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The Agency Hour
Sustainable Growth & Remote Culture
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How we measure our project success, the most important thing is the team happiness and the client happiness. So that gets to like timeline and budget and things like that. So whether we're measuring how the project is successful, if our team isn't happy, that's going to be bad for our culture. If our team isn't happy, they're probably not going to do a great job for the client.
SPEAKER_01If 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_00Hey, uh, welcome to the Facebook group here. Welcome to the Agency Hour. Hey, I'm pretty excited today. We have a very special guest this week who I've been stalking a little bit uh recently on the interwebs. Found them, reached out, and he's very kindly agreed to come in and have a chat with us about a couple of things. Uh the m some of the topics we're going to talk about are building culture amongst your remote team and also sustainable agency growth. They are a WordPress VIP partner. I'm talking about Reactive Studios. Please welcome to stage CEO Josh Eaton. Hey buddy. How are you doing? Doing well. How are you? I'm good. Did I get to that right? Are you CEO or are you president or founder? Both. What do you call it? President, CEO. All three.
SPEAKER_02Depends on which uh which form I'm filling out. But yes, exactly. That's me.
SPEAKER_00Uh for those that don't know, give us the too long didn't read version. How long have you been around? What do you do? Who do you do it for? And what are you doing here?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we are a digital agency uh design and development, primarily focused on WordPress. Um we you mentioned we're a WordPress VIP partner, um, and we've been around for 10 years uh serving uh bin market and enterprise clients in uh higher ed media and technology.
SPEAKER_00Hmm. Higher ed. Um what were you doing before you started Reactive?
SPEAKER_02Uh I uh I started accounting. Uh and then I um I went to work for Deloitte uh put in consulting. So uh actually passed the CPA exam uh and then never spent a day as a professional accountant. Uh uh I managed to uh I managed to get the the bonus you get for passing the CPA exam there. And they were they were very confused because they were like, why did you do this? You're not in the accounting group, but uh I managed to tuck my way into that. So uh management consulting um and uh working on technology that um you know really large projects primarily with like budgeting and forecasting, but it wasn't really exciting technology, and I always had done web work on the side. And so after you know, spending all day working on one thing, I'd go home and you know work on web projects and things, and it was like maybe I should make that the stuff I really enjoy doing, what I do all day, and then not be on the computer at night. So uh uh my wife and I actually left uh left our jobs and took a trip around the world for a year and a half. Um and it was during that time that I uh got more connected in the uh WordPress community, um, uh met the person who became my my business partner and uh yeah, joined up with Reactive and uh been here ever since.
SPEAKER_00Were you building websites while you were traveling the world?
SPEAKER_02Uh a few, yeah. We primarily took took that time off. Uh so I'd say mostly building skills in terms of uh making connections, uh learning as much as I could, um, and then traveling.
SPEAKER_00Johnny, jump in when it jump in whenever you can dude, because you know what I'm like, man. Oh, and I think we've lost your audio, Johnny.
SPEAKER_03We can't. Oh, it's okay. Sorry, I was muted. We can say in uh pre-COVID, I'm assuming was all the traveling around, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. We're coming up on like the 10-year anniversary of doing that. So next year it will have been 10 years. So definitely pre-COVID, yeah. So uh it's been we love travel, so um this past year has been pretty rough for for that, of course.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna say you've been having Disneyland withdrawal, right, Josh?
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, that's true. Uh our our kids are like, when are we going back? We're like, uh maybe never. I think they just added like this, because we live in Southern California, they just added like the the pass back you can get if you're like a local, which uh you know would be great. We'd go during the week and stuff. So yeah, we're uh we're missing that, but uh uh can't wait for our next trip out of the country as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they should just turn Disneyland into a vaccination hub, right? I mean that's the obvious pivot there, right? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I have talk of that, but yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Uh for those that uh for those that are interested, reactive.co is the domain name here. It's R-E-A-K-T-I-V dot C O. Reactive.co is where you go and check out Josh's work. Dude, you've got a client list that is like a dream list of clients that anyone starting out would be like, oh my god, you've got Intuit, Microsoft, Harvard Business School, NBC Universal, Atlassian, Wire Cutter. I I I mean, I I get I just have to ask, how do you land these clients?
SPEAKER_02Uh, word of mouth, referrals, and partnerships. Uh, our VIP partnership has been really great for us, especially we've been partners with them for seven years. And um that definitely helped when we were really small, get us started getting some of these uh larger enterprise clients. Um and we've done really good work over the past 10 years, and uh that's turned into some really great relationships that we've been able to leverage there. Uh but yeah, I it's a great client list, but I'm I'm really happy and proud of all the all the work we do and who we do it with.
SPEAKER_00Had the VIP partnership come about, I was I was talking to um someone recently from Automatic who we're actually going to have on the show in the next couple of weeks as a guest. I'm not gonna announce who they are, it'll be a surprise. Uh, but he was saying, you know, what is the perception of VIP, WordPress VIP from an outsider's point of view? Obviously, we've got a lot of agencies here and and you know, freelancers and smaller agencies. And the perception, I think, for a long time has been, and I I'm hoping you can correct me on this, and I actually asked Jake uh this from Ten Up when he was on the show a couple of weeks ago, um, you know, clarify this for me because from the outside, it looks like, first of all, it's kind of invite only. It feels like this really exclusive club that you kind of need to be invited into, and now that you're part of the cool gang, you get to use our platform, which is by the way locked down and you can't use any of your favorite plugins, and it's really restrictive. And so from, and by the way, we'll probably give you some leads, right? That's kind of what it looks like, and I know that's a that's a crass kind of way of explaining it, but what does the relationship with WordPress at a as a at a VIP level actually look like?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh there's uh especially among the gold uh partners in VIP, there's a lot of collaboration there in terms of making sure that we're we're serving our shared clients uh correctly. Um some of the things you said around you know access to the platform and things like that. Um I don't believe you have to work with with an agency partner, but it helps. And it's definitely not as locked down as it was in the past. When we when we started uh the partnership, uh the platform is completely different. They have a new environment uh that's uh much less rest much less restrictive, um, and there's a lot more that you can do on it now. So I think that's really opened up um who can who can run on the platform. Uh many of our clients are on VIP and on many of the other managed hosts as well.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um and the lead generally comes in, those sort of leads generally come in via WordPress VIP because obviously the those clients are looking for someone who has the skill set and the expertise to manage the project. And WordPress VIP is essentially a kind of enterprise hosting or managed hosting platform, and then they they refer the development and design work and implementation out to the VIP partners, right?
