The Agency Hour
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The Agency Hour
How to Recruit and Keep Good Talent
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There are so many talented people across the world. So many talented people. And sometimes it's because we're just look like you hire who you know. You interact in certain communities. And it's like this is all I know. And so when I go to hire someone, that's where I post it, or that's who I talk to. And that's who. And so that was some of my growth is just realizing there's a whole big world out there. There are strong, robust communities that know WordPress really, really well. And uh, and so just getting out there and learning about different parts of the world and where talent exists and giving people an opportunity has made a lot of difference in our company. And from you know my conversations with my team, it makes a difference in their lives.
SPEAKER_02If you have a vision for the agency you want to build, then we want to help you build it. Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast, brought to you by Agency Mavericks.
SPEAKER_03Hey, welcome to the Agency Hour, ladies and gentlemen, live here in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. My name is Troy Dean. This is Pete Crispy Butter Perry. Our guest this week is a man who, a little bit of history. When I started WP Elevation way back in the dark ages, uh, we had this thing. We had a a kind of a I called it platinum, right? It was like a platinum coaching thing. And this guy turns up out of nowhere on my my list, the name Brad, and uh he's like, Oh, I want to, you know, talk to you about this. And I'm like, all right, cool. And so we uh we jumped on and we had a bit of a chat. And then I think that was before that was after Chicago, I think. I'd met Brad at WordCamp. No, it was before, was it? It was before, oh right. So then I went out to to Chicago and ran WordCamp and met Brad. And uh we went out to dinner after the after the we had a mastermind after WordCamp and then after the mastermind on the Monday, we went out to dinner, we did this Thai restaurant. There were about, I don't know, six or seven of us at this restaurant. And we're getting towards the end of dinner, and I went to the bathroom and I come back and I'm coming back past the counter and I'm gonna pay the bill. And I go up to the the counter and and the and the guy said, Oh no, it's all been taken care of. The uh the tall man with the gray hair and the glasses paid the bill. I'm like, what what do you mean? What do you mean he paid the bill? He paid the bill and uh and kind of just disappeared out of side door before anyone could stop him. And the thing I've learned about Brad over the years is so we worked together uh and he he kind of pivoted his business at the time, and he's just grown from strength to strength. And I will say this the one thing I've learned about Brad over the years is his generous spirit is he's genuinely more concerned about other people's success than his own. And I think that's why he's been so successful. Yeah. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage from GoWP Brad Morrison. Hello, hello.
SPEAKER_00We need to just end the show after that. That was insane. We're done. It's all it's all downhill from here. It's all downhill. How are you, brother? I am doing well, doing well, wrapping up a Wednesday here. And uh so like life is good. Awesome.
SPEAKER_03Where um where are you in the world now? Because you've moved recently, right?
SPEAKER_00That's right. Yeah. For um, I lived in Georgia almost my entire life. We were in Atlanta most recent, the last six years in the Atlanta area, but then uh over the summer, June, uh, we moved down to Florida, uh, not far away, still only about maybe 20 miles or so from the border. Uh, but we are in a place called Pana Vidra, Florida, uh, living near the beach.
SPEAKER_03So wow. Um what why why why the move? Is it is it is because Florida's a tax haven? Is it everyone's moving to Florida?
SPEAKER_00No, no, we we were looking, so we love Atlanta. So many friends there from there, um, or from that area from Georgia. Uh this is actually a little bit closer to my family where I grew up, uh where I live now. Um, and then uh so that was kind of one reason, but also um we wanted a little more warmth throughout the year. Uh, it just makes a big difference with Atlanta being kind of closer to the mountains. You still have that kind of three months out of the year where it's it's cold. It's really hot in the summers in Atlanta, as a lot of people know, but it's also very cold. That we don't get a lot of snow, but you still can't get out and do a lot of stuff. So for the more active lifestyle, that was a reason as well.
SPEAKER_03And you've moved into uh a new facility. I saw a post recently where you guys have moved into a new facility, which looked really impressive. Can you talk us through what that looks like and how many of the team are actually there in that facility?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it it helps understanding this community. So this is a master plan community, a golf cart community. There's 20,000 plus people in this master plan. So it's like 20-something neighborhoods. Um, all the schools are in the community, two high schools in the community. So you you drive your you know child on a golf cart to school. And uh I drive, I I ride a bike or drive a golf cart here to the office. There's a town center area. And so when I wasn't kidding when I said more active lifestyle, like we're always out. You know, yesterday it was pickleball. We'll ride bikes tonight, you go on an evening golf cart ride. It's like, it's really cool. And uh, and so the town center here has a place that just opened up actually, um, maybe a month after I moved here. But I had been in the works to have a lease and have office space here. Um, but it's called the Link. And uh it is they do kids' camps, so it's events for the whole family, but it's office space on the top floor. So it's co-work, they're gonna do like uh incubator, have an incubator um uh portion as well. Um, it's co-work spaces outside the private offices, and then I love the kids' camps and after school activities. And so sometimes I'm working up here on the second floor, and my daughter is in Lego camp on the first floor, which is really neat. So that's cool, man. And that's the vision for the place is like this kind of place for the whole family, which is which is awesome. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_03So you're now you're a fully distributed team, is that right?
SPEAKER_00We are a fully distributed team, yes. So um, yeah, now we we are 45, I think, with more hires on the way.
SPEAKER_03So wow, and and now now when you and I were working together, it was you and Lucas, right?
SPEAKER_00It's me and Lucas. That's right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's just like that's unbelievable. That just sounds like a lot of headaches to me. Yeah. Oh no. I mean I mean, I have Pete, right? And he causes me sleepless nights.
