a little bit bigger. I think as much as I love the WordPress space, I think it can sometimes get a little bit insular and you can get stuck in the WordPress bubble. I think it's important to have a look at what other people are doing in other industries outside the WordPress space in the general tech startup space. The Growth Show podcast from HubSpot. Also a buddy of mine, Nathan, runs Founder magazine, which is a great Apple books magazine, digital magazine. He's got a podcast as well. It's FOUNDR, Founder Without the E, Founder magazine. He actually works in the same building as me. So we hang out a bit. And he's interviewed everyone from Branson to Tony Robbins to Tim Ferris to Seth Gordon. He's got this amazing ability just to hustle his pants off and just interview.

Troy Dean:

It's incredible how he gets these. He quit his job. He started the magazine before he quit his job. He actually got Richard Branson on the cover of Episode 8 of his magazine. And he was still working full time while he was building this thing on the side. He's awesome. The magazine's excellent.

Lee:

I feel like Nathan rings a bell. Have you interviewed him on your podcast as well? Or is that a dream I had?

Troy Dean:

I haven't, but he's been on a webinar for us at WP Elevation. He actually came and spoke at one of my live events here in Melbourne earlier this year. But I do plan to have him on... I'm probably going to be starting a new podcast internet TV show next year, and I'm going to have Nathan on as a guest, for sure.

Lee:

That's awesome. Now, on the podcast, I was listening to the most recent that you were talking about. You're looking at changing things, you're looking for feedback, etc. Is that what your plans are for next year then to launch more of a TV show or something along those lines?

Troy Dean:

Yeah. So the WP Elevation podcast, 100 episodes, almost two years every week, interview format with people mainly in the WordPress space. A couple of people outside the WordPress space, like Guy Kawasaki and Seth Gordon, Andrew Warner, but all freelance WordPress centric. I'm looking at... After two years, I got a little bit bored with that format, so I'm looking at doing something a little more engaging and a little more entertaining. I'm looking at just casting the net a little bit wider and speaking to people who aren't necessarily just WordPress centric, because as I said, I think we can learn a lot from looking at what people are doing in other industries and other verticals. Not that I'm not interested in doing a Drupble or a Joomla podcast, but just more in the general entrepreneur startup space. For example, I did this speaking tour recently where I met this guy named Glenn Martin from New Zealand. He invented The Martin Jet pack. This guy actually... A real jet pack, not a WordPress plugin jet pack, but the real jet pack that you strap on your back and fly around. He spent 34 years inventing this Martin Jet Pack in New Zealand.

Troy Dean:

He's just an amazing, amazing entrepreneur. And I actually, I want to be able to have conversations with guys like him and bring that to the audience because it's really inspiring. And as I said, it's not just in this WordPress bubble, but it's more in the general entrepreneur, innovator space. And I think TV, I like video. I think video is more engaging. We're trying to work out a format at the moment where I can produce a weekly TV show for the internet, but just spit the audio out as a podcast because I know a lot of people just love listening to a podcast in transit or on the train or at the gym, walk on the dog, whatever. I'm trying to work out a format where it can be visually interesting to look at and entertaining. Maybe you'd like a 25, 30 minute episode once a week, but I can just shoot the audio out as a podcast as well.

Lee:

That's awesome. And with your background experience, will you be singing?

Troy Dean:

Well, you never know, man. I mean, if I shoot it on a Friday afternoon and I've had a couple of videos.

Lee:

Well, you did say you want to make it fun, so I figured you could.

Troy Dean:

I could start each episode with a little song.

Lee:

Yeah, a little jingle. That'd be awesome. Well, I'm really excited about that. I'm especially excited because I'm a huge fan of entrepreneur on fire with John Lee Dumas, and he's constantly interviewing entrepreneurs from all sorts of different arenas. And there is so much to learn out there and you are right. If we were to just fill our brains all the time with just WordPress information, there's a whole lot of stuff that we're missing outside of that arena. The same for design agencies. We tend to click on the design section of iTunes when there's an awful lot that we can learn from around the world. So I'm really excited and can't wait to catch the first one and hear your new Jingle.

Lee:

So, mate, one of the ideals that we want to get from each one of these episodes is when we do interview people, we'd love for our listeners to come away with one highly recommended piece of actionable advice that they could do today or tomorrow in the next few weeks in their business. And you've already dropped a whole load of really amazing value bombs. But what would be that one thing that you would recommend people would go do today? Like, press pause and go do it now.

