How To Sell Paid Discovery The Right Way
With Special Guest Laura Elizabeth, Founder of Client-Portal.
Learn how to sell Paid Discovery with confidence! Explore essential tactics and insights to boost your success in the marketplace now.
Are you struggling to sell paid discovery effectively? Our informative video breaks down the essential steps for presenting this valuable service convincingly. From identifying client needs to demonstrating tangible outcomes, we cover it all! Discover how to position yourself as a trusted partner rather than just a vendor. Ready to refine your sales skills?
Laura Elizabeth founded Client Portal, a WordPress plugin for freelancers and agencies that lets clients keep track of all files, links, and deliverables in a professional, centralized portal.
She also runs Design Academy (a design course for developers), and Project Pack (sets of templates and documents for freelancers and agencies).
She loves helping freelancers improve their workflows, project management skills, and design through free, premium products.
Laura Elizabeth
@lauraelizdunn
#1 – So, Laura, how did you get into the would-have design and WordPress?
#2 – What key things do you feel that Freelancers or micro agency owners need to understand connected to selling paid discovery?
#3 – Can you give some information on Client Portal and what problems it tries to solve for freelancers and agency owners?
#4 – Have you got any general advice regarding onboarding new clients for freelancers?
#5— What AI tools do you personally use to help you run your business?
#6—If you had your time machine (H. G. Wells) and could travel back to the beginning of you?
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:02.310] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back to the WP-Tonic Show this week in WordPress and SaaS. In this show, we will discuss some great subjects like how to do paid discovery the Right Way and several other topics. We got a great guest with us. We have Laura Elizabeth, the founder of Client Portal, and she also does some great courses around paid discovery and some other subjects that will interest you. It should be a great discussion if you’re a freelancer or a small agency owner. I’m going to let Laura quickly introduce yourself. Laura, would you quickly like to do a quick intro to the tribe?
[00:01:05.850] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, you did a pretty good job. I’m Laura, the founder of Client Portal, a WordPress plugin for freelancers and agencies that gives them a place to store their client deliverables. I also have a few of the products and courses on things like paid discovery and lots of templates and stuff for freelancers, as well as a course. So yeah, lots of things, everything just for freelancers and agencies since that was my background.
[00:01:36.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Loads of goodies. I also got my patient and great co-host, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:49.690] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Annen. I own an agency called Manana Nomas. We focus primarily on membership and learning websites and specialize in moving SCORM for enterprises to a more affordable package.
[00:02:02.560] – Jonathan Denwood
As I said, we will be discussing everything around paid discovery and a load of other subjects. It should be a great discussion. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I also want to point out that we’ve got an excellent resource for you, freelancers, micro-agency owners, and power users. We’ve created a list of the best WordPress plugins and services aimed precisely at you, plus special deals from some of the show’s sponsors. You can get all these fabulous goodies, these free goodies, by going to wp-tonic. Com/deals. Wp-tonic. Com/deals. What more could you ask for, my beloved WordPress professionals? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’ll get from that page. So, Laura, let’s delve into your background. How did you enter the semi-crazy design world of WordPress and web development? You look relatively sane, so I’m always puzzled how people get into this world. I’m bonkers, so it’s understandable, but you seem rational.
[00:03:36.760] – Jonathan Denwood
So, how did you get into it, Laura?
[00:03:38.880] – Laura Elizabeth
Well, thank you. It’s nice to be seen as sane. I’m not sure how true that is, but it’s good. Yeah, so I started way back in university; I studied design. I thought I was going to get more into print straight after university.
[00:03:54.040] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s that?
[00:03:55.780] – Laura Elizabeth
Print. I’m showing my age now. Well, I came out of university when websites were still really just HTML and CSS, and Dreamweaver was still around. So yeah, quite a long time ago. And I got an internship at an agency that wanted to start getting into web design. And because I was the youngest, straight out to university, they assumed that would be what I knew how to do. It wasn’t, but I quickly learned. And yeah, web design came just my thing. After my internship, I worked in an agency for a while, and then I went off on my own, became a freelance web designer. Did that for probably, I don’t know, a decade or something before Client Portal came along, which was really an accidental product, which I’d made for myself to use with my clients to help with onboarding and stuff. I didn’t want to use big project management tools because it was too much for me. I made it was one of those scratch your own itch, make your own. Talked about it a lot at different conferences, and it turns out a lot of other freelances had the same need. Client Portal became a product and it became a WordPress plugin.
[00:05:13.810] – Laura Elizabeth
Then in 2017, I think I launched it in 2016, and in 2017, it became my full-time thing. And yeah, like I said earlier, alongside that, I also create courses and products, downloads, templates, and all these bits and bobs that helped me when I was I was freelancing to hopefully help others.
[00:05:33.480] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:05:36.230] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I think I’m just going to lean really hard into our second question, what key things do you feel freelancers or microagency owners need to understand? But as you start talking about, you scratch your own itch because everything was too involved or too whatever. As an agency owner, I have a lifetime subscription to this giant platform I use as a client portal that has probably 80 % more stuff I’ve never seen, used or done anything with. I track my time, my projects, and I generate invoices out of this thing. But I know it does a ton more. So I’m really interested to understand how you came up with Client Portal, what were the key features you looked at, and what drove you to a more simple answer.
[00:06:18.220] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah. So really, I started with project management tools as well, because I felt like my whole process working remotely, it was a little messy. Everything was just in email, and all the files I sent were in emails, all the links I sent were in emails, and they’d get lost in these giant threads. I’d get this problem that I had for years, and it wasn’t a It was a huge problem, but it was annoying enough to make me want to do something about it where clients would constantly be asking me to resend them files. Oh, that invoice or that deliverable or even the logo that you did for me, I’ve lost it on my computer that you did five years ago. Can you resend it? I was constantly just going through my hard drive, just trying to find files for people who couldn’t seem to organize them themselves. I thought, Well, I want something a bit more professional. I tried a project management tool, and they’re great. I am still a big fan of project management tools, but I found that my clients didn’t really use them. They wouldn’t want to log in to them. They didn’t want to learn them.