SPEAKER_00I can't imagine having 45 people that you know Yeah, we we've you know so many great systems. We we've built, you know, while I think we've done a good job on the external community of partners and customers and agency owners, that's who we serve. We've also done a good job, I think, of building the community internally as well. So it's fun. It's it's really a lot of fun. Um, so you know, building our team has been community building, and we work with a lot of people that like each other and uh share some common goals, not all the same, but share some common goals and we all move in the same direction. So it's it's really been a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_03Now, talk us through the um 45. Obviously, that includes people who are working for other agencies, right? So talk us through when when you and I first started out, it was South Point Media, is that right? You're basically a hosting company and a client services company, and you made the pivot towards kind of a productized offering with GoWP. What was the first incarnation of GoWP?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so yeah, we were South Point Media was just a web agency. So we were a web agency in a mid-sized city, Savannah, Georgia at the time. And then we had another office in Augusta. Um that was 10 years, 2004 to 2014. And um, and so in 2014, that's when we decided to kind of become a productized service. And we took the things that we were best at. And you have to do some soul searching there, and we did. And it's like, we're not really good at design, we're not really good at project management. I'm not great at sales. I'm not right. I we we can do it, and and we were doing it to make the business successful, but I didn't get enjoyment from it. The team didn't get enjoyment, and that was something that was kind of enlightening to me is when I started just talking about let's have an honest conversation, let me tell you a little bit about what I'm feeling. The team kind of opened up as well. And so you realize you kind of built things something that isn't very enjoyable and people don't like doing it. And so it's like, well, we don't have to be this. Let's figure out what we do like doing and what we're good at, and let's build some productized services around that. And so, and we and we did. So that was 2013. We were having those conversations. Um, that's when I was meeting with you, Troy. That was probably a lot of 2013 and 2014 when we were having our um our coaching calls. Um, and so, and and I have to say, um, in you were incredibly helpful in this process. Um, like I do. I I, you know, I think of you often like this. You you're there, there is Troy Dean legacy with GoWP. Like it is, we owe a lot of what we do to a lot of those early conversations. Um you were the first when we were doing this, we were actually going to productize support and you know, maintenance, support, and hosting, but we had built up 250 plus retail customers, right? So small businesses, so working with them directly. It was in those conversations with you where you're, you know, you really ought to consider a white label offering for agencies. And we had those discussions and you challenged me on that, and we kind of went in that direction. So the first iteration is definitely it's a far cry from what we are now, it's very different, but um, we were serving everyone, and now we exclusively serve digital agencies, right?
SPEAKER_03So, so you don't do the retail clients anymore, like a small business owner comes to you and says we want unlimited WordPress support. That's not wow, that's interesting. I eventually fired you, I think, as a coaching client because I didn't think you needed me anymore. I remember we're having a conversation with like Brad, come on, what are you doing here? You don't need me anymore, man. You're fine, you're up and about, and you were so polite, you were like, Well, you know, maybe. And I'm like, No, no, no, you don't need me. It's okay, it's fine. Just go like go do your thing. Also, I've I vaguely remember, I need to, I need to shout this out. I vaguely remember seeing the other day that you still are a paying member of WP Elevation and have been for wow eight years, dude. Like still, I think, yeah. I've tried to cut you off and refund your money several times. You're like, no, no, no, I want to keep support.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, we we you know, learn learn so much from the from the community that you've built. And uh it's it's incredible. And you know, some of one of the strongest things with WP Elevation back in the day and now with Maverick is that peer support and community. And I I find things it's not just so I can learn about what agency owner, like part of it. Yeah, you want to tune in and like what it was the discussion that agency owners are having, what do they care about? But I would say even more than that, and it has always been I learned stuff from it. It's like, oh, I that's something we should we should try. Let's let's see how that works for us, a business that's a productized service and not an agency at all.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I mean, at the risk of it being a mutual affection society, one of the things that I uh really liked about working with you, and one of the things I learned actually, because you were one of my earliest one-on-one coaching clients as an agency. I'd done some previous one-on-one coaching with other businesses and other and non-profits and stuff, but you were one of the earliest one-on-one coaching clients as an agency. And one of the things I learned is that uh some people will take massive action and most won't. That's just the reality of life. Right. And the most rewarding thing about working with you is that you were just taking massive action. And and even when you didn't know what you were doing, you were just still taking massive action and trying things and experimenting and see what worked and see what didn't. And that uh actually served me as a coach in years to come because uh I my uh radar became quite uh finely tuned to the people that would take action and the people that wouldn't. And uh I I just I just you know, I mean, all respect, but I just don't have time to work with people these days who don't take action because it's just uh exercise in academia or otherwise. So so thank you for taking action and and growing what you've grown. And then so at some point, how far into the journey of Go WP did you say, okay, we're just gonna serve agencies? When was when did that pivot happen?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so just exclusively serving agencies was probably 2017. So it was um three three to four years. Um we had we had done both um at the same time, and it that ended up being something weird, like you go to the GoWP homepage, and like half of it is literally a line down the middle, and half of it is verbiage tailored to businesses, and then the other half is verbiage tailored to agencies. And we're like, we're I we're not doing this. We're going to simplify, which is one of our core values. Simple is better. We're going to simplify this. We're going to really nail the message and go after one defined audience that, especially when at the time we were just doing um, we were just doing subscription WordPress maintenance and support. So you have a $29 subscription and you have a $79 subscription. Do you want one customer tied to a $29 subscription times 10, right? Or do you want one customer that's bringing you 10, 50, 100 subscriptions and there's one point of contact? So there were several reasons for us to do that, but the clarity on marketing has been it's been huge.
