1:6 Becoming More Than Average

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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. Welcome to the WP Innovator podcast, Episode 6. Happy New Year, it's 2016. So this is the first episode of this year and I'm really glad to say I don't have a cold anymore. I'm feeling really good. Unfortunately, though, this episode was recorded where I was at the height of my man flu, feeling pretty rubbish. I apologise for any sniffing or any deep, Barry white voice. I do miss that voice. It was pretty good. Anyway, we have a Jan Koch as our guest today and I assure you this is a fantastic episode. He's a restart specialist. He's full of information for people who work with WordPress on how to work with WordPress better and to generate income. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this week's episode.

Lee:

Good morning, or at least it is here. This is Lee at the WP Innovator podcast, and I have the absolute honour and privilege of introducing you to Jan Koch. Now, Jan is an awesome, fresh face, exciting WordPress expert online. I've been following him now for the past few weeks, and he was recommended to me by our old favourite, Kim Doyal. Now, Jan is a WordPress specialist, a designer, and a restart specialist, and even more excitingly, the founder of the WP Summit. Jan, say hi to everyone for us.

Jan Koch:

Hey, Lee, thanks for having me.

Lee:

Really, really honoured to have you, buddy. I think you'll have had some replies to some of your emails in the past from me just fanboying on you and saying how great your content is. Jan, I've given you an introduction, but there's nothing better than you telling us a little bit about yourself. So, Jan, go ahead, introduce yourself. Tell us what you do, a little bit of history about yourself. It would be great to find out more about you.

Jan Koch:

Yeah, absolutely. So I started my WordPress career, to phrase it that way, in 2013 when I decided to become self employed on the side of being in a job as a, basically, a business consultant. So in that job, I was helping my clients to work around their ways with their ERP systems, introducing new systems to the companies and stuff like that. And I was feeling bored and almost even depressive in a while because that job really didn't interest me at all, to be honest. I couldn't care less about that job. So I figured out I need a way to make my own income. Wordpress was just coming up to me in that time. I was reading more and more about WordPress and I was just starting a blog. I joined a training program to make money online, which is called Internet Business Mastery, where I met a lot of great entrepreneurs. Basically, that's when I learned to make money online and when I refined my WordPress skills, I was a coder in my job already. I was doing customizations for the software for my clients. It made sense to me to learn to code for WordPress.

Jan Koch:

I started developing themes and I started working with clients to tweak their themes and create plug ins for them. And basically, that's when I learned that almost anybody could make money online using WordPress and by putting out great information and creating online products or coaching programs and stuff like that. So that's when the term... We're talking about probably mid 2014 now. That's when the term restart strategist came to my mind. In January 2014, I quit my job, so I became full time self employed. I was still on the search of my true position in the market. Who am I? What do I want to be known for? And all these questions. And it turned out that the term restart strategist resonated with a lot of people. I built great connections just through this positioning and this branding. And that was my focus for 2014. And at the end of 2014, I saw my friend Navid Moisez, did an absolute home run with his branding summit where he interviewed 88 experts on personal branding. He inspired me to create the WP Summit, which is my own virtual conference about WordPress and he coached me a bit in the process of running that event and running the summit.

Jan Koch:

In 2015, I was ready to launch it. In March 2015, I started publishing 28 interviews with experts like Jason Cohen, the founder of WP Engine, or Oli Gardner, the co founder of Unbounds. Basically, that's when I was able to took my business to another level.

Lee:

That is awesome. Now, we were saying just before we started this podcast that you got Tony Perez on there, that totally blew my mind. As a web developer, security is one of the most common questions that agencies are coming to me and asking about. He is my go to guy when it comes to any information he's got on his blog, but also his company security. How did you manage to land such, in my view, a prestigious individual?

Jan Koch:

With Tony in particular, I think I was plain lucky to get him on the summit. So I shot an email to the support team of security, told them about my plans with the summit and about the speakers who I already had secured. The first speaker I had confirmed was Dan Norris from WP Curve. So that helped to get more speakers on because Dan is very well known. So eventually I got an email back from the security support team that they forwarded the request to Tony. And then Tony replied to me by himself, telling me that he almost declined because he's normally not doing these type of interviews. But he felt intrigued and wanted to start a bit more doing these interviews. So I was just lucky to catch him in the right.

Lee:

Timing, I think. That's awesome. Maybe I should email him then. That's amazing. And also I noticed you managed to land at Tim Paige as well from Lead pages. Was that a stroke of luck as well or was that through?