SPEAKER_02Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Got it. Um so uh how we a couple of things we were talking about pre-show is sustainable growth as an agency. Yep. And uh the the the thing that I really want to get stuck into is the people aspect. Like how do you recruit, hire, keep motivated, keep everyone moving in the right direction, build a good culture remotely, and particularly because of COVID now. I mean, we've a lot a lot of us have already done this remotely for years before COVID, but particularly because of COVID now, this is we have to work remotely. So before we get to the team stuff, let's maybe talk about the growth angle because uh money doesn't solve all problems, but it sure as hell helps hire people who can help you solve problems and then create new problems you didn't know you were going to have because you're dealing with human beings. But let's talk to us about the um I particularly want to talk about the revenue models, like recurring revenue versus project versus retainers. How does that work? What's your take on it? And and what's your kind of the knowledge that you would like to pass on or that you wished people passed on to you 10 years ago before you started out?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, a lot to unpack there, uh, which is great because there's I got a lot to say. Um I would say, yeah, both those things, the sustainable agency growth and and remote culture, uh like you can't have one without the other. They're uh completely intertwined. Uh so it makes sense to talk about them together. Uh let's talk about the revenue models for a little bit. Um we we do projects in all kinds of different ways. Um and in terms of uh in terms of sustainable growth, in terms of uh uh you know keeping your team afloat whether when going through hard times, last year is a great example, having that recurring revenue base there is really valuable. At one point in our um history, I think we were at uh maybe 70% like uh retainers. And so we had uh I remember one we were in like Q4 of one year, and I was like, I don't think we have to book a project for the rest of the year. I was like, we've got this, we've got these retainers coming through. Um it that was really great. We're not there now. We've had a lot more growth in our uh larger project work. Um and so we um and just the agency has grown, so that's become a smaller part, but uh it's still a a huge part. Part of uh last year was a very challenging year. Like I don't even know if I need to call that out, but uh we still had a great year. Um and it was thanks to our great clients and uh partners and our great team um that we had all these pre-existing relationships. And so uh we only had a few new clients during 2020, but um all our existing clients helped us make it through and even grew in in 2020 um from a revenue perspective. So uh kind of the ways we structure that is um most of our projects are are fixed bid, but we kind of run the game on how we like build the projects. So we've gotten pretty good at estimating those. And our project managers are really good at uh keeping track of scope, making sure that we're not gonna go over timeline and budget. Um and pretty much all those products will turn into some type of going work, whether it's say a fixed fee retainer, an hourly retainer, um uh, or we even do buckets of hours. Sometimes those are combined. We'll do maintenance under a retainer and then have like a bucket of hours for the next year, like 300 hours or something to like use whenever, uh whenever needed. And the priority there is different based on uh if you're on a retainer, we have you forecast it in. If you're on a bucket of hours, it's something that we're having to um, you'll have to contact us to figure out what our scheduling is and we'll schedule you in. So people who need the most priority are on those like use it or lose it every month uh retainers. Um so having those uh set up, we provide a lot of value outside of just straight development hours, too, in terms of ongoing monitoring, um, checking performance, accessibility, uh things like that, and kind of be treated by and so having those really helps in a year like last year when you know it may not be such a growth year. Uh I'd say how we measure our project success. Um the most important thing is the the team happiness and the client happiness. So then it gets to like timeline and budget and things like that. So whether we're measuring how the project is successful, if our team isn't happy, uh that's gonna be bad for our culture. If our team isn't happy, they're probably not gonna do a great job for the client. And so um the way we make our client happy is by having our our team, uh, our team be satisfied and happy on the project too. Uh so we we do what we can to not not burn people out, to not uh overload people with too much work, make sure they have the resources they need to succeed. And uh part of the reason we can focus on that is because we have the fundamentals down in terms of making sure we're hitting timeline and budget, because we have a great project management team, great team of engineers and designers to uh to keep those projects on track.
SPEAKER_00This is I'll gonna I'll get about 8,000 questions right now.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna say I've got some questions too. Yeah, you go, Johnny. Oh, I was gonna say, Josh, when you're talking about the project managers and stuff, I was just curious. Um, are any of them on any kind of like commission or bonus structure? Um, or is it just your sales team? Or I'm just kind of curious. I was we I was having a conversation about this with some other agency owners earlier today, and so I was just kind of curious um how you've approached that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, our our project managers aren't. They don't have a um, they're not tasked with like account management in terms of like growing accounts necessarily. Um that is primarily on our sales team. Uh for the longest time that was just me. Uh recently we've hired another salesperson as well. Okay. Um so there's no commission structure there. Um our project managers do uh they do know to look for those kind of things. So if there's any talk in like a meeting where um, oh, this is something we might like to do in the future, or um, you know, we have an event coming up or something like that, all that information gets back to our sales team, which then we um we'll reach out and try to figure out, you know, whether that means there's another phase or some other work for us to uh push forward on.
SPEAKER_00Cool. How do you measure uh I want to come back to the revenue thing for a second and talk about retainers and maintenance, but how do you measure the happiness of the team and the happiness of the client?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, one of the ways is um, well, let's say for clients, um some of the things we look at are uh, you know, are we hearing what kind of feedback are we getting? So we're regularly checking in with the client to say, how's everything going? Are we meeting your expectations? And if we're not, uh that's kind of how we measure that. We don't really use any automated tools for that. I know some people do NPS scores and things like that. Uh for the kind of work we do, everything's so custom that um I've looked into those, but it hasn't uh hasn't seemed like a fit. The personal email seems to get uh get a better response for those kind of check-ins. Um same thing with the team. We have everyone has regular one-on-ones with their managers. Uh, we have skip level meetings with with me. For anyone who's not reporting, we're doing a retrospective at the end of every project where we're very candid about uh how the project went, you know, the good and the bad, what did we learn, all that. All that gets published on our like internal blog. And uh so everyone, even people who aren't on the project, can kind of get the takeaways of you know what learned on those projects. So those are those are the main ways we measure client and uh team happiness there.
