Putting WordPress to Work
Carrie: Hey everybody! Welcome back to officehours.fm. Today I am super pleased to bring you my friend Steve Zehngut (it a.k.a. Zengy online). Steve? How are you doing today?
Steve: I’m doing great. How are you?
Carrie: Good. For those of you who have not met Steve that probably means you haven’t been to a WordCamp yet. I think you’re absolutely at all of them. Steve is the owner of Zeek Interactive. It’s a company that’s been around for a long time and has been in the WordPress space specifically for quite a while. As I eluded Steve is highly engaged in the WordPress community. Steve? Hello!
Steve: Hello! That’s quite an intro.
Carrie: I’m actually going to have some fireworks going off at the same time (I’m going to dub in the sound). What did I leave out? I’m sure I left something out. How would you introduce yourself?
Steve: Sure not a problem. Zeek builds online businesses. We do that by combining WordPress, mobile, and SASS solutions. Like you said, we’ve been doing it for a long time. We’ve been in business since 1995. So we’re in our 22nd year in business. We were originally founded as a CD-ROM company. Throughout the 90s we did online games. We became a full-service web shop around 2001. We started mobile about eight years ago.
Carrie: Wow! So you have seen quite a few changes over the years in tech. Clearly, I don’t want to use the word pivot (I’m trying to think of a different word) but you’ve taken Zeek and shifted direction as those have changed.
Steve: We’ve pivoted several times.
Carrie: You’ve got to leave plenty of runway for the pivots.
Steve: Unlike Harrison Ford. (laughing)
Carrie: Steve? You are known as the client whisperer. I have seen you give talks at WordCamps and I’ve been to CaboPress with you where you talked about client communications and expectations. I guess it just comes from your many years of experience, but what I would love talk about today is some of your client customer whispering skills and how my listeners might be able to apply that in their own businesses. You game?
Steve: Sure. That sounds great.
Carrie: So let’s start at the beginning. So when you’re onboarding a new client what are you doing in terms of creating expectations, setting up the structure and those sorts of things?
Steve: I think the managing expectations part starts even before we onboard a client, right? I’m working on managing expectations from the first interaction with the client. There’s several things or several components to that. One of the first things that I do is let the client know at all times that we’re listening. So with all of our calls, all of our meetings or in-person meetings, everything that we do with a client or prospect is documented. We take that documentation and we email it to the client or the prospect to say hey! This is what we heard. These are our understandings. That gives the client the opportunity to say you’re on point or this isn’t exactly what I meant so we can clarify things. The follow-up is invaluable. I think that’s important to do all throughout the process. It is to A) listen (which doesn’t come naturally to everybody) and B) to have that follow-up to say hey! This is what I heard. That documentation is critical because that documentation goes on throughout the entire engagement of our process. The client gets used to it. That sets the expectation that says not only are we listening but you have the opportunity to tell us if we misunderstood something.
Carrie: That’s fantastic! Does most of that documentation take place via email or are you using some sort of a project management tool to pass that along?
Steve: So let me clarify. I’m terrible at taking notes. I’m terrible at documentation. I have a secret weapon and her name is Sarah. Sarah Wefald or Katrina, our account manager is on every call with me. They are taking copious notes. Those currently happen through email and we’re working on moving those into a project management system so both will happen. The reason we’re moving them to a project management system is so that we have an ongoing log. Anybody can have a central area where they can look at the back story of the project.
Carrie: Man, everybody needs a Sarah (or both).
Steve: Yes. You can’t have either of mine. Back off!
Carrie: Whoa! I am pivoting and going in the opposite direction. I don’t know why I feel really silly when I hang out with you Steve (even when it’s just via the inner webs).
