50:1 The website manual that makes clients stick

Note: This transcript was auto generated. As our team is small, we have done our best to correct any errors. If you spot any issues, we'd sure appreciate it if you let us know and we can resolve! Thank you for being a part of the community.Lee:

Welcome to the Trailblazer FM podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today's show, we have the one, the only, back again for the umpteenth time. It's Mr. Kyle Van Deusen of Admin Bar fame. Kyle, mate, how are you doing?

Kyle Van Deusen:

I am awesome. It's always excellent to come talk to you, Lee. I'm so excited to be here back again, I think, for the third time, which is I don't know how many people have done it more than three times now, but I want to be at the top of that list. It's like hosting SNL. I should get some jackets at some point.

Lee:

I think you're competing with Candy and Pete Everitt. At the moment, I think Candy has been on five times. But she did a whole season with me, so that's cheating, I guess. You could class that as one. But anyway, mate, thanks so much for coming on the show. We are long time friends. In fact, our first episode, like you said, was like six or seven years ago, so we've known each other since we were little children. But for those who don't know you, mate, could you just give us a little bit of a quick bio and maybe even something that people may not know about you?

Kyle Van Deusen:

All right. Kyle Van Deusen, I run an agency called Ogal Web Design. I started that back in 2017. When I got sick of my full-time job, I had worked as a graphic designer for about 15 years. Before that, launched my agency with completely naive to what would happen next, but it ended up working out, thankfully, to people like Lee, who coached me through tons of that getting started and getting it off the ground. About a year later, I started a community called the Admin Bar, and we've grown that to a little over 7,000 people at this point. It's been voted the number one WordPress community twice two years in a row now. So definitely proud of that fact. It's just a great place for people to come hang out. Freelancers, agency owners, all that, people who are involved in the WordPress space to ask questions and get help and not be so lonely working in your basement like I do.

Lee:

And folks, there is a link, by the way, to the Admin Bar community. Can I highly recommend that you go ahead and check that out? I for one know how hard it is to run a Facebook community, and you'll all be aware I eventually took the big decision to close mine when we got to about 4K because I was just exhausted. Whereas this young gun here, Kyle, has way more energy and has a really vibrant community. It's something that I've really missed. So if you're not part of a community of other designers and developers, I highly recommend you go and join the admin bar. There will be a link in the description of this YouTube video if you're watching on YouTube and also in the show notes if you are on the podcast. Don't do agency life alone. Many years ago, I was just behind me at that table crying. I had no friends. I was running an agency. I had horrible clients who were bullying me. I looked like I was about to lose my home and my business, and I had nobody to talk to. Being a member of something like the admin bar is something I highly recommend.

Lee:

Kyle is a freaking legend. Knowing you've got Kyle as your wingman, boom. You can cut that out of this podcast, mate. That's really good. You put that on your website, I hope.

Kyle Van Deusen:

I got the testimonial I came for. There you go.

Lee:

Well, now you got to give us some value for.

Kyle Van Deusen:

That, mate. Okay, fair. Good trade.

Lee:

Now, you launched the website owner's manual quite a bit it a while ago now, and I just remember it went super crazy. Everybody got the idea that it would be great to give their clients a document that told them how to look after their website. What I'd really love to explore with you in this episode is how an agency owner can develop a cracking website owner manual. First of all, could you just explain the concept to us?

Kyle Van Deusen:

Yeah. I'll do that with a story that I think we can all relate to. How many times have you got a new client come in and they already have a website or whatever, and you say, Okay, could you get me admin access to the website? They have no idea. You say, Oh, well, can you tell me where the website is hosted? Again, they have no idea where it's hosted. Okay, well, where are the DNA records? They have no idea what a DNA record is. You end up inheriting this website that you're supposed to be working on or rebuilding or whatever it may be, but your client's been completely left in the dark on how to operate any of this website. We've all dealt with the customer that comes to us that has an agency who disappeared. It's not fun for the customer and it's not fun for the agency that has to take over in that situation. The idea here is you empower the client and educate them and give them everything they need to take care of their website in the long run to be able to get in access to everything and all that, know exactly what's required as far as maintenance and upkeep and security and all those details.

