officially kick off All right, welcome everybody. We are ready to start now with do what you love, outsource the rest. Stephanie Hudson is with us here today. And we're going to be talking about outsourcing. Stephanie is a geek entrepreneur, inventor and notebook hoarder. Her passion is helping digital agency scale and thrive through her white label company focus WP and that's a.co At the end, which I just learned in the pre show I had incorrectly entered in the chat. Welcome, Stephanie. Glad you're here with us. How are you today?
What's up, Nathan? It's so good to see you. But last time we were together. We were we were on a different podcast. We were on TV chat. And then we were in person,
IRL person, like in an actual event where they were people and everything.
I know. It was so great, wasn't it? Yeah,
it was it was really great. So let's definitely give us a little bit of an overview of what we're going to talk about today.
So we're going to talk about outsourcing, but not just in some of the basic ways that you might think of it. What I want to talk about really is how you can enjoy what you do. And also make more money at the same time.
Gonna be a lot of fun today. So if you are doing things with clients, like most of our audience members are, there'll be a lot you can pick up from this webinar. Just a couple of bits of housekeeping. We do have a live transcript running. Hopefully everybody should see those captions, the whole transcript will be available on the replay page, which I'm going to drop in the chat. It's the same link that you use to register for the webinar in about an hour after we wrap up today. You'll be able to view the replay and download the slides and view the live captioning and also the chat. So anything that's shared in the chat will also have linked from that replay page. Do please ask your questions in the chat. It's always helpful if you put question in all uppercase at the beginning. I'll be pulling those questions out of the chat and saving them for Stephanie when we get ready to do q&a. So, Stephanie, with that, I'll turn it over to you. Let's talk about outsourcing.
Thanks Nathan. How is everybody? I'm so happy to be here. I haven't I've been wanting to come on this webinar series for a while now and we had a little bit of a scheduling glitch. I got sick had to reschedule all this stuff anyway. So Nathan is the best though he's so gracious about everything. As you can see on the cover slide there. This talk is called do what you love, outsource the rest. And so basically what I wanted to ask you that little subtitle to boost your revenue and your happiness. So if I told you that you could work less and the work that you are doing would be in your zone of genius, the stuff that you are killing it at and still make the same or more money. Would you say stuff that's Kim Possible? You might you might think like, that doesn't sound likely at all. But today we're going to talk about how that's possible and why. But before we dive into that, I want you to have a little bit of faith in me as a teacher here teaching you these things. Why would you listen to something that I'm saying? Why did what do I know? So I'm going to do a quick intro. My name is Stephanie Hudson. And I have done all the things so I've been a freelancer a subcontractor. I've had a side hustle. While I was a full time employee. I've been a business partner a solopreneur. And I am a boss. I have staff I have teams so I have all these things. So basically, if you are feeling pain in the web industry, I have felt that pain I know that pain, and so I have come up with some solutions to help. I run an agency called Sweet Tea, sweet tea marketing because I am in the South. I'm in Charlotte North Carolina in caught pretty close to WP y'all territory but not exactly Nathan. I also run focus WP which is a white label outsourcing company. i This is newly this just happened where I'm associated with to be a part of the birth of AI team helping with their marketing. I'm on TV chatty tweek I'm on WP Tonic a few times a month. I have a focused Facebook group focused on your biz we'd love to have you come over and say hi hang out where we do a Thursday night. Little educational thing every week and I have like this weird thing with 3d glasses. I don't know but if you if anybody is going to W to WordCamp Europe in a couple of weeks. Keep your eyes peeled for these characters here. They might be making some appearances so I'm on to the topic now. You've met me. Who are you? I'd love to get to know you. Just kidding. I already do know you. You don't even have to introduce yourself and I'm going to prove that I know you. Let's play a little game here. I'm going to make five statements. And if one of them is true, you put up a finger. Careful with that first finger. This is a family program. Okay, so here's the first statement this one's a gimme. The previous slide made you feel sad and a little nauseous because that design was so horrible. That slide is such a mess. It's true, I can't help it. I always want it to be a designer and I'm I'm just not good at it. Like it's not my strength, no matter how much I love it. And that is a concept that we're going to come back to a little bit later. So if that slide was just gave you a headache, then put up one finger a nice finger not a naughty finger, you guys. Okay, next question. I mean statement you are an entrepreneur. Do you resonate with that statement? You might feel like maybe you shouldn't get to be called that maybe you don't if you are out there hustling if you are watching these educational webinars trying to improve your business and things like you aren't entrepreneur, my friend. If you're out there doing the hustle. It is your business. It is not a job. You're an entrepreneur. Okay, that's two fingers.