[00:07:28.980] – Laura Elizabeth
They They still resorted back to email, so it didn’t really solve the problem. It just has to be money each month. So I thought, well, there’s got to be some middle ground, right? I don’t want to just go back to just email, but I don’t want to force them into a project management tool that they’re not going to use. So I thought, well, why don’t I just create a login on my website where I’ll put their files here, I’ll put all the useful links, all the random bits of information that they might need to access in this login area, they can log in anytime. If they ever need something, it’s right there. But they can still email me. We still communicate via email because that’s what they like. And to be honest, I’m fine with email. It was just when things were getting lost that it would be a bit more difficult. So that’s pretty much why I created it, the problem it solved. I found this simple tool, it just ticked all the boxes that I needed at the time.
[00:08:27.750] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and then as you’re talking, I’m about how many different freelancers and agency types that Jonathan and I talk to in our lives. And everyone’s got their own wicked combination of nonsense, right? The Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and all these subscriptions and premiums. And no matter what you use, clients are always like, well, we use this. I think having your own platform, and I’m just going to go out on the legend and make Maybe this is copy for you, right? I’m supporting your effort. I think when you say, well, no, this is our custom platform. This is what we use. This is our process. I think that has so much more stick with the customer than some Dropbox Google Drive, because then they’ll say, Well, let’s just use our Google Drive. Let’s just put everything over here on our Dropbox, and it’s a nightmare.
[00:09:19.290] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, exactly. It makes you look like you’ve done this before, which was always another problem that I had. I wanted clients to feel like I had a I could lead them through the project rather than them maybe feel like they had to lead me or something like that. But again, these tools that you use, like Dropbox, Google Drive, I use Google Docs all the time, Google Sheets. It’s like everyone has their own little stack that they find the most useful. And these tools are all really great at doing what they do. And if you find a project management tool, sometimes they’ll try to do all of these different things, but it’s not not as good as just these individual tools. So I thought, why don’t I let myself and other people use the tools that we already know and like, but then just bring them in to one branded hub, one branded portal where clients can access them. So they’re not asking for this Google Docs link that you sent them, and they’re not asking for this PDF or something time and time again because it’s all in one place. And it just looks a little bit more branded because it’s to your brand while using the different software that you already like.
[00:10:33.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
What do you think were the pain points for you in developing this tool?
[00:10:38.490] – Laura Elizabeth
From a technical perspective?
[00:10:42.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, just in general. As you were like, I’m going to scratch my own itch, right? I really love the way that you put that, right? I’m going to scratch my own itch. I’ll make my own thing. But as you started to do it, what were the obstacles or the pain points in the process?
[00:10:55.980] – Laura Elizabeth
Well, the biggest one is that I’m not a developer, so I can’t actually make a That was the most difficult one. But the way it worked, this wasn’t intentional. It’s looking back, it was really good that it worked this way. Was that I didn’t set out to make a tool and sell it. I had made this tool and I thought, Well, I’m going to teach people, not necessarily how to make their own, but I’m going to give people this idea in conference talks and on podcasts. I’d go and I’d talk about onboarding clients, and I’d say exactly what I just said to you, which is these different pain points. I would say, A way that you could solve this would be to just create a private area on your website and have clients log into that. I’d show a screenshot of the one that I made, assuming that people would then go and make their own. But instead of that, the response was just… I still think about it today. There was one in particular where at the end, they went around the room and said what was the most viable thing they got out of the conference.
[00:12:07.070] – Laura Elizabeth
And about almost, I think over 50% of people that were asked said, Laura’s Client Portal idea, it was just exactly what I need. And people would come up to me saying, Will you make this into a product? So the conference organizer had said, My audience is really interested in this. If you’ll make it into a product, I’ll I’ll promote it to them because they clearly want it. So I had that head start in a way, because if I just built the tool and tried to sell it, I’m starting from nothing. That’s hard. But I had people who were already interested in the idea. And what I did was I said, okay, well, what I’ll do is I’ll pre-sell it. You can have the HTML CSS template as it is, and I’ll give you instructions on how to do it. And assuming I make enough money to make this into a WordPress plugin, I’ll do that and you’ll get lifetime access as an early adopter. If not, I would obviously have to refund everyone, which would be pretty bad. It’s like a kickstarter, right? And luckily, yeah, it more than made enough for me to pay a WordPress developer to make it into a plugin without me having to do it or dip into anything else.
[00:13:22.600] – Laura Elizabeth
So it just went from there, really.
[00:13:25.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
Nice. That is a perfect master class example of what Chris Badgett would say is product-market fit. They made the demand, you fulfilled it, and shangri-la. Jonathan, over to you.
[00:13:37.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, thanks, Kurt. Laura, you’ve got a new digital product aimed at helping freelancers and agency owners with paid discovery. What made you develop this digital product and what are one or two of the main things that you think people would get from obtaining it from you?
[00:14:05.430] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, so the other thing that I do is it’s called Project Pack, and I basically made a bunch of templates or repurposed a bunch of templates that I used in my own project. So I normally did web design or branding or something like that. And I basically took all the templates that I used. Then that is a product to sell to other people who to do web design or branding projects. So it would have things like site map and invoice template and a contract and just all the bits that I used. And the paid discovery one is a new one because I actually It’s a bit complicated, but I actually help out on my husband’s business. He has like a side agency, and we do a lot of paid discovery. And so, I thought, Well, this would make another great pack. And it fits with the Client Portal thing because I make all these packs so they integrate with Client Portal. If you offer paid discovery and you have Client Portal, you can buy the pack and you can import them into Client Portal. You don’t have to have Client Portal to use it, though.
[00:15:12.150] – Laura Elizabeth
It’s a standalone thing. Really, I just wanted to give people templates that were really used by real agencies to give them a starting point, because I remember when I was freelancing, you can buy templates online anywhere, but it’s not using real content. It’s not like the behind the scenes secret source of what people are actually doing. So I wanted to just basically give people real content, real documents that were actually being used to help them add different services to their pipeline. So the paid discovery pact is the newest one, and it’s my favorite one because I think it’s one that everyone can add. Paid discovery is basically where it is what it sounds like. It’s the discovery phase, which normally includes a proposal and research and all that thing. But instead of doing it for free, you charge money for it. I find it’s such a lucrative income stream for your business. I also find clients get a lot of value out of it. It sounds to a lot of people that it could be quite a hard sell, but I’ve always found it’s a really easy sell. I just think almost every freelancer and agency could offer some paid discovery to their clients.