Steve: It’s all good. The other thing I was going to say in response to your first question about onboarding and about just getting introduced to a new client…one of the things that I’ve recommended in some of my WordCamp talks is to let the client know or let the prospect know you’re human. We’re not perfect. We make mistakes. Mistakes will happen during the course of this project but that’s ok. If you let the client know up front that you’re human, when you make a mistake it can help cushion that a little bit better. The differentiator between what makes a good shop or a good studio and a great studio is how those mistakes get handled. So let the client know hey! We’re going to make mistakes but we’re going to handle them immediately. We’re going to learn from our mistakes and we’re not going to make them again. We do actually practice that. We follow up on that. That’s not just verbiage.
Carrie: Yeah. I’ve heard you speaking before about taking ownership when mistakes are made even if they’re not necessarily your fault. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Steve: You kind of summed it up. We take ownership of every part of the project. The buck stops here. Even if something goes wrong that is not our fault and it’s out of our control, we’re going to take ownership and we’re to see it through. When a technology problem happens (our clients typically aren’t technical) so they don’t know what happened. They don’t want to necessarily understand what happened. Frankly, they don’t care. They have a business to run, right? So they’re hiring us for our expertise. We’re going to take ownership of those issues and see them through. We will report back what happened and what we did about it, or this is what happened and we saw it through. This is where the problem was and here is why it won’t happen again. Yes, we absolutely take ownership of anything that happens (even if it’s outside of our control).
Carrie: Let’s say you are talking to the client and they’re talking back to you. This is all documented and they had the opportunity to provide feedback to make sure that everybody’s tracking in the same direction…have there been points where you thought you we’re tracking in the same direction and then it turned out that you weren’t?
Steve: No, I’m perfect. (both laugh) That happens all the time. As much as you communicate or attempt to communicate or attempt to set expectations, things fall through the cracks. There are missed communications. There are multiple stakeholders on the other side that we may not understand. So yes, miscommunications happen. When that happens, the way I deal with it personally is just pick up the phone. Even better, if it’s possible, do a face-to-face meeting. Say “hey listen. This happened. There was a misunderstanding. There was miscommunication.” An important piece of that is also saying “I take full responsibility for my part in this situation. Let’s work together to fix this.” I communicate to all my clients or prospects that we’re all on the same team. We all want the same thing. We want the same result. We want success and we’re interested in a long-term relationship with you. So we’re going to keep continuing to earn that business even during the project and where we’ve actually landed the business. We want to keep earning that repeat business. It’s important that as soon as an issue, a miscommunication or a problem is identified that we just address it. Address it quickly so it doesn’t fester so that there are as few hard feelings as possible. Then we can all move on and keep the project on track.
Carrie: You said something really important there. That was addressing it as quickly as possible.
Steve: I did?
Carrie: You said a lot of great things. I loved highlighting the importance of addressing things quickly. I think the tendency to mull over things can create this adversarial relationship between the vendor (the service provider) and the customer. Now I kind of rambling…you said it better than I said it. I should have just shut up and gone on to my next question.
Steve: What’s important about that is if things fester…you had a good point, Carrie. If things fester it can impact the whole team. Once something starts to fester and there are bad feelings or something is not addressed and the communication wasn’t there to address the issue, the whole team can start to feel that. Those feelings whether verbalized or not are there subconsciously. That just starts to create a bad feeling around the entire project. Nobody wants that.
Carrie; I want to see how many times we can use the word fester in this episode.
Steve: Let’s do that.
Carrie: Do you remember Uncle Fester from the Addams Family?
Steve: Absolutely. There are several ways I’d use the word fester but none of them are to be appropriate for your audience.
Carrie: We’ll put that in the after hours episode.
Steve: To this point really quick, you mentioned an adversarial relationship between clients and vendors. I hear of this all the time. I’ve talked to people and coached people through these kinds of situations, right? Here’s the thing to remember. Our clients put food on our table. They put our kids through college and keep the lights on. Whatever metaphor you want to use, that’s what they do for us. They’re paying money for us to do work for them. That can’t be forgotten. Any time there’s an adversarial relationship between the client and vendor it boggles my mind. They’re paying us to do a service for them. So those adversarial relationships just don’t make sense to me. A lot of those times I find those come because there’s a misunderstanding. There’s a misalignment of expectations. Sometimes it’s around mismanagement of change orders. We could probably spend a whole other half hour talking about change orders. Basically, if change orders are mismanaged and clients asked for changes and they’re not being managed appropriately, that to me is the one I hear mostly creating that adversarial type of position. Oh! The clients asked for something else. They asked something else. They want us to do all this stuff. If the change order process is mismanaged it’s going to become adversarial. I see change orders as a good thing. The client asked for more work. I’m jumping for joy. That’s not adversarial. That’s lucky! That’s awesome!