Kyle Van Deusen:

They're empowered to do all of these things on their own. Now, I think that's just a good thing to do when you're selling something as powerful as a website and something that's also technical and confusing and most people might not understand right off the bat. But it also has some side benefits of if you're the one that's doing this, if you're the one that's providing all this info, you obviously are setting yourself up as an expert. That's one great thing that content does for us. But you're also letting the client know all the things that are involved in running a website that they might not have thought of in the beginning. They might not be thinking of things like updating plug ins or security or running backups or paying for plug in license. All of these things might be new concepts to them. By you introducing all these things to them in a helpful and friendly way and saying, Hey, here's how you do all of this. What I think most people realize is, you know what? I don't have time to do this, or I don't have expertise, or I just don't even want to do this.

Kyle Van Deusen:

Can you do this for me? That's the other side of this is it ends up getting you a lot of work that you might have not gotten otherwise. It's not because you're selling to somebody, it's because you're educating them, which I think is a way better way to build trust and to get that relationship going on the right foot.

Lee:

So if someone was to sit down with a blank Google Sheet, what elements, I think you've already alluded to a few, but what are the key elements that somebody should include in an owner's manual?

Kyle Van Deusen:

Yeah. So it's definitely going to depend on the types of website you're building, right? So I'm doing almost everything. I'm doing everything in WordPress. So mine are definitely WordPress related. But think of all the roadblocks that somebody would run into. I often will use my mom as an imaginary character in this. If I handed my mom a website who knows nothing about websites, what would she need to know in order to just keep this thing alive? So you start going through that mental checklist in your head of like, okay, well, she'd need to know how to log in and how to update content. She'd need to know that all these plug ins need to be updated. She'd need to know that we need to have backups of the website in case something goes down. You might even want to include frequently asked questions. So think about all the questions you get from new clients, like, My emails aren't going through, or I updated a plug in and now X doesn't work. So all those questions that happen to beginners, people who are operating a website for the first time, I would just try to start making a list of all of those things that are included in that and then put that into a document.

Kyle Van Deusen:

When you hand the website over to them, you can hand them this document that answers so many of those questions. It's the same concept of when you go buy a car and you open the glove box and there's a manual inside there that tells you how to change the windshield wipers and what battery you need to put in the car and all that. Same deal here, except for a website that just empowers the customer to be able to know what to do with the thing that they bought.

Lee:

That's awesome. You also mentioned that story where they didn't know how to log in, they didn't know where their DNS was and everything else like that. How would you recommend delivering that piece of information? Because I assume the an owner's manual for most of my clients would be the same with a few minor tweaks, but I guess I don't want to necessarily deliver them that more secretive information on the back page of the document. How would you recommend we deliver that data?

Kyle Van Deusen:

Right. So that's definitely one of the more tricky things about this. But what I've decided on is I want to make sure that all those accounts are set up where they have access. So through their email or their login, whatever that may be. And then if nothing else, I can give them the URL of where they would go to find this. So let's say their domain registrar is Go Daddy, right? We'll say domain registered at Go Daddy, and then give them the Go Daddy website address, right? And then we can say, here's the email that was used for the account, and here's the link to reset the password. Then you can just go to Go Daddy and click the Forgot My Password link or whatever and copy and paste that link into the document. That way, you're not giving them the sensitive information, but you're giving them a way that they can access that. I think that's a pretty easy way to do it and still have them be able to get the information they need.

Lee:

Now, some of this sounds like stuff that you could be talking with your client prior to even building the site and then delivering them a document such as this. You mentioned things like licenses. During the discovery, you may say, Hey, look, the features you've asked for go beyond WordPress. However, we could install this plug and this plug and then this plugin. You're going to be having some of those conversations. Is it worth delivering the owner's manual in advance as well? So during the early days of negotiating prices, saying, Hey, look, this is all that's involved, or is this literally something you recommend giving after the fact? You set the expectations at least about licensing in those sales conversations, but this document is something you deliver after the delivery.