There are parts of each project that you do that you absolutely kill it, you crush it, but there are other parts where you maybe you're struggling, you're feeling insecure, it takes too long or it's not the quality want any of these kinds of things makes you feel a little overwhelmed. That's three fingers. If, if you're holding up three fingers like this, I just want to say I'm not sure we can. We're gonna be friends. Like it's gotta be to it like a normal person. Okay. Next up, you are, you're working full tilt. You are at capacity, but you're not making enough money or you're not achieving what you would like to achieve. Whether that is a skill level or a number of clients or things like that. And the fifth one is you spend too much time working in your business rather than on your business. So there's our five things who do you have a full hand up? If you do then this talk is for you. I got your number. I know what you're dealing with. And we're going to talk about some of these things. How are we going to combat some of the struggles that you're having? There's one word I'm going to put it up on the screen. Outsourcing. Is it a sexy word? No. It's not beautiful. It's not fun. It's not exciting. It's confusing even you never know if that C is supposed to be an S. It's it's an awkward word. So what are we going to do? Let's just define it. There's there's words like delegation, versus outsourcing and things like that. There's a bit of nuance between those words but for the purpose of this talk, and just here today, so we're all on the same page. We're going to use the word outsourcing to mean taking duties off of your own plate and arranging for them to be done by an individual, a team or a tool. So we're going to come back to this definition. This is going to be our thread throughout. And in order to do this, I'm gonna we're gonna work through a couple little exercises. So you guys, if you have the slides, you may want to do it you can just also just jot it on a piece of paper. What we're gonna do, I'm gonna pull up the next slide and you're not a guarantee you unless you cheated and looked ahead you did not seeing this slide coming. So when I was getting started, back when I was young, and I I've always had entrepreneurial drive, I've always wanted to run my own business and things like that. So I would always have sort of this image. It was always more of it like a wagon wheel type of thing, which has kind of evolved into this ship steering wheel, which fun fact it's actually not even fun it makes me crazy this this should have its Do you not think that this object should have its own name? I'm pointing like this because it's there on my screen. I don't know where it is on yours. But this I tried to find what this will be. This feels like this, like the thing that you steer a giant ship with like a pirate ship. It's called a ship steering wheel. It's kind of disappointing. But anyway, so what I would do, I was sort of pictured myself that little circle in the middle that the center of the hub would be me and I sort of pictured each of the spokes coming out as the various elements of my business, the components, the parts, the things that made up the hole. And I would sort of try and decide, you know, how I was going to achieve all of those things. Now, there are many, many elements and aspects to a web business, as you guys know, but we're going to simplify it today. This is this is not to help you figure out all of the answers what the point of this talk is to get you excited about the possibilities of outsourcing how beneficial it can be, and that it isn't as it doesn't or doesn't have to be as expensive or stressful as you might think. So, in order to outsource things, we need to first figure out what we're going to outsource and then we're going to talk about who so first things first. What are these sorts of elements. So as I was like I said we're going to just stick with with a it's an easy eight here, right? So this is sort of some elements that make up a webshop design, development, copywriting, sales, finance, administrative stuff, project manager, project management, scuze me and then after the project's done maintenance, as a follow up as a after thing. So once you've sort of come up with your components of your business, then we have to work through a little exercise. Another exercise because this is the first one and that's how we determine what are the things that are the best to outsource and what are the best things for you to do. And for that, we're going to use this little chart this matrix here. And we'll take those same eight aspects of a web business. And I'll show you my answers to these questions and I'm going to basically plot them here on this chart.