Jan Koch:

No, that was through a common friend that we had. Navid Moisez has introduced me to him.

Lee:

Because he'd done the branding summit as well. That's amazing. I remember first hitting the WP Summit website and just seeing the banner with a whole load of pictures and my eyes lit up and my ears pricked up. I was like, What is this Sorcery? This is amazing. It's really exciting. So if you have not checked out the WP Summit, that is thewpsummit.com. It's a recorded online event and absolutely packed with amazing speakers. I think it was... Was it over five or six days?

Jan Koch:

That was 10 days, actually. Oh, wow.

Lee:

So it's 10 days of content covering an absolute wide range of subjects that would be pertinent to developers and to design agencies. Now, I know this sounds like a plug, but I just remember seeing this and getting really excited about it. So I wanted to tell the world which is why I had Jan on in the first place.

Jan Koch:

Just to be totally open here and totally honest, since the summit itself was a live event, it was just for the 10 days limited, the interviews, or not all interviews, are accessible for free anymore. I charge a very reasonable fee for these interviews now to get lifetime access. But during these 10 days, it was free. I had 1,100 registrants from 110 countries and around 25,000 page views. So people loved it.

Lee:

Yeah. I mean, kudos to you. It's fantastic for a first time WP event to get such great people involved and to get such good statistics. And I reckon whatever you're charging is reasonable to get access to that information. So I know I'll be doing that. I've already had a look at a couple of things, but I'll be subscribing to get access to that content as well. So thanks.

Jan Koch:

Awesome. Thanks, mate.

Lee:

No worries. Excuse me. So I remember when I started this podcast as well, I've interviewed quite a few people already. Kim Doyal, Troy Dean, and all of these people have been heavy influencers to myself and my own business over the last few years. So as I was interviewing them, I just remembered how nervous I was initially. And then I realized that everybody is just a human being and everyone's actually nice. There's not that many people that are grumpy and mean. I've yet to hit one. But did you have that same apprehension when you were getting everything set up?

Jan Koch:

I was feeling nervous as hell, mate. I'm German, so I'm not a native English speaker. And I had all these huge names like the Jason Cohen, for example, or I had Rand Fishkin on the summit as well. I was like, Who am I talking to these people and bringing all these people together? But then I remembered the very first interview that I did, which was in May 2013 with Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. And I was trying to get Pat in front of the camera for probably two or three months. And then in May, he had his let go day where he celebrated the day he left his job or he was laid down and started Smart Passive Income. And I was nervous as hell. I was coughing all the time. And it was 1 AM for me to record the interview and I forgot to plug in the power to my MacBook. So during the interview, I had to go beneath my table and grab the cable and put the power and stuff like that. And Pat was just, Yeah, you did a great job. I was like, No, I didn't.

Lee:

It's funny, isn't it? We're so self critical. I got a very similar story. As in last night in the early hours of the morning, I was talking to Troy because he's based over in Australia there. So I too, I was full of cold so I could hardly talk. A couple of times we had to actually pause the interview whilst I coughed away and gargled my throat. And then right at the very end, he was like, Mate, you're really good at this. I was like, Damn it, I really wish I was still recording at this point. So he laughed. But he put me absolutely at ease. And it's funny, isn't it? We have this, I think I've mentioned it before on the podcast, but we sometimes have like an imposter syndrome, don't we? We think that we're not good enough and that we put other people up on a real high pedestal, but actually they're just normal human beings and they are approachable. And I've had people say, Sorry, I'm busy, but they've said it really politely and they've not slammed the door in my face. They've kept the communication channels open as well. Excuse me, I've even approached Dan Norris and he explained right now he's winding down for the year.

Lee:

He's got a whole lot of stuff on, but he's left the door open to communicate with him again next year. Although I've not always had a yes, I've certainly had really friendly and warm conversations with people. Definitely. Yes, definitely an encouragement. That's awesome, mate. Okay, well, it sounds like you've been in... Have you been in business or you left your work over the last two years? Has it been two years now? Yes. So over these two years, mate, what has been the biggest challenge to your business?

