2:5 Marketing A Web Agency

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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. My name is Lee, and in today's episode, we interview Clay Mosley from the 100 K Academy. He's also a web developer and web designer and drops knowledge bombs left, right and center. So I am going to shut up in a sec. But just a quick reminder of our amazing new plugin that we released only the other week called SochiPress, which allows you to automate Twitter through your WordPress site and it's a great value add as well for your client sites. You can check that out on leejacksondev.com/plugin. That's leejacksondev.com/plugin. All right then let's do this. Hi, this is Lee at the WP Innovator podcast. And today we have the hatted legend that is Clay Mosley. Mate, how are you doing?

Clay Mosley: I'm doing Well. Thanks for having me.

Lee: Well at least in most of the pictures, he has this really cool hat. In England he looked like he was from Yorkshire, but I'm going to guess about 80% of the people listening to this will not get what I just said. Hey, hi to the UK people. Anyway, Clay is a great guy. I met him through Facebook. We're part of the same group on Facebook, which is the Entrepreneurs Roundtable. And since then we've got to know each other really well. A good group of us. And he runs a couple of businesses, the first one being Rock City Digital, an amazing web design company. There you go, mate. I'm plugging you there. And he also is the man behind Clay mosley.com and the 100 K Academy. So I'm going to shut up for a few seconds and mate, do you just want to introduce yourself? Give us a little bit of background about who you are and then we'll rock and roll.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, sure. So not a lot of people know this, but actually started out my career as an insurance a special investigations unit in the insurance industry. I was an insurance fraud investigator. Is interesting as that sounds to many. Yeah. Yeah. And I absolutely hated that job. It was a cubicle farm, basically, and I did that for like three years. And then and then I was like, you know, I wanted to do something that actually like to do. So I actually went back to school. I studied mechanical engineering and ended up getting minors in physics and mathematics. And I didn't finish my mechanical engineering degree, even though I have another bachelor's degree that I got back in 2005. But but I ended up not finishing my mechanical engineering degree because I ended up going to work for a start up company. And don't think you know this. Maybe you do. I don't know.

Lee: No, this is good. Keep going. Yeah.

Clay Mosley: So that was back in 2012, the fall of 2012. We were basically a sustainability consulting company, so we consulted on how to make commercial and residential buildings more green and energy efficient and helped them, you know, get like certifications like Energy Star certifications and LEED certifications, which I think a lot of people may have heard of LEED just from Pat Flynn, because that's where he started out as as an architect and he was LEED certified and he had the I think, what was it called, Green Exam Academy or something like that. Anyways, that's that's what we did. And I did that for three years and built it up from just it was just me and one other guy and built that up. And just keep in mind, I knew nothing, nothing about business, nothing about sales or marketing. I was just a science geek. So that's that's why I went into the startup, because it had it had it was basically building science is what it was.

Lee: So, cool. By the way.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, yeah. Oh, geek out to that stuff. I still do to this day. But I, I built that up from just me and this other guy to at one point we were over 50 employees and over the three year span we actually generated almost $4 million in revenue. And you know that during that time that was actually the time where I learned everything about sales and marketing. But at the beginning of 2015, we had our company got hit hard pretty much because we were very heavily relied on relying on government like incentives. And so when that kind of program kind of fell apart, our company started to fall apart and I basically got let go. I did not own the company, just FYI, I was just the director. But yeah, I got let go. And at that point that's when I had decided to start full time with my web agency. And just backing up a little bit while I was working at this startup, I was doing web design on the side because my wife has a lot of student loans and I just needed to generate some extra income to pay those off. So January 2015, that's when I decided to to go full time with the Web agency. And I have been doing that ever since. Wow. I just had a one year anniversary, actually.

Lee: Hey, mate. Well, congratulations. And I'm just thinking back to the times when I was doing the same as you, you know, building sites on the side, but kind of being scared to go it alone. And it took kind of a life event to make me go it alone. That's right. Same for you. Kind of a life event. Something that forced you to just have to go it alone and go full time.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, it was. It was definitely a blessing in disguise.