Kyle Van Deusen:

Actually, this is one of those things that feels like a secret weapon when I send out a proposal or when I talk to my clients on the first call, prospects on the first call. One is I want to mention all of these things that go into maintaining a WordPress website as early as possible because I made the mistake early in my career of like, I just wanted to make the sale. So whatever I had to do to make the sale and get the job. Then once the website was launched, it was like, Okay, well, excuse me, but now you're going to have to do all of this work, or you're going to have to pay me to do all this work forever. That's obviously a shock that a customer doesn't want to hear for the first time once they think they're done with the project. For me, it's always important that I want to let them know if they've not had a website before, I want to let them know upfront how much work goes into it, what they should expect going forward, and those kinds of things from the very beginning. Now, in my proposals, I do include the website owner's manual that I provide them as a deliverable of the project.

Kyle Van Deusen:

I think this is such a really clever thing to do. Not clever because I thought of it, obviously, but clever because I've seen the results.

Lee:

If you say so yourself. 

Kyle Van Deusen:

Right. If I do say so myself. Clever because I've seen the results. Anytime you can figure out what are the questions and the worries your clients have and then provide them with some answer before they even have to ask. That's what this does inside the proposal. You say, Okay, along with I'm going to deliver you a website and email templates and this and that, whatever is going into your proposal. I'm also going to give you a complete document of all the instructions of everything you need to do going forward, where all your logins are, all that information. So you explain what's included in that manual. That really just eases the mind of prospects. I can pretty much guarantee that none of the other agencies you're going up against. So if you're doing bids against other agencies, none of them are including this. And what that does is it plants a seed of doubt in your customer's mind about all the other agencies. If you're providing this document and this training and all this knowledge and those others aren't doing it, even though this isn't something that they go out and pay extra money for, it's not like you put a total of $1,000 added to the invoice for this deliverable.

Kyle Van Deusen:

It adds so much value that they're now worried about the agencies who aren't thinking of all of these things. I think it's such a huge value add inside of proposals just for that peace of mind that you're giving clients before they even have to ask for it, really.

Lee:

As you're talking, there's another use case here as well, or benefit at least. It's the "hit by a bus clause". So clients will often say to me, "What happens if you disappear tomorrow"? Well, don't worry, we will provide you with an entire manual. You'll have access to absolutely absolutely everything. All of our code is accessible to any other developer. WordPress is, because like you, we deal with WordPress. Wordpress is like 40 or 50 % of the internet. I can never keep up with that statistic. But basically there are a lot of WordPress people out there who will be able to look after you directly if you need to edit what we've done with code wise. And equally, you'll be able to do everything else because here is your manual, which I think is a phenomenal upsell as well.

Kyle Van Deusen:

I was waiting for the day when that life cycle happened where somebody who was giving out a website owner's manual as part of their projects ended up getting a website owner's manual from a client. And we had that happen. It's been, I don't know, maybe two years ago now. Cool. But an agency inside of our community said, You'll never believe it. Somebody came to me and they're like, Here's a document from my last developer and it had all the information. They're like, It was so great to start a project with all this information in hand. I'm like, Yes, this is exactly it. It's the entire life cycle happened, which was pretty awesome.

Lee:

Well, that segues perfectly into the next question, which is, do you have any other examples of where the... The owner's manual that you created that other people can use has had great effects?