Hi up is the things that I'm good at. And downlow are things that I really kind of suck at. I'm just not that's not my strength. And then on the left is things that I hate doing. And on the right is things that I love doing and then there's a range in between on both of those. So it'll start to make a little more sense. Design. Again, remember that slide. It's awful. I love I wanted to be an artist my whole life, but I'm I enjoy it. But I'm just not that good at it. So you can see where that's plotted. Next up development. Oh, my thing broke. It's supposed to be on online development is something that I'm okay I can get by I'm not like a hardcore coder. I can build a killer site and using a builder I know CSS and stuff like that. So and I enjoy it. Do I really but this is sort of moving toward the left like this is something that I used to really really love and now I'm like less and less do I want to do that? Copywriting to remember what all my symbols meant. Sorry. copywriting and sales. Sales. I'm killer at sales. I love it. I am a closer you guys. So I enjoy it and I'm good at it. How about that that upper right hand corner is powerful. Opposite of the upper right hand corner, you'll find the finance icon. I let me just tell you I should not be allowed anywhere near the checkbook and that's a funny joke because everybody in the world thinks it's ridiculous that we use checkbooks and it's it's okay. Well let them poke fun at us here in the US because it is ridiculous that we have we hand write IOUs to people but anyway, that's beside the point. What about administrative stuff? Filing email management if you've ever tried to email me well, I probably don't know about it because I'm I'm a mess with my emails. So that's that's a thing where it's it's not something I you know, I mean, I can do it. It's just not my strength. And I don't love it. Keeping the trains running on time, that's what this one is. And it's for project management. Same kind of deal. There's a bit of a pattern here. There's a lot of things that I'm not that good at, right, but let's keep going maintenance. website maintenance. I'm pretty good at it. It's not really that hard. And it's it's something that's like I don't hate doing it. I don't love it either. So let's float in a little bit more toward the middle. Okay, so now that we've got this scattered mess here, what does this tell us? Well, let's block it out into quadrants. Okay, so down here on the not good at and dislike corner these are things that are ideal to outsource where possible. So this for me would be things like finance, administrative tasks, and project management. You can see where if it's something that you're not good at how damaging those things could be to your company. If you insist on still keeping that in your wheelhouse. upper right corner. These are things that you want to stick to keep doing this yourself. So for me sales, I love going out and talking to people. I love helping people solve their problems. Maintenance is something that I could do myself. We're going to talk about that a little bit more. And then you've got these opposite corners, where they might be sort of like a tie. Right so I can do some copywriting. I'm okay at it. I don't hate it. Is that the right thing for me though? That's a that's a little bit of a question. So what we're going to do now is we're going to take some of these that may be in those gray areas should I shouldn't tie and there's a couple factors we can use to determine if they if it would nudge them toward outsourcing them or nudge it toward keeping it with ourselves. So here are our tie or tie breakers. First one up would be cost. And remember your time has a value to it. So I don't just mean a financial cost. I mean, all of the costs associated with doing a thing closely related to that then next up is time. What is if you are talking about maybe design or develop directs aspect of a client project. Are there deadlines? What about your workload or your availability? Are you doing the side hustle thing like if you have a full time job and a client needs a deliverable by a certain date? Are you able to get it done within that time period? What about efficiency? Is there someone that you know, maybe maybe you can get excuse me get a site done, that maybe somebody who's more proficient with a certain builder or with PHP or some or CSS, maybe they could crush it out way faster and so it'd be more efficient to go with somebody else? Lots of sort of elements on the time factor. I'm gonna have a sip of water.