SPEAKER_03Talk us through the FOMO that you had to manage when you made that pivot and said, all right, we're not going to serve that customer anymore. Obviously, you're going to get pushback from those customers, they're going to be disappointed. But we might be missing out. That's a large audience that we could tap into. They're like, why don't we go all in on? Because frankly, there's more small business owners in the world than there are agencies. So even though I believe agencies are a better distribution channel for you, and you've proven that that's worked, but there must have been a point where you were like, I'm not sure about this. How did you manage your FOMO through that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it I think because at the time we had so many small businesses, we had a good understanding of what that looked like when it was doubled or tripled and how that grew. And I was pretty comfortable doing that. And that's kind of the way I make decisions also, I don't second guess or question usually. I I when I make a decision, say, hey, this is the direction we're going. My job is kind of, you know, uh coach of the team, cheerleader of the team, whatever, right? That's what I'm doing, is trying to rally the team so that they're all moving in one direction, is for them to see that in me, that this is a decisive decision that we have made. We are strategically going in this direction and we're going to go. So I didn't experience a lot of FOMA and have not since. Um, so that I I can see it. If I sit back and I I remove myself from the situation, then yeah, I can I don't like turning money down, right? You don't like turning, especially when you have been successful in that. Like we had built up clientele and we were helping those small businesses, but strategically, it just made so much more sense to focus on the quantity and then also helping agency owners kind of grow in their business in other ways. Um, a small, for example, a small business owner would not have pushed us to where we are now. They would have stopped at content edits, right? So we do maintenance and then we do content edits if they need site changes. It was agencies that pushed us and said, uh, could you create a landing page for my client? Can you create a full site for my client? How do we productize that? Okay, we're giving you two hours time to build a landing page. What if I want a dedicated resource to do more than just this? Then you get into like some staffing. And so the whole evolution of Go WP is only possible because we focused and addressed the needs of agencies, whereas small business owners, we would have probably gone a different direction. They have needs too, but it might not have been even web-related.
SPEAKER_03This is oh man, we can park here for weeks and talk about this. There's so much to unpack. I know we're going to talk about how to recruit and keep good talent, which is the core topic that we're supposed to be talking about. Um, and we will get there. But I I'm fascinated as to how you because you know, rolling out the dedicated developer, rolling out, let's build a product ties, building a landing page, rolling out uh, you know, uh the the the services that you offer now requires an enormous investment in infrastructure, people, systems, culture, process. How do you validate? How did you validate the idea of the landing page build, product ties landing page build before? Well, well, I'm making an assumption that you did validate the idea before you went and built the infrastructure. Did you? Or did you just go, my gut tells me this is going to work, we're going to build it and then sell it, or did you validate the idea and then build it?
SPEAKER_00We we validate sometimes too long, like honestly, like so that it leads sometimes to slower rollouts. That's something my team hears a lot. It's like, let's move a little faster on this, this particular thing, because like we've maybe done something before similar. We've got the model, let's do it, let's move fast. But we like to validate, and the team likes to validate. I think one thing to go all the way back, you mentioned Lucas. Lucas and I have worked together side by side for 12 years. He's essentially our chief technology officer. He he handles the technology side. Lucas is incredibly good at identifying things that will scale and things that will not scale. Sometimes when I'm pushing on the business side, this is a great, this is this is something that that might have some legs. This is something that really we might be able to run with and have some potential. Lucas is very good at analyzing that and sometimes being the no to my yes. And sometimes we have to work that out internally. Um and it's it's it's just such, I'm so fortunate to have him on the team. It's such a great dynamic. Um, and that's at the very early stage, just conceptualizing something. Then what we like to do is after we've said no many times, right? We never are going to launch a service that customers have not asked for. So we will have said no, we, I'm sorry, content edits includes 30-minute changes. We can't create landing pages, right? That's that's going to be more than 30 minutes. We don't do that. We know this scales, we're doing this times thousands of sites. We we have to say no on that, right? And there's a reason we say no. So we do that, but we kind of log that as an idea. So it goes on the board. That's something that might be possible if we can figure out a way to scale it and or product ize it and scale it. So when we hear about that enough and we have those enough like internal conversations where we say, okay, this is something, look at the idea board, look at the requests that have been made on this, let's think about it and let's try to offer some, you know, and not really an MVP, but some type of basic version of this that is all manual just to see how it works, right? So we do that and we just again we log everything, we test it with one, just one customer, no more than one. We get feedback, we let them know we're doing that. That could run anywhere from a month to six months, depending on what we're doing. We gradually increase it. So usually once we've done that and we feel comfortable that this is working well enough, we lift the gate on it and we say, the next person that asks about this, we know they will because we have a record. Or we reach out to someone that has asked in the past, right? That's something we do. We don't ever just say no and forget about it. We know who has asked for it and we said no to. So we invite them in and say, hey, we're doing this as a pilot program. It's a pilot program, it may not work. We'd love for you to try it out. It's heavily discounted, heavily discounted to get people to try that out and give us feedback because there's a commitment on their part. And then we test it out and we say how it works. And most of the things that we do, we end up moving on. So that's how you get from maintenance to dedicated staffing, right? Dedicated developers. And uh, and so and we expand that. We'll go to 10 customers, we'll go to 50, depending on what it is, and um, and then we still with with dedicated copywriter right now, we have a wait list. So we don't just, you know, we have enough resources for everyone. So we we kind of meter that a little bit so that you know, and so that we can also match the right person with with what they need. Um, but we go slow, we go slow.
SPEAKER_03I hope you're paying attention, ladies and gentlemen, because you just uh Brad just laid out a master class.
SPEAKER_01Gold right there.
SPEAKER_03That was pure gold. Absolutely. And uh we, you know, uh what I'm curious uh tactically, I'm curious. Where's your idea board? Like I want to get into the geeky details here. Where is the idea board?
SPEAKER_00I'll tell you what I'd strongly recommend. And it's not something we used early on. It was rough. Um, so we use click up for everything. I don't care when you use it or what the tool is. Um, but um, this is something that that I learned from Chris Lemma. He has a um like an initiative scoring worksheet um that's awesome. Uh reach out to him, ask him about it. Uh but an initiative scoring worksheet that is really cool. So it allows you to put your ideas kind of in the left, and then you have different criteria, like do we have the technical talent for this? Is this expensive? Or like a defined range, right? So you have these different criteria and you come through and you score it. This is a seven, this is a nine, this is a four, this is a three. And what it allows you to do at the end is to sort, and you've got kind of your best, the things that you need to move on next. It's all scored and says, you know what, we can do this with the budget, with the with within budget, we can do this with the talent that we have. The the potential customer um base for this, right? The target market for this is broad or fits within this, right? Um, it's something that leads to something additional, right? There, there are a number of different factors that you can do and score it, but that's what we use now. And I strongly recommend doing this very objectively.