Lee: Yeah, exactly. Decision made for you. You didn't have to make the jump. It just. It just kind of happened. And you. Rolled with it. That's amazing, man. That's exciting as well. I remember. I remember the feeling of kind of intrepidation, but also that feeling of freedom as well. Just yes. You know, this is me.

Clay Mosley: You know, the first you know, the first, like 2 to 3 months. Man, I'm not going to I'm not going to lie. It was I struggled, you know, just like any other business that starts off, you know, financially, you know, I struggled a bit just because I was just getting getting my name out there because when I was doing it on the side, I was doing more of the like the freelance, the elance.com, those types of gigs. And you know as well as I do, a web designer cannot, at least in my opinion, you can't live off those websites totally not. Yeah. So that yeah. So when I went full time it was just I was trying to move away from that.

Lee: So yeah. When was it then that you launched the 100 K Academy and what is that exactly?

Clay Mosley: So 100 K Academy, so that, that a lot of people think that's that's related to my web design business which in a way it is because. Well, first of all, what what let me tell you what 100 K Academy is. So it is a membership website where basically I teach sales and marketing, whether it's offline like brick and mortar or or if you're an online business or a freelancer, it doesn't matter. It's basically a library of video tutorials on sales, marketing, sales and marketing and entrepreneurship. And a lot of people think that that it's it's related to my web design, which it is because I, you know, I started the Web design business and have been very, very successful with it. But the idea of it came out actually before I started, I officially started my web design business. It's because it's basically everything I learned during whenever I was working at that startup, because I knew nothing about sales and marketing. And I had to, you know, basically learn it by myself. I didn't have a mentor or anything. I mean, I basically read the books, read, you know, listened to the podcast and things like that. But it was a lot of just kind of, you know, just like trial and error. And I even had to learn like accounting, bookkeeping, things like that, because at the beginning I was doing everything from from sales and marketing to accounting to even I was even going out in the field and doing some field work. I was easily working 100 hours a week. It was not going to lie. It was it was dude. Yeah, it was tough at the beginning. But yeah, the idea of 100 K Academy came out because that's I struggled during that, that part. And it's for people that are it's either for one of two kinds of people, it's for those that are working a full time job that want to get a business up and going like get started or it's for those that have a business already, but they're still kind of in growth mode. They're in startup mode and just just need a little umph to their sales and marketing. But yeah, the video tutorial library is contains videos all the way from, you know, discovering your business idea to graphic design to sales and marketing, to trying to refine basically your processes, your business processes. And, and actually I just officially announced that the website is actually going to be a collaborative membership. So basically, instead of just me doing all these videos, I'll be doing, you know, I've done a lot of the videos, but I'm bringing in experts from all over the globe that are teaching different topics. So like, for example, I know the basics of copywriting, but you know, obviously someone that does that for a living is going to know more than me. So I brought in someone to teach a course on copywriting, and so I'm in the process of bringing all these experts together and putting the content on the website. Right now it's mostly just me. I do have that copywriting course on the website now from it's Maria actually, but she's got it up on there now. But I think I'm thinking here in about a month or two it's all going to be up on the website. But the second announcement too is I've actually made the the website free to members, which is a lot of people think I'm crazy for doing that.

Lee: Well, it is. I mean, remember when you announced that it's a completely different model because most of the time you're you're brought in with some sort of free, um, free lead magnet, as it were. And then you're expected to pay to get a part of. But for you, you've launched this. I've got a free account as well, and I believe you're going to do this through. Is it through sponsorship to fund it? Yeah.

Clay Mosley: So, yeah, I'm taking a bit of a gamble. And here's. Why I'm doing it this way. Mean, the way I think of it is. I mean, think about a podcast, right? Like your podcast. It's free to to people, anyone who wants to listen or download the episodes. Right. And I'm assuming and I could be wrong, I'm assuming you eventually want sponsors for this podcast. I don't know. A lot of people do for their podcast show.