Jan Koch:

The biggest challenge to my business probably is similar to what most starting businesses are facing, which is the being afraid of not earning enough money to be fully 100 % transparent here. It's like when you come in from a job, you're used to get that pay check every month and you know there's money coming. But when you're full self employed, you don't have that pay check anymore. So you are self responsible to earn money to pay the bills. So wrapping my head around this issue and knowing that I actually can make it and can earn enough money and can make reasonably more money than I was making in my job to that time. That was probably the biggest mental barrier that I had to come through.

Lee:

And what of steps did you take to try and overcome the mental barrier?

Jan Koch:

I wrote everything down that I was afraid of and I imagined the worst scenarios possible, basically. And then I worked myself, I worked out the steps that I had to take to avoid these scenarios. So I knew when I wanted to build a lot of WordPress websites, I need to know a lot of people who need many WordPress websites and who are those people's online coaches in every form, for example, online mentors who help people become self employed. And that somehow resonated with the people I was naturally attracted to. So I remember being interviewed by AJ Amex from the US. He's a Twitter coach. And AJ and I have become friends over the past two years. And he constantly refers clients to me and vice versa. And I just, in the beginning, tried to make these strategic connections, basically, where I knew I could serve other people who needed my help. And I really tried to become friends with those people. And that's when I got this constant stream of clients coming in, basically. Once I established that, then I started to think about scaling the business.

Lee:

That's amazing. You had fear, you wrote that fear down, you put down ways of avoiding those issues. As a part of that, you then started to create a real targeted focus to who it is you're going to be approaching, who is your ideal customer, and you went out and sounds like you're killing it, mate. That's awesome. Absolutely fantastic. Yeah, totally inspired. Again, for myself, it was only when I absolutely niched down, wrote down those fears that I had as well, which were actually very similar to yours. How am I going to pay the bills? I had a little bit of savings to last me maybe a month to go ahead, but how was I going to pay the bills? It was a worry, but I just had to take the jump and go for it and see what happened. But without a plan, it would have been very, very scary.

Jan Koch:

Yeah. I think it's just natural to have those fears. And I don't think having these fears just qualifies anybody from being an entrepreneur. It's what you do to conquer these fears that I think divides the successful entrepreneur from one entrepreneur.

Lee:

Exactly. And in fact, if you are nervous right now, if this is one of your fears, then that's a great thing. That's a natural thing. And it means you're in the right space because if you were not and you were overconfident, I'd be very worried for your business right now.

Jan Koch:

Absolutely. Because these fears, at least for me, they keep me pushing forward and they keep me pushing harder and staying up late at night and working towards my goals, basically. And even though you know how it is in business, sometimes the business goes very well and sometimes the business just doesn't. It's these cycles that you experience, or at least I did over the past two years. And it's just in these hard times, you have to remind yourself of what you've already accomplished, and then you've got to plan out the next steps and see, if you are a WordPress agency, for example, see five ways to get new clients or five ways to build new projects with your existing client base or come up with a plug in you know the world needs and the people in the forums are talking about and you know that you could create this plug in. Go ahead and create a demo version for it to get some attention at least, and then see how you can monetize that demo version with some upfront payments or something like that.

Lee:

Yeah, that's awesome. That's great advice as well. Validating an idea. Putting together a demo or simple version of the plug in concept, see whether there is a market out there and push it out. That's episode two. We had the honour of talking with Hani Mourra, I can never say his last name, Hani from Simple Podcast Press. And he talked about how he launched those products. In fact, you had him as well on the WP Summit.

Jan Koch:

Yeah, I love Hani. Hani is awesome.

Lee:

He is a great guy and great products as well. I actually have all three of his plug ins on my site. Awesome. Not just to creep around him as in be a fan boy, but also because they're really useful and I use them on a daily basis. Excuse me, I'm struggling today with this throat, so I apologise if you're listening and you can hear me croaking away. But my commitment to the cause means I'm here with a full cold. So buddy, what one thing X or an idea or a product over the last couple of years has been an absolute game changer for you?

Jan Koch:

That has to be the WP Summit. So before that event, I was just the average WordPress developer with my existing client base, but I was just this average blogger, I like to say. I like to think now after this summit, I'm a bit special. I still don't see myself as a special guy, but I know that my brand has a broader reach now. I know that I'm known by more people and my network has grown like crazy over the past month after this summit. So definitely running the virtual summit was the biggest game changer for me.