SPEAKER_00Do you have a framework for uh please excuse my lucid brain, I can't help myself. Do you have a framework for the one-on-one meetings that you have with team members? Or is it pretty loose and organic conversation, or do you have like an agenda?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we um I would say it's fairly loose. Everyone has we use Asana, that's our tool. And everyone has a an Asana project with their manager and it's laid out uh laid out with their goals, uh, any issues or and proposed solutions. So if an issue needs to go in there, it needs to have a proposed solution as well. And that's a topic to discuss, uh, agenda items, and then there's uh there's a place for feedback in there. So typically we'll be delivering feedback, a call or something like that, and then recording it in that part of the uh the Asana document. But there's uh we have that structure, but it is pretty freeform as well in terms of uh challenges and and growth opportunities.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and and the the one-on-ones I'm curious, you know, I mean, are you uh you're not I'm gonna make an assumption that you're not talking about project work or what happened with this client or where are you at with this project, that you're more talking about the development of that individual and their growth within the organization and what they might be challenged with in terms of their own personal growth. Is that uh is that a fair assumption?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Uh, you know, sometimes there's specific project things to talk about, but it's not a it's not a status update. If if a one-on-one proceeds like a status update, it's not a good one-on-one. So there's not really getting to the core of anything there. So, yes, it is about uh personal development. It is checking in, checking in on that person. Uh make sure that they have the opportunity to give feedback on things they see. Um, as managers, we are able to give feedback on things we see. Um and you know, continually feeding back into what their annual goals are, their professional development goals and all that.
SPEAKER_00Love it. Love it. Um, I I do want to come back and talk more about team in a second, but I just want to unpack the maintenance um and the retainer model for a second. Do you I I I've kind of been advocating for a long time that maintenance in and of itself, if you're just dealing with like a small or medium business and you build a WordPress website and we launch it, that maintenance in and of itself is actually not that valuable because the client kind of expects it, right? They I mean, Chrome updates, you don't even know that it's updated, it's just expected, right? So yeah. Do you do you I mean, do you have clients that are just on straight maintenance, or is there something that you add into that maintenance contract to make it more valuable for the client so that they don't churn? Like, are you are you talking to them about strategy or goals or just kind of walk me through that a bit?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely. Uh it's heavily customized for each client. So some clients will have like an hourly retainer, but they have requests constantly. And so we may call that a maintenance retainer because we're also updating plugins. And the big thing there is like anyone can update the plugins. It's the testing of those plugins and thinks that's the important part. Um, and so even if we're doing that, uh, some clients are gonna have they're on that retainer because they have a lot of requests every month. Um other clients want to know, they they want the peace of mind that their site's gonna be taken care of. Uh, they don't have to worry about being hacked, they don't have to worry about keeping the plugins up to date. They just wanna they just want it out of their head and to know that they have a trusted partner taking care of it. So um in some organizations, they have someone internally that can do that, and but many don't. And so uh that's where those kind of meanness retainers are a really good fit. Um and so that is where we have uh additional options there, where we do everything from uh uptime monitoring, uh performance monitoring. We'll monitor lighthouse scores on an ongoing basis uh and kind of track those so we can know. Um, you know, you might for a product check the lighthouse score and be like, hey, look, we did such a great job. The you know, the score is you know 90 something. Um a couple months of new features and maintenance, and if you're not consistently checking that, you may have implemented something and not paid attention to what's going on there. So continual monitoring there. Same thing with accessibility. It's uh you can build an accessible site, and then a content editor goes in there and puts in inaccessible content and and you're out of compliance. So um those are things that we have. We have tools to run automated scans, and also we'll do manual checks. Uh, we'll also do things like uh analytics reporting uh and analysis. So we'll look at Google Analytics every month and produce a report that says um, you know, here's here's how the bounce rate changed, here's where most of the traffic came from, and kind of analyze that for our clients.
SPEAKER_00And then you uh and then are you kind of consulting on strategy or are you just consulting on from a technical layer? This is what we can do from a technical point of view to improve the performance of the website. But hey, if you want to publish that blog post, that's entirely up to you. That's got nothing to do with us. We wouldn't do that, but hey, it's your business. Where do you where do you draw the line there?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, primarily tech strategy, web strategy. We don't do a lot of content strategy work or um or just like content in general. So it is primarily from a uh from a tech perspective, from a process perspective, uh that will provide insight there.
SPEAKER_00Okay, cool. Awesome. Johnny, I'm gonna I'm gonna shut up and I know you're doing great.
SPEAKER_03You're doing great. This is this is fascinating to me because I obviously this is the world I'm living in too in terms of agency stuff. So, you know, I always I always like to hear how people are structuring their their maintenance, their retainers, their projects, and kind of the value that you're pitching, you know, which it sounds like it's more on the the customized care than it is like pressing update on the plugins, right? Definitely.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. There's uh we just um I created a site for someone that doesn't have anyone to take care of that, but uh we put them on a specific posting plan where they have um where they have automated plugin updates with like visual regression set up so that they could they just weren't a fit for the for the maintenance retainer. Um And so that's that's an example where, like, you know, we want to find the right fit for the client. And it just doesn't make sense for for some clients. Uh we'll still make sure you're set up in a way that, you know, you're you're gonna get what you need, and that may not be customized care from us. Um and you know, that client may come back for a larger project in the future. Um uh, but it's it's it's not where we're saying, oh, if you don't take care of your if you don't sign a retainer with us, you're not gonna be able to take care of your site. We know that for many sites, you're just clicking update. So those are the ones that we're not actively going after. It's primarily the ones where, you know, uh we're gonna be working on things month in and month out.