SPEAKER_03I can see Max in the green room already going, let's spin up something and click up and add some custom fields. Uh, he's already excited about it. We used to do this thing called growth hacking. Um, and it that the the the and uh I think it's Sean Ellis who was the growth hacker. Dropbox, who kind of pioneered the whole growth hacking movement. He was the one that put on the homepage of Dropbox get more story, get more free storage by recommending your friends, right? Or referring your friends. And he developed this ice score uh thing, which is uh which is a similar thing. Um, and so it's you you basically come up with an idea and then you rank it by the potential impact that it could have on the business, the confidence with which you think you can roll it out, and the ease with which you can roll it out. And he says every idea starts at a 10. If you can do it this afternoon in less than two hours on your own without disturbing anyone else in the company, then it's a 10 in terms of confidence and ease, right? And then you have to sort of judge the impact that you think it might have. If you have to start asking other people in the company to help you, you need to deduct two points off the ease score for every person that needs to get involved. So it could be high impact, high confidence, but it could be a two on ease because it's gonna take four of us three months to roll this out. So therefore, you weight the numbers and you roll out the things that are gonna be the quickest with the most confidence and the highest impact to and the shortest experiment to kind of see if it's gonna get some traction. It sounds similar to the initiative school worksheet.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah, and it works that so I'll give you, I'll give you an example of that, a tangible example. Uh it's it's very similar to that. I'd say we have more columns, but it's it's really measuring the exact same thing. So um, yeah, that's that's uh it's powerful. Um, but an example of this, we had a lot of customers that said, you have an eight-hour turnaround time on your content edits, right? So like if I send, if if one of their agency's customers sends something to our help desk and we're doing that on a white label basis, we have eight-hour turnaround time. And we didn't really, it just it's not clean and easy to go to a like priority two-hour turnaround time, right? Like the systems, what would be required in order to do that was like we couldn't, we just could never really make in the pricing of that. How do we do it? Well, through the initiative scoring, we were able to essentially figure out hey, here's a way that we could just do a workflow in Help Scout that takes everyone's customers, moves it to the top of the list. We call it jump the line. And it is priority support. It's not priority in it's a guaranteed two hours, but it goes to the top of the line, and we're finding those tickets are usually done within an hour. And so it works beautifully, but something that we thought was really hard when we got down to it and we kind of said, What can this be? It ended up just being a tag and a workflow in in our help desk system that we could use, and we never would have gotten there without.
SPEAKER_03And they pay extra, they they pay a premium for gunner that's exactly right. Really nerdy question. Right. And I'm sorry to put everyone to sleep, but I'm really curious about this. Does Help Scout integrate with ClickUp?
SPEAKER_00Is it we don't? There's no reason for us to do that, but yes, I think you can do that. Right. But you manage your tickets just in Help Scout. People send in everything's in Help Scout. Yeah, we we what's more important to us is the WHMCS billing integration and with Help Scout. And then we we do have some other things that Lucas has integrated with as well. But for the most part, it's more the billing in Help Scout that matters because we need to see who has a subscription and you know, um, and invoice history and things like that. So that we can see in it, but I don't think we're using a click up Help Scout integration for anything.
SPEAKER_03So at some point you get into the staffing business, right? And you're like, well, we're gonna we're gonna provide human beings to work. So I'm, you know, I have an agency, I need a developer, I go, uh, you know, I don't want to be, I don't want to have the hassle of finding someone and interviewing them and vetting them. And uh, you know, I want to also want to have some redundancy that if they disappear, that I can replace them in a short, you know, time span. And so I go to Go WP and I get a dedicated developer. Man, that's a lot of problems to solve from your point of view, like compliance, legal, you know, all that kind of stuff. How what what is the pro what is your process for first of all, where did you start? Did you geographically, where did you start the talent building the talent pool?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I mean, I I would say here in the US, as we built um kind of and up until you know three years ago, probably, um, uh was all in the US. And then um, as we started looking at what additional services and how again, we're a wholesaler, right? So you we've got to get the price down. We're a wholesaler, the agencies are retail that are retailing, uh, you know, that are charging their customers at retail. And so uh we are going back to what you asked about working with small businesses, that is another negative. You know, if you're working with a small business or a medium-sized business or an enterprise, you can charge retail rates are higher. Um, there's other negatives that can come along with that, but pricing is not necessarily one of those. Um, when you're doing this for digital agencies, uh price has to be lower. So we were looking at, okay, so we do, we do have to look at, you know, what are, you know, what are our staff costs? Um, so we started really looking all over the world and and looking at, you know, where are where are strong WordPress communities, right? We are in the WordPress space uh exclusively, like it's we are GoWP. So we don't have a lot to offer for digital agencies that don't tie into WordPress in some way. So our dedicated developer offerings are WordPress developers. So we look for strong, strong WordPress communities. Um, we have hired, I mean, we've got staff. The initial was in the Philippines. We have staff all over, though. We have um Eastern Europe, we have Africa, US, South America, uh Central America, and that will only continue. So I think we're five continents, six continents now, six continents, and I forget the number of countries, a lot of countries.
SPEAKER_03And and is the model that you you you hire someone to come in and do uh support and and content edits and dev support for the agency's clients, like for your clients who are agencies, that's where they start. But now, hey, you you've got some bandwidth, we've got an agency who needs a dedicated developer. We can kind of carve out four hours a day of your time to work with that agency, and then the rest of the day you're working for GoWP on serving all of our clients doing support. Is that the way it works?