Lee:

That's awesome. Now, we had Laurence Bradford on last week. And it's actually live now today as the point of this recording. You'll be out in two weeks' time from now. But she was talking as well about putting yourself out there. There's a massive difference, isn't there? There's a lot of people who are WordPress developers. There's a high out an ocean of them available in places like Upwork, et cetera. So how can you stand out? How can you put yourself out there? And you've done an amazing job of raising your credibility, of getting people to know you, and of growing your network. It's very clear from that by the WP Summit. So buddy, I just want to give you a huge slap on the back and a well done for that. Thank you. I wish I'd thought of it.

Jan Koch:

Well, I think just like you said, since there are so many of us, so many developers for WordPress, you need to do something special and you need to stand out of the market. I refused from day one to create a job profile for me at Upwork or oDesk or all these other platforms because I just didn't want to be comparable to all those people. I wanted people to work with me based on the personal brand and based on the content that I put out and the way I work. Because it's like sometimes you have these clients that are super easy to work with and that you really enjoy working with, and then you have clients that are a pain to manage and they constantly over demand and they constantly pay too late and all these stuff. I really wanted to sort through these type of clients, and I just wanted to focus on people that are naturally attracted to me. So I had to put my brand out in some way or the other.

Lee:

That's awesome. And regards the amount of time you're putting into your blogging, etc. I presume you're still developing sites now for people? Yes, I am. So what's the ratio of the amount of time you're putting into generating content versus actually working on... I guess you could say working on the content is like working on your marketing strategy, isn't it? Yes. What's your ratio at the moment to marketing and working on content and development for direct clients?

Jan Koch:

At the moment or over the past 90 days or so, I have to say that working on client project has taken up probably 90 % of my time. So I really did very few marketing actions or I didn't write any new blog posts for probably the past two months. That is because I'm involved in a super big project currently that I'm working on, that I have to be so focused on that I can't spend any time on my blog. But usually, I write a post every two weeks. When I feel I have something to say, I write a post every two weeks. And it takes me around maybe 6 to 10 hours from first idea to publish post.

Lee:

Wow, that's intense, man. 6 to 10 hours.

Jan Koch:

Yeah, but I think it has to be this way. For me, it has to be this way because I want my content to be really actionable by not limiting the readers to those who have a technical understanding. So I want my content to be approachable for anybody who comes to my website and who's interested in using WordPress. And that just takes some time to do the research upfront and to create screenshots of what I'm doing and maybe record a video and stuff like that.

Lee:

That's really good. And it's very clear to me as well, the attention and care and the detail that you do put into your blogs there. So it definitely shines through. I myself don't blog so often recently as well. I'd say a probably similar boat to you. I've got several very large projects. Everybody wants to be done for Christmas. Although that does mean that they won't do anything with it over Christmas. So I sometimes wish they'd say, Let's all agree, January the fifth. But anyway, that's another story.

Jan Koch:

They want to have the feeling that everything is done. They can start right away in January.

Lee:

Absolutely. I was bold. I'm even bolder now. So it's been fun, though. Now, from what you were saying, what I am interested in, you said you're involved in a really large project. I get involved in quite big projects as well. I'm sure a lot of web agencies would be interested. How do you manage the briefing process especially for the bigger projects. So you're putting out some price to do some work. You're going to build something from scratch for a client. How would you manage the briefing process product speccing?

Jan Koch:

The first step that I do is usually I'm in Germany, my clients are in the US or in Singapore. So we have several Skype conversations. If it's a reasonably big project, I go on Skype with them for maybe two or three times. In the first times, they tell me what they want and what similar software or similar websites they like. Then I rephrase what they want in my own words. Then I tell them what I understood on a different Skype call. They had time to think about it and I had time to think about it. During these conversations, we try to come up with specs that I'm writing in a project map. I only work on projects where things are written down because that makes it super clear for me what to create and for the clients what to expect. When this project map is agreed on, I tell them the way I work, which is usually I'm updating them at least once a week on the project updates. I give them access to my development server so they can see the website as I'm working on it, basically, which puts me under pressure to stay true to my own deadlines and keep the deadlines.

Jan Koch:

This way, when they log into my Dev server, they can see the progress that I'm making. I ask them for feedback when I released a new iteration of a website, for example, I immediately sent them an email, Hey, let's go on a Skype call, talk through this iteration, what needs to be done differently, how do you like it, and all that stuff. I really think communication is the biggest issue in the big projects because you need to set the expectations for the client properly. You need to keep them updated with the progress that you're making, and you need to ensure that you get quality feedback from the client.