SPEAKER_00Sure. And so the the kind of the bucket of hours model, are there clients who don't who aren't on a maintenance retainer because they don't need it, because maybe they've got someone internally that can manage that, but they need kind of regular development work, and so they just buy a bucket of hours. Is do you have clients in that mix? We do.
SPEAKER_02We do. We like that approach for clients who don't have that regular, maybe not even maintenance, but they know it'd be seasonal. It's like they know for the year they're gonna have a few big events. And rather than rather than do a contract every time and go through a whole estimation and legal process, um uh it's usually easier to do like maybe to say, hey, we know this for the year. Um, you need to let us know X number of weeks ahead of time, so we have lead time to uh to resource people for that. And uh those will work really well. Sometimes they're paired with a maintenance retainer, uh, particularly our our flat fee ones where it's just rather than hours, it's just like um this amount per month, and we take care of this bullet, this bulleted list of items, and then uh the bucket of hours outside of that. It is uh it is a challenge from a um like if you're not busy, having that mix of of retainer work, project work, uh hourly buckets and things isn't that big of a deal. Then when you are busy, uh those those buckets become uh a kind of a strain on your on your forecasting. So those have to watch out for. If you're careful or if you don't set expectations up front with clients, you can run into into issues where uh like a retainer. And so that's why we have ours set up where if you want that priority, you you've got to be the month in, month out, you lose the hours if you don't that way we're setting that time aside. Otherwise, you know, we've got to be able to schedule you in.
SPEAKER_00How do you also avoid the conversation where you say, like, here's a bucket of hours, here's how much it is. How do you avoid the conversation where the client goes, all right, so if I divide the amount by the bucket of hours, that's your hourly rate, that's expensive?
SPEAKER_02Uh that's a great question. Um for those buckets of hours, we uh clients know our hourly rate. Uh, if we're doing a fixed bid project, um we're usually not sharing an hourly rate as part of that because that's not really part of that that fixed bid. Um but for those buckets of hours, they uh the client does know our hourly rate. Um and clients will say it's expensive, and we walk through uh what the value is. So um our uh we have have plenty of people come in and say, uh I'm sure anyone runs an agency is is has that had that experience. It costs this much. So this is uh so expensive. So uh we uh you know some of that comes down to making sure you're getting the right leads in. And they um they have that expectation. Like our our rates are uh are within market. Uh it doesn't mean people still won't come in and say they're say expensive. Of course.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah.
SPEAKER_02But I guess over over the years of having those conversations, it uh uh it gets easier and easier. I know once we get to that point where it's like over hourly rate, uh, that client might not necessarily be a great fit for us. Uh because IBR agency is bringing a lot more than just an hourly rate. So once it gets to that point, it's like, well, now we're now we're a commodity. Sure, there's gonna be plenty of people out there at a lower rate, but here's what you get when you work with us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's so good.
SPEAKER_03That's so good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um what one one question I've got about complexity of scope of project. Do you if if a project comes in and you're not like do you ever build like a prototype or like a like a not a mock-up of a design, but do you ever build like a a wireframe or like a like an interactive prototype just as a proof of concept before you actually scope out a project?
SPEAKER_02Meaning before we've actually sold it?
SPEAKER_00Or as like a Yeah, like as a first phase, yeah, correct, as a first phase.
SPEAKER_02Oh, as a first phase. Um we have done that. Um typically our first phase is uh is a discovery phase. So whether it's actually sold as like, here, we're signing a contract just for discovery, or it's actually just like the first stage in a in a project that we've given like a an estimate on. Um it's not typical that we'd actually do like a full prototype, more that we'd put out specific things that are um that we know will be tricky. So if a client comes to us and there's like an integration with another system that they want to do, maybe something we haven't done before.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um we've done a lot of API integrations, but there's you know thousands and thousands. Exactly. So that would be something we would spend extra time on. Um, so you know, we may not build like a fully functioning prototype, but we'd like, okay, do we have the authentication working out with this API? Does it give us all the data we need? Uh figuring all that out. So we try to we try to eliminate any of the assumptions we have from our estimate, uh, or validate those assumptions, uh, and then eliminate any of the additional questions we had. So if there's anything that isn't clear, we want to make that clear during that phase. So we'll button.
SPEAKER_00But let's be clear, you're getting you're getting paid for this work, right? You're getting paid to validate or eliminate this assumption. Because this is the big, this is the this is one of the biggest differences between where I see people who are starting out or are you know trying to grow and established agencies is that the you know, with the reputation and the credibility and the social proof that you've got with the clients that you work with and the quality of the leads that you're getting from WordPress, VIP, and all that kind of stuff, is you just wouldn't dream of like doing discovery like this and not getting paid for it. It doesn't make any sense to you as a business owner. It also doesn't make any sense to the client at that level, right? They expect to pay. How do you how do you make that transition? Because I know there are a lot of small agency owners and freelancers starting out who are like, I'll just want to prove how much I know and how what I can do to earn the trust of the client so they then hire me to build the thing.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Yeah. Uh I felt the same way uh when I started out in terms of how am I going, how am I gonna get someone to pay me to figure out how to do the project. It's when you describe it like that, it seems like why would someone do that? Um, but there's a lot of value in that because most people that are setting out to do a project uh with us, they're not uh they're not a web person. They're not a developer, they're not a designer, they're in marketing, they're in communications, they're in product, uh, something like that. Not something that they do day in and day out. So they can say what maybe like the end solution they want is, but they don't know how to get there. And so there's a lot of value in being able to uh help a client through that process and get them there. One of the things that we'll that we'll frequently say, you know, we have deliverables as part of that discovery project, um, like a TechScope document, a design brief, something like that. And these are valuable documents on their own. So there's there's value produced during that discovery phase, even if they decided not to move forward with us for the project, they could take those documents, give them to someone else. Um that hasn't happened at this point to us.