Next up is available tools and resources. If you want to keep some SEO in house, you know, you might need some expensive tools. H refs alone, it's like 100 bucks a month or something like that. Some of these things that, you know, maybe if there's this could be a tiebreaker where if there is something that you know, maybe you don't really want to invest in Adobe software which is quite pricey, and you've never gotten around to learning affinity or things like that, you know, these are just sort of factors that you can consider where it might just make sense to outsource to somebody who has access to these tools already. prioritization. Like, just because you're good at development, or design. You know, that doesn't mean it's okay to start neglecting things like sales or lead generation, because at some point, there won't be anything for you to design or develop if you don't pay attention to those things. And expertise, so even if it's something that is in the green, where you're decent at it, like I said, with, with maintenance or with coding for me, like I'm decent at it, but maybe somebody else could do it faster or better. Again, a lot of these kinds of overlap, but I just wanted to sort of break down that this isn't an end all be all list, right? This is the I mean the previous list or matrix or grid. Those are ways to start getting your head around how to think about these different tasks and roles and then these are additional factors to consider. So I'm gonna go back to our definition here, because we're taking these these things, we're figuring out which things we want to take off our plate. And the next element of that is to figure out how to get it done. And they can be done by an individual, a team are a tool. So let's map this out, you guys. I've got our same eight elements here. And all our little lines are flying in. So I'm just gonna leave like person that could be a team or an individual. And then we've got a tool column as well. So how could we think about outsourcing some of this stuff, finance, of course, that was my like big red X that I don't need to be doing. So what if, what if we could use a you know, maybe in your business, getting a tool like QuickBooks could help streamline things to track things so that you can just send off your you know, you have all of your profit loss statements and everything ready at the end of the year for taxes, no problem. If you don't have a ton of in and out if you don't have a ton of transactions. That's the word each month you know, that may be perfectly acceptable way to do things. If not, maybe you bring in a bookkeeper part time, maybe you get an accountant, you know, things like that. So that's how you could get a person or a team or if you get a service, you know, an accounting service. Underneath administration, could you use a tool like Zapier to connect things to automate things when someone fills out a form on your website? Could that automatically dump all of their details into your spreadsheet or your project management system or send you an email about it and and trigger other things so that it schedules a meeting or does things like whatever there's so much you can do with automation software, Zapier and Tigger? That one just got renamed. Forget what's called make maybe Padley. There's all these different ones, they can connect all me so many things. So that may be one way to streamline the admin duties that are on your plate and get them off virtual assistants, which I think that title or that
what's it called that job description? I don't know job should be sort of becoming obsolete because we're all virtual at this point. So many of us work remote so many of us have dispersed teams that I don't know. But anyway, that the VA virtual assistant you get the concept of what that is that that's somebody that works for you. From afar and can handle some of these administrative and other tasks, take them off your plate. Project management if you're trying to keep everything in your head, you know what a nightmare that turns into after you hit a certain level. Maybe get a project management software, click up Pluto, there's a million of them out there. And by the way, these are not necessarily recommendations. These are just getting your brain going thinking about possible possibilities and ideas. Some of these I use some of them I don't. What to hire project management person. I think that's a very interesting one. It's very difficult. I think for that you would need to maybe consider something like an indeed or wise hire, they do personality testing and things like that to really get into the right fit because this is somebody that's going to be dealing directly with your clients on your behalf for maintenance of your sites once they're completed. I theme sync hey I themes. Manage WP There's main WP there's but there's so many of these as well. There are amazing tools that help to automate a lot of the tasks of the maintenance. You still have to be there to fix stuff when it breaks because of plugin conflicts and things like that. But you could also outsource that to a team. Like if only you guys knew somebody who was awesome and cared about you and had a company that did outsource maintenance. I'm just saying, anyway, focus MVP. There's also several other companies that do that as well. Development. If you're still trying to hard code, things like Dreamweaver days are long behind us. Get you know, get simpler tools, get things that help you and we had a little brief chat in the pre show but because I happen to be a Divi girl and I know a lot of people like to hate on Divi, but you know what, I made a decision early on that I wasn't going to bog myself down with learning a bunch of different tools. Then you got to pay for all of the tools you have to pay for all of the extensions that you use for each of them or the plugins or the services or whatever. And it just becomes expensive and time consuming. So I decided early on, Divi worked for me, that's what I'm using. So maybe you could instead of in under this tool category here we almost could say rather than adding on a tool, maybe you could streamline your stack that would take a little bit of time away, you know, like off of you from what you're spending. If you wanted to get developers they are everywhere. They are all over the world at wildly varying price ranges. Upwork Fiverr, Facebook, I mean, there's you can find devs if you wanted to get help with some copywriting Barcia AI is an AI copywriter that can at least get you started. it'll generate tons of content for you for a bunch of different purposes, for your stuff for your client sites, things like that. If you want to hire a person to do some copywriting for you, my suggestion is to ask for referrals. copywriting is a complicated thing to hire because voice and tone is so tricky and to have somebody that can communicate the way you want your audience to be spoken to. You need to have the right fit. And so And with all of these, there's so many nuances to them. Of course you guys again, remember this is just a crash course. If you wanted to do design, maybe again like we talked about with Photoshop, Adobe software, maybe you can go to Canva they and don't be a snob about that either because Canva is killing it lately. And it's way cheaper than Photoshop. It is more limited than it of course but you know, what do you actually need it for? You can go onto Behance I guess that's how you pronounce that. I've never said that word out loud before. Look on LinkedIn, put out ads, you can put a free job posting on LinkedIn. I've done this to hire designers put a free job post out require them to send you a portfolio, do a test project. So these guys these are some of the ways that you can look to outsource these different elements. And I'm going to now break down so this is getting us we're seeing we're moving farther and farther down this path. So now we're gonna go back we're gonna circle back we're going to talk just really briefly on tools in general, and then we're going to talk about outsourcing to human beings. First up tools. This is sort of a caveat to the tool thing. And that is Oh, no, I just hear that my sound is I hope it's not for everyone.