Lee:

That's awesome. Regular communication and the accountability of giving your client access to what you're doing at the same time, that really pushes you out there. Accountability is one thing I think has been a good thing for me as well this last year, especially with things like launching the podcast. I actually told people I was launching even before I'd recorded the first episode to set a date so that I had that self pressure. And it sounds like as well, you've really firmly established over the last couple of years a really good communication process as well with your clients. Regular meetings and regular QA. That's brilliant. I imagine you've got a lot of very happy customers.

Jan Koch:

I try my best to keep them happy.

Lee:

That's Awesome. .

Jan Koch:

On the other hand, speaking about accountability, you need to hold your clients accountable as well. Especially in the beginning when I started working with my first, say, 5 to 10 clients, I had a hard time to get the content from them and to get the feedback and all that good stuff. I think too many WordPress developers or too many freelancers in general are too shy of being bold in front of their clients. And the client just needs to understand that the developer they are working with depends on their input. So they need to give the content, they need to give the site map they want, they need to give inputs on the structure of the content. That's nothing that can be developed by a developer, I think, because these things heavily relate to the branding of the client. it. The freelancer can't be in the position to create the branding if it's a web developer.

Lee:

Absolutely, that's so true. And on that accountability as well, helping the client understand that if they are late providing information, that will have an impact on the product schedule. For myself, very early on, I didn't have the balls, basically, to argue with a client to say, Hey, guys, you've provided this two weeks late, we need to push the delivery deadline and that's going to impact it by even more weeks because I have other projects on. I didn't do that at first. I used to just work all night trying to catch up and then realise that was really bad for my health.

Jan Koch:

Sounds familiar. Yeah, sounds like.

Lee:

We're bonding on a lot of issues there then. Well, it sounds like you spend your time buried in WordPress like me looking at awesome plug ins as well as creating awesome plug ins. Excuse me, over the last few years, what's been that one plug in that really piqued your interest, has been really valuable and that you'd recommend to the community that are listening to this podcast?

Jan Koch:

That plug in picked up probably in the beginning of 2015 when I was reaching out to the experts for the WP Summit. And it's called Filament. It's a filament.io. They just released the plugin I was part of the public beta rate. During that time in January, I signed up, I think. And Filament is Google Analytics, but on steroids. I think what many bloggers struggle with is to get the right conclusions from their metrics. So when they log into their analytics, they see how much traffic they have, and they see the bounce rates, and they see all that stuff that Google shows you, but they don't know what to act on those data. They don't know what to do with these data. And Filament hooks into Google Analytics and your website and shows you this nice web dashboard where you see the top performing pages and the top performing posts and all that stuff. They condense the shares into an average share rate per post and they can tell you what type of post actually gets more shares than others. And I think it's a great time saver when it comes to analyzing the metrics.

Lee:

That's awesome. I'm going to check them out. I remember reading a few of their articles just a while back. It looked fascinating, but I haven't actually explored their services yet. But anything that can simplify Google Analytics, I think, is a winner for me. So that's Filament.io. If people want to check that out, I'll make sure that's in the show notes. Does that hook directly into Google Analytics or does that have any plug in with WordPress as well?

Jan Koch:

It's a WordPress plugin that you need to install. And I think you need, from the Filament itself comes with a web dashboard. You log into the Filament website with your user account and that account grabs the data from your WordPress site through the plugin. From that account dashboard you can connect it to your analytics if I remember correctly.

Lee:

That's brilliant. Well, I'm going to go ahead and check that out as well. I think one of the problems with running a podcast is I'm now learning about lots of exciting tools. I think my bank balance may suffer.

Jan Koch:

Your times get you may too.

Lee:

Yes, exactly. Because I'm spending too much time checking out these new systems. A couple of people have recommended CoSchedule as well, which looks awesome. So I've been tempt. I've not yet, but I've been really tempted to just go check that out and spend another three hours looking at some other tool. Well, it's great to hear actually, the reasons why you like this tool as well. And I'm guilty of this. If you're listening to this and you hear of exciting new tools and you go ahead and check them out and waste time, I'm guilty of that too, and I really have to check myself. So if you hear this and it doesn't pique your interest, you're not excited about it, then you probably don't want to be looking at it right now. You need to be focusing on your business. But if you're thinking, Wow, metrics, data, I need to get a grasp on that. Go ahead, check out filament.io and take a look at that. Have a look at how your site is performing because that's going to give you an amazing insight into what's going on and then you can start to create content.