Kyle Van Deusen:

More than just this being some document that you hand them, you have to use it strategically. That's how I've always thought of it as a strategy. F or me, I wanted to use this in different scenarios. Like I said in the beginning, I want to talk about maintenance early on in the process. I think that helps a ton of people sell more plans is when they're open and honest about this upfront and they don't drop it on a client after the project is completed, including this inside of your proposal. Again, I think that's another huge one. With the copy we supply, we supply pre written content that you can put inside of your proposal. When I was explaining earlier that in my proposal, it has information about what they'll get with the website, owner's manual, provide that. Obviously, when a client, you finish a project and maybe they don't take your care plan, well, then we have a script for that. We also have a script for when a client does accept your care plan, you want to go ahead and still provide them with all this information so they know exactly what you're doing for them.

Kyle Van Deusen:

Then we thought about some other scenarios where this might be helpful. This is where I think people have gotten a huge return on this is going back to clients before you had the website owner's manual, before you were providing this document and saying, Okay, here's a list of all the customers that we built websites for that didn't sign up for maintenance. How can we get them to sign up now? Maybe it's been a month or maybe it's been a year or maybe it's been five years. Well, we developed a script that goes in with our copy of the website owner's manual where you can email those past clients and say, Hey, here's something that we've been doing since whenever. What we've seen is clients really appreciate having this. I went back through and retroactively created a copy for all of my past clients, and I wanted to get this in your hands. If you need any help, let me know. What's great about that is because you're educating them on what needs to be done with the website. A lot of times this is when clients realize, I haven't been doing any of these things with my website, and you've opened that dialogue again to go back and maybe start that relationship again.

Kyle Van Deusen:

For me, that's huge, being able to go back and think about all the clients who might not have taken you up on maintenance, to be able to capture a percentage of those is huge.

Lee:

Earlier on, you mentioned wanting to get the sale, therefore, just not mentioning maintenance till later. Could you give any advice to people who feel little bit scared to talk about maintenance? Perhaps they just want to get the sale in, like you said.

Kyle Van Deusen:

I think that's pretty natural, especially early on when you are a little bit more desperate for work, you just want to get somebody to sign up. But it's just such short term thinking because eventually you're going to deliver the website and the maintenance needs to be done. Think through this scenario a little bit. Let's say you finish the website, you never talked about WordPress needing any extra maintenance going forward, and now you say, Hey, by the way, you need to update plug ins and set up security and there needs to be backups and people need to know this and that and this and that. They're not equipped to do that. Then you say, Well, I could do it for you and it's X amount of dollars per month. They're going to feel like they got swindled. You never mentioned this upfront. Obviously, you knew this the whole time, right? But you never mentioned this to us. Now that we're done with the project, you want to hang it over our head that now we have to pay you 100 bucks a month or whatever it is. I don't think that's the best bit of relationship building you can do with clients.

Kyle Van Deusen:

The other option would be to not tell them about it at all. But of course, in six months when their website is hacked and they don't have any backups or anything to be able to access the website and fix those problems, whether it was their fault or not that they didn't do all these things, they're going to blame you. They're going to say, Well, I just spent $10,000 having this website built. Why didn't they take care of this? I don't think it's a good look either way. I think when you look at this in the long run, just being as upfront and honest, and really to me, it always comes back down to education. The more you can educate a client, I think some people are afraid you're giving away the keys to the kingdom, but most people don't want to do this work. You and I want to do this work. Most people who are running another business don't want to do this work. What you're doing by educating them is proving that you know what you're doing. That just builds so much trust with them that I think in the long run it's just a much safer bet than trying to skirt around the edges.

Lee:

Also, I guess there's two points here. Number one, quick story for me, I actually ended up refunding an entire web project because I didn't have this conversation. Things hit the fan about a year later. I was thinking it's been over a year now, but they threatened legal action on me because I had not given any of this information. I'd just gone ahead, built the website and let them go because I didn't particularly like them. It wasn't a great working relationship and I just thought I could let them go. But they came back on me like a ton of bricks. I I'd avoided that from the get go because I had that fear of losing the sale or the fear of confrontation or whatever else was bubbling around at the time when I was having that early conversation with them. Really, it was just delaying the inevitable because what came back was 10 times worse than that slight uncomfortable feeling you might get when you say, Yes, the website costs this, but there are also other costs that you will continually have to pay for the lot if you want to maintain this, or at least work you'll have to do if you wish to maintain this.