[00:16:33.440] – Laura Elizabeth
And then the pack basically just shows them all the documents that we use that you can tweak and edit and use it yourself and start offering it.
[00:16:43.610] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic, Laura. I think paid discovery is extremely important, but my experience is a little bit different to yours, Laura, and I just want to be totally honest with you and upfront. My experience is most clients really don’t want to pay for discovery, and they’re very resistant in doing it. It does depend on the type of client. If you’re dealing with a small, medium-sized company, and the person you’re dealing with has some experience in IT or marketing, they’re probably up for it. But if you’re dealing with a single entrepreneur or somebody that they are extremely resistant to it. I just want your feedback of what I’m basing my experience on, Laura.
[00:17:37.320] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, so I think you’re completely right. So when I said almost every freelancer, the thing that I should have added was the fact that The clients that won’t go for it or won’t benefit from it are the ones who are quite new in the whatever space they’re doing. They might be new business owners or something. And they don’t see the value in it because essentially all they hear is, Well, I’m going to pay for something that everyone else is doing for free. Really, what they want to know is who’s got the lowest price, and I’m going to go with them. The people who really benefit from it, and why it’s a really easy sell, particularly for us, are the people who’ve been through projects before and they found that a poorly planned project and a poorly scoped out project can cost them more money than in paying for paid discovery. The difficult thing about talking about paid discovery is that it can be quite vast. It can be on the lower end, which is literally like what we talked about, which is scoping out a project and paying for it. It can go all the way to the other end, which is full on consulting.
[00:18:50.210] – Laura Elizabeth
I am going to take your business and everything that you do, and I’m going to give you a roadmap on where you are now and where I think you need to be, and then how we can help you get there if you choose to work with us. People can charge $200 for paid discovery, or they can charge $10,000 for paid discovery. That level of consulting is different. It does make it a little bit harder to talk about. But when you get into the more consulting end of it, the sell becomes easier because people, particularly if you’re an expert in something, people want you to guide them and to give Okay, here’s step by step, what do I need to do? And then an option of how to do it, either themselves, hire someone else, or ideally hire you.
[00:19:40.410] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I agree with about 80 % of what you’ve just outlined, but I think there’s also… I was talking to a possible client last week, and it was a major legal association, and they had been let down. They’d gone on to the freelancer marketplace and got work done on their learning management system, and it hadn’t really worked out that well. They had a very long list of things they wanted to be done, and they were extremely resistant to pay for any paid discovery. What’s it about is that they wanted me to take the liability. They wanted me to take the risk of underbidding. They wanted me just to blindly go in. In the end, I just gave them a very broad figure that basically just came out of my backside, basically, that covered the risk that they were attempting to put on me. Am I just a cynical old geezer, or is there some truth in what I’ve outlined?
[00:20:59.980] – Laura Elizabeth
I would imagine there’s truth in what… I mean, that’s what happens. So of course, it’s true. Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the type of clients that I work with. I haven’t worked with anyone in the legal- Well, they tend to be a handful, don’t they? Yeah, I can imagine. I can honestly imagine. I remember when I was back in my agency days and doing the whole- I just want to interrupt.
[00:21:29.230] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not being rude. I just want to draw you the picture. I was talking to the chairman and they brought in, I think it was a marketing agency. I think the marketing agency had just hired people from Upworks and it hadn’t really worked out that well. They were on the retainer and they just wanted some fault just to save them. The chairman was just telling me how large their their association was and the largeness of the clients, yet they were totally resistant, even thinking of paid discovery. So I found the whole thing quite hilarious, really.
[00:22:14.890] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, I mean, I think you’re always going to get clients who just maybe aren’t a great fit. And it’s easy to say, from where I’m sitting, it’s easy to say, Oh, just don’t take those clients on, or just say, No, we’re not a great fit, not going to do it. But I do understand actually being in that situation myself where you don’t want to lose out on that. You’ve still got bills to pay, and it’s scary. But what I would say to that is that it doesn’t sound like they would be a great fit. All you can do is you can… You have to believe the benefits of paid discovery yourself, and you have to genuinely believe that This is what’s right for them as well. And as long as you believe those two things, you basically make your case to them. And then they, to be honest, have the right to say no, just as you have the right to then say no for the project.
[00:23:13.130] – Jonathan Denwood
I think before we go for a break, Laura, what I was trying to point out is that I think you laid out, you got the new client, and then you lay out an enormous amount of clients that are not resistant. I wasn’t trying to be negative. I was just point out there’s also a subset that subconsciously or consciously aren’t in the new sector, and they still don’t want to pay for paid discovery because subconsciously or consciously, they really want you to take on the risk level. That’s down, they’re looking for the best quality work for the lowest price possible, which is understandable, but also totally incompatible. So that’s where the conflict comes. So that’s my down to try, but you’re used to it. We’re going to go for our break, and We will be back and we’ve got some great discussions about onboarding and other subjects. Laura has got an enormous amount of experience in this area. It’s been a great discussion so far. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had all a feast, a feast about paid discovery and my gloom and despair about it.
[00:24:45.390] – Jonathan Denwood
But Laura wouldn’t have it. She’s been upbeat. Before we go into the second half of the show, I just want to point out, if you’re really looking for a great hosting provider that provides all the plug-in services, support that you’re looking for, for your bigger jobs as a freelancer and as a microagency, why don’t you look at utilizing WP Tonic? We’ve got over 15 years experience in the WordPress space. We have the leading podcast in the professional freelancer space, and we love you to become a partner with WP Tonic. You can find out more by going over to wp-tonic. Com/partners, W-P-Tonic. Com/partners, and we love to build something special together. So over to you, Kurt.