Lee:

I presume, Jan, you've created or evolved your content strategy based on the information that's in that plug in?

Jan Koch:

Yes, absolutely.

Lee:

That's awesome. That's really exciting, man. Thanks for sharing that. I will go ahead and check that out because that does pique my interest. I can't stand Google Analytics because I can never remember where to go. There's so many options.

Jan Koch:

Yeah, it's too complex.

Lee:

I think. Totally. Probably great for enterprise, but for someone like me, I need to spend five minutes in there. It's not good, so it's too much. Mate, you are obviously a avid reader, a self teacher, I guess. What would be your online resource or resources that you use that's your bible for life, as it were, and that you'd recommend for people to go check out?

Jan Koch:

For the web press related resources, I have to say WPMAGER. I think John Galler is doing a great job with that platform. And for the other online resources, for online business related stuff, I would have to say the best resource, it is a paid one, but the best resource I came across is Internet Business Mastery Academy. So that is the online training program that I joined when I started my entrepreneurial journey and I didn't know what I was doing at all. I was just setting up the WordPress blog and I had a friend who told me a bit about SEO and keyword research. So my domain was basically only the keyword I was trying to rank for, not my name, not any type of brand. I was just putting out crappy content to be totally honest with you, but we all have to start somewhere. It wasn't until I joined Internet Business Mastery Academy that I understood the principles of building honest online businesses.

Lee:

That's awesome. I'm just writing this down. I was actually looking at their website as well. So that's the Internet Business Mastery Academy. Do they have accountability groups as well?

Jan Koch:

Yes, they have a huge Facebook group with... Don't quote me on this, but I think it's well over 1,200 members. And they have a great free podcast as well. So that's how I met them, basically, by listening to their podcast when I was driving to work and driving home from work. There was one episode a day. And basically, why I joined them is because I saw that Pat Flynn built his online business with their coaching. And Pat, from Smart Passive Income, another great resource, by the way. What I admire about Pat is not only does he make a huge amount of money online, well in the five figures and six figures per month, but he's super open about his earnings as well. So he has these income reports where he breaks down where his money is coming from. And I think that shows how good the work is that he's doing. And if a guy like that learned from people who are accessible online, even for a fee, then I wanted to learn from these same people as well.

Lee:

Yeah, that's awesome. And Pat Flynn is one of my go to guys. Not personally, I wish I knew him, but with his podcast and with his website, he puts out tons of amazing information. So if you've not heard of him, that's Pat Flynn, and he does the Smart Passive Income podcast. Many times he interviews some amazing people. He also has the SPTV where he covers particular subjects. One of the things that's been really helpful for me that I'd recommend people go check out is how he shows you how to organise a book. Basically, how to write a book using Post it Notes, amazingly enough. I think they're called Post it Notes everywhere. I'm pretty sure they are. Yeah, Post it Notes. That blew my mind. I've actually been able to plan a couple of books using that same mythology. But then he also shows you things like how to do a webinar using Google Hangouts, which I'd never thought of. That's pretty cool. So yeah, Pat Flynn, I agree there. I'm a big fan. He's an awesome guy and also does a lot as well charity wise as well, which is really encouraging to see people who are...

Lee:

They're being successful in business and then they're trying to also make an impact as well in the world. I just find that really inspiring.

Jan Koch:

Yeah, definitely.

Lee:

So it sounds like one of the actions that you would encourage people to do is to go and check out Internet Business Mastery. But if there is one thing that you would recommend people listening today should go and do that will make a massive positive impact to their business, something that they could do in the next few days or weeks, what would you recommend somebody do to action, either a new process or a new idea, a new product, whatever it might be that they could use in their business?

Jan Koch:

I would say implement a task management system because just like we said earlier, it's easy to lose the focus in our fast paced world and it's easy to get overwhelmed with all the new tools that fly at you from all sides. When you have this task management system in place, I personally use Getting Things Done by David Allen and Jamie Tardy from The Eventual Millionaire has a great interview with David Allen on this methodology of organizing your tasks and prioritizing and all that stuff. And that has been a game changer for me because it holds me accountable on responding to clients, on making progress with my work because I'm forced to plan out the next steps that I want to do in my client project, but also in my marketing. I feel that I've come from reacting to the emails I get to acting and controlling what I do every day. It's like being in a position of, I don't want to say control, but being confident that you achieve your goals in the time frames that you expect.