Lee: Yeah, definitely. At some point it would be great to have some sponsors currently self sponsoring it.

Clay Mosley: Yeah. So yeah, self sponsoring. I like that. Um, so yeah, it's a, it's the same basic idea and I'm trying like I really want because you know, you know this market as well as I do the, the membership, the online courses, it's so crowded and I'm basically trying to create a disrupt, I guess you can say an interruption in the market by offering it for free. And then and I'm basically when I say free, I'm basically moving the cost of the membership to sponsors. But like but as far as my model, I'm thinking of it more of like a podcast. I'm trying to get my users up and then bring in sponsors when when the users are up. So yeah, we'll see. It's either going to backfire or it's going to be wildly successful. I don't think there's going to be an in between.

Lee: No, but I'm intrigued to see how that goes. And I guess, you know, you can try this and hey, if it doesn't work, then you can try a different models as well. But I love that you're being so brave and just going for it. And there's always naysayers, mate, isn't there? I think someone shared the other day, um, a picture of it seems funny when someone gets a new job, everyone's like, Hey, congratulations. And you get like eight 8000 likes. And then when someone says, Hey, I've just launched a crazy business idea, you might get three likes and a whole load of comments saying you're a nutter.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, I saw. Yeah, I saw that graph. I don't know who it was. Maybe it was a mutual friend. More than likely. Yeah, I saw that.

Lee: Yeah. Everyone calls you a nutter, But, hey, you know, if you don't try it, then, you know, if you do nothing, you get nothing. And nothing is kind of boring. Who wants.

Clay Mosley: Nothing? Yeah. You know, you know what's you know though. But, like, here's my thing. I have nothing to lose. Like, I don't. This is not my 100 K Academy is not my main company. It's not my main job. It's not my main revenue source. At least not right now. You know, I make plenty of money with my web agency, and it's if 100 K Academy doesn't work, like you said, I can change the model or if I, for some reason decide just to get rid of it, which I don't see that happening at all. You know, my life is not going to be ruined, you know, But at this point, it's it's just right now it's just a hell of a lot of fun for me.

Lee: So it's like a passion project. And you can tell because that comes through in the videos that you're sharing. I love the three minute marketing videos that you do, etcetera, and you're very passionate about what you're doing. It's brilliant. So yeah, love it.

Clay Mosley: And I always tell people this like even though I own a web design business, like I'm more of a sales and marketing guy than I am a web designer. So like sales and marketing is really my passion. If I, if I can seriously, if I can like just do 100 K Academy full time, I probably I would. But it's not at that point right now since we I just launched it October of last year. So it's only what, four months old. No. Yeah. Four months old. So it's growing. It's growing.

Lee: Vibrant community. So. So Clay's also got a really vibrant Facebook Facebook group going on as well. I think there's over 300 members at least or more on the group.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, I think we're just shy of 300.

Lee: Yeah, it's awesome. And he did a challenge recently to get people doing videos for their first ever video. So there's been a constant feed of fresh faces in in my own Facebook feed, you know, doing videos, talking about their favourite movies or doing different challenges. So it's been great fun. And the fact you're offering it for free is awesome, mate. Hey, now on on the side of the the Web agency that you run. So obviously, you've been running that since you, like you said, big life event. You started an agency, um, and you've been running that probably well for at least a year, year and a half. What's been the biggest challenge for the Web agency, you'd think, over the last year or so?