Carrie: When I think back to my own history freelancing and when things have not gone well, it does come back to how I communicated that and what our expectations were between each other. Yes, me managing expectations poorly. I’m sure you learned that skill along the way.
Steve: Oh yeah. That doesn’t come naturally to me. This took years. This is definitely a learned behavior. That’s it. Anytime there’s any sort of bad feelings or adversarial positions (however you want to put it) it comes down to a misalignment of expectations. Going back to my earlier point, when there’s a misalignment of expectations the first thing I do is hop on the phone and say I think there’s been a misalignment of expectations. Just verbalize it. This is what we were expecting and it feels like this was you what were expecting. Let’s just talk that through. That’s how I approach it.
Carrie: What if Uncle Fester is really angry on the other end of the line? Maybe you don’t get angry clients but how would you handle that situation?
Steve: I just get angry right back. I use a lot of curse words. I’m just kidding. You probably want to edit that part out. #sarcasm. Don’t do that, right? The first thing I do is take a deep breath. If somebody’s angry on the phone and the conversation is starting to escalate, I take a breath. I stand up from my desk. I start to pace and I just calm myself down. Then I just listen. I let them get angry and get it out. They can say anything they want as long it doesn’t turn disrespectful. Disrespect is one thing. Anger is another, right? If it’s angry I just let them get it out. Again, I repeat back what I heard. I’m taking notes during this process as well as pacing. Once they are done I say ok. This is what I heard. I just want to make sure I got it right. I summarize what they said. That gives them a chance say “yes”. That’s what I’m angry about. You did these things. Or they may say “no”. I didn’t quite say that right or you didn’t hear that right. Whatever it is, it gives us a chance to discuss things. After I’ve listened I repeat it back. I say ok. Let’s just address these things point-by-point, right? I want you to know Uncle Fester that we want to make this right. That’s an important statement. I want to make this right. By saying that, I’m taking responsibility. I have said that a couple times during this podcast. I’m always going to take that responsibility. I’m taking responsibility for my part in the situation. It’s ok to be angry with me. As a matter of fact, I want to hear your feelings. It’s ok to say these things because if you don’t say anything, I can’t do anything about it. If you say something, no matter how it comes out…if it’s calm or if it’s angry…at least at that point I can do something about it. So I thank them. I take responsibility for my part. Thank you for sharing that. Now let’s discuss these things through so that I can fix them. I want to make it right.
Carrie: Are we talking about business or personal relationships? I think we could go either way.
Steve: You can apply these things to life; however you want, that’s fine with me.
Carrie: Life hack number 873.
Steve: Again, I will tell you, none of these things come naturally to me. I’m naturally an emotional person, right? So if somebody gets angry, my natural reaction is to get angry back right. I want to react and match their emotion. I had to learn (I recommend this in a lot of my WordCamp talks) don’t react. The worst thing you can do in that situation when somebody is angry is react. At that point, just take a breath, listen, take it in, write down what they’re saying, and then respond once they’re done.
Carrie: That has got to be a really hard skill to learn.
Steve: It is extremely difficult. It takes years of practice. I’ve had a lot of people yell at me.
Carrie: Again, are we talking about business or personal stuff?
Steve: Take your pick.
Carrie: Ok, so the art of not reacting. It sounds like you can buy yourself a little bit of time to take that deep breath by getting them to talk?
Steve: Absolutely. Another way to get them to keep talking is just let them finish. Then ask a follow-up question. Make sure it’s open-ended though.