SPEAKER_00So have you got to a point where you've gone, hey, great, we've done discovery. You're a lunatic, we don't want to work with you guys because you're a pain in the ass and we don't want this project, but here it is, ta-da, bye bye, go find someone else.
SPEAKER_02So uh we've had happen on projects where we've had fire clients. Uh it usually doesn't happen at the at the end of Discovery, though. So we haven't we haven't so much had that exact situation, but we definitely have had uh projects where we where we've had to fire clients uh yeah for for similar reasons. So um that's always a tough conversation to have, but uh usually ends up being a a good decision.
SPEAKER_03Josh, um when you're talking about scope and everything, you know, as I talk to agency owners, a lot of a lot of them struggle with um, you know, when you were talking about like keeping the projects on schedule and all that, um doing exactly that because the client holds it up with getting them content or providing feedback that's timely and stuff. What what what do you guys do to kind of help with that part of the process? Correct question.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we uh that is a good question. We um it really comes down to communication and setting expectations with clients. Um it's not foolproof, it doesn't mean they still won't like ghost you for months and you'll wonder uh what's going on with the project, but because that does still happen. But um uh setting the expectation up front of what the timeline is and being super proactive on our end. So we do everything we can to make sure that if there's a gonna be a delay in the project, if there's gonna be a scope overrun, uh it's not gonna be us. It's gonna be it's gonna be the client, um, whether whether it's something they didn't consider. And that means when we're putting our estimate together, we have to include all of our assumptions. And so if we're saying we think this project is gonna be uh 100,000, we're saying, and we assume this, this, this, this, this. And so then if any of those assumptions have changed once we get into the project, um that's the point where we can make a change order and say, hey, you know, we assumed this way, it changes our estimate by this much, changes the timeline, um, and that. And it's really easy to say that and then get into and get really excited about a project and be like, oh, this is great, and then realize, oh crap, we forgot to include our assumptions. And so uh, and if that happens and we didn't, you know, we may thought something in our in our head, but we didn't document that with the client, it's on us. And so then we um it's like, well, you know, we're we might eat that time uh because we want to keep a good relationship with that client. Um through the years, it's more rare and rare that that that actually happens, though.
SPEAKER_03Um we it really is about it really is about the expectation and the communication, right? Because if you set the expectations really well with the client and you communicate throughout the process, then you're typically not going to get off track because they know what's going on, they know what the expectations are, you're communicating, you're being proactive to get that stuff from them. And so I think I think a lot of times it just does come down to the expectations weren't as clear as we thought they were, or we didn't communicate as well as we thought we could. You know, anytime I get the email that's like, hey, what's the status of this? That means I'm not doing a good good enough job proactively communicating what the status of that is, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Um we having that kind of communication throughout the relationship, and we have many really long-term relationships with clients. Um always putting your best foot forward there means that when something does happen on your side, like right now, we uh we're missing some people on our team for personal emergencies and such. And uh we're able to reach out to our clients and say, here's here's the situation. Um, and because we've been proactive the whole time client relationship, um our clients are are okay with that. Uh, you know, if you don't have that that rapport, that relationship with the client, that's gonna be a very challenging conversation if you're not able to uh that's right, to fulfill that.
SPEAKER_00It's it's it's like it's having like enough, it's it's having enough deposit in the bank of trust, isn't it? Like if you think about any relationship in your life, whether it's a professional relationship, whether it's a relationship with your partner, a friend, a family member, the any any conflict in a relationship typically comes down to where uh people's expectations uh are not aligned. Someone was expecting something they didn't receive, or someone you know wasn't expecting something that they got. And usually that comes down to a failure of communication because the you know the great uh myth or the great misunderstanding about communication is the fact that it's actually taken place. You can have a conversation with someone in your head and and you think that they've heard it, but they haven't. And so I think uh if you know I I I what I've learned over the years is that consistency of behavior is the thing that builds trust. If you think about it, uh if we were friends and we were hanging out socially on a regular basis, and then all of a sudden, like we started hanging out and you were just like getting blind, smash, drunk like a couple of weekends in a row, like really punishing yourself. I'd be like, dude, are you okay? Like, what's going on, man? This is not your usual behavior. And so the inconsistency in behavior there makes me question. Whereas if you behave in a consistent fashion, I know what I'm gonna get. So I'm I'm like, I'm happy for you to babysit my kids, man, because I know you're reliable, because I have that trust, because you've demonstrated consistency of behavior. It's the same with managing client relationships. If your behavior is consistent and your patterns are consistent, you build up enough trust where then if you do drop the ball, they're more likely to be forgiving of you because you've got enough deposit in the in the trust bank.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. And if you if you show up on time and you communicate clearly and you deliver what you said you were gonna do, you're ahead of 80% of the people out there, right? I mean, it's the reason that there's just there's just not that many people that do it, you know? And it's not that they don't intend to, it's just they they don't end up doing it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I when I freelanced um before reactive, I uh I ran into those same situations where uh exactly what what you said, you know, say what you're going to do and then do that thing. And it's like it's as simple as that. And I know that I fell victim to that when I was a freelancer. It can be really hectic as a freelancer trying to manage, you know, your your project, you're doing the actual development. Uh it can be uh it can be a challenge. So I uh I definitely give people grace on that because I remember doing the same thing when I was a freelancer. Uh but then when you're trying to hire freelancers to work with you, you're like, why how come people can't do what they say they're gonna do?
SPEAKER_00Uh nice pivot into into talking about team if you're okay.