[00:25:44.190] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I was just listening to you and Lara talk, and I think a lot of agencies, especially freelancers, they consider paid discovery to be this strange voodoo, witchcraft, sorcery thing. We hear about it, but we don’t really get to to understand it or visualize it in practice. So I like that you focus on it. For some people, asking for $500 in discovery is like you’re asking someone, Oh, could I please borrow your left arm for a while? It just feels like the world. And then just from personal experience, I was literally brought into a call with a major agency, and they wanted me to talk about LMSs to their client as the expert. And then I discovered after the call that nobody knew anything that I was talking about. At the end of the call, I found out-I have that regularly happen to me, Kurt.
[00:26:36.550] – Jonathan Denwood
The company charged $10,000 for discovery.
[00:26:40.350] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks. The number doesn’t matter. It’s the expectation or what’s being covered or what’s being filled as the service is what matters, and the value is the value you assign to it. I find it all very interesting. It’s a complete vertical in an agency. It’s a revenue vertical that so many we don’t explore. For you and your product, how do you get agencies and freelancers to understand there’s even a need? You can fulfill the need, you can cure the pain point, but how do you get them to even recognize that that is a pain point?
[00:27:16.730] – Jonathan Denwood
Can I butt in just for a second? Laura, I think Kirk’s got a fantastic question here. I think in the second half, we didn’t deal with the most important aspect. How do you assessment of the client’s attitude towards paid discovery in your initial consultation with them? How do you fill them out? How do you judge their attitudes?
[00:27:44.760] – Laura Elizabeth
Well, I think this is a really good question. In our agency, we do have an easier time of it, I’ll be honest, because we specialize in one very specific thing, which is segmentation and personalisation. And the agency is known for that. So when people come to us, they say, We want to figure out how to segment our audience and how to personalize the right offer for them. Can you help us do that? And then we always say we’ve got canned emails that we send to everyone. We’ve got a little guide that explains what road mapping is. And we always say, well, the first step in almost all of these projects is we do what’s called a road mapping session. This is what it is, this is how it works, this is what you get, this is how much it costs. We have all this in a little guide. We have such a high success rate with it. Almost nobody says no, because actually, that’s what they’re asking for when they first contact us anyway. I know that’s not necessarily super helpful to everyone, because not everyone has that niche, but that’s why it works so well for us.
[00:29:03.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, it’s totally understandable.
[00:29:05.860] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, but it can also work. The thing about paid discovery is, like I mentioned earlier, because it’s such a spectrum, it can… Ours is more on the higher-end consulting, which I do think is an easier sell because they’re going to get something really valuable out of it. On the lower end, when it is paying for discovery, paying for a proposal, I do think you are going to see less people go for it, potentially. But one way you can get around that is you can always offer to take the cost of the paid discovery off the work, assuming that you go ahead and do it. It’s basically you’re saying, Right, I want to really go through this project, and I want to give you a plan that you can take to any other freelancer, any other agency that, we’ll just say a website because it’s just what I know, that tells me how we’re going to do this website project. Everything we need, everything Something that could go wrong, we’re going to really go deep. But this is quite a lot of work to put together a brief like this. I’m the expert, so it makes sense that I do it.
[00:30:11.550] – Laura Elizabeth
Not you, you’re not a web design expert. That’s why you’re coming to me. I’m going to give you this, and this will be really valuable because it’s going to save you so much, so many headaches. Hopefully, they just understand that innately anyway. If we end up working together, I’ll take that cost off. But if not, you can just take this. You’ve got a brief that you can take to 10, 15 freelances and agencies if you want, and it’s all scoped out, and it’s going to really lower the risk. And it becomes a slightly easier sell, but it’s never going to be 100 % success rate.
[00:30:42.560] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t know if that- Well, if that It’s precisely the language that I utilize, actually. So sorry, Kurt, I interrupted there. I wasn’t being rude, Kurt.
[00:30:53.430] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s okay.
[00:30:55.980] – Jonathan Denwood
You want to continue, Kurt? Sorry.
[00:30:59.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, My question was more towards the freelancers and the agency people, because you have this product, you have this digital product. You want to teach people the benefits of this paid discovery thing. But how do we, you, How do you educate people that that’s even a pain point or needs addressed? Are you finding that there’s a ton of demand on the subject matter, or are you finding it’s still an educate and supply the need situation?
[00:31:25.930] – Laura Elizabeth
So I think there’s not… I would say it’s something that I feel very strongly that a lot of people can benefit from. I don’t necessarily get a lot of people coming to me saying, I need to learn about paid discovery. But because I’ve got an audience of freelancers and agencies, I do tend to talk about it a lot because I think it’s really useful. So I say, this is what it is. I don’t have a course on it or anything like that, but I do have courses that I can recommend on it. But the reason I created the pack was because I just thought, For me, personally, the best way for me to learn something is to just see how other people are doing it, more of like a behind the scenes thing. Sometimes courses and things can sometimes go into a little bit too much detail or on the other end be almost a little bit too vague. You get the concepts, but you’re just like, Okay, so what does that look like? What does the email say when you’re actually proposing this? What does this document that you say you send clients actually have in it?
[00:32:30.900] – Laura Elizabeth
When you say, How does it run? Well, how does it run? Just being able to give everyone all the documents we use, and there’s quite a lot of them actually. I can’t remember exactly how many. There’s three phases, and I think there’s probably about seven documents in each phase or something. And they can go through and you just see firsthand how we run these projects. Like I said, again, it is more on the consulting end, but you can still use some of them if you want to do the more proposal end. Then For each template, I’ve got a very short video that just explains, sometimes they’re like one or two minutes, that just says, So this is the document. These are the bits that you’ll need to edit. Any quick tips or any things that I think are useful to know. This is when you’d send it, this is why you’d send it, this is when you shouldn’t send it, or something like that. I find that if you have that, you don’t necessarily need the course or a course in order to do it. But in terms of telling freelances and agencies that they have a need for it, project pack isn’t my main thing, so I don’t really try and oversell paid discovery.
[00:33:41.080] – Laura Elizabeth
I just really think it worked for me. It’s a really good income stream in itself. And once you do it, it’s quite repeatable and quite easy. You can also hire other people to help you with it, so it’s scalable. It can be, it’s not really fully recurring, but you can book like X amount in every month, and it can be almost semi-recurring. So I just think it’s really good. So I just come, I go on a podcast like this one, and I just talk about how great it is. And hopefully some people listen and go, Oh, might consider it one day.