SPEAKER_00That is the way it works. So we we hired the develop we hired developers and and copywriters, we hired them all full-time with us. And then what we do, you know, we go WP is really three things, by the way. So we we help agencies expand their team, we help agencies with outsourced services like white label maintenance and support and page builds and copywriting, like so a case study service. We have a case study service and more uh and more coming. Um so that's the outsource services. If you don't want to hire staff and just want to offload things, right? And then the third is kind of that community and free training. We do a lot of webinars and training um how to be successful with doing the types of services that that we're selling at wholesale, um, but then just other things that can help an agency. So those are the things, but it it all it all works together. So if we hire an agency and we say for four hours, that agency is going to, and when we hire a dedicated developer, by the way, we are specifically hiring and copywriter for the things that we do on an outsource basis. So we wouldn't, we won't we hire WordPress developers that can build sites that can support and maintain sites, right? So those are the skill sets we're looking for. We know they will be successful, they have to pass all of our tests, we bring them in. Um, and they're one of the teams. Like it's they are one, even if they're assigned to two different agencies, they are a part of our team and we celebrate their accomplishments. And you know, they it they have equal standing to every everyone, doesn't matter where you're located or whatever, you are an equal full-time team member with GoWP. Um, and so we work with them. Um, they would provide the outsource services and they get placed with agency. So we just divide the day up and so we really go down to two-hour increments. So for two hours, someone might be working with an agency for six hours, they might be doing you know, go WP um uh white label support tickets.
SPEAKER_03What is the process for because talent, sure, that with with with the global pandemic, there is a large talent pool who are looking for work, but good talent are is hard to find, right? Good talent are generally not sitting around twiddling their thumbs looking for an offer. So is you know, I've always kind of had this balance between trying to find good talent and then bringing talent in and training them and developing them. What's your philosophy? Do you try and find someone who's really experienced who can do the job? And how do you attract them to your offer?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh that's a that's a great question. Um so, yes, they do have to have a certain like level of competence and expertise in what we're hiring for. And I would say also, there are so many talented people across the world. So many talented people. And sometimes it's because we're just look like you hire who you know, you interact in certain communities, and it's like the this is all I know. And so when I go to hire someone, that's where I post it, or that's who I talk to. And that's it. And so that was some of my growth is just realizing there's a whole big world out there that um has like for take WordPress developers, like things like you know, WordPress or WordCamp Nairobi brings hundreds of people, hundreds of people. Um, there are strong, robust communities that know WordPress really, really well. And uh and so just getting out there and learning about different parts of the world and where talent exists and giving people an opportunity has made a lot of difference in in our company. And from you know, my conversations with my team, it makes a difference in their lives. And uh, and that's that's powerful and important. And I've taken a much more of a global mindset when it comes to hiring. Um, so that's that's one thing. Um attracting them to the company. This is something where if you're thinking about hiring, let's say you're looking at making your first hire or you have um a small team and you want to you want to grow it, um, there's a lot that goes into creating your company culture that will make your company attractive to people that are that that want to join your company, right? So, or make them want to join you or be more appealing to them. So I there's a you know, I I could the first thing when you're thinking about this, you have to kind of you have to divorce yourself from from the company in some ways, right? There you're not hiring people to help you make money. You're building this separate entity, a separate entity that has more responsibilities than just making you money. It's got a lot of now other mouths to feed. Maybe you do work in whatever community that the company has a responsibility to the community that it lives in, right? Not necessarily physical. Maybe it's uh the WordPress community or maybe it's some other type of community that you're working in. So I I I view the company as kind of a whole, it's a separate thing, right? And the reason that I'm attracted to my company and want to work in my company, those are the things that we should talk about. And those are their reasons that the rest of your staff sees your company as appealing. So just that mindset is like the first thing that I think is important. Um, the next thing that's important is like create what is your mission? What are your core values? What are your behavioral norms? That's another thing. And so we kind of codified that in a way. We put that down and said, okay, so our mission is to create happiness, right? And it's been to create happiness by providing exceptional WordPress support. And as our we have changed the service offering that we do, it's create happiness by delivering exceptional outsource services, WordPress outsource services. And so having the mission and talking about the mission, it will attract the right people that are in alignment with that. So the mission is really, really important. Your core values are very important. These are things that, you know, everything in your company should be tied to that, to a core value, every action should be able to be traced back in some way to a core value. And like I'll give you an example. Like, number one for us is we help and encourage others. That's at the heart of who we are and what we do. So we've kind of that that helps you build your culture. And then people see that and they want to be a part of that. And maybe they have something that you haven't even ever thought of. So your culture evolves by having this new member from somewhere else in the world, from some other skill set, from some other whatever it is, you become more diverse, you become um an enhanced culture because of the people that you attract and hire.
SPEAKER_01So I think um when when you have such a strong culture like that, it actually helps to weed out people who aren't going to be a good fit. Is that the have you found that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we see that with every every time we set up a hiring pipeline. Um, it's it's so interesting. And I I will sometimes, I'm not always responsible for doing the hiring on it, but I'll jump in just to see the comments. And some of these are video responses, and you you you you see, you can tell the people that are just filling out an application to fill out an application, and you can tell the people that are really kind of ignited by your mission and and want to be a part of that. So, yeah, even if they're not if they're not following through and applying to begin with, it helps you be able to say who should move to the next stage.
SPEAKER_01And it helps you, even if they're even if they're technically an A player, yeah. You can weed out because there's lots of A players, and and it comes down to being an A player who fits into the culture.
SPEAKER_00We do a culture fit assessment as a part of every hiring pipeline that we run. And there's a lot of video response on that. It's a lot of timed off-the-cuff conversation, and we we prompt their questions to kind of get, and we started by putting our five core values up on a board and saying, let's let's ask some questions that aren't, you know, quite obvious. That's what it's about, but that's what it's about. But you you start with those core values and then you create the there, and then you score it based on what you see.