SPEAKER_02If we can can we yeah, there was one thing you said about about conflict that I wanted to um to follow up on, which was um it especially starting out, uh you might want to avoid conflict, like, oh, the client client comes in and says they have uh oh, we we forgot to add this, we need to add this. And it's like now I have to have a conversation about adding budget, adding timelines, something like that. And you're like, oh, we'll just figure it out. And then project gets late, project's over budget, maybe eat that cost. Um we we kind of proactively looked at that conflict. Um, there was a a study uh at one of like the major hotel chains where they um they figured their most satisfied customers would be the people who didn't have any issues, but it was actually the people who had an issue. Uh, and then the hotel uh the hotel solved that issue in such a good way for them that they were those were the most highly satisfied and the most loyal customers. And so I find the same kind of thing with our projects. Like when there is an issue, something was missed, something was broken, it's how you react to that issue that really makes a difference with that client. Not that, oh, it'll be free from bugs and you won't have to bear to talk to us. It's the yeah, it's really that how you react to that conflict.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and again, you think about the personal relationships in your life, right? The relationships that are the strongest and that would stand the test of time are those relationships that have conflict. It's like the spouse, right? Yeah. Don't tell me, don't tell me there's no conflict with the spouse, right? I don't believe that. That is bullshit. I hear any couple that are like, we never fight. I'm like, there's something wrong in that relationship, right? You gotta have conflict. That's just human behavior. It's human human beings want things and and and we will we will fight for what it is we believe in, and there's always conflict in human relationships. It's how you resolve that conflict and how you heal that actually makes the relationship stronger. So I that makes total sense to me, that uh that um that study. Um talking about team and and like uh conflict and uh you know, how do you uh I want to talk about recruiting in a second and fight finding talent, but uh there's a couple of things here. I mean, seriously, I consider all weak and ask questions because I'm just fascinated by this stuff. Uh first of all, how is your role different now to what it was when you were on the tools? Like, do you spend does Josh Eaton spend any time on the tools doing client project work now, or are you just running the business? How's your role changed?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh great question. Uh it's changed a lot. Um for the first um four years, I was doing kind of full-time development and also running the agency, um, which you know, two full-time things, how does that work? Um and uh so it's been it's been about four years, I think, since I've actually touched a line of code for a client, um, which was a good change. Um, and so my primary role today uh is uh vision and strategy sales, um, and uh just like the general running of the agency. We have uh an operations manager, we have a principal engineer uh who are like on our leadership team um uh along with me. Um but it I am the sole owner and kind of the buck stops at me. So like uh if there's an issue, if there's you know an emergency, that bubbles up to me and I'll I'll handle that. But I would say day to day, uh, I'm not in the I may join some meetings um with clients and help with overall strategy uh approach thing that be more involved in in discovery than actual like delivery of the project. Um but more and more I'm I'm primarily on the sales side and and uh account management uh internal things with the team.
SPEAKER_00And what's the what's the and I'm gonna make an assumption that all your team are moving in the right direction and working on the right things at the right time and that everything's running perfectly smooth and that all the admin work is done and everything's up to date, and there are pigs flying past your window and rainbows and unicorns everywhere. So, based on that assumption, how do you keep a team of people moving in the same direction and uh fighting the same fight and all?
SPEAKER_04What do you do internally? Given that you're a remote team, given that what's happened over the last eight, ten months where our life has been turned upside down, how have you managed to keep the morale and culture of the team at a certain level? And what are some of the things you do in terms of the merge that across the lab?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely. We um we've always been remote uh uh when we started. Um and so uh there wasn't a huge shift in terms of like how we worked uh over the last year, unlike uh companies that had brick and mortar offices and things like that. Um, but that doesn't mean that the last year wasn't challenging for even people who were used to remote working remotely. Uh you know, a lot of a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty. Um and so there was a lot of understanding. Um and you know, we we said communication again and again, but that's a that's a big one. So if we come uh if we look at like the values of of Reactive, one of them is is people first. It's it's our our very first value. And so it's that, you know, when there is something like last year, uh, you know, there maybe there's concern over revenue, there's concern over clients, but we're really looking at people first. How can we take care of the team? How can we uh extend them grace so that um they can take care of themselves? Uh and so that kind of guided all of our decisions over the last 18 months, um which really helped. Thankfully, we had uh processes in place in terms of how to how to work remotely already. Uh we already had that. So that's kind of having those processes and then continually checking in on those is how we keep everyone moving in the right direction. Um from a culture standpoint, um we've had a bunch of new people start recently and a few more starting soon. Uh we have everyone uh, you know, one of the things that we miss from being in like offices is like you don't get to like show up the first day and then you know, everyone's there, you meet them in person. Uh many people at our company have never met each other in person, especially if they've joined in the last year when we haven't had like a team retreat. Um, so they uh one of the things we do is set up like a 15-minute check-in call with everyone on the team. Uh, if our team isn't isn't uh isn't huge, so that you know that doesn't take uh a year to get through. Um, but uh that's something we instituted that really helps people feel more a part of the team. It's like there's no agenda for those. It's not it's not talking about work, it's just like connecting personally. And there's a huge difference between having someone be like a faceless like uh that you talk to every day and actually like having a conversation uh, you know, outside of work things. And so that's something that really helps. We we do weekly all hands meetings. Um uh and And you know, everyone starts a meeting talking about their weekend, talking about what uh exciting things they did, which like doesn't seem like a big deal, but it actually really it really helps because people are then checking in, like, hey, you remember that thing you did a couple weeks ago? How did that work out? And yeah, all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00It goes the long way.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it does. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's some of my I've learned I've learned so much about my team through those conversations about their personal life that have you know, and and again, you're just more likely to go into bat for someone who you know, like, and trust. You can't build that trust unless you build some kind of affinity for the person, right? And you can't do that unless you get to know them. So the best way is just to you know ask them about who they are as a human being, what's going on in their life, and and connect with them on that level. Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_02And as much as we believe in remote work and love remote work, there's something to be said for getting everyone together in the same room, which we couldn't do last year, we're not doing this year. Um, so I can't wait to do that again. But that's always a huge culture-building activity that everyone looks forward to. Uh we can fly everyone into a to a location and uh spend a whole week there.
SPEAKER_00So stop it, I'm getting itchy. I know. I can't wait. We used to come out, we used to come out to San Diego twice a year and run out live events for our customers and stuff and get all the team together. And now that's just killing me. I can't, I'm not allowed to leave the house without getting shot these days in Australia. We're still in lockdown, so I can't wait for the travel restrictions to be lifted and get back out there. I want to ask something about values. At what point in Reactive, when you started Reactive, at what how far into this 10-year journey did you say, hmm, I think we need some company values?