It's not the tool. It's the process. This is very important. If you happen to be an app sumo addict, such as myself. The first step is acknowledging that there is a problem. I know this. So what you have to do is make sure that you're not just jumping from tool to tool to tool because you're getting shiny object syndrome. What you want to do is focus on the process and find a tool that suits that that fits that so that you don't so that you're not making more work for yourself instead of actually reducing your workload. So that's all we're gonna say about the tools you guys are in all the Facebook groups, you can ask colleagues and friends, you know, you can get on YouTube and search for things too. There's plenty of resources. And because I know you, I know that you can go and find the tools that you need for some of those different things. You're probably using many of them already, actually. So let's talk a little bit more about hiring because how does it make you feel when you think about hiring somebody? Does it make you feel very David Rose sounds very do you not love that there's a shits Creek Jeff for literally everything. So yeah, is right that's in the chat. So let's talk about the different sort of configurations for hiring somebody. This is four things but it's really only three so a full or a part time employee, a contractor and a service provider. So if you are working with a full or part time person, and this is this is specific to the United States. I am not an attorney, I do not play one on TV. So if you live in another country, please check your legalities there. But if you have someone that works set hours for you, they are an employee and that a lot of times we sort of tend to think of full time and part time as different, but they're both employees. So if you have, say a VA that works from like 10 to 12, three days a week or something like that, that's an employee. You don't need to set that person up as a contractor. Again, many there's so many caveats with all of this if you're working internationally and things there may be some other factors but for the most part, these are, these are the basic buckets. You've got. These are employees. The next step is a contractor. And this is someone who works basically as needed when you need them. They come and do some work for you. They're paid typically, either hourly or by project. As you know, most all of you have worked with some of these people already. The last one is a service provider. For lack of a better term. This would be something like your deer designer, or design pickle for design services. Both of those dear designers awesome, by the way. I've used them a lot over the years. They are they have a monthly rate and it's unlimited which nothing is unlimited. Don't be fooled by that but the other one is you so that's a monthly flat rate. There's also things that are hourly. So for example at Focus WP, we have development and design copywriting we have all these agency services that you can subscribe to, for as many or as few hours as you want. So that's another example of a service provider. Oh, and Nathan's got the designer link in there. So that's great. So, now that we're looking all this, we're going through we're talking about software and tools and hiring. And I know the next thing that's coming out of your mouth is Steph, this all sounds very expensive. And you're not wrong. But also, why don't we do a little math? What do you say? Everybody loves a little math on a Wednesday? Yeah. The important thing here is to talk about scaling that we're going to increase without pain. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna say why don't all my lines breaking I wonder if I can make this bigger?