Carrie: (laughing) Is this is a good example of a follow-up question? Yes or no?
Steve: No.
Carrie: Steve? We are talking about the art of not reacting. Clearly, you are communicating via email sometimes. You are not always on the phone or in an in-person meeting. What does that translate to? How do you keep the emotion out of an email? Maybe you just need to make a phone call to get the tone right.
Steve: So let’s talk about that. Email is the worst form of communication. Texting is number two as the worst form of communication. Texting is just a little bit better than email because you can kind of sense the emotion and text based on the response.
Carrie: Because there are emojis.
Steve: (laughing) There is that. I was thinking about how quickly the text came in or how much somebody doesn’t respond to you, right? I always complain about the three dots. I am on iPhone so every time I see the three dots…you see that first. So email and texting are the worst forms of communication. The best form of communication is a face-to-face meeting. The second-best is video chat. The third-best is a phone call. I prefer those three if we are dealing with a heated situation. The problem with email is it’s up to the reader to determine the intent behind your statements. That’s why it doesn’t work. Now as far as keeping emotion out of email, I strive to write just the facts. So take out pronouns (especially you). If you use the word you, it can be taken as a blame statement. I strive to take those kinds of pronouns out of my emails. I will actually write and rewrite emails two or three times (especially important emails) before I send them. I’ll write the email I want to write and trash it. Then I’ll write the email and go through it to make sure that I’m putting myself in the reader shoes and nothing in the email sounds like an attack. The best way to write an email is with just the facts.
Carrie: Just the facts ma’am.
Steve: Just the facts. This is what happened and this is what we did about it. Done. There’s no emotion, right? The kind of language you want to take out of an email is the kitchen sink type of language. Again, this is another life lesson. This implies as much to the personal as it does to business but if you write an email that says you always do this or you never do this (or you remember last year when you did that)? That is not productive. That’s just going to fall on deaf ears or it’s just going to piss somebody off. So it’s just the current facts. Here’s what happened. Here’s what we did. Let’s hop on a phone call. I always like to end my emails with an action item as well. So it’s here’s what happened and here’s an action item. Let’s hop on a phone call. Can we meet next week? Something along those lines.
Carrie: Are most of your clients local to you?
Steve: No. Actually, the majority I don’t see face-to-face very often. So we communicate over a video chat, phone call or slack. I have clients that I’ve never met face-to-face.
Carrie: Well there you go. I was trying to come up with a song that involved face-to-face. I think it’s on the tip of my tongue but I’m going to let it go unless you have it ready to go.
Steve: I’m trying to figure out what that one face-to-face song was.
Carrie: It’s like dancing face-to-face.
Steve: No I was thinking of…it will come to me. It will come to me right when we get off the call.
Carrie: Clearly, it’s critical information. For you guys listening, I’ll be sure to add that to the show notes.
Steve: I just googled. I cheated. It’s Disconnected…was the face-to-face song I was thinking of. The band was actually Face to Face.
Carrie: Oh! Well done!
Steve: So there you go Uncle Fester.
Carrie: Well I don’t have to let that fester. I can move on with my life. Before we shift gears is there anything else in the realm of client relationships, managing expectations, handling maybe some unpleasant situations or anything else that you want to add there?
Steve: I think we talked about most it. In general, an overall tip or overall good rule of thumb (this applies to business and life) is to treat others with respect, right? Treat others how you want to be treated. If you do that, you’re going to keep clients around longer. You’re going to get more business. That could be relationship advice as well.
Carrie: I love it! You are super duper involved in the WordPress community as I mentioned earlier. You lead several Meetups there in the Orange county area.
Steve: Yep, I’ve lead the Orange County WordPress meetup for the past eight years. That Meetup has spawned several other local Meetups. Our meetup now has three meetings a month. I lead the general Meetup. Then we have a developer Meetup which is run by Brandon and Jeff. Then we have a designer Meetup which is run by Sarah. So those are all under our same Meetup. The community that we built in Orange County is fantastic. It really is a community built on giving back. That community has spawned several other Meetups in the Southern California area. It’s been it’s been awesome. I’m also the new lead organizer of WordCamp Orange County.