SPEAKER_02Uh this is gonna be embarrassing. Uh it was probably about five years. Um, of course, it should have been day one, right?
SPEAKER_00We know that now. Like it should have been day one. But but here's the thing, because I because I can tell you, right? I so this is part of what we part of what we teach and help our agency clients with. But I I feel huge resistance from agencies because they think it's all a bit woo-woo. I resisted this stuff for years because I was like, this ain't gonna help me get more clients. What are you talking about? Values, you want to sit around and play kumbayar and hold hands around the fire? This is horseshit. How's this gonna actually matter to the business? Why did you why did you go on that journey to instill values in the company? Did you get any help from any coaches or books or podcasts or consultants to help you do that? And what impact has it had having your values articulated, written down, and shared across the company?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we um it was probably about five years. It was once we got to around 10 people, that was when um before that, uh, I was so heavily involved in in everything that I I didn't necessarily need a way to like instill like how I think things should be run without me actually being involved in those uh being involved in those you know, individual things. And so that's where I where it starts to, once the agency starts to grow beyond like uh you talk to every single person at the company every day, um that is where uh that's where that's where that starts to become beneficial. Because how do you bring someone on and instill in them, you know, all that experience you have with your existing employees where they kind of learn that through osmosis, um someone new coming in, how are they how are they gonna know what's what's important to us? And so it comes down to decision making. Once once you're at the point where people are gonna be making decisions, so like if you're one, two people, you know, if you're the owner, you're probably making every decision that has to be made. Once it gets to the point where those decisions need to be made by other people, they need something to guide them.
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_02And and having those values uh really helps. So that way you get into a tough situation, you you have a pandemic hit, you have uh an angry client, something like that. Um if you if you want to give feedback to someone who did something wrong, what do you point to? Uh they'll say, Well, I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to do exactly this thing. Um, but if you can point to your value, say, one of our values is communication. Do you see where the communication breakdown was here? Um, you've kind of laid out that roadmap. Um and uh if you don't define your culture, someone else in the company is going to do it for you. Um you may not end up with the culture that you want. And so it's a critical part, especially as a remote team, uh, that you're proactive in building that culture. And values are a big part of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Did you get any outside help to help you work out your values?
SPEAKER_02Um, I do have a coach uh that I've worked with for uh about two years now. Uh meet with him just about every week. Um I had help help from him on that. Um I definitely did some research on my own into like other companies' values and uh kind of kind of tried to do my own. I didn't do like a seminar or anything like that, but try to do my own like process of like sit down with a blank sheet of paper and think through what's important to the UC, what's important to me, all those kind of things. And it um it was it was a challenging process. And then when I got to the end, I was like, even some of our values, it seems, it seems uh you know common sense. Um but every day I I can look at those values and refer, think of a decision I had to make that day where those values came in handy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I in fact, I think it's the I think it's sorry, Johnny. I I think it's the only vehicle that we, I think it's the only device that we have that allows us to make decisions as a collective rather than every decision having to go through the business owner or the person that started the thing. I think it's the only framework that we have to guide that decision making. Sorry, Johnny, I'll cut you off.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, that's okay. I was just gonna say um we've got a few questions coming in, and I'd love to get to them before we run out of time here. Totally. If that's okay. Uh James on Facebook asks, uh, when you have those project debriefs that you were talking about earlier, um, you know, like after a project, how do you action on the bad? Like if something comes out of that that's like, man, we missed it here. How what's kind of the I know you had the internal blog that you mentioned, but what's kind of the how do you action on the bad?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh it's there's definitely not a blame game, but we are candid in terms of like uh if there was a communication breakdown, you know, we have developed a culture where people usually own up to it. So that there's usually not a situation where people are like, well, yeah, this went wrong, but it definitely wasn't my fault. Uh it's you usually people are like, yeah, I dropped the ball here. Uh and everyone else is like, oh no, no, you did just fine. Yeah, fine, man. Yeah, yeah. Uh but we say, but yeah, you did kind of drop the ball there.
SPEAKER_03That says something about the culture though, right? I mean, when a team member, and and this happens on my team too, where someone just like they just own it, they they are they're upfront about it, they're not trying to point the blame. I think that speaks volumes to you know the team, the integrity, you know, all of that. And and it's so important. My team's all remote as well. And so, you know, I think that's the integrity part of a remote team is even more important than when you're all in the same space, right? Because we have to know we can count on each other, we have to know when each other's around, available, what's going on, who's who's working on what, or else, you know, it would fall apart really quickly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um, so we we take that that write up from our um, we actually do it in a sauna with like a Kanban thing, and everyone adds in their feedback, we vote on it, and those are the ones we talk about. Um, and we we take all those takeaways and we'll actually turn them into uh asana tasks in our internal thing, and each one gets an owner. So if there is, if if there's someone, um if there's like a personnel issue and that needs to be dealt with, that's not public. We'll we'll make that a separate task and and talk to that person. Um thankfully that's usually not the case. It's usually like uh it's a process breakdown or a communication breakdown, uh missing expectation. Uh, and so then we're making tasks and putting someone to be an owner for those. So some of the ones um trying to think of a good example. But we've had um it might be like we need documentation on this, we need some way to onboard people into our project better this way, or you know, we need to do something our client onboarding to make sure expectations are set correctly. It's usually the things things like that. You can get an owner and get assigned.
SPEAKER_03That's cool. I love it. Uh, another question on Facebook. Uh, Josh, how important is having a niche? How would you define your niche?
SPEAKER_02Um a really good question. Uh, you can listen to it.
SPEAKER_00So uh the standard answer is I haven't got anything planned for the next hour and a half.
SPEAKER_03So we're dropping all the hard ones at the uh 11th hour here.