Lee:

It also just reminds me literally of a time where I had just assumed, this is in the late 90s, one of my very first sites, they didn't understand they had to buy hosting. When the year came round and I invoiced them for hosting again, they got really mad. Now, we all think that's obvious. Back in the 90s, it probably wasn't that obvious. But to me, it was totally obvious. And that's another instance of where I just completely had not educated my clients whatsoever because I just made massive assumptions.

Kyle Van Deusen:

Yeah. And going back to that first story there, I've had those clients too, where I thought it was going to be a great project, and it turns out going through the project, these clients aren't a great fit for me for whatever reason. And sometimes that's because the client's crazy, or sometimes it's because you just don't mess well. You can always still educate them on everything that needs to take place. The website owner's manual will give them a good starting point if they want to do it themselves. And if not, you can recommend them somebody else. Just because somebody is a bad client for you doesn't mean they're a bad client in general. So there's always people you can reach out to and refer that work on, just making sure that people know what's required in order to keep their website up and running because you definitely don't want the story you described a year later to get some threats from a past client and especially a client that you didn't really like in the first place. But you definitely don't want that happen.

Lee:

And then refunding, that's suck... Now, folks, let me just prove that education does work because during this podcast, you have heard reasons why you should develop a owner's manual for the websites that you deliver to your clients. You've also heard some of the things that you could include in the benefits, etc. I guarantee you right now that you're thinking, I don't have time for that. Well, you can actually go ahead and purchase that because you have been educated. You can at least go and purchase it from the admin bar. There will be a link in the description. This is not an affiliate. I'm just promoting this because I think it's awesome and so is Kyle. You can buy that and repurpose it for yourself in a fraction of the time. So if you're thinking like that, then I guarantee your client when reading the website owner's manual will definitely be thinking, We don't have time to update this website. We need to commission you. So, mate, thank you so much for spending some time with us. What are the plans of you got in the near future for Admin Bar?

Kyle Van Deusen:

Well, I don't know what date this will come out, but we're getting really close to WordCamp US here in the States here in about a month from when we're recording this. And we have a big group of people. I think last count, there was like 70 folks from our community who are going to be at WordCamp US. I'm really looking forward to getting all those people together and some new exciting things coming inside the Admin Bar as far as some products and stuff I'm developing right now that I'm really excited about. But mostly it's just continuing to help everybody stay in the game. You need a little bit of support in different ways at different times. Sometimes you need to come in and gripe about clients, which we definitely do a little bit inside the admin bar. Sometimes GA4 is coming down and we all need to know what to do. Having a community of folks like that together to be able to help and support one another is huge. We just want to continue providing that service to everybody who wants to be involved.

Lee:

And folks, if you just literally thought he meant GTI 5, just then now, GI4 is something to do with Google, which I just totally glossed over the other day when they kept spamming me and asked one of my colleagues to deal with it.

Kyle Van Deusen:

That was the analytics isn't it?

Lee:

The minute I saw that and read everything, I just cried a little inside and handed it off.

Kyle Van Deusen:

That's somebody else's problem.

Lee:

So folks, if you want to go find out more, check out adminbar.com. Check out the links in the description as well for the website and as manual for the Facebook group. And Kyle, are there any other ways that people can connect with you before we say goodbye?

Kyle Van Deusen:

Well, I would say Twitter, but I don't know what's going to happen to Twitter in the next few days. So I would say the Facebook group is the best way. You can always reach me at kyle@theadminbar.com if you want to just go old school with email.

Lee:

Nice. Thanks so much for your time. I hope we can have you on again soon so that you can beat Pete Everitt's record.

Kyle Van Deusen:

Anything to beat Pete. We can record another one right now.

Lee:

Back to back. Let's do it. Take care, buddy.

Kyle Van Deusen:

See you later. Bye.