SPEAKER_03Super interesting. Uh, I want to unpack that a little bit. But um, I want to talk about the elephant in the room, which is I resisted doing this shit for years, like mission, values, vision. Boring, sounds like corporate gobbledygook. Uh, I having now done it, it's transformational. In fact, I think it's the only way to move a group of human beings in the same direction is that they have a shared set of values and a common vision for what they're trying to achieve. What would you say to people who are like, oh, come on, Brad, don't tell me to spend a couple of days staring at my navel, coming up with the vision and the mission and the values for the company. That sounds like hogwash.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I'll give you two examples from our core values. The first is um we lead with consistency. What that allows me to do, right? We lead with consistency. That's the core value. So it allows me when we have someone that is uh working in the support queue and they normally resolve 20 tickets a day, but for the last week, they're averaging five tickets a day. It allows me to have that conversation and say, as you know, one of our core values is we lead with consistency. We've noticed this, that there's been some inconsistent effort. What's going on? Is there anything we can help with? Is there a tie the action to the core value? That's what it allows you to do. So it's it's very applicable. Um, along with that, I'll say behavioral norms are important too. And behavioral norms are kind of those things that they may not fit directly in a in a core value, but it's things like, you know, we complete our commitments, we believe integrity is paramount, we um uh we care about our reputation, right? There thing, there are things like that. It's just as you join the GoWP team, these are just kind of behavioral expected norms that we all take part in. So it's fine to start there. If you see the other as too much of an academic exercise, start by identifying your behavioral norms and say this is kind of a base expectation of anyone that's working here in our company. Then work yourself backwards to the core values. But I think it's important. The other thing I would say, one more, we have another core value is we pursue our passions. And what that allows us to do is to give every individual team member the freedom to do the things that they enjoy and want to do, right? So you're not boxing people in and making them follow one, two, three. This is the blueprint for exactly what you have to do every day at GoWP. We pursue our passions. How can we use your passions? You're not helping me. It's this separate entity that we talked about that has a lot of mouths to feed, that's doing a lot of good in the world, that's helping clients, helping team members. How, how can you use your gifts to propel that forward? And so again, core value helping steer all of these individual self-interests, because we all are self-interested. Like, I mean, it we just are. You go back, go back to the state of nature, John Locke, right? When you're doing that, people are they are self, we are self-interested by nature. Not doesn't mean we're bad, doesn't mean, but we are looking out for our own self-interest, right? And so no one's joining the company to make Brad more money, right? That's not what's happening. The company has to be set up so that we understand this is what Pete wants out of our company, right? This is what, yeah. And I'm gonna tell you, this is still a bond.
SPEAKER_01What's that? Could you just reference John Locke? I did, I did. Yeah, you're pretty smart for a car heel.
SPEAKER_03So I'm not familiar with John, I'm not familiar with John.
SPEAKER_00So it's it's in the state of nature, it's basically saying that we all like if you I used to do an exercise when I taught school, and that's one of the reasons, Pete. I know that is like where I'd take the kids out to a playground and I'd drop dollar bills on the playground to see what happened in this state of nature. And guess what happened? The biggest, strongest people grabbed the dollars, but you also had some people off to the side that said, I don't want to get involved in that. Everyone's looking for their own self-preservation. So what you do is you enter a social contract. I don't want to get two government, whatever, but you enter into a social contract to say, I'm gonna give up some of my liberties to push the whole thing forward so that we all have a base level of safety, so that we all, when you work in a company, it's very, very similar. That's what it is. You're giving up your right to be a freelancer and do exactly what you want all the time and make all the decisions. You're giving up some of that freedom to have consistent pay, to have vacations, to have, right? So there's an expectation, but it is both ways. As the employer, you need to understand that the the employees, the team members have their own individual interests that you have to respect and give them space for. Sorry, I don't mean to get all not at all.
SPEAKER_03The the um uh I always reference Maslow's hierarchy of needs as the thing that motivates human behavior, right? And I and I think, you know, like you know, basic kind of you know, food, water, shelter, personal safety, and then uh and then so they're the first two. And then the the third uh level on the hierarchy of needs is is uh a sense of love and belonging and connection to the tribe, and then it's esteem and then self-actualization, and then later he added uh self-transcendence as a as another layer, which is a whole other conversation. But I uh I with that in mind, also think about the work that Jonathan Raymond's done at uh with at Refound. He wrote he's written this fantastic book called Good Authority, and he he I've listened to him on a podcast recently. I've just discovered him recently, and he was the ex uh he was the ex-brand manager and then CEO of the EMIS company when they he basically took them digital when they moved to to uh Portland and then he took them digital and he ran that company as as as Gerber was kind of transitioning out. And one of the things he talks about is uh everyone is on a personal growth uh uh journey, right? Every human being wants to grow. I mean, let's make an assumption that we are physically and emotionally and mentally well, right? And that we're not dealing with some kind of uh mental health crisis or physical trauma. Once we are well and we are engaged in life, then we want to grow as individuals. And uh what happens is we spend 40 hours a week working, right? And then outside of work, we pursue these uh things to help us grow as human beings. And and he, for him, he it's like it doesn't make any sense. We spend more time at work than in any other endeavor, and we're not supposed to grow personally at work. I mean, it's not a conversation that we have with our superiors. What we have a conversation with our superiors at work is well, how are you going with your tasks? Oh, and what did you do on the weekend for your personal growth? Oh, that's nice. But how are you going with your your tasks and your numbers, right? And so he poses this idea of uh leaning into the individual and helping them grow as an individual within their role, right? And maybe even either giving them some time during the week to pursue those or making their role more relevant to their personal growth. And one of the things I did just recently with our team is said if there's something you want to do within the company or you want half a day a week to do something that is going to help you grow as an individual and nourish you and help you flourish and help you become more confident and help you enjoy life more or or be proud of yourself, come talk to me. And I can tell you I've had three of our staff in the Philippines just book a time in my calendar to talk to me about getting clarity on their role and how they. Can make a bigger contribution to the company. Wow. Right. And I know that it was a big step for them to reach out and do that. And I have, and Charmaine has wants more responsibility and is leveling up her role. She's taking on more responsibility because she's asked me that that's what she wants to do. And I fully support her. And I've said to Charmaine, it is one of the most rewarding conversations to have when a team member comes to you and says, Hey, I've got some time and I don't think I'm I want to challenge myself. I want to learn new skills. How can I make a better contribution? What can I learn? How can I help? Right. And that's, I think just because I've created the space for them to do that, I still come across agency owners who are running what look like very successful agencies and have teams and still have the mindset that their team are there to make profit for the company and make the agency owner wealthy. And it's like the that mindset is like, and I say this to our clients all the time no one is gonna get out of bed every day to make you money.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_03They just why? Why? I'm not gonna get out of bed to make anyone else money. I'm gonna get out of bed to feather my own nest. That's why we all get out of bed every day.