Clay Mosley: Well, um, I would say the biggest challenge for me throughout the entire year is trying to manage my time as far as between sales and actual client work. Because when I was with, you know, when I was with the startup company, I managed over 50 employees. Dude, it was like babysitting. And when I had left there, I had decided I just I did not want to have employees with my web agency. So I'm essentially by myself. Now, with that said, I do have contractors. I have other designers that I work with that I outsource to. But contractors outsourcing the contractors and actually having employees, it's a two it's two totally different. And but with me being by myself, essentially, that's probably the biggest thing, is making sure that I'm always doing some sort of sales activity. Yeah. Because yeah, and I'll tell you this, the first six months and you may know this and I'm sure every web designer out there or solopreneur out there can relate to this, but I basically had that never ending cycle. So you go, you go a month or you go a certain period of time, you know, of sales activity, right? You're trying to get business. And then finally you get a client and then now you're doing client work. But the problem is you stopped that sales activity. And so while you're doing that client work, there's no nothing coming in the sales pipeline pretty much. And then you finish that that client's project and then all of a sudden you're dry. Right now you have a month of of no revenue coming in because you weren't because I wasn't doing any kind of sales activity while I was doing the client work. And so now I'm hustling, trying to get another client. And so the same cycle happens over and over again. And so getting over that cycle was was the biggest part. The biggest thing.

Lee: That I think a favourite phrase for that is called feast and famine. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yeah. So you've got you got a huge project. You're like, Yes. You throw everything you have into it. Yeah. Building an amazing site. Heads down. Shush. Don't interrupt me. And then suddenly delivered invoiced and. Oh, crap. What's next? Yeah.

Clay Mosley: Yeah. And then you're broke again.

Lee: You spent that invoice. You've got another mortgage payment coming up soon, and you're freaking out. I've been there. Definitely been there. I mean, again, something I heard that really encouraged me and I love the word sales activity because people think of kind of sales and marketing as like one big thing, like doing a big email campaign or a big print run, but like a sales activity could be daily social media. There's different types of sales activities that we could be doing. And about a year ago someone said to me, Lee, sell every day. And that's, you know, do a sales activity every day, regardless of how busy you are with paid client work. Yes, they're important and it's really important to service that client. But just do something, some activity every day or, you know. So yeah, that's been an encouragement to me and it's definitely helped keep my pipeline nice and healthy. Yeah, it's all about the pipeline, baby.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, that that's absolutely 100% true because like, I make myself as much as, like, as busy as I am. I mean, I have so many projects on the table right now. It's so easy for me to just, like, sit down and hammer out my client work and not do sales activity at all. But I make sure that I do at least an hour a day of sales activity. And like you said, that could be anything. I mean, that could be from, you know, cold calling, which I don't cold call, but it's just an example to like, you know, direct sales versus like, in my opinion, even even doing writing up a blog post I think is considered, you know, sales activity in one aspect or another. Um, so yeah, I make sure I at least do an hour a day.

Lee: Sometimes more. You said that was that was kind of one of the biggest challenges of your business. It sounds like you're busy now and you're kind of overcoming that with the regular activity, but has there been any kind of idea or, you know, something you started doing differently or product? You know, that's been a real game changer to the way you run your Web agency?

Clay Mosley: The so the way I run it or.

Lee: Well or to its success, you know, that's made that pipeline healthier.

Clay Mosley: Yeah. So I would say and this is really for any business but I would say when I because you know this but but I'm a big introvert person, so I'm 100% introvert. So getting out there and getting my face in front of people, that that's that's one of the most awkward things you can get me to do. And through the years I have, I have mastered that. But, you know, naturally, I just want to stay at home, sit on the couch and do and not talk to anybody. That's just the way introverts work. But I would say when I decided to actually get out there and show my face to people and just make friends, really, because really that's all sales is, it's you just making as many friends as possible and just making sure they know what you do. And when I decided to get out there and just make as many friends as possible, that's when my business actually, like dramatically changed because, I mean, it's easy. I see so many people. Okay. So I see a lot of people on like Facebook, for example, where they do web design, right? But they're trying to get it with like. Facebook advertisement and and Google AdWords and things like that. But they're not they're, you know, they're staying inside their house and sitting on the couch. And and that's how they plan to get their business is 100% online which is my intention originally when I first started. But I realized that going after a local market is a gold mine. And so when I decided I'm going to go out there locally and just shake hands with people and show my face and make as many friends as possible in person, that's when my business turned around substantially.