Carrie: That’s awesome!
Steve: Thank you! This will be my first year leading WordCamp Orange County. That will be June 10th and 11th.
Carrie: All right! Of course, you speak at many WordCamps around the country. In a nutshell, what role do you think your involvement in the community has played in your business?
Steve: That’s a good question. That’s not my primary motivation for going out and speaking at WordCamps or speaking of any conference. I really do speak at conferences to give back to the community that’s given so much to me. That is my primary motivation for going and speaking at a place like CaboPress. I really do enjoy that. I find that giving back to the community ultimately does come back to me. It just creates this environment of sharing which is good for the whole. As far as how I have benefited from speaking at WordCamps you know it does help with my name recognition and my brand recognition. Sometimes when I’m meeting with a client or I get a prospect that calls me, they’ll tell me that they saw me at a WordCamp or on WordPress TV. That’s a nice to build a brand and build rapport.
Carrie: I didn’t mean to imply that you are going with the purpose of benefiting you.
Steve: That’s ok. That sums it up on a WordCamp. As you mentioned, I have spoken at WordCamps across the country. I pick about one city a year. I target a WordCamp I want to go to. It will be a city that I haven’t been to in awhile or have never been to. I use it as a way to go meet new people in a new area and see a city that I’ve never been to.
Carrie: Double duty.
Steve: Yeah. According to the IRS, it is still a business write off. If anybody from the IRS is listening I am there for business purposes only.
Carrie: I have a huge listenership in the government.
Steve: Fantastic! We should probably edit that out.
Carrie: Done and done. I will put a big black mark over those words. You know? I was speaking with another guest on the show about the importance of attending live events and how that changes the dynamic both in terms of relationships when you get to meet people in real life and also just your learning. The way you learn in person is different I think than online learning.
Steve: I agree.
Carrie: So it was great to hear a little bit about your “WordPressing”.
Steve: I agree. When I go to a WordCamp I’m very interested in in the talks. I’m also interested in the hallway track. That’s where I do a lot of my networking, coaching and things like that. I like to meet people outside of the talks, especially people I’ve never interacted with face-to-face. One of the things that I do when I got to a WordCamp is I try to organize either a lunch or a dinner with people that I’m just meeting for the first time. The piece of advice I give there is if you have dinner with a large group of people play the phone stacking game. The phone stacking game is you take your cell phone, place it face down in the middle of the table. Everybody stacks his or her phone in the middle of the table. The first person to touch their phone pays the check. I can guarantee you that you will have meaningful good, engaged face-to-face conversations. Dustin Meza and I did this two years ago at WordCamp Las Vegas. We took 15 young twenty-somethings to dinner in Vegas. I’m not stereotyping (but I will) young 20 somethings are always on the phone. That’s just how it is. Once we told them the rules and they put their phones on the table, we saw them fidgeting and sweating for about 10 or 15 minutes. Once that wore off, we had 15 or 20 people at a table engaged in conversation for two and a half hours.
Carrie: That’s awesome!
Steve: I love it!
Carrie: You could get in a stalemate unless somebody just forgets and reaches out and grabs their phone.
Steve: I’ll let you in on a little secret. Dustin and I had already agreed ahead of time that we were going to pay the check. But they didn’t know that during the meal. It worked like a charm.
Carrie: I love it! I’m going to have to try that out for the next WordCamp experience. Steve? I am going to let you get back to your day and whispering to your clients. That’s kind of weird.
Steve: (whispers) Thank you, Carrie.
Carrie: I so appreciate your time. Where can people find you online or follow-up say hello?
Steve: Our website is Zeek.com. On Twitter I am @zengy. I don’t spend a lot of time on Twitter. If you happen to be friends with me on Facebook that’s a good place to interact with me. Those are good places to find me.
Carrie: Awesome, thanks so much Steve!
Steve: Thank you!