[00:34:16.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you, from my own experience, I’m 100 % in with you. I didn’t use the charge for discovery, and I found myself making proposals and throwing them out into the ether and going, Well, I didn’t hear back, and then the follow-up and the babysitting and the nonsense. Whereas if you say, Hey, I’m going to charge you $1,000, $1,500, $2,000, whatever it is, that person has a vested interest in getting back to you. Now you’re not chasing people down. They’ve made an investment, you’ve supplied an answer, and then they’re going to come back to you and be like, It’s a yes, it’s a no. We want our credit towards this job because they’ve made the investment. If the people won’t make the investment, then they’re the wrong client for my agency. That’s where I’ve gotten to. But I know for a lot of people, that’s a really hard line to draw because so many start out desperate for each job, and then you grow to the point where you’re like, I really don’t need all these jobs. There’s more work going into this job than I’m getting revenue for. And that’s a hard part of growth.
[00:35:15.500] – Laura Elizabeth
I think it’s the hardest part, yeah. Like taking that jump. But all you need to do is try it with one client, just one, and just say, charge quite a small amount and offer for it to be taken off the proposal and just see how it goes. During everyone gets the feast and famine cycles of freelancing during one of the feasts. Just give it a go and see what happens. I think you’ll probably be surprised in how well it goes. You’ll probably love it like I did.
[00:35:47.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, it’s excellent advice. Jonathan?
[00:35:49.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that’s fantastic. I also believe that looking at your website and client portal, I think the other digital products you’re offering are utilizing them very sophisticatedly, which I classify as educational marketing. The other products introduce you and your primary digital offering, the Client Portal. Everything else drives them into that funnel. I think it’s sophisticated. Let’s talk about onboarding because I believe this is the other enormous area I feel I’ve failed consistently. I guess having documentation and maybe utilizing a client portal and a transparent onboarding methodology is essential. Many freelancers and micro- to medium-sized agents and agencies don’t have a coherent onboarding process. Would you agree with that? If you do, what are some things you would like people to understand that are important for onboarding?
[00:37:16.000] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, I think there’s probably a lot of truth in that, in that, you know. Usually what tends to happen is freelancers or even small agencies tend to get a new client and just onboard ad hoc Just as it happens, there’s no real process. It just happens. And, it’s fine, it works. But I think having an actual onboarding process is really valuable both for you and your clients because you can Your clients want to feel like you know what you’re doing. You’ve done this before. It gives a really great first impression to have good onboarding. But also good onboarding, you don’t have to do an awful lot for it. It can be very easily really templated out. I don’t have fancy onboarding sequences at all, but there is a process that I follow, and I have things like templated emails that I send during different parts of the onboarding process, not letting me forget things that are commonly forgotten. Back in my web design days, it used to be stuff like asking for logins or something. I’d always forget until the project started, and then I’d have to do that really embarrassing email that’s like, Oh, can you send me the login for this?
[00:38:33.990] – Laura Elizabeth
I can’t get in, or I haven’t tested it, or something like that. Just having a process really, really simple that just tells you what happens when a client first contacts you to when a client starts working with you. What are the steps that happen? What are the emails that can be written? Are there any documents or templates that you can create to help? Maybe a process document or something or a checklist that a client might need. It doesn’t really have to be fancy. It has to be useful, first and foremost. But this is really handy to have. I think one thing I think, I don’t know what you think about this, But I think most freelancers, I almost want to say every freelancer can benefit and properly should have a VA, like a virtual assistant, even for just two hours a day or something like that, to be the one to put this onboarding process into action. Because freelancing is really hard when you’re on your own. You’re trying to do the actual work, you’re trying to be the expert, but you also want to give a good experience. So you’re trying to send these emails, you’re trying to collect create different links or login files or remind clients to fill out intake questionnaires and all that stuff.
[00:39:52.050] – Laura Elizabeth
And if you’ve just got one client, that’s fine. If you’ve got five clients, that’s even harder. If you’ve got 10, that’s even harder as one person. And so I think having a VA and a very simple step-by-step onboarding process, not too fancy, that the VA can do for you is really valuable, and it’s going to make working with your clients so much smoother.
[00:40:17.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I agree with 80% of what you just said, again, it’s going to be the key phrase of this interview.
[00:40:25.260] – Laura Elizabeth
It’s a good percentage, I’ll take it.
[00:40:26.930] – Jonathan Denwood
Is that my experience of offshore VA Unless you can guarantee them 30 to 40 hours a week, the idea that you’re going to hire a decent offshore VA for 10, 20 hours.
[00:40:44.740] – Laura Elizabeth
Well, I didn’t say offshore.
[00:40:46.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, most of the people… Well, you didn’t. That is true. But the reason I’m saying that is that unless you’re a certain level of freelancer, where you’ve got a substantial to book a business and you have enough digital marketing and enough flow coming through your agency, you normally have up its fee It’s normally you don’t have any clients, and then you have five prospective clients that turn up. It’s only when you get to a certain level where you have a consistent book of business. That’s my experience, Laura. Most freelancers and microagency owners, it’s fecal famine. That’s why I think it’s really difficult to guarantee either domestic or offshore VA, the consistency in hours that they’re looking for. That’s why I don’t think it always pans out. But I think in general, you are correct. That’s why I said 80%, because I think trying to do everything when you have that consistency, that’s the time where you should be farming it out and shouldn’t be doing it. The other thing I want to point out is that I think onboarding is really important. I had this discussion with Kirk last week, is I learned bitterly that the concept of vacuum.
[00:42:27.180] – Jonathan Denwood
And what I mean by that, Laura, is If there’s a vacuum in the process, that vacuum will be filled by the client. And that gets ugly quickly, based on my experience. Can you see where I’m coming from? Because what I mean is, if you don’t have a clear signpost of process, the client will feel that process for you quite rapidly, and they have no idea. The only idea they’ve got is they’re paying you, and if things don’t work out, you get all the blame.