Lee: That's so funny you should say that, because most of my clients, although I'm very prolific online, most of my clients are through local networking, like BNI, for example. I'm a member of local BNI chapter and I'm also a member of different networking groups, mainly to make friends with different types of people and get my name out there. And then that's where the leads leads are generated that way. Although I do generate quite a bit now through Twitter as well, which is great. Um, again, it's mainly been through, I think they call it pressing the flesh. I hate that phrase, but you know, shake, shake, shake, Yeah. Pressing the flesh, shaking hands, you know, getting to know people, doing business locally. It's incredible. And I've seen quite a lot of agencies, you know, who've, like you said, they've they've invested in online campaigns, done big email shots, and then suddenly they've realized, hey, there's a whole load of business on the doorstep that they could be tapping into. And, you know, they've they've changed their tack and gone out networking and gone out, meeting people. It's incredible.

Clay Mosley: Oh, yeah. It's it's so like love. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of being online only, especially being like a digital agency. But man, it's. It's just like, I can't. I have to go where the money is. And, you know, and here's the fact to the fact is people locally, I mean there there's still people with money to spend you know, there's still customers and so many people are just like they're stuck on this this idea of of being online only. And, you know, I was, too. But you got to go where the money is.

Lee: Got to go where the money is. And don't be online only. And I mean, there are people, you know, over time you can build up a business like that where eventually you're bringing in all your revenue online. You know, there's guys like John Lee Dumas. ET cetera. Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. ET cetera, who've been able to develop over time. But that's something that took a very long time, you know, to build that up. And, you know, they've been able to sit back, relax, and I guess that's the direction you'll eventually go in. You know, with 100 K Academy is you'll eventually have an entirely online business, etcetera. But yeah, you're totally right for agencies listening and for freelancers listening, you know, there is a whole load of business there in your local area. And you know, when you go to a networking meeting as well, you're not really selling to the room, you're making friends in the room and they know so many people. You know, I've got some massive contracts through people I know. You know, I wouldn't have realized a painter and decorator would have known my target client and would have made a really good introduction, you know, to that target client, which then led to a great contract. So there's so much out there. So definitely encourage you if you're not out networking, if you're not out meeting people locally and you're struggling with online marketing, etcetera, then go ahead. It's probably going to cost you a few dollars for a really good breakfast and a great chat and before you know it, there'll be opportunities, I'm sure. So there you go. Top tip. That's awesome, mate. So, hey, what? I mean, you're a WordPress, you're a WordPress guy, you're developing WordPress websites. Is there any particular plugin or a couple of plugins that you'd recommend people go check out?

Clay Mosley: Yeah. So and I'm saying these are pretty basic and I'm sure people, you know, other designers use these, but you know, the, the Google Analytics plugin I think is, is like one of the ones that I install on every single website just because it's easy, you know, you just, you just put in your, you know, your ID and it basically, you know tracks your, your analytics for the entire website. And looking at your analytics is so important. I think just because you know where your traffic is coming from and you know if you set it up correctly, you know who your demographic is. So that's one. And the other one is I love the the Yoast SEO plugin. I'm not a big SEO guy at all. Like I get I get requests all the time for SEO services and nothing against SEO. I just don't like to do it. But to get some basic SEO on page SEO, I think that's the easiest way to do it is through the Yoast SEO plugin. Yeah.