Lee:

That's such great advice. Using some form of task management. What was the tool you recommended?

Jan Koch:

It is Getting things Done. That's a methodology. And on the Mac, there's this amazing software that is called Omnifocus. It is quite expensive. I spent probably $150 for the Mac, iOS, and iPad versions, but I used that investment to keep me accountable on using it because otherwise I knew I would fall off the wagon at some point.

Lee:

Well, as web developers and as design agencies, I think we can all relate to the idea of absolutely tons of stuff going on. You're working in the business. There's so many things being thrown at you. And we're all fire fighters as well because if there's a client site that's live, there's an issue with that. Not only are we working on existing stuff, but we're also then potentially fire fighting issues on live sites as well. So it's really, really important to use some task management system. Now, we internally use a combination of Basecamp for projects that are ongoing over multiple sprints. And then we'll use... Excuse me, I'm struggling today. And we'll use Asana as well.

Jan Koch:

Yeah, Asana is a great tool.

Lee:

Yeah. Exactly. So buddy, you can tell my voice is starting to go a little bit, so we'll probably have to wrap up soon. But how can people connect with you? So how could they contact you? And where should they go to find out more about you and read the amazing content that you provide?

Jan Koch:

To find out more about me, people can go to jkoch.me. That is my personal website, jkoch.me. To connect with me, just send me a tweet @iamjankoch. That's probably the best way. Or subscribe to my WP Mastery Club newsletter. That's WPMastery.Club.

Lee:

WPMastery.Club. I'm just checking that one out because I don't believe I found that one.

Jan Koch:

You can tell it's inspired by Internet Business Mastery.

Lee:

No, it's great. It pricks my ears at the minute you said it. I was like, Oh, yeah. WP Mastery weekly helps coaches, authors, and speakers get more leads and sales from their web. I'm hooked already, mate. You're great at writing copy. Do you just come up with this copy yourself or do you have help?

Jan Koch:

I usually have the ideas myself and then I ask for feedback.

Lee:

That's a good idea. I write my own copy. My own site, just a few weeks ago, I realised it was terrible. I wrote it in one evening and realized that I thought I was being clever by focusing just on one product that I did. But it was actually making me as just another developer. I wasn't really standing out. I wasn't showing people the wide range of services that I do that do include consultancy for agencies, et cetera. So it was people like Kim, Troy, et cetera, who gave me a bit of a friendly slap and encouraged me to update my content. So I'm still doing it on my own. But if you or anyone listening can recommend a really good copywriter that could give me some help. I can talk a lot, but maybe not always hook people in. It's been an absolute pleasure. I've loved learning from you. To be honest, I feel like we've not had enough time and I'd love to have some deeper chats with you in the future if you're up for it. Yes, absolutely. On some real specific conversations, some specific pain points for agencies that you yourself may have experienced and overcome because I think there's an awful lot that we can learn from you.

Lee:

I'm so appreciative of your time and thanks for being here and have an absolutely awesome Christmas, buddy.

Jan Koch:

You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks.

Lee:

And that was Episode 6. You can really tell that I was struggling by the end of that episode. I had proper full on man flu and I assure you, my wife and family were extremely sympathetic. Anyhow, thank you so much for listening and again, happy New Year for 2016. We've got a really exciting New Year planned and we've got a new course coming out. This is how to build a web application with WordPress. So if you'd like to know more, just drop me a like. We've also got an exciting new product which launches in I think it's about 15 days from now called Soci Press. We're just dropping teasers out there at the moment, but you'll find out more about Soci Press in the next episode. We've also got some really cool content already on the site. I've been blogging every day. So so far we've got three days and I've got the fourth day coming out today. So that's leejacksondev.com/blog. And this year, we're also going to be launching a Mastermind for design and web agencies to take part, win, and share their experiences with WordPress and grow their businesses together. Now, we're also looking for visitors or guests to the show who are design or web agency owners.

Lee:

So far, we've had the opportunity of interviewing mainly people who either have a product or are coaches in their own right in WordPress, but we're looking as well for design or web agency owners, people on the ground working with WordPress on a daily basis. We'd love to learn from your experiences and share in your knowledge. So come on, get in touch on leejacksondev.com/contact. Let's have a chat. It'd be great to have you on the show. So all that's left for me to do is again to wish you a very happy and prosperous new year. And I'm really looking forward to enjoying this journey with you together this year.