[00:43:04.180] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, I mean, well, I think I understand what you mean. If I am wrong, just let me know. But what it sounds like you’re talking about is where a client maybe starts to micromanage. If you haven’t led them through a process, they don’t know what to expect, they’ll start contacting you or calling you up or just expecting that you’re just working full-time for them.
[00:43:28.410] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. All times, weekend, nights, whatever, especially if they’ve had a few drinks.
[00:43:35.450] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah. Well, I think the way I try and think about clients micromanaging is that, okay, it’s not always going to be the case. Some clients are just… Yeah. But in a lot of cases, micromanaging means that they- I’m a bit gloomy in this interview, aren’t I?
[00:43:53.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m just putting it as…
[00:43:58.160] – Jonathan Denwood
If you listen to this interview your beloved tribe, and learn from it, it’s all going to save you a lot of agro. We’ve covered some great stuff in this interview.
[00:44:07.350] – Laura Elizabeth
Well, there’s a lot of agro in the freelancing world, definitely. It’s like…
[00:44:11.880] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s 80 % agro- I’m just based on what experience in pulling the arrows out of my back because I’ve made every mistake under the sun.
[00:44:20.710] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, I think everyone has. But it’s just one of those things, where for the most part, micromanaging happens when clients aren’t confident or they’re feeling a bit insecure about what’s going on. Did they make the right choice in hiring you? Are you doing the work? Is it going to work out? Is the risk going to pay off?
[00:44:40.260] – Jonathan Denwood
So one thing- I just wanted to point out is that I can be a little bit blunt. Surprise, surprise, Laura. But on the other hand, Kirk’s more friendly, more cuddly. But on the other hand, it’s not a friendship. These people People are always making the assessment. Did I make the right choice? Does this person or this agency know what they’re doing? Every conversation, every email, they’re always making this assessment, aren’t they?
[00:45:17.390] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah. One thing that really helped me, to be honest, was setting expectations at the start for when they’re going to see different things. This worked for the projects that I did. So I would always say, on a Monday, I’m going to email you with something like where we’re at now, what’s on my plate for this week, and anything that I need from you, for example. So the email, it might not have been a Monday, but it followed that same template. Those three things, they’d know where we are now, what we’re going to be working on next, and what I need from you. So they knew they’d get that every single week. And that meant that they could see progress was happening, they knew they were going to get a check-in, and that thing. And then for some other clients, I didn’t do this for everyone, but some of the bigger clients where the project was a bit more complex and there needed to be more one-on-one calls and things. Later in the week, I think it was probably on a Thursday, I would say, and then we’ll have a catch-up call every Thursday or every Friday or something like that to basically go through what I’ve done, any questions that you have, anything that’s come up.
[00:46:34.610] – Laura Elizabeth
And I try and encourage them to save questions unless they’re urgent for that catch-up call. They knew that they had these points, sometimes twice a week, where we’d definitely be checking in and they’d be seeing progress. And that really helped, to be honest, because they knew what was coming. And it worked really… I don’t know if you’ve done something like that, but it worked quite well for me to help with it.
[00:46:58.010] – Jonathan Denwood
I think also a lot of freelancers and small micro to up to 10 people agencies, they don’t realize the larger digital… If they never worked for a large digital agency or a traditional agency, they don’t realize that larger agencies have individuals that handle clients. That’s their job to handle clients all day. And you’re a freelancer and you’re doing the design, the development, client billing. You’re doing everything where you’re trying to compare yourself to a larger agency. But on the other hand, the larger agency is probably charging between 5 and 10 times more than what you’re going to be charging. Back over to you, Kurt.
[00:47:47.130] – Kurt von Ahnen
I was just listening to your conversation, and in my mind, I’m like, so much of this is fixed by revenue. So much of this is when we recognize our value and just charge more, then we can offer the services and delegate the task. Risks, right? And that’s one of the hardest things. But the client portal gives you the process, the onboarding you talked about, lends confidence to the customer. All the stuff that you guys are talking about is all answered by revenue. It’s a perfect conversation around that. To switch gears, we ask a lot of our guests if they’re a fan of artificial intelligence and what they use. And so I’m just, to get to that question, what AI tools are you personally using in your day to day, Laura, that help you with your business, if any?
[00:48:33.820] – Laura Elizabeth
So I pretty much just use Claude, and I use it quite a lot for brainstorming. I have issues with blank canvas syndrome when I’m trying to come up with an idea or come up with examples, I have to come up with examples a lot. So my background, as I’ve said, is in web design, but not every freelancer with Client Portal is a web designer. So I need to think of examples for developers and copywriters and coaches and that thing. That can be really hard because I haven’t necessarily experienced those projects myself. I use AI for a lot of brainstorming I also use it when I have a thought that I need to write out, so I do a lot of writing, like content writing and blogging and things. I know what point I’m trying to make, but I can’t make it, and so I just blurt it into that and say, What am I trying to say? And it helps me out. It’s just like a little pal that I just have that just helps me when I need it. But that’s pretty much all I do with it. And a lot of spreadsheets stuff because I’m really bad at spreadsheets.
[00:49:44.510] – Jonathan Denwood
A little pet.
[00:49:45.800] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, it’s just like my little pet that sits with me and helps me, comforts me sometimes.
[00:49:52.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s nice. I’ve got a couple of tools, some of which Jonathan has introduced me to, and I won’t say they’re like 80% of my existence, but they’re a great little nudge. It’s a good little crutch, right? When you’re having that blank moment, they really fill the gap. I can see that. Jonathan, last question, you?
[00:50:10.930] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, let’s go over to our last question. Also, are you up for doing some bonus content, Laura, or do you have to disappear on the hour?
[00:50:21.980] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, no, I’ve got time.
[00:50:23.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, Kurt will probably leave because he’s got another appointment. But we do this and then we go in. We’re the podcast part of the show and then we’re going to go in some bonus. We have a chat about your views of WordPress and where it is and that. So, Time Machine, HDR Wells or Doctor Who English. We did interview an English person a couple of weeks ago that didn’t watch Doctor Who, Laura. I’ve never seen Doctor Who since then. She said she never watched it. I was gobsmacked, Laura. So I actually didn’t know what to say, which is quite… Kirk was quite amazed. So Time Machine, Doctor Who, if you had your own time machine and you could go back to the beginning of your career, Laura, is there one or two things you’d love to say to yourself? A little bit of advice you’d like to give?