Lee: That's awesome. So that's the Google Analytics plugin. Just pop in your ID and then there is Yoast. The cool thing about Yoast as well is it gives you the ability to score your pages. So I think Yoast has come up a couple of times in the past, but I don't think I've ever kind of gone into detail with Yoast per page. It will analyze the content and it'll give you some recommendations. So you can set like a focus keyword for a page and then it'll give you some recommendations. So if like me and like Clay, you mainly generate your business locally, but you do want to do some basic SEO without having to invest in a third party provider, then Yoast will give you that help. It's got its own inbuilt algorithms. It's going to score your pages and it's just going to give you some basic recommendations, things like maybe adding a phrase into your title, maybe into the URL or maybe just repeating a particular keyword in the content, etcetera. So just nice basic things, but it really helps you just improve. And I'm kind of a bit OCD when it comes to Yoast. I like to have green lights all the way down all of my blog posts and if and if I see anything like yellow, I've got to go in there and I've got to go and change that. But it's great. It just it's kind of it's weird. It kind of holds you accountable, doesn't it? If you're OCD, like me, it kind of holds you accountable to make sure you're you're ensuring that the content you have is at least optimized, you know, to the best of your ability without having to go ahead and invest a whole load of money in an SEO specialist. But, you know, this content you've got, it's going to be evergreen, it's content that you can then keep resharing in the future. So it's worth just taking an extra few minutes using the Yoast plugin and improving the content of your post or your page. So that is such a good call, mate.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, there's, there's nothing there's nothing worse than from, from an OCD standpoint, seeing all those green, those little green dots and then you see a yellow or a red.

Lee: Drives me mad. I also can't have draft posts. I just have to delete them.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, it's like you either want to have them published or not.

Lee: Exactly. Yeah. They're either live or not, even though you can filter them out. Yeah.

Clay Mosley: Yeah. I do want to point out on Yoast. So if you if you're a big blogger. Yeah. Like you said, that's a great way of if you combine that with Google's keyword tool, you know, researching key keyword phrases that that you know get a lot of requests via Google, you can combine that with Yoast SEO and your blog articles and have your blog articles keyword rich. So it's very, very easy to do it with with the Yoast plugin.

Lee: So, I'm going to put these in the show notes, guys, but definitely recommend change all those reds and yellows to greens. You'll feel a lot better at the end of the day. Yeah. Now one of the things that stuck out mate, was that you are a massive self teacher. You've obviously spent a lot of time actually doing stuff, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes to enrich your skill set and to make you the man you are today. So is there any particular resource or resources that you'd recommend people go check out where they can go and get some real valuable information?

Clay Mosley: Now, are you talking in regards to web design or.

Lee: Well, anything really anything that you've found has been really helpful for your agency. So maybe it's a blog that you read regularly, maybe an online course that you took that you recommend people should go to. Obviously, we're going to recommend a 100 K academy for people to go check out the free courses on there as well. But is there anything else that you yourself would refer to? Um, you know, to, to teach yourself something or to stay in touch with what's going on?

Clay Mosley: Yeah. So there's a website called and you're probably familiar with it, I think it's called Millo.co.

Lee: I'm actually not aware of this. How do you spell that?

Clay Mosley: It's millo.co.

Lee: Tell us all about Millo.co, mate.

Clay Mosley: So here's the cool thing. And this, this really helped me get some ideas on on how to get my agency up and going in the whenever I first got started. So the really cool thing about this website, it's more of a blog than anything, but they started out as like graphic. I think it was called Graphic Design Blender is what the name of it was. And they they rebranded or sold to somebody, I don't know, but they it's now called Miloco. But it's a website to in a nutshell, basically to help you market and get more sales and be more productive as a creative entrepreneur. So I think like when they first started, it was more toward focused towards graphic designers but mean graphic designers and web designers. I mean, it's essentially the same business model. It's just you do one does graphic design, one does web design. And a lot of a lot of people will actually do both. But yeah, this this blog has a ton of ideas on how to like how to position yourself, you know, in the local market to be more competitive, how to niche or niche, however you want to say it down with your with your business. I mean, it's there's all kinds of things. I mean, you can you can be on this website and read for days, maybe even weeks on all kinds of ideas on. How to grow your creative business. So yeah, this is this particular website was a big one for me.