SPEAKER_00That's it it awesome to you for doing that. What what you're doing there is you're serving, you know, as a as a champion of of your team. And that's huge. And I think that goes to that mindset change of I'm not gonna stand over. And we're having a lot of this discussion in the corporate world right now, right? As people go back, like, can I still work remote? How will I know they're working if they're working remote, right? So a lot of these conversations are happening. We're more comfortable with it than ours, but um, are we right? Are there are there other ways that we try to kind of put people under our thumb, that we try to control, that we try to dictate what they're doing every hour? And why are the why is the green thing not on Slack? I don't like and where are they? What are they even doing? They're taking money from me. Like, that's not the way to do it. What you're doing is you're you're leading with kindness, you're leading with an interest in your employees.
SPEAKER_03So he so here's the thing, Brent, right? Sorry to cut you off, but here's the thing this is not entirely selfless. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not an entirely selfless pursuit of mine because I've learned this. The only way to free yourself from your own creation being your business, whether it's an agency, whether it's an accounting practice, whether it's an outsource service, whatever it is, the only way to get off the fucking treadmill that you've created is to empower other people to do things that you can't on your own. Right. So the only way for me, the only way for Johnny Flash to go away for 16 days with his family recently and have a holiday and not open the laptop and still have the business generate profit is because he's built a team who are delivering value while he's not in the building. So this is yes, I genuinely want my team to flourish, but I also know that if I help them become the best versions of themselves, they will drive the company forward. And because I own the company, that is going to benefit me. So it's not entirely a selfless act. The other thing I'll just say here is that for me, it comes down to, and this is we're gonna get really woo-woo here right now, we're gonna get the acoustic guitar out of a minute and start singing kumbaya. What it comes down to is that in every moment in life, I believe you have a choice. You can act from a place of fear or a place of love. And uh in business terminology, we call that abundance and scarcity. It's the same thing. It's love versus fear. If you are if you are using software to screenshot your remote worker's computer to make sure they're not goofing off on Facebook, you are acting from a place of fear because ultimately you are afraid that you are going to pay them and they're not gonna do their job and they're gonna rip you off, they're gonna take the piss, or they're gonna outsource their job to their cousin and whatever. You're operating from a place of fear. And so, what I would invite anyone to do who is afraid of hiring someone in the Philippines and then having them interact directly with a client, if that's a fear, right, or if you are afraid of hiring someone that you are never gonna meet because they live on the other side of the planet and you're gonna pay them and you think they're gonna piss off with your money, if that's if you're afraid of that, let's name the fear and let's have a conversation about the fear. Right and let's do whatever we can to help you reframe your mindset and come from a state of abundance and a mindset of abundance, not fear. Because fear is a slippery slope into trying to control and trying to manipulate and and it it it ends, it does not end well for anyone. Whereas abundance elevates people, lifts people up, and they will go on to do things that you could never have done on your own. And then, you know, everyone's a winner.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I I think along with that, separating out, like I said, there's really three different entities or roles we're talking about, right? You're an owner of the business, you're a CEO or manager of the business. That's number two. And then you have the business entity itself that all that everyone belongs to. Those are different roles. My my interest as an owner might be a little bit different than my interest as a CEO. It's not always 100% aligned. I like I have a family, I'm trying to feed that family, right? So you in the coach's role, in that CEO role, that's your responsibility is for to everyone. Yours is one of those interests, but it's everyone's interest that you're trying to do. So, yeah, in your case, the interest that you have is to be able to step away from it. So you need to coach the team and be able to drive it as the CEO in order to fulfill that, but you also have to consider what does this team member want and what does this team member want? And so you you kind of have to do it collectively, but you have to pay this individual attention. But I think getting it out of your head that it's all the same, that I am, this is my company and this is my livelihood only, and this is, you know, that I want these people to come in to help meet. That's not what we're doing. That's not what you're doing in business. And I'd question like that. I think you need a reset to go, like not to you, but to people that are considering this, that are digital agency owners, um, to do a reset and really figure out what you want in the first place and and why you're doing this and make sure you can get to that place where you can do the detachment as the business being a separate entity.
SPEAKER_03How do you how do you educate or encourage people who are making their first hire to let go of we had this call, I had I had a call yesterday with a bunch of our Mavericks members, right? And the common theme that came up on the call was well, it's quicker if I do it. No, so okay, the the conversation was, hey, I've got a team, but I'm I'm still being pulled into conversations with clients because there's this weird thing going on with WooCommerce and they need to integrate with something, and I'm the only one who can solve that problem. So I'm still getting pulled into all these conversations, right? Because no one else understands it the way I do, because I'm a unicorn, right? And everyone, it was a very honest conversation, and uh, we all admitted that it was an ego thing and that everyone loves being Superman and saving the day and solving the problem, right? And so I said, Hey, look, there are however many people on this call, and I I added the numbers up and I said, listen, guys, what you're suggesting here is that 43%, I worked out the numbers, 43% of the people on this call are unicorns who cannot delegate what they're doing to someone else because no one else is going to be able to do it as well as you. So, therefore, if we take that assumption, what you're telling me then is that 43% of the population in our community are unicorns. Right? That's horseshit. You're just not willing to let go of the reins.
SPEAKER_00There was a story in our last happiness hour call. We do this call on Friday afternoons where people just come and it's a that the community part of what we do. And someone brought up a very similar question about delegating and and like being comfortable with that first hire. And again, it was it was Chris Lemma that was telling the story, and I'm not gonna repeat, I can't still tell stories like he does, but the story that he uh that he was saying was, you know, it was an IBM study, and they said, on average, how many times does someone have to do something in order, like on the first try, right? To get to get it exactly the way that you did. And like something, it turns out something that takes you, you know, three hours takes the first person on average 10 hours to do that same task. But what they found is that the second time it's a little bit faster, the third time, a little bit faster. And before long in 10 days, whatever it was, they're actually doing that task faster than you were doing it. So um yes, there is trepidation. People are scared when they want to outsource something. It's going to take longer. You have to be comfortable with that. That's okay. Be comfortable with it. Realize it's going to take longer, but there's no way that you can get there to actually grow your company and be able to delegate and be able to add someone if you're not willing to go through that and be patient.