[00:51:14.890] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, I think it’s just… It’s a hard one, but I actually find this question really, really difficult because if you change the past, then how is your butterfly effect? What’s going to happen? But I would just say be a bit more confident and-Well, you’ve dealt with me really very easily, Laura.
[00:51:36.190] – Jonathan Denwood
You’ve just dealt with me with the velvet glove.
[00:51:39.670] – Laura Elizabeth
Well, I’m a lot older now, but I definitely struggled with confidence and imposter syndrome a lot when I was starting out. I think it held me back a little bit. Then you realized that actually everyone’s in the same boat. Even really, really successful people have the same issues as far as I know anyway. I would just say be more confident, be more focused. I feel like I’ve wasted so much time over the years trying tricks, those quick tricks that are going to get you loads more clients that don’t pan out because I don’t want to do the long term hard work of the uncomfortable things like outreach or going and talking to human beings and that thing. I want something more automated. I’ve spent a lot of time doing that, so I’d say there’s no hacks, really. You just have to do the uncomfortable things, and that’s what sets you apart.
[00:52:42.190] – Kurt von Ahnen
You got to do the work.
[00:52:43.440] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, exactly.
[00:52:44.780] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. We’re going to wrap it up for the podcast part of the show, folks, but Laura has agreed to do some bonus content with us. You can watch the whole interview plus the bonus content by going over to the WP Tonic YouTube channel. Laura, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and also Client Portal?
[00:53:08.260] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, so you can go to client-portal. Io, which is the website. I also have an e-book and five-day mini-course on onboarding. If you go to clientexperiencecourse. Com, you can find that there. I’m mostly active on Twitter or X, as it’s known now.
[00:53:28.580] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll call it Twitter forever.
[00:53:30.120] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, I think I will. I feel silly saying X. And I’m Laura Liz Dunn on there. Projectpack is projectpack. Co. And yeah, that’s basically me.
[00:53:41.890] – Jonathan Denwood
And you’ll find all the links to all the great products Laura has produced in the show notes, which you’ll find on the WP Tonic website. Kirk, what’s the best way for people to find you and more what you’re up to?
[00:53:55.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m pretty dang active on LinkedIn, and it works well for me. I’m the only Kirek Vanhaunen on LinkedIn, so when you find me, you know you got the right guy. And then for Manana Nomas, it’s manyanonomas. Com, and for agency work.
[00:54:08.600] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. We’re going to wrap up the podcast. Like I say, we’re going to continue the discussion. And we’ll see you next week. We’ve got another great guest. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye. So let’s continue the discussion. Kirk has to leave because he’s doing something with Lifter LMS on the hour. So How important is WordPress? I don’t think you’re doing… I got the impression that you’re not doing any new client work. I don’t know if you got continuous work for legacy clients that you’re still doing, or if it’s all Client Portal. But what does WordPress… Do you use it for your marketing websites and that?
[00:54:59.320] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, so So my marketing website’s on WordPress. Back when I did, I don’t do client work anymore, but back when I did, it was all WordPress websites. And then obviously Client Portal is a WordPress plugin, so it’s pretty much just been WordPress from day one for me.
[00:55:16.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. All right. So have you been following the great leaders, Bust Up with WP engine and that? And if you’ve been following it a little bit, what do you think’s going on there? If you want to pass any view on it?
[00:55:31.640] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, it’s a difficult one. I try to be a politician and give vague non-answers, but I’m finding it increasingly hard to not just say I’m on WP engine side, to be honest. The whole thing, I don’t know. It just seems… I’m very confused about the whole thing. I like to try and see both sides, but I’m really struggling to see the side of WordPress just because of the mixed messaging that we’ve been getting. At the beginning, it was not contributing enough, but then it became about licensing, and then it became about something else. And the questions that people are asking are not being answered. So what I’m thinking internally is, what is this about? I don’t know.
[00:56:23.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it doesn’t really make any sense. And then I have no insight into this at all, folks. So it’s just a couple of people have said the same thing to me, but where they’ve got their insight, I have no idea. But I was told by a couple of people, it was basically that he wanted to buy WP Engine. This is the crux of it. They wanted the venture capital firm that owns WP Engine, just wanted a lot more money than he wanted to pay for it. That started the spiral of them falling out, and it got more and more ugly, this whole business of poaching the CEO of WP Engine Heather and giving her a job to somebody who’s supposed to be the head of wordpress. Org. It’s all murky, dirty stuff, isn’t it, Laura?
[00:57:26.600] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, it’s just crazy. And I am… One interesting And the interesting thing actually that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is, obviously, one thing that Matt’s been saying is that people are confused between WP engine and WordPress thinking it’s the same. I started attending word camps, and when I go to word camps, I’ve always felt a little bit awkward because I feel like despite being in WordPress for so long, I don’t understand it. I don’t understand WordPress. I didn’t really know what the link was between WordPress WordPress, automatic. I get customers confused about, and I was confused for a very long time, about the difference between-Well, I feel like everybody else, I think it was done intentionally, don’t you? Yeah, well, the interesting thing is, and there’s also new things like the foundation. I still don’t know what the foundation is. Now I’ve realized that it’s not actually just me that’s confused. I thought there was something wrong with me. I was thinking-There’s definitely nothing wrong with you, Laura.
[00:58:29.420] – Jonathan Denwood
If there is If there’s anything wrong with this interview, it’s me. I understand it, Laura. I accept my madness.