Lee: This is such a Good call, mate. I'm just, just taking a look at it as well as you're talking. There's one article I definitely want to read How to Grow Your Creative Business with Instagram Live on that. So that would be awesome. And it looks nice, easy, nice and easy to read. And it also looks like they've got a mastermind on here as well that's free to join and that's full of looking at this about, well, there's way over a thousand other creatives, so that's such a great space for people to just go check out. So thanks. I've literally never heard of this. Yeah, actually, there's a billion websites in the world, mate, so I'm bound to have not heard of one. So a couple of episodes ago someone mentioned a site I had not heard of either, and I'll send you a link if you're a physics geek. It's called actually, I don't know, it's a weird name, but it's full of really detailed information about how things work, etcetera. And they're talking about like the Mars landing and, you know, could we, could we land, could we live on Mars, etcetera? How would we live on Mars and all those sorts of things? It's really intriguing.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, you got to send that to me. I'm a big science geek, so.

Lee: Yeah, me too. There's a whole load of podcasts I could recommend as well. I'll send them over to you. You probably already listened to them, but, you know, I'll. I'll. Hey, I'll send them over anyway, so. Hey, man, that's. That's awesome. So what we like to do on every recording is it's been great to find out about your agency, about, you know, the different things that you're doing. And it's been great to learn about the things you've learned and you've applied to your business. But is there any one thing that you'd recommend to people to do today that they could start doing in their business that you think would start to make a difference?

Clay Mosley: Yeah, definitely. There's well, I know you asked me one thing, but there's actually three things I hope you don't get your pens out.

Lee: Everybody. Three things.

Clay Mosley: So one, we've already talked about, make sure you already you always do some sort of sales activity every day from day one. And I'm not going to go into that just because we already have. The second thing is to that really changed my business is to get my processes down and my workflow down. And you know, if you if you're just starting out, I would not focus on that. I would focus on sales because if you don't have sales, you don't have a business. But once you get your sales up, you know, refine your processes and your workflow as much as you can and try to make things more systematic, that that right there really, really helped me out being more efficient in my business. So an example is every time I get a new web design client, like there's a specific set of like checklists that I go from the top all the way down to the bottom, from beginning to the end on every single project that I take on. So that's my second thing. My third thing. You know what I forgot already. I had three things in mind and I totally forgot it. Oh, Oh, the third thing. Okay. All right. Yeah, we talked about this earlier, too. Video you got to do video.

Lee: Expand on that. How do you mean? We got to do video.

Clay Mosley: So there's so many people that that do blog posts like just writing, but doing video. And when I say video and I mean like even you can even go from just, you know, your edited video that you put on YouTube to even live streaming. So if you're on Blab or on Periscope, you can start doing live streaming. I would start doing video as part of your, I guess, content creation or content marketing. And the reason that is, is because I think the market has gotten so crowded with blog posts like just written blog posts at this this time video is like the biggest disruptor in people's lives, I think in a good way. And you'd be surprised. Okay. So when I started doing video, I have a blog with 100 K Academy and I did not intend it to be a lead generator for my web design agency. But it has because and the reason is, is because the the videos have really helped with my personal brand. And people will if they continue watching, like they just keep watching my videos, they'll eventually find out I'm a web designer and then they they hire me. So I've actually gotten 3 or 4 projects just from the videos that I've put out so that I'd say video, you know, start doing video today, especially live streaming, because it's all really, really brand new. If you can get in now and do it and do it well, you know, you're going to be kind of what people will call early adopters of the technology. And hopefully, hopefully, eventually you'll become a big name in that space. And here's the key point, too. You know, there might be the question of, well, you say go after local market, so why am I going to be doing like the live streaming stuff and all that? Because. Right now, the live streaming is more of a you capture more of an international or nationwide audience versus local. I think the biggest key thing there is it will help you get out of your comfort zone just in general, because there are so many people that are so afraid of putting themself on camera, whether it's just recorded or live streaming. The more you do, the more confident you're going to be, which means that's going to that's going to that's going to help you with your in-person sales. Just getting out there and meeting new people and networking events and things like that, you're going to that's going to 100% increase your confidence in that. So I know it has for me. So like getting on video was one of the most terrifying things that I could have done, but that has helped me tremendously in local networking and being more confident in myself. So anyways, those are my three things. That's awesome.