SPEAKER_02No, oh I've this is one I have struggled with uh with a lot. Um our niche is high-end WordPress development, uh, primarily for higher ed technology and uh and media companies. Uh that's still pretty broad. So, you know, I would love to say that we have like some like really defined uh niche, and you'll read everything that says this is the only way your business can be successful. Um but then our business has been successful, and I know plenty of other agencies who aren't necessarily niche down and they can still be successful. So it's like if you find a really good niche where you can become an expert in that, go into that because you'll do really well. Um, but I wouldn't be losing sleep over like, oh, we're winning all these projects, but I haven't defined my niche, and so I'm we're not gonna be successful. So that I had to tell myself that because I was losing sleep over it, like I have to be able to define this. So and I I I hope that like, okay, over 10 years maybe we'll find a certain type of client, and those are the only the projects we're gonna do. Um we kind of like working on a bunch of different things, and that's that's worked really well for us.
SPEAKER_00Um but I think you do, I think he he couple of things. You know what you don't do, right? You've got a list of projects that you won't take on, right? Or clients that you won't work with, right? Yep. Also, I think you have I think you do have it. So I think the word uh niche, as we say here in Australia or niche, I think is way overused, and I think people misunderstand it. I don't think an a niche is your target audience. You don't have to just uh service accountants to have a niche. Your niche is high-end WordPress development, that in itself is a niche, right? We don't build Squarespace websites for life coaches, we do high-end WordPress development for higher ed uh education technology media companies, right? Yeah, you don't do I'm making the assumption you don't do e-commerce for people who manufacture hoodies. Right. Right? Right. So I think you do have a niche. I think the challenge that we have in this eco in this kind of ecosystem, which is a bit like an echo chamber in the WordPress space, is that we all have a very similar like m your for me, your niche is the is the pathway that you carve to help your clients go from where they are now to where they want to be, right? And this is kind of the process that we have. That is your niche. It does it, it's not your target audience. Your target audience can be broad, right? Adam Silverman, one of our clients, works with growth-minded small business owners. He's got a professional speaker, a vet, a museum, a school. It's a really broad cross-section. But he basically does the same thing for those clients, and that's his niche, and WordPress is a big part of that, right? So I think you probably do have a niche, you probably just can't see it because you're in it. So I'd look at your business objectively and go, dude, compared to what these people are doing, you have a very well-defined niche, right? I think the problem when people starting out is they have FOMO, they don't want to say no to anything, they say yes to way too much, and that's what gets them into trouble. So even having a list of what you don't do and who you don't serve by osmosis means you then kind of do have a niche.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, that's that's a great point.
SPEAKER_00Um, I have a question here about WordPress VIP that's coming from our private Slack uh team, our private Slack channel here. Um joining WordPress, I just want to clarify this. Joining WordPress VIP, if you manage to get onto that platform, is not going to just open up a flood of leads automatically, right? You you need to invest in that relationship and still, you know, prove your worth. And it's not just a like, well, here we are, we've got the open sound on the door now, please just flood us with leads.
SPEAKER_02Correct. Yeah. Uh just like any partner relationship, like uh we just talked about having a niche, you have to be able to define what kind of projects should be sent to you. So like uh which clients are a good fit for you. So if you're struggling to define that, having a source of leads uh isn't gonna open the floodgates necessarily. Uh so you have to be able to define that and you have to build relationships with people throughout the company. So it's like you may have a a partner manager, but then there's other people at the company you need to build relationships with. So when it comes down to there's a client issue, who can you go to to get that resolved best? Um so it's really that building those relationships with time gets you to the point where you can, you know, it becomes a f a fruitful relationship both ways.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Right. And so and so even though the quality of leads that might come through the WordPress VIP ecosystem are going to be better than if you weren't in that ecosystem, it's still not a tap. You just plug in and turn on and the leads flat in. It's like anything, you've got to build a relationship with the people there so that they go, and also you've got to be referral, right? So a lead comes into the WordPress VIP again. Someone at WordPress VIP has got to go, oh hey man, we're gonna refer this one to Reactive because I know exactly what those guys do. This is perfect for them. They want a successful referral because otherwise they're gonna look stupid for referring to someone who can't do the gig. So you've got to be referral, and that comes down to actually figuring out what you don't do, what you do do, and kind of starting to specialize a little bit. I could sit here and talk about this for weeks, literally. Uh, this has been super fun. We are on the hour, I'm respectful of everyone's time. What questions should have we asked that we didn't that you wish we did?
SPEAKER_02We could have talked a little bit more about growth. I think uh there's in some circles, growth is is a bad term. It's oh we don't want to grow too fast, we don't want to grow too large, and in other circles, it's like growth at all costs. And so it's fight there's finding a balance there and uh going back to values. That's where that really that really comes in. It's like if we're growing too fast and not taking care of our people, that's a problem. If we're growing too slowly, are there enough opportunities for our people? And so that's something where I was really happy when we were five people. I was really happy when we were 10 people, I was really happy when we were 15 people. Um, but it was really different at each at each phase. And it was never like I never had a number in my head, like, oh, we we need to be this many people. Uh it's it that's part of the sustainable part. It's like if I'm like, oh well, we have to be uh 30 people, then I'm gonna go hire 30 people and then well, wait, now I need to work for those people. Now I'm bringing in projects that's gonna make everyone happy, and it's a huge cycle of trying to figure all that out. Um, and so it's a challenge to do that sustainably, and you may make decisions that cost you money or uh opportunity costs uh in order to make sure you're taking care of your people. And that that's what's been really important uh at Reactive over the years.
SPEAKER_00Well, at some point we're gonna reach out to you and we're gonna get you back for part two, and we can uh dive into that and unpack that more if you're up for it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. This was a ton of fun.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Yeah, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I know you're a busy man and uh really appreciate your generosity here. I know people are getting a lot out of this, and uh we'll uh keep an eye on the comments over the next 48 hours as the replay keeps playing out in our group. Josh Heaton from Reactives, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Had a great time.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for having me, Josh.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcast, Audible, and wherever you like to listen. You can catch all of the Agency Hour episodes on our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash agency mavericks. Or you can get involved. Check out our free digital mavericks Facebook group, where we broadcast these episodes live for our community every week, along with a ton of free channels. We'll see you there.