Nope. I don't know why these slides looked right. 20 minutes ago. Okay, so let's say you charge about three grand for a site. This is not a talk about pricing. Don't ask me. We're gonna I just picked the number that was kind of easy to do math with. So 3000 And let's say maybe you have a side hustle. So you work full time you're doing this other stuff. Let's say you can handle about six projects in a year. You're looking at 18 grand and all 18 grand goes straight into your pocket. We're not talking about taxes, all that stuff base. This is general numbers. Okay. So now you're going to outsource so let's say it costs you 1000 bucks to outsource. Maybe maybe part of the project. Maybe you still want to build it and do some things. But you would like to outsource like the mobile optimization, the site launch, stuff like that. So you now if you're doing those same six projects, you're making less money. You're also working less but you're in that may be a benefit to you enough, but you're also making less money. But watch this because you're working less, you have more capacity. So you can actually take on more projects. So if you could increase from six to say 10 projects in a year. You can make $20,000. So you could actually make less money per project that because you're focusing on the things that are in your zone of genius, you're, you're sticking to your green square, and you're outsourcing these other things. You could have the capacity to take on more projects and in turn, make more money. Can you guys see how running a company like that? Doing what you love and what you're good at would bring you so much more joy and happiness and instead of waking up dreading that proposal that you've got to write or the administrative stuff for the email inbox it's overflowing or the finance or the development whatever the things are, that give you give you the anxieties, you know, whatever gives you the pit in the stomach make you on a pull your blanket over your head in the morning. If you could minimize or eliminate those things being on your plate. How much better would your day be? And the fact that you can maybe make a little more money anyway, I hope that this has helped you guys I hope that this has made you feel like hey, wait a minute, this is something was possible for me and that could be beneficial. And I do we do offer a lot of outsourced services that focus WP obviously, we offer maintenance and we do have a whole suite we have six different departments development, design, copywriting, video editing, Bas and SEO. So if you would like to outsource any of those elements to a team, like folks have up you can give us a shot 20% Off with code I themes. 22 I feel like I was flying. Sorry, I probably talked way too fast for all of that. But Nathan, how is everybody?
It's great. Presentation. Stephanie. A lot to think about here on you know, so for a lot of us, I think who started out being you know, a solo pilot, like we're doing it all ourselves. It's really really hard in my experience to get over the mental hurdle of bringing somebody onto the team, like when did you first do that?
Um, that's a great question. When did I first do that? I've always been I mean, I had my wagon wheel back when I was like in my 20s Like I always knew that I never aspired. To be a one woman shop. I always wanted to have a team. So I outsourced to other people as much as possible. And then I worked with partners or I would do other things. And you know, when you're a full time employee, you can't really so that was tricky for me, but, but I've always sort of been of this mindset that like, there's just stuff that I'm not good at, should not be doing.
Yeah, that's interesting. For me, it's sort of like the opposite thing. Like I got, my focus was like, I'm working somewhere else full time and a nonprofit and I'm doing this kind of as a side hustle. And so I got good at all the things and it was really hard for me to let go of some of those things. For sure. I don't know if it's anybody else's experience, but we have plenty.
Yeah, that's a big solopreneur issue and also accepting like the other because you say you're good at them. I'm sure you were. But you know, there's people better at certain things. You know, there just is and that's not an insult to you. Because the other thing is like the skill that is the most important that you guys all have as entrepreneurs is that you're an entrepreneur, you have the business going, like if other people are only doing one of those things, if they're just a developer, they're going to know a lot more code than you, right like that's facts, but they don't have the skills to run a team to do the sales calls to get the leads to do so. You know, it's this thing that we get in our heads that like, I'm the only one that can do this stuff. And it's it's just not true, but it's not false in an insulting kind of way.
Yeah, you know, and it's, I think, for me what the big aha moment was, was it kind of revolved around I am able to do this, but should I be doing this? Exactly. Right. And you know, some of the things were easy like bookkeeping, right, like I before I outsourced to a bookkeeper and accountant. I was constantly six months behind in reconciling all the things and it costs me a little money, but you know what it's done every month, and I can open up QuickBooks and the reports make sense? And I know who owes me money and all those things. So Alright, folks, well, we have some time for questions here. I've missed I don't believe we've had any in the chat so far. So if you do have a question for Stephanie, drop that in in the chat here and we will certainly get that over to her. Stephanie tell us once again. What are the services that focus WP offers
development design, copywriting virtual assistants, so admin tasks, video editing and SEO. And the way it works is you basically can just have an incident team. So if you don't want to go through like if you need to just hire somebody that's I showed you all those different places you can go and do that. But, but if you just need an incident team you can just subscribe and you send in tickets to whichever team whichever of the departments you need. And they'll just do it all. And I I built that because I wished I had it. Like I really wanted that back in the day.
Sure. All right, well so Stephanie, what would you say? Like, way back in the like before I started before I had my aha moment and you let's say we met at a conference somewhere and you had all the wisdom that you carry today and I'm still back struggling eyeball deep and all of the things I was trying to do. What would you say to a person like me to help me snap out of the paradigm I was in and move to something that was going to give me a little more control over my world?