[00:58:38.180] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, but all this whole thing’s done has made me even more confused about WordPresses. It’s hard because I’ve always run my whole business on WordPress. I feel like I should know a little bit more about it. But the more I try and learn, the more confused I get. It seems like almost everyone else is in the same situation. It doesn’t seem like anyone understands how everything works together. So I would love at the end of it to see some clarity in what WordPress is, because it is my whole livelihood. So I really feel like I should know what it is Yeah, this whole…
[00:59:18.000] – Jonathan Denwood
He’s achieved the impossible with me because obviously, he’s not a close friend, but I think he’s okay. He’s been on my podcast numerous times, and we’ve had chats, and I see him as a friend. That’s Jason Cohen, the founder of WP Tonic. He’s been on my show a number of times, and he’s a great guy and very generous in his time. But I don’t have any emotional linkage with WP Engine because it’s owned by a venture capitalist. That would be like having an emotional connection with a white shark. You don’t wish it ill, and you wouldn’t want pain and suffering to inflict the creature, but you don’t expect any emotion back. It’s a white shark. That’s not in its makeup, so I don’t expect that from it. And that’s my feeling towards WP engine. It’s a well-run machine that’s owned by a white shark, and I don’t expect The great leader, as I call him, has done almost the impossible. He’s made me feel sympathy for the right shark. Is this making any sense, Laura?
[01:00:43.300] – Laura Elizabeth
That’s exactly how I feel. I feel like, and I think I’ve said this before in private chats and things, I’m like, I never would have seen myself as sympathizing with a company as giant as WP Engine, because a company is a company, right? It’s not a person. It’s different from a small business where the person is the business, and by insulting the business, you’re insulting the person.
[01:01:07.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Wp Engine-This is a $100 million dollar hosting company, isn’t it?
[01:01:12.220] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, but I feel like I want to protect it. My client portal is hosted on WP Engine as well, so there’s that. I’ve always had good experiences with them. I’ve always really liked their support, but I’m just surprised. I almost don’t like how on their side I am, but I just I can’t feel a different way because the whole thing just seems so bizarre.
[01:01:38.190] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve attempted to keep a balanced approach to it because at any stage W, might just give him the money that he’s asking for because they just do the math and it’s just business to him. On the other hand, or they might sell to him. In the end, they come to an agreement and and automatic. I think one of the problems is that his recent interview on Disrupt, run by TechCrunch, he said that this is… I’m talking about automatic here, Laura. He publicly stated at that interview, which was very well done, much better than my interviews, Laura, that he owns 82% of Automatic. This is a company that over six rounds, over a 12 plus year period, has obtained near a billion of external investment. He’s saying that he has 82% of the company, which I can’t pass a remark on, but it sounds very strange to me. I think he has obtained an enormous amount of external investment, and I would imagine that they’re asking a return. And I really don’t see how automatic, unless it buys something like WP engine, it has any ability to produce the returns that investment necessitates. Are you following my logic at all, Laura?
[01:03:23.890] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, I do, but it’s just one of those things where… Because it’s still just all It’s a speculation, isn’t it?
[01:03:31.400] – Jonathan Denwood
It is. We don’t really know. It’s all smoke and mirrors, isn’t it?
[01:03:34.950] – Laura Elizabeth
Yeah, and that’s the hard part. But it’s like, there’s a lot of people who rely on WordPress, and we’re realizing that there’s actually this one person who can affect it.
[01:03:45.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Are you also puzzled? Because his persona, I’ve interviewed him twice, and he is extremely intelligent, and he handled me as easily as you have handled me. He’s very friendly and very passionate about WordPress. You’ve got to give him his due. He’s got this friendly air, and he goes to the word camps, and he will go on podcasts, and he will smile at me and handle me very easily. But then there’s this dark… There seems to be this side where It’s all a very complicated company structure and this relationship with the foundation. He has these discussions with the CEO of WP Engine to replace somebody that’s already supposed to have the job. And none of it adds up, does it?
[01:04:55.510] – Laura Elizabeth
No, it’s extraordinary. It’s like a split personality thing, or there are different facades that… I know people are complicated. People aren’t just good or bad or that thing.
[01:05:13.040] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not.
[01:05:15.660] – Laura Elizabeth
Everyone’s got a bit of… Everyone’s got secrets or things.
[01:05:20.990] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m boring, Laura. I haven’t got many secrets. That’s sad. I hope you’ve got a lot of secrets because I’m disappointed in my life. After all, I’m a dull fart.
[01:05:32.670] – Laura Elizabeth
I bet we could find something, I don’t know, long ago. Who knows? I don’t know. But I think people are complicated. And the only thing I can think of, and I think, okay, I don’t want to say he’s terrible, even though he’s not coming across the break.
[01:05:49.230] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t. I never wanted to do that at all.
[01:05:52.860] – Laura Elizabeth
Well, the only thing I can think of is that I’ve seen before people who have excellent intentions and are trying to do the right thing, sometimes they get screwed over a lot in their life, and they get a lot of people to take advantage because friendly people always do. Eventually, something snaps in them, and they get so sick of it that they go in the opposite direction and become nasty. I’ve seen that happen before, so maybe that’s what’s happened with him. Perhaps he was friendly, maybe he’s been screwed over a lot, and now he’s just snapped. That’s just speculation again. I don’t know.
[01:06:32.320] – Jonathan Denwood
To finish with a little bit of sarcasm and English sarcasm. The thing that came out in the interview is, well, it’s come out before; he seems to have a real need. A love of surveys. Consistently in these interviews, I’ve run this survey, and 14% of the people get confused with WP tonic or all the latest interviews as he’s done; he seems to have this thing around surveys. Secondly, his mother appears to influence his business choices strongly. I think you should listen to your mom. My mom was gone a long time ago, but bless her heart, I would listen to her. I wouldn’t do everything she suggested, but always gave her time. But he seems strongly influenced by his mother, but that’s a bit of English sarcasm. I think we’re in the… Sorry, go on, Laura.
[01:07:32.570] – Laura Elizabeth
As you say, it’s always bringing your mom into something. It makes it harder to take it seriously, in a way. It feels like I’ll be wickedly English if I can help.
[01:07:48.060] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve been here for 18 years, but I’m still very English. Thank you, Laura. It’s been a fantastic chat. I think you dealt with me quickly. I pushed back a little bit, but you dealt with it quickly. I think we covered a load of stuff. Hopefully, you will come back in the new year. I did enjoy our discussion. We’re going to end it now, folks. We’ll see you next week. Bye.
WP-Tonic & The Membership Machine Facebook Group
Why don’t you sign up and be part of the Membership Machine Show & WP-Tonic Facebook group, where you can get all the best advice and support connected to building your membership or community website on WordPress?
Facebook Group