Lee: And with the video as well, it does actually raise the local credibility as well. I've found through running the podcast etcetera, that equally locally I'm getting more of a name for myself as a web developer and a lot more design agencies are hearing of me and connecting with me locally through the podcast and through the people talking about it. So that's been great. So just to wrap up then, this is a once sorry, not a once, this is a first time already. Instead of one thing, you've got three things that you could start doing. Number one is a sales activity, some sort of sales activity every day. We covered it earlier, something like a tweet, anything, some small piece of sales activity. Number two, if you're established and you've been going for a while, get those processes down so that you've then got something that you can refer to and then you don't feel like you're winging it every time. But also the cool thing about that is when you've got a process down, you can get other people involved as well to free up your own time. And then lastly, video, get out there on video. There are all sorts of platforms. There's blab, it's freaking awesome. I'm on there. I've got a t shirt. There's also Periscope, there is Snapchat, etcetera. And the cool thing as well about some of these platforms, especially things like Periscope and Blab, is they do get recorded and you can replay those, you can put them on your website, you can also put them on your Facebook pages. Any social media network that you're on, you can get those replays and put them out there. So again, they kind of act like evergreen content. So even if you recorded a short periscope about a very quick subject, just a couple of, you know, a couple of months ago, that content could still be replayed and checked out by other people as well, because I guess we all obviously we want to earn business locally. But, you know, there is also business out there internationally. So it will raise your profile internationally. And if you're looking, you know, like us to produce other other, you know, other diverse income streams, maybe online consultancy, etcetera, in the future, then it's also going to be great practice. So yeah, that's, that's freaking awesome, mate. You've been full of amazing knowledge bombs today, buddy, and I really appreciate your time, so I.

Clay Mosley: Appreciate you having.

Lee: Me. I know people are going to want to connect with you and I know people are going to want to check out the 100 K Academy as well. So how can we connect with you? And then we'll say goodbye?

Clay Mosley: Yeah. So just you can go to my website, just Clay mosley.com, Clay mosley.com. And on social media, I'd say the best two places to connect with me is Twitter. It's at Mosley underscore Clay and Snapchat I'm really loving Snapchat right now and it's actually different It's just Clay Mosley That's my handle. It's just Clay Mosley with no underscore.

Lee: And I'm loving this stuff. You're putting out these little funny videos here or there.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

Lee: And the the fact you can draw over your pictures as well. I think you're having lots of fun with that. So. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's awesome, mate. Well, I really appreciate your time. Thanks ever so much as well for that website you recommended. Miloco. I'm. I'm already excited to go and read that. So and thanks again. Have an awesome evening buddy, and thanks for being on the show.

Clay Mosley: Yeah, thanks, Lee.

Lee: No worries. Take care, bud. Bye bye now. See you. And there you have episode 13. Now next week we have Matt from Freelance Transformation. You're not going to want to miss this episode. Matt has started from a bread and butter agency with a physical location and has transferred into a fully virtualized office environment with staff all around the world. It's an absolute fascinating episode and there are tons of lessons that we can all draw from it for our own agencies. So that will be next week on episode 14.

Clay Mosley: Thanks for listening. Don't forget to check out Social Press and also if you're interested, there is a secret plugin list. Yep. I'm giving away my free secret plugin list only for a few more days on Lee Jackson dev.com/secret list. That's Lee Jackson dev.com/secret list and there's ten plugins in. The that have really transformed my agency. So I'm sure you're going to want to go ahead and check those out. Okay, then.

Lee: Have a great one.