SPEAKER_03Well, my my theory is that the reason people don't, the real reason that people don't want to let go of control is because if they don't have to do that thing anymore, they're not entirely sure what they should be doing. Because that thing just keeps me busy. And I just do that thing and I feel productive and I feel valuable because I'm solving a problem. But if someone else is doing that, and actually turns out that person that I've hired is better at it than me, I'm now not I'm now not sure of what my role is in the company. Yeah. And that's a scary place to be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I could, I could, I could see that as well. So, and that's again, some people don't care about professional development and learning and you know, constantly figuring out, you know, let me develop my skills so that I can bring more to the company.
SPEAKER_03You're just walk us through the value proposition for the dedicated developer or the dedicated resource. I'm an agency owner, I need someone. I can't be bothered. I don't want to know. I just I'm time poor. I just want a developer. And I and what's the value problem? Why should I talk to you guys?
SPEAKER_00So management is huge. So you're not alone in that hire. Um we've already done the vetting. We place the developer, they're hired for the things that we do. So if that's your need, it's a really good fit. But we actually do the coaching, we do the one-on-ones and the performance reviews, we work with a developer, they're a part of our team. Um, so all of that goes hand in hand. You don't have to do all of that on your own. Um, so you have an account manager resource, a developer resource, and then you have a developer. But one other thing that has just worked out so well is because of the quantity, because we've been staffing up. We're able, if someone has to be out, we can actually plug someone else into that role. So you're you're not gonna have folks that disappear, you're not gonna have folks that um that for whatever reason can't, you know, can't show up and the work's not gonna get done. We're able to backfill that with another vetted resource that we have. So I think that's probably the most the most powerful value proposition.
SPEAKER_03And and the the skill, the roles that you're able to fill at the moment apart from developers?
SPEAKER_00Copywriters right now, but designers on the way.
SPEAKER_03Hmm. Interesting. How is this different to how will the designer thing be different to Deer Designer, for example?
SPEAKER_00Deer Designer is awesome. And uh I I would consider that more of like the outsource services as opposed to a dedicated uh designer that is kind of logging in and and and run and working a four-hour shift in your agency.
SPEAKER_03Got it.
SPEAKER_00So it's more tar it's more like, hey, we need something designed, send it over to Deer Designer, whereas this is a part-time employee that's jumping into your company and working in your Slack and doing working and in your AI. Our our dedicated resources are essentially part-time employees. They're working in the tools of the agency. We're helping with onboarding, we're coaching, where there is a resource, but this is a team placement. Like it's it's stabbing.
SPEAKER_03So they'll join in, they'll join in team meetings if I want them to. They'll be on calls.
SPEAKER_00We have we have dedicated resources that are on calls with customers, even. So in customers for the agency.
SPEAKER_03Wow, that's great. Love it. Fantastic. What are you most excited about over the next 12 months?
SPEAKER_00I am very excited about some expanded offerings to help digital agencies. So again, I I mentioned the the initiative scoring sheet. We've got a lot in the pipeline. We've got some new things coming. Designer is going to be a lot of fun. Um, and so uh we've already got assembling a wait list on on designer, um, project management working on that too. So there's some other creative and some other creative um uh services that we're we're working on for digital agencies. So um continuing to follow the same blueprint. So uh, but I'm I'm excited. Love it.
SPEAKER_03Love it. How do people get in touch with uh with go WP and what you guys are doing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so an easy way if you want to get in touch with me ever, Brad at gowp.com. I'm on Twitter and Brad Morrison. I would recommend the first place to start, though, if you're interested in learning more about Go WP and taking advantage of some of the just free resources that we have in the community, go to the niche agency owners group in Facebook. So the GoWP niche agency owners group. Um, you don't have to be a niche agency, it's okay. Um, but uh but if you're a digital agency, that's a great place and it's a a fun community. And uh we do the happiness hour calls every Friday and we have training, and then you can just uh 3 p.m.
SPEAKER_01Eastern time, right?
SPEAKER_003 p.m. Eastern time is our our weekly happiness hour.
SPEAKER_03So 5 a.m. Saturday morning for me, man. I wish I could join. I might get up. Uh I I have in the past, and I I might just say yeah, you you've been on that.
SPEAKER_00That's that's uh commitment, man.
SPEAKER_01What is actually not actually in a couple weeks it'll be later for you, true?
SPEAKER_03Be late, it'll be six, right? And then a couple weeks later usually up that time on a Saturday morning with the kids anyway. Why do you say niche and not niche, Brad? Uh oh that's hilarious. Do you say niche? I say niche. Oh, we say niche. We're we're Australians, we say niche. Yeah, I say niche.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's because I've been told it needs to be niche.
SPEAKER_03What do you say, Pete? So niche niche, niche. I thought all Americans said niche. The rich is niches.
SPEAKER_00We already knew what I did originally, but I was corrected by our customers and audience. So right.
SPEAKER_03Well, there we go.
SPEAKER_00So we we want to we want to speak a common language, it's niche. So yeah.
unknownLove it.
SPEAKER_01You are very well educated. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03Go get it. Hey Brad Morrison from GoWP, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us on the agency hour here in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. I really appreciate your time. Uh Pete Crispy Butter Perry, thanks for joining in. And uh go and check out gowp.com and check out the niche agency owners Facebook group. I'm in there, Pete's in there, Brad's in there, Chris Lemma's in there, everybody's in there. Go join the group and keep the conversation going. And uh look forward to seeing you guys all again next week on the agency hour. Thanks, Brad.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me. This has been awesome.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcast, Audible, and wherever you'd like to listen. You can catch all of the agency hour episodes on our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash agency members. Or if you can get involved, check out our free digital metrics Facebook, where we broadcast these episodes live for Apple News every week, along with us on Facebook.