I mean, I don't know it's a personal journey. It's like it's a process, getting on board with some of that stuff. And there are things like nobody thinks twice about hiring somebody to do their taxes. People don't feel like oh, that's giving up control. No, you think like, this is somebody that's gonna save me from going to prison? Right. Do you ever like are getting my wages garnished, eat or whatever the heck it's called, you know? So if you can start to sort of reframe it into other areas where it it isn't as controversial feeling, you know, that you can start to say like, it's the same thing and if you can start to talk about the benefits on your own mental health, like, there are things that I would just procrastinate and they're like my my inbox this is one that I've just done within the past six, eight months is to have an assistant go through and manage my inbox for me and send me messages in Slack to say, I put something in the drafts, please go send it. And it is like it's life changing for me. And I get that that's not for everybody. I just had a conversation with a colleague two days ago, and they were like, I can't even imagine having somebody else in my inbox like it was. It felt sacred and like private, not he's like, there's not even anything scandalous anybody sending me. I just wouldn't want somebody in there and I'm like, I get it. That's why like, there's no right and wrong answer to all of this. So that's sort of in this talk. The whole point is to just sort of allow yourself to go through that exercise. And to just say, what if, like, you don't have to commit to it. Just see, like, what if I could get this thing I hate off my plate or at least reduced? How would that change my life?
Yeah, yeah, there's a myth that says Well, why would I pay somebody else to do this when I can? Right? Yeah. And you might be able to, but how much you know, what's the misery index of
the misery index? I love that. Yeah, for sure. Now, there's another sort of aspect of it too, that you can even take it beyond the bubble of your business. And you could say, like, let's say for the example of I mean, who, who in the chat, how many of you guys have full time day jobs and then sorry, do a side hustle. You know, just out of curiosity, but if you're in that situation, and you want to do more of these things in your business, what if you hired house cleaners? What if you hired childcare? What if you hired people to do your lawn or people to you know, those meal services that they bring the stuff and you have to go grocery shopping? Those things, that's another aspect of this, if that's also outsourcing, it's doing things, taking things that you maybe aren't good at or don't want to do, and letting somebody else do them, which frees you up to do the things that are your priorities.
Yeah, that that is a really great. That's a great point. And I haven't really thought about HelloFresh in the context of outsourcing but it really is it really, it totally is a piece of my world. I wouldn't miss if it was just taken care of. Yep. So we've got a couple of questions that have popped in our first from Ben, just a few minutes ago. When you look at jobs that are brought into focus WP are they quoted based on an estimate of hours or how do you handle that?
So the whole concept is that you're the boss. This is I refer to this as like an instant team. So you're the agency owner, you're the boss and we only work with agencies. So we're not we don't take on any end users. So you come in and if if you had an office that had your cubicles of your staff in there, how would you delegate tasks to them? Would you say like to your developer, would you say we need this in this how much would that cost? No, you don't you say go do this and you you evaluate a new developer or designer, whoever, when you start a relationship with them, based on your experience, and see if they match up to the same and some are a little slower, some are a little faster, some do better at certain things than others, right? So there is a bit of a learning process at the beginning where you're getting to know your team, but for the most part, it's it's on you. Now, if you have something like, oh, we need to set up a learning management system. I've never actually done that. Could you give me an estimate on about how long you think that will take? No problem? Right? So you can submit tickets and ask questions of your developers or designers or whoever but for the most part, the concept is this is your team act as if they are your employees.
Interesting. So I would encourage been join Stephanie's Facebook group and you can connect with her there. She may not be in your inbox but she is on Facebook. Right?
I am on Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. Okay,
another question here from let's see, Melanie, whose question I had and then last, but yes, so Stephanie, in this situation in your previous answer probably just answered this question, but did the developers at Focus WP will they use our stack or to plugin stack? Okay,
for sure. Yeah. And, but just like if it was your team, it's your licenses. Right? So they're not going to you know, you're like if you would hire an agency, you know, you'd get your Divi or whatever, you know, you'd get your license your I theme security license. You'd get all that included in the build. But with this, you're the agency so they're just your team.
Interesting. And so I would like to know how long focus WP has been around.
We started in 2018 2018
Okay, for coming up to four years. Exciting. Marcin has a question. How do you describe your process and your expectations up front if you're outsourcing? What is your approach?
That's marching. That's my Palomar. Oh, Martin. Yeah. So um, how to describe your process and your expectations up front, if you're outsourcing. This is where those relations that relationship building comes into play, as well as your own personal experience. So if you weren't working with somebody else, how would you identify your process and your expectations to your client? It's based on your experience, right? You would, it's because you've done this before. I mean, let's be honest, sometimes it's absolute wild guessing, but you learn and as you grow in business, it's based on your experience. So when you go to work with somebody new, there is that point, like we were talking about where you kind of have to figure out people's strengths. And weaknesses, their timelines and things like that. But other than that, it's the same. It's basically the same especially when when you're working with like, focusing up where you are the boss, other contractors may have different you know, sort of procedures and things. But basically, if it's your project and you're outsourcing it, unless you don't want it this way, like I think you should dictate what the process is. Maybe there's flexibility in there. You know, if somebody wants to use a different time tracker or a different you know, wireframing tool, I don't care, but for certain things, I do care like you are going to have to do this and click up or you are going to have to message me only in this spot, not in emails or, you know, so you're the boss Marchin
Very good. You know, I think if we if we walk away from this webinar today was something if there's a rock in our shoe about something, I think it's interesting to ask, if I could if I did that exercise that you talked about with the with the x and y axis and I started looking at all the things that I do, what would what would life be like if I could get rid of those things that are closer to the to the angle, right? Like all the things that I'm not good at and I don't like? Because I mean, let's be honest, if you're in business, there's plenty of things that we're not good at and we don't like. So you know, how would my life be better how, you know, how much more would I be excited about my work and how much by the way, better work, what I do with the things that I'm good at? If I got rid of those things? It's just it's that is a that is an echoing question. I think that I'll take away from this.
One of the one of the fun conversations I've had with some folks who are kind of new, and they're asking, you know, like they'll meet with me, they're new focused or maybe new in the industry and they'll say, like, they'll talk to me about their proposal that they're gonna send out and I'll say like, give them some advice on like pricing maybe or this or that. And I'll say, I could never do that. I could never charge somebody for me to do that. And I said, Guess what, you're not going to do it. This super talented team is going to do it. So interestingly, sometimes if there are areas that you're insecure about, and there are a lot of folks that are that way, if you have somebody backing you up, then you have all of a sudden like they'll sit up straighter, like while I talked to him about that they'll be like, You're right that is worth more because these people have been developing for 20 years. You know, like we've got people who are contributing to core on our team, we've got people who know all the difference, you know, like we've got some amazing people and I'm this really isn't a hard sales pitch. I really do like anybody that you go with is like that. But if you have somebody that's super talented, and better at something than you rather than making you feel bad, that should give you more confidence to sell that work.
Yeah, very good. I think it's a great, great place to stop. Folks. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Stephanie. It's been great today.
It's been super fun. One last little thing that I didn't share in slides. All the 3d glasses you guys like it's not with the 3d I know, everybody gives me grief about it. It's just gimmicky and it's fun. But if you don't happen to own your own 3d glasses, I don't know how that's possible. But you can fill out a form on my website, just that it's on most pages. You can find it put in your address and I will literally mail you a pair of 3d glasses with a little 3d postcard.
So just for that, and I promise you this morning, I was looking for my pair of 3d glasses because I was that I got at the event where we were together. Yeah. And I was I was going to come on with my little 3d glasses. And that I think, I think one of my daughters has swiped my glasses.
You know, usually people that I know who fill it out. I'll be like, I just send extras for the kids because it's happened. extra stickers, extra classes.
Fun stuff. All right, folks. Well, hopefully, you've got some things to think about. Now Stephanie is really asked some good questions and give us some good points. So check out focus WP check out our Facebook group. We'll have the replay up in about an hour. You'll have the video, the slides, the live transcript and the chat log. So with that, Stephanie, thanks again for being with us. Thanks. Yeah, it's awesome. You have a lot of fun, a lot of fun today. I'm back for office hours tomorrow at one o'clock. Here on iThemes Training where we go further together.