Troy Dean:

Sure. This is, on the surface, might sound like really boring advice, but I promise this is the most valuable thing I think you can do is, first of all, I say this, having said that you should be building your own list, I think you should. I think you should also unsubscribe from everyone else's list unless you just cannot make it through the day without anticipating their emails. There's a fabulous tool called unroll me, unroll.me, which allows you to put all of your subscriptions into one daily digest. Just go and get all of your email subscriptions, stick them in one daily digest, and that will free up about an hour and a half of your day, every day. And then use that time to actually write out just one very simple paragraph about what your business looks like in 12 months time. I know that sounds extremely boring, but if you are not absolutely crystal clear about what you want and where you're going, I promise you, you will not get there. And even if you do, you won't know when you've arrived. But if you are super, super clear about what you want and how you're going to get there, then you will absolutely increase your chances of achieving it.

Troy Dean:

And most people, I think, don't achieve what they want in business because they don't know what they want in business. And we just end up being in business and doing all these business activities because we think it's what we're supposed to be doing. And I see this happening in small business all the time. So just get super clear about what you want out of your business and then make a plan to get there and then just stick to the bloody plan. It sounds boring, but that's actually how you win at the game of business as far as I'm concerned.

Lee:

Amen, brother. So the word for today is stick to the bloody plan.

Troy Dean:

Exactly. We love it.

Lee:

That is awesome advice, that just knowing where you're going, knowing your why, and sticking to the plan, even writing that plan down. There's a website somewhere, I think it's called the One Page Business Plan. Having something written down is so important. People are asking me, what are my plans for the next 12 months? And I can tell them off the top of my head, it's ingrained. I only started doing that a year ago and things in my own business have completely transformed. So, mate, #relatable, yet again, that is fantastic. I love it. I'm excited. I'd scream, but my voice won't let me. I'm proper Barry White right now with this deep voice.

Troy Dean:

The other thing about being really clear about where you're going and why is that when other opportunities come up, it just makes it really easy to make decisions in your business. Can you just go, Is this going to get me closer to my goal? If it is, then let's do it. If not, then just put it on the shelf.

Lee:

Amen, brother. I just got religious on you there. Sorry. This is great. So exciting. Troy, you've been epic, which was no surprise listening to your podcasts, I knew you were going to be amazing. And again, I'm truly honoured that you've joined us here on the WP Innovator podcast. How can people connect with you? What are the best ways and where would you like to send people? You also mentioned that you had a few things coming up in January as well. It would be great to learn about. 

Troy Dean:

Yeah, sure. So wpelevation.com is probably... I mean, that's where we are. That's our home. It's in the middle of a redesign at the moment, so I'm not sure what it's going to look like when you get there. But we've got a whole new design coming, which we're super excited about. It looks a million dollars. We haven't paid quite that much for the design, but we have invested quite a bit in a design agency here to give us a new brand and a new design of the website. And in early January, I think we're starting to give away a whole bunch of free training around writing proposals and getting better clients into your business. Of course, WP Elevation, the program itself, I think we've got another intake in the first week of February. But if you come along anytime in January, we're going to be giving away a whole bunch of free training as a lead up to that launch in February. So wpelevation.com and hit me up on Twitter @troydean. More than happy to keep the conversation going on Twitter.

Lee:

Awesome. So guys, if you were nodding your head vigorously when us two old men were talking about pictures or anything like that, then totally recommend you go check out WP Elevation, check out all of the past blogs. There are tons of amazing pieces of information in there that will inspire you and change the way you do business. And it sounds really exciting, these free courses that Troy is going to be putting out there. I'm really excited, mate. And thanks so much for taking the time to put out this valuable content. I think you're practicing what you preach, mate. You're making yourself an extremely valuable person online and providing amazing value to people. So we salute you, buddy.

Troy Dean:

Awesome. Thank you, man. Thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. And keep up the good work, man. You're really good at this and I really enjoyed it.

Lee:

Thank you very much. I'm going to take that snippet out and have it as my ringtone.

Troy Dean:

Awesome.

Lee:

Have an amazing day, buddy. And thanks so much for your time.

Troy Dean:

You too. Thanks, Lee.

Lee:

Take care, buddy.

Lee:

And there you have it, the fifth episode of the WP Innovator podcast. Like I said, I was truly honoured to have Troy Dean. And next week we're going to have Jan Koch. Jan is a restart specialist and specializes in helping entrepreneurs make amazing businesses with WordPress, so you're not going to want to miss this one. Now, if you're enjoying the podcast, please do get in touch on leejacksondev.com/contact and let me know what your thoughts are. If you're not enjoying the podcast, I would joke and say, Let's keep that a secret. But no, actually, I would really love to know if there's anything that you think is missing, anything that I might be doing wrong.

Lee:

I can't change my voice.

Lee:

Though.

Lee:

So I do apologise about that.

Lee:

I had a terrible cold during the last interview, so thanks for getting this far. But anyway, it's leejacksondev.com/contact. And to go and check out all of the podcasts and the show notes, it's leejacksondev.com/podcast. Thanks for listening. Have an awesome day and I really look forward to talking to you